13138	----	THE FORGOTTEN THRESHOLD A Journal of Arthur Middleton TO W.S.B. FOR SUBSTANTIAL EMBODIMENT PREFATORY NOTE Before Arthur Middleton died he gave me this record among others in the belief that it would help to tell me what he had always known in the silences, yet could never in life transmute into the friendly counters of speech. During the last years of his all too brief experience of his friends, more than once he shyly sought to tell what he knew, yet always silence claimed him, and nothing but the wonder of his eyes revealed the dream that consumed his heart. Because beauty claims these words in a deeper knowledge than we had before, I have transcribed this fragment of them here, confident that in these white intuitions of his youth there is a revelation of the Light behind beauty beyond our poor knowledge and still poorer faith. I have omitted only what was most sacred to the privacies of his heart and our affection. He was of the old faith and would have wished had he published these pages to have expressed his entire and passionate loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church in faith and deed, and to have disclaimed any word therein which conflicted with the intimacies of its truth. I can do no more than to echo his wish, and mourn the unhappy chance which took him from us on an April tide, though it befell on the Easter that he loved and at that hour when the flaming symbol of the Divine Sacrifice was setting in the west. So the passion of the sun and tide which reflected his belief witnessed the consummation of his great desire.--THE EDITOR. THE FORGOTTEN THRESHOLD THE JOURNAL (N.B.--On the opening pages of the blank book in which this journal is contained there is a short fragment which bears no relation that I can discover to the entries that follow, and I am inclined to believe that it is the beginning of an autobiography which Middleton never continued. In my uncertainty, however, I print it, and accordingly it is transcribed below.--THE EDITOR.) _Fragment_.--I was not more than three years old when the sunlight first made me happy as it stole through the curtains and over the coverlet till it kissed my lips and wrapped me in its warm embrace. Then I would fall asleep again and my dreams, if I dreamed at all, were white and faintly stirred me to a smile. I never tried to catch the sunbeams, for I felt their gold in my heart, nor could they have been nearer than they were, being associated with my mother's watchfulness as she stole in to smile upon my slumbers and claim the second silent unconscious kiss. On Sunday morning they would be freighted with a quiet whiter light, more peaceful and hushed to the feeling of the day, and somehow the peace was guarded with finger on lip throughout the house, so that it was implicit in my nest of images long before reason took note of it or sought to explain it to my consciousness. Once again as a boy of fifteen I knew it with a catch of delighted and almost tearful surprise when I stroked the breast of a wounded pigeon who found shelter in my room. The world is not as quiet in these days, nor is the hum of traffic in the mart attuned so kindly to the flow of light as when it ran so gently by the bedside of the dreaming boy. ... (The journal now follows, written in a small cramped hand, without paragraphing or division. I omit the first few entries as purely personal. Middleton had gone to a group of remote western islands, and these notes are the fruit of his sojourn there.)--THE EDITOR. July 5. Yesterday found me on the island with its silences, and last night the host was red and sacrificial and rode on a thunder cloud. This afternoon the planets go singing through my flesh and my song of praise has widened to the arches of the sun. The sea is moaning slowly on the sand. I stripped to the cool salt air for the first time. ... Walking I found my way out on the long gray dunes. July 6. On the dunes today with my mother. My hand swept idly over the soft white sand, shifting the order of many thousands of starry worlds. What a chord of music if one could but hear it in its entirety! As it was, I caught wonderful echoes that would light the beauties of many a sunrise. The silent man reminds me of Synge in his drifting life and the fires glowing in his eyes. Today I saw the-beauty of a flower. ... Some day I shall write a play about the stars. The action will burn in their seedtime and blow on the winds of Fate with all its ironies. ... Tonight in the sitting room I heard in my heart the singing of the sands. It is on the shifting desert, I feel, that we shall discover the secret origin of language. How the infinitely aspiring music must sound tonight along the dunes! July 7. The night before last after I retired I felt that lifted feeling physically which represents the beating of the tides. Last night it coalesced with the singing of the sands. At Mass this morning the voices at the Credo thundered out _Et Homo factus est_ in a torrent of living sound. At the elevation I saw a thin white flame rise from the uplifted chalice and disappear. It takes a beam of light one hundred and eight years to travel from Arcturus to the earth. Are we similar traveling beams, and is death merely our arrival on another planet which we illumine? Today I read aloud on the cliffs from the glories of Plato's _Phaedrus_. July 8. In the morning I wandered onto the dunes leading out toward Wonder Island, but was driven off by the terns who were nesting. ... The billows of the wind today mingled in me with the sands and the tide, so that I experienced from a new angle Landor's "We are what suns and winds and waters make us." ... July 9. My life will see much traveling. July 10. Morning on the dunes. A cold clear bath while mists drove over the sands. Returning home, as I came to the deep sand on the road, I perceived the mystery of the resurrection of the body. In death there is no physical decay. The singing planets of the human body merely part to combine in other songs, recurring again in the end to their old disposal and song, exchanging other worlds for their own once more, and recurring to the first motif of the symphony. I was sad this afternoon for the will failed me in my work. Sitting on the sand this morning the singing dunes had attained to the harmony of silence. All at once a little wisp of seaweed--hardly more than a thread--started to beat time upon the sands. And then I knew and saw it to be in its happy beating the pulse that governed the music of the stars. Can the heart conduct the symphony of the body? Tonight the sun set, borne away--a Grail--by angels from the questing Galahad. There was a great silence in my heart as I sat in the crowded room. July 11. A day of northeast wind and upward thunder. The joy of the wind was in me, and I lost the sense of space. The air was so buoyant that it was closely kin to the sea. ... Today I succeeded a little better with my will. I had a strange sensation this afternoon, which told me that bare lonely places are the only places to write drama, since there only can we find the pure dynamic forces of life disentangled from the subtle and complicated web of human ambitions and interests. The air was very thin and clear at twilight, but the sun was hidden in the clouds. ... July 12. ... There was a great silence this evening in the crowded room. Closing my eyes, I raised the upper lids as far as possible without seeing material things, and so saw myself in fearful wonder elevating the host and chalice on high. I know now the inner meaning of "Domine, non sum dignus _ut intres sub tecta mea_." Under these two arched roofs of the eyes hidden from all light save Light, there is a secret dwelling. ... A day of close-shrouded palling fog--a chrism confirming the strength of beauty. July 13. This morning the wind blew through the fields of grass like countless angels in the courts of heaven. Shadow and color and light and movement dancing before the first syllable of the Name. A gull flew down almost to my hand, and the sunlight thundered in my ears. Last night the sea was sadly purifying the earth. I now understand the Washer of the Ford. Majesty lies in darkness, and grief is only the privilege of seeing Majesty. Today on the porch with closed eyes buried in my hands the winds swept over me in a torrent of living light. A symphony is a wonderful symbol. In the first place, it is music. In the second place, it is a name of praise with four syllables. Then it completes a cycle, and returns on a higher plane to the motif with which it began. It is the history of a soul, and in its last movement typifies the resurrection of the body, by means of this very return,--a return to the order and disposal in which it was created and which it now reassumes to praise its Creator for all eternity by the harmony of the original Thought. I looked at twilight into the tiny white heart of a flower that grew among the grasses, and out of the heart pulsed the Sacred Body in wounds all glorified, with Hands outstretched conducting the music of the worlds. I know now that the flower was a chalice. The sadness of it cannot die as the Man can, and I know that it is with me ready to be shared. As I write this, there is a mist within my room. I always sleep now like one ready to soar. In the crowded room tonight I felt myself making the movements of swimming, as if the air were water and I an expert swimmer. July 14. _Views of the unveiled heavens alone forth bring Prophets who cannot sing_. A day of tempestuous wind and rain with all the keen dynamic life of time poised 'mid eternities. The happiest of my days battling with the elements in wonderful silences. At Mass with wonder the shining of the Host. My eyes were veiled from the chalice, but I felt two angels --guarding the acolytes. Again at the Credo the thunder of _Et Homo factus est_. With Shelley in the afternoon and a perilous walk on the cliffs. ... I am gaining in detachment. The desire and passion for solitude grows and I meditate a winter on the islands. How unworthy I am to partake of mysteries! They fill me with fear, for it is hard for the body to live in eternity. In the evening with Gordon Craig. Is he right about masks? A mask is a symbol, but a face may be a sacrament. The Mass, after all, is the supreme dream and drama of the world. Sadness is majesty, as I found the other night, and majesty is always impenetrable, for it is a secret full of awe and mysterious silence. Tonight I see that great drama, whether it be a tragedy or no, must reveal time poised in infinity. Beauty, I think, contains everything save the human will, and it is the ideal of the will to be thus contained and of beauty to be the container. ... In the supreme drama of Gethsemane and Calvary, Christ used the human body as the supreme visible instrument of drama. July 15. ... Tonight the fog broke through the sunset and scattered gold across the sea. Clouds hung over the cliffs. ... I prayed through the sunset, and won a victory for the will. July 16. Last night in the darkness I learned many things. The human will is the unit, the core of flame which binds all elements together. It is sad because it is the force of impact tearing things from their detached and comfortable places and placing them in new relations. It is the magnet, the summoning voice, our own conscience, the expression of Majesty. It disposes reluctant and conflicting notes in harmony. And we have control of it given into our hands. And then, too, I learnt that words are worlds. At every breath, nay, by the slightest thought, we create planets. Pray that they harmonize! They have power. Are they angels? They convey our messages, but their harmony of inter-woven song and meaning was lost at Babel to our ears. Yet by them if our will is strong and we do not fail in deeds we may take our part in the symphony as truly as life itself. And so we must not use them idly. How can anyone dare to tell a lie? One begins to see how God is a Name. I felt before how the secret of language was to be found among the sands. It is because the sands are the nearest and most visible planets we possess. Words are planets. But planets are sands on the shore of eternity. Words are sands. We are little words made flesh, little echoes in the image of the great Word made Flesh. His creation is the complete echo made flesh, His Image and likeness which He contemplates. And so we are in our measure part of the song made flesh, and the little common words that we use are our brothers. July 17. The sunset tonight was a glorious crucifixion after the day of clouds. It was human in its beckoning. I cannot find the secret of the moon, but it reminds me of Lionel's phrase, if it be his, "golden mediocrities." Is it the astral embodiment of "They also serve who only stand and wait"? Why is it that the little human beauties of Nature pass me by as entities, and that I seek bare places? Is there a parallel in my personal attitude toward all but those who are specially dear to me? I thought of how I looked down on the city from the mountain in May, and felt the whole city to be my prayer. It had been given into my control for a few minutes, and the only worthy use to which I could put it was to offer it up with a prayer for my people and all the desire of my heart that the prayer would be answered. The half-million souls with all their dreams were under my care then, and their acts were mine. So little are cities, and so little I found my worthiness that I could not hide my tears. Later I crossed to the height looking down on the cemetery, the world was silent save for the flaming heart of the city pulsing below, and reflecting the Flaming Heart above as the sun set. The woodpeckers did not fear me, and I sank slowly and deeply into God. I think that some day I shall know His wounds. I cannot understand why I was delivered from temptation at the moment that the city was put into my hands. July 18. ... I bathed on the dunes on Wonder Island. The sun set tonight sacramentally just as it set that night at ---- when I failed to speak. Never had I felt stronger, but something held me back from telling him how the dearest wish of my life was that he should participate in the Holy Eucharist. The flame was in my hands to lay upon his heart, but something bade me wait. I distrusted it, and asked him to walk with me on the shore. The thunder of the tide and the moon were too strong. Why could I not have told him? We were silent for hours while his heart lay with the _Titanic_, and even his little daughter was quiet in the room. July 19. The stars are the dust rubbed off from human souls. "Dust unto dust thou shalt return." At the last judgment, they will fly together in an angelic hosting, and clothe once more the souls which moved in them, and our souls will rule their songs. Human suffering is the friction of angels making stars. ... I know now that the end of one's forty days is not complete knowledge, but only a clear indication of the road. The joy is in that, and also the sorrow. It is the direction given to the will, orders to be so carefully obeyed. This is the greatest discovery of all. Words do not reveal it. It is absolutely prosaic, though it is eternal beauty. But what I have written does not reflect it even faintly as it seems to me. Read Hello this afternoon. The freedom of the dunes this morning seemed to extend more than is usual. Later I read from Plato's "Symposium." July 20. ... The proverbial symbol of impermanence is writing upon sand. What could be more gloriously permanent? To have one's message spelled out by singing planets, to write upon the stars. It is so that our songs have immortality. "Verba scripta manent" takes on a majestic significance. Are not joy and sadness the same? The only difference is one of rapidity. Sadness is made up of the long, slow, majestic chords of the song. It seems to me that when a wheel seems to cease motion, and finally attains a state of motionlessness, it is perhaps merely turning into a terrible speed which we cannot perceive. It is the turning of an hour-glass. When I am dead, I wish only my faults to be chronicled, for these alone have any value for the world. I have dreamt always of cycles of infinities. As a decimal always tends by evolution towards a number, so also we evolve toward an infinity. Yet at that goal another infinity starts, as another infinity starts in numbers,--the symbol of patience after all. "Unto the man of yearning thought And aspiration, to do nought Is in itself almost an act,-- Being chasm-fire and cataract Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd. Yet woe to thee if once thou yield Unto the act of doing nought!" Read Hello and Elia. I am learning how to see in crowds. These past few days I have succeeded in withdrawing into life for long periods in the midst of a general conversation, yet my absence was not noted in the least. Out of it I hope will develop the ability to be with life always in the tangle and confusion of city circumstance. This afternoon I read _Phaedrus_ aloud on a sunny cliff, and in the evening read aloud Keats' "I stood tiptoe" on the green heights in the wind and the rain. Rossetti's lines do not forbid a life of contemplation, but rather encourage it as distinguished from quietism. ... Through the summer I am to see the Crucifixion. How I envy St. Francis the Stigmata! Even as a little boy I desired them--but I shall never be able perhaps to love passionately enough. The nights that I cried as a little fellow without knowing why, just because I loved, were nearer than I shall ever be again. July 21. At Benediction after Mass today I saw the Wonder in all Humanity with Light surrounding It, and I shook with an awful thunder of sound. ... Today I have been happy to tears, and in the blue afternoon on the cliffs with my mother, I shared "Endymion" and "Epipsychidion." ... I do not understand why silence is spoken of as a precept. To me it is the living attribute of God. ... How nobly scornful is Sir Aubrey De Vere's phrase, "witless ecstasies"! July 22. Simply a day of hard work. But I was happy in it. In an odd way I felt as I wrote all day on the smooth white paper that I was stroking the sleek breasts of doves. Tonight the steady patter of the rain upon the eaves. July 23. A day of hard routine work. ... Tonight in the inky darkness I walked to the postoffice in the thundering wind and rain and surf, and learned how the deeps can praise the Lord. I have always felt the wonder of that psalm. July 24. Rose at 4:30 and saw the sun rise a pure and shimmering symbol of the Host above the silver outline of Wonder Island. The day was dumb. A little boy has come whose face is his sacrament. What a song he must sing! I look forward to the morrow as a day of special grace and wonder. ... July 25. It is evident to me that music is wrong before a play or during intermissions. But it is necessary until our dramatists provide some other prelude. That prelude must be a beautiful setting of silence for a few moments showing the protagonist under the light of eternity. In the beginning all words contained a spiritual "import,"--were angels. At Babel many fell. Now all our spiritual words are material words grown out of their meanings. When expression becomes passion, it is the passion of creation, clothing itself in images as God does through eternity in the Passion of Creation. This is near the heart of life's most awful secret, but words conceal it except from experience. For Passion proceeds from Creation as Preservation proceeds from both, though they are all from Eternity in the Unity of the Godhead. All my planets at the contemplation of This are dancing before the throne. The thunderous rhythm of their music is shaking me physically like the engines of a steamer in shallow water. Every atom struggles against the law of cohesion. God loves the beautiful boy. His name is Henry R----. The Greeks, Emerson says, called the world _Cosmos_, Beauty. Reading this on the veranda this afternoon, I closed my eyes and sank contentedly into life. When I returned the faces were foreign, and even my mother never knew. On the dunes this morning I heard the silence of Eternity on the edge of time. I think it is a pine forest. Babel took away the Word, until It came to earth, and in material form took on supreme Spirit coming from the Father. ... July 26. I wish I could raise a singing altar of planets by some great sacrifice. My fingers drummed upon the sands this morning a crude and simple rhythm. I thought of its influence in displacing planets, and of the almost infinite musical variations that were set in motion, and then I compared my crude thrumming with the majestic thunders of the sea, and realized the insupportable beauty of absolute music. A dog talks by smell. There are vibrations of smell, as well as of sound or of heat or of light. And the blind reveal vibration of touch, the holiest of the senses. We talk now by sound, but are learning to talk by heat and light. When shall we learn to talk by smell and touch? Flowers, too, talk by smell. There is nothing but vibration in the image of God, for LIFE IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE TREMBLING OF HIS BEAUTY. The awful speed of Truth hardens into fact. Words must not say more. A dog taught me this,--Prince, the companion of the silent man. One should be a priest when he marries two ideas. In any one of the planets within the singing tissue of my flesh are Dantes and St. Francises. Creation requires of us infinite crucifixions which we shall never be able to consummate alone. When I lie on my breasts on the sand and bury my face in my hands, all Nature receives me as a human bridegroom, and I sink through time to eternity _creating_ space around me, that widens and narrows to the reaches of immortality. It is always on the sands that I find the friendliest depths, or in the snow drift of cold planets upon a winter day or else within in the terrible energy of my body, as my heart beats time to the universal spheral rhythm. Think of the literal meaning of "universal!" Tonight in the silence I read _Prometheus Bound_. I love the grace of the boy's eyes. I pray to be guarded from the pride of humility. July 27. [Illustration: Circle with a cross through it.] ... It was a day of silences. I traced this figure idly on the sand today, and suddenly understood the symbolism of the scarab. But did the Egyptians anticipate the Redemption? As men are impressed by the face of the world, so is the world impressed by their faces. The face, as mirror of the soul, shines forth with electricity and makes an impression on life, altering the song of those it acts upon as the violin sound alters the formation of sands resting on a tightened drum. By what ancient intuition does the Latin word "malum" mean both "apple" and "evil"? Music creates substance through the speed of gaiety, and God in His Creation is a cosmic humorist. (Cosmic means beautiful.) To distinguish between fascination and sympathy is a counsel of perfection for critics which has its spiritual analogies. ... Angels ran in hosts through the grasses. July 28. "His soul's most secret thought, Eternal Light declares." I read Lionel's poems on the cliffs, and almost discovered the secret of the blue. Today for the first time I realized the remoteness of these islands, and it was a great joy. It was a golden day of sunshine on the cliffs with blue cloudless sky over quiet waters. Life is turning inward to the heart of silence, and out of it will come the beauty of my dream if life is willing. July 29. ... I met a man today who knew beauty. He was a French country lawyer. ... The sunset tonight revealed all the sadness of the Burning Babe. I failed today. July 30. Another sadder failure of the will. Yet beauty came in the evening. The love of man, far more the love of God, is God in heaven descended upon earth, eternity made time in beauty, "majestic instancy," the Word made Flesh. The soul is the pool wherein God and we see our images, and Heaven will be the mutual contemplation of our souls. So that human love is the adoration of God in human flesh, and therein may the beloved be seen as the image of God in time. The praise of Our Lady should then be the praise of God. Was this Patmore's secret? Or Dante's and Petrarch's? "My lady was desired in the high heaven." ... I see now how in Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage. Far flowing ramparts of a starry world! The _flammantia moenia mundi_ of Lucretius. To contemplate Beauty FACE TO FACE! What a wonderful proof of the beauty of our souls. Twin mirrors of a single singing thought, the face of man looking into the Face of God, soul mingling with Soul in immortal music, bathed in the cool wind of Our Lady's eyes. Today I lost a nation in the cycle of my soul. What is the blood but the history of my planets as engraved upon the constellations of my flesh? It is the book of the angel of judgment for the first syllable of my song, as the emotions, the intellect, and, alas, the will, for the second, third, and fourth. The flesh is the ebb tide from God, as the emotions are the flood. The intellect is the second ebb, and in the will pray God that it may be flood! The other is Hell.... July 31. ... A victory for the will this morning. ... Tomorrow is the first of August, and I shall enter upon my forty days. The ringing in my ears is the ringing of my fleshly stars "toned all in Time." I have commenced an anthology of high imaginings more worthy than a book of essays of that title I have loved and desired to use for years,--_Flame and Dew_. If rightly done, it may do poetry one of the greatest of services by assisting it to praise Beauty on many lips in naked Light. I wish to consecrate my work on it to that end. Today I have been influenced by Frederick Tennyson, Traherne, and Patmore. In agony lies the highest music. The key is struck by circumstance, Time's organist, and the stars tremble with music. For the full thundering silence of Absolute Beauty a Divine Agony was necessary, so that all Heaven and its choirs and Hell trembled in the majesty of this _stricken_ Doom. Death is the final chord, the passage of our full song from time to the silence of eternity. Sleep next to death is the most terrible life that soul and body knows. It is the center of the wheel radiating high powers to the circumference. The speed there is terrific, so fast that it hardens, again that "majestic instancy." The tiniest flame is the friction of conflicting "universes." Beauty is alike the center and circumference of infinity, the silent wheel of omnipresent omnipotence, wherein all thoughts are not timed but eternal. From eternity we were nothing: to eternity we are Beauty's image. Is it strange that in sleep we are often given sight? August 1. Art is the exhibition of life in the light of eternity. I can conceive of no other adequate critical formula. This applies to painting, sculpture, literature and music. Such too is the art of life,--the exhibition to God and man of life in the light of eternity. I have been startled to find a kinship between Wordsworth and Millet. I found it today in a stooped old man who was traveling the roads with a walking stick and a heavy bundle of driftwood. He was worthy of a great painter or a great poet. By the sign of the cross one draws a magic circle round the soul which evil may not penetrate. It places one "in the name." On the seashore one should lie parallel with the waves facing inland. Then only may one advance onward with their prayer. August 2. It is absolutely true that only music may shape woods and fountains and the beauty of souls, for it is the only medium of expression which is pure. Pure music is the true white magic, as black magic is music mixed with clay by human hands. Naked Beauty alone may mix music with clay in Its own image and likeness. Even poetry fails save in so far as it echoes the pure natural truths of music. And all creation may flow from a flute if the player breathes a prayer. Some day we shall have the great opera of the Incarnation and Redemption. It is the ideal goal of music, and so of all art. But it demands the poet, the painter, and the sculptor, too, for its actors shall be immortal statues and a living chorus singing the passion of the race against the supreme dawn and the supreme sunset. But its greatest moments will be silence. Christ and His Mother will live this silence in the glory of transfigured stone, and the drama will be played in the open with the stars above as orchestra, to which the human music will be but a beautiful echo. To this Wagner and Craig point the way. I read Patmore's _Two Infinities_ today with bewilderment and emphatic disagreement. It seems absolutely lacking in vision, provincial, almost challenging Creation. And yet it is essentially true. Christ was a man of golden mediocrities. He speaks of the lilies of the field, but never of stars or of planets. And St. Francis perhaps hints at the solution. To him brother Wind and brother Fire and brother Worm are alike and equal, for he sees them in the light of infinity. But all are wonderful, and we must not sneer at the stars. ... Today writing as a means of expression has seemed to be absolutely futile. Silence is the only active way of praise that I can find, provided that it informs some daily action. My will won again today. Horizons are wonderful. S---- told me that Lionel invited him into his Oxford rooms one evening at sunset and led him to a seat from which nothing lower than the horizon was to be seen. "There," he said, "nothing matters that is below that line." You see he knew that our souls in their beauty are always above it. August 3. To watch a grass-blade tapping will teach you wonderful music--the language of the wind. The sunlight running through my flesh in-flames the song of the will. I lost myself tonight in the crowded silences. Joy stays with me now, and if I can only join it to sorrow, the will can then sing simply and freely a continuous song. The turning of the tide is soon to come, and my homesickness for G----ville is transforming itself into a different nostalgia. My planets are rising in song like little candle flames. I wish I possessed their humility. Within me tonight are quiet moonlit waters very full and rich with silent promises of rest. August 4. At Mass today Mr. C---- showed a fine courtesy serving with the high humility of a punctilious gentleman. ... Today I saw the body of Christ, "infinite riches in a little room." The human body of Christ in its passion is the sum of all our bodies, and it is this truth to which pantheism in its blindness dimly beckons. The saints and pure poets and those who have died for friends are the image of the Sacred Heart, and in them at moments of pure _reflection_ there is naked light and the vision which is insupportable. Hence in the greatest saints the stigmata. All God's lonely ones are the reflections of His pain when they attain to sanctity. And holy priests are the reflections of His Hands. Little children and saints may look into His Eyes and see their own. And repentant sinners may reflect His Feet in their tears. All the births and lives of the earth go to form His Human Body, which is vast as Eternity and radiating with Light from all points and inward to the Heart of Light. To some saints it has been permitted to be the spouse of this body and soul. Magic is white or black. White magic is the offspring of spiritual marriage and is a sacrament. Black magic is the offspring of unauthorized spiritual contacts. My frame tonight is possessed by angels dancing before the throne in a fearfully rapid rhythm. The secret of spiritual achievement is unremitting labor urged without ceasing by a fearful joy. No drama is more vast than that of the crucifixion, and yet I have seen it all in the heart of a strawberry blossom with wounds all glorified in an ecstasy of living trembling light, and heard the beating of His Sacred Heart while universe called out to universe in the anguish of His surrender and all the stars died into the Light of Eternity. The tide has turned. August 5. Today looking into a narrow dome I saw the seeded planets banded by circles of light whereon they turned. And color changed into silence at the bidding of the central suns. And these were the eyes of happy innocence wherein all others died to the Living Light, God being in them by their childishness. The tide turned yesterday, and today I have spent entirely in eternity surrounded by a host of fair-winged Possibilities, God's angels to humanity. Death is glorified by their passage from the future to the past, and we respond by plunging our lights into the Light wherein it dies. _Abt Vogler_ is the musical philosophy of it all. At my first symphony concert as a little boy, I saw the face of the dying Christ through the wall, and in it the music of the seventh Symphony sang through the naked eyes calling me inward to the Sacred Heart. This morning and noon at table I smiled at white horizons and in the evening I swam through the Host on my future wings. We love earth, air, fire, and water now, but the eternal joy of swimming through the Light of God and reflecting His Light in song and silence is the infinity of all poets' dreams incarnate in the awful speed of Absolute Music. It is the privilege of laughing into the Eyes of God, those Eyes before which the angels veil their faces. It is the privilege of smelling the blossom of the Living Rose, of tasting and consuming forever the Body and Blood, of touching the Sacred Knees, and of hearing the Divinity who is Music. Priests and poets shall swim in the song of his heart, and those who have died for friends will reflect its resolving rhythm. How I pity Blake his pride, though he was preserved from the pride of humility. God will let me see more of Him in this life than Blake did, though it is of the most trifling significance to anticipate eternity in poor time, the crippled heir of original sin. Since it is to be, I wish with all my blood that my will were worthier. August 6. A day of happy drudgery reading proofs. I rode through them in the winds of eternity. That is the secret of it all,--to teach us joy. The human symbol of it is a martyr's ecstasy, which is in no way sensuous or voluptuous since it has completely forgotten the body. The Sacred Heart is the Mystical Rose spreading its petals over the Cross of Time. In _Flame and Dew_ is the first application of an idea and belief that the day will come when anthologies will be books containing the wisdom of the poets on special sciences, such as the science of childhood, the science of love, the science of death, and the science of silence. August 7. Imagination being Eternal Life, it shows the blind instinct of language that the word should mean the creation of images. Imagination is the instrument of God's creation in his own _image_ and likeness. Today I came to Petrarch and Dante--the mystics of the supreme elements. To contrast their serenity with Blake's wrath shows the whiter heights. All height is inward through narrow circles to the Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight its light in the music of the ancient winds, telling me of the crucifixion in burning colors of a dying world. Why am I unworthy of an equal death? The blood runs toward it in a passion of harmony. The day is near when my morning stars shall sing their lives out together in praise of their Creator, though it is futile to measure it in terms of time. One is not curious of time if one lives in eternity. Death is then only the fulfilment of our operative desires. I wish that I were one of the tears of God. Joy is for those _of good will_. August 8. I met one of Wordsworth's old men today gathering faggots on the shore. "I have been to all places and cities and I found no one happy on the world, and now I wish me to be dead." ... Tonight I bowed in silence under the vault of stars. To be holy is to lose the knowledge of good and evil through "clinging Heaven by the hems." To refuse evil is to refuse the apple _(malum)_ of the Tree of Knowledge. There is no possibility of finding the ideal unless we look passionately for nothing but the beauty of souls, seeing therein God's image and refusing to perceive the clouds of evil. Circles lead to Heaven, but straight lines to Hell. Straight lines are the tangents that "err" from the sphere of the ideal. Miss C---- told me about a little boy who was visiting Italy with his mother. He fell down hill, and stopped before a roadside crucifix. And then he forgot his fall. They found him crying as if his heart would break, and he told them that it was because he was so sorry for that sad Man whom everybody had made suffer so. The angels drop seed into our souls which make them invisible to other men, and we also may plant seed with modesty and humility. It is God's fernseed to mortals. How strange it is that we measure time by moons, cold satellites, and thus the symbol of death. But after all time is the dark night of the soul. I realized for the first time today that I was born in December, the month of creation, when the flame turns in upon itself in the hard cold earth and gives birth to high hopes whose fulfilment are in eternity. It is the month of Christmas on that account. I have begun to perceive what awful wings my thoughts have, and know that they are given them by God through me to carry them humbly into the most secret circle of the Sacred Breast. We must do the labor of God with human hands, yet the Labor of God is the Creation of Beauty. As the vegetable kingdom renews its life once a year through time and so preserves its secret, our souls must renew themselves in infinite recurrence through eternity. Our life differs only in ardor which is speed. The greatest speed lies in submission, for submission is the greatest strength. At high moments it is Atlas supporting the earth. At the supreme moment, it becomes the mystery of the Redemption. August 9. Singing through the universal stars that were woven into His Flesh, I saw the Son of God tonight glorified in the joy of a living Smile. And all the angels bowed laughing toward Him and clapped and danced before His Name, though the sum of their song was silence. And then every living star was scourged by the sins of men, and died into the darkness, saying "Thy Will be done," and it was morning with the Eucharist in the sky. Only Redemption trembled through the air. The stars are the eternal reflections of God's patience, for they endure His Human Passion, since together they form the shadow of the Word made Flesh. They are the singing echo in time of God's speechless patience, as we are destined to be if we conquer our wills. But patience is suffering, and Alpha must submit to the yoke of Omega. Since God is the Alpha and Omega he caused the Incarnation and Passion. THE IDEAL OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE PASSIONATE REDEMPTION OF THE WILL. This is life's darkest secret, _unless_ we live in the Eucharist. We are to be the silent reflections of speechless patience in the still waters of eternity. The evil came when Lucifer stole fire from heaven and brought it down to men. Conquer fire, and we conquer the will. Then heaven is ours. My body and blood ache with my prayer for it. August 10. The angels weave what God creates, according to their functions. His archangels are the weavers of time, and all the others of material nature, uninformed by a soul. This is a branch of the heavenly song. To weave God's image is the function of the saints and of all those on earth. It is the wonder of incarnate Music that saved the world, Absolute Silence born into Sound, and dying with all Sound into Silence. The archangels are God's messengers of life and death, for they control the days. But they are sent from Him to His Image, and our weaving is made out of their materials as we adapt them to our song. All outer powers and forces are brought us by the angels, and among the dearest to God's heart are his flame-winged Possibilities that hover on the borderline between today and tomorrow, Time and Eternity. They alone may not enter time unless we beckon them. The starry heaven is the heaven of the body; the crystal sphere, of the intellect; and the empyrean, of the pure soul. We may live in the starry heaven in this life, if God gives us the grace. But it is then a heaven of desire. But the weaving of the angels is the whole philosophy of nature. Their music explains its sympathies and sorrows, its deaths and resurrections, and above all its solemn silences of night and noon. And the song of their weaving becomes nature's love of wisdom, that is to say, adoration of the Word. The saints are the only complete philosophers. The object of asceticism is generally misunderstood, particularly in one phase of its endeavors,--to forget the body. The truth of the matter is that the flesh and blood in their highest song toward which we should strive are so occupied with praising God that they completely lack self-consciousness, and do not distract the intellect or the will. God is with them in naked purity. It is His simplest and dearest starry music. He demands that our life should be a programme of infinite proportions. And yet I wonder if a saint can ever be both a great prophet and a great apostle. I do not believe a great prophet can be tender enough to persuade. That is why prophets are scorned or ignored by their generation. Gentleness is the absolute breath of music, which alone can penetrate the soul or even the material body of nature. The supreme gentleness of St. Francis of Assisi made the birds listen to his music, for his breath ran dancing in a cool breeze through all their singing stars. We need a St. Francis at present burningly. Is it possible to form a religious order of the poets? Here is an ideal. But it must be Franciscan: a gown, a girdle, and sandals, poverty, chastity, and obedience. Where is the wise man to obey? I can believe that jewels are potent for good or evil, since they are condensed flame and a secret word lies hidden in each of their hearts. A day of tempestuous wind and rain. August 11. Today I found myself progressing slowly to a triumphant rhythm round the circumference of a vast musical plane. The celestial earth is flat but progresses upwards to its central point, the cone of aspiration and song. And then I remembered the vision of St. Frances of Rome wherein she saw the Supreme Godhead as a vast Circle of Light in the midst of which was a Pillar, the Cone of Redemption and Silence. Death is the point of meeting. Perhaps the Zodiac is the merry-go-round of the stars. A second day of tempest. The great message of future poetry will be to proclaim that nature is the expression of man, rather than man of nature, and thus to reveal the essential nobility of man as the image of God rather than the image of nature. Suns and winds and waters are what we make them. Pantheism confuses the image of the image with the face. Nature is the mirror of man as man is the mirror of God. Nay more, nature is the mirror in time of man's eternity, as man is the image in time and eternity of God. It is for this reason that the stars are the open book of the future, though they are not to be read by men aloud. Astrology is forbidden because it violates the precept of silence, which is the courtesy we pay as gentlemen to God. We may only read the stars in little children's eyes, wherein their future is concealed. The breast of Mary is the fountain of the stars, and round it fly the seraphim in flaming adoration of the blessed womb. Her eyes are God's dew, wherein the secret of His Light is whispered by the thrones. I felt through the morning His human Presence graciously walking the roads, and I was resting on His left Arm that brought me to His Heart, the country wherein the dreams of my will are born. August 12. I have been sick today. Rain and tempest, but God was on the wind, and I am happy. August 13. Still ill. Rain and fog with intermittent sunshine. But I am as happy as I have ever been. August 14. Still ill. Fog in the morning breaking into a wonderful pearl day of summer haze. Our bodily senses are instruments in our orchestra. August 15. Today I sank into Beauty several times in the sunlight. August 16. Read through the last proofs and on the dunes with my mother in the afternoon I lived in the light of God. The sun I caused to smile and I wrapped myself in the blue of the Virgin's sky. I found myself causing a shower twice by failing in humility. But the laughing Light of God's eyes in my soul is eternal, and when I submit it controls the tides of my body and mind. Tonight a woodpecker alighted on Father K----'s shoulder and stayed with him nearby. The Brahmin may attain to the shadow of the first syllable of the Word. He does not believe that there are others. _Om_ is simply the symbol of inward breath, inspiration. I heard myself today very near to the Heart of Silence, whose systole and diastole is the ebb and flow of Love from Eternity to Eternity. Time is the sound of silence and is dead to all eternity. It is the only beautiful death that the angels do not mourn, for in the death of Time is the Redemption of the World. It takes the circle of eternity to unite the four points of the cross, and a crucifixion to unite two parallel lines. August 17. Out of the summer I am weaving the pattern web of the future in threads of desire. Every resurrection of a body is the last judgment of infinite planets, which fly to or flee from the human song of God's first syllable. Yet those that flee may be purchased by an infinite Redemption. This opens a terrible possibility of mercy. Is God continually becoming man for the love of His image? This is the joyful secret of God's sad fourth syllable. I clothe it in words to guard it from my intellect. Infinite incarnations prove time an illusion, since they make it eternity. God's Sacred Heart is the silent ocean beyond the universe. It reflects. The Incarnation is its flood. The Host tonight was more white than shining silver in a lonely pearl sky. It was Absolute Music unveiled to the human eye. Tonight I stood out for long alone with the stars, and watched a thunderstorm come over the sea. We must guard our dreams and intuitions not only from the intellects of others but most of all from our own. Yet our faith must be precisely bounded, although this boundary is to be none other than the infinite succession of points where time and eternity meet and bow down before God. This morning I saw His Beauty in a daisy. ... I do not believe that God will reveal His mysteries if we seek to know them, without inflicting a penalty. The way of knowledge is the way of silent patience, which lies quietly dreaming of Love till the flood washes it with Living Light. August 18. Every time we look into another's soul we may enter Paradise. There is an indescribable grace in the air this first day of prescient autumn. The summer has taught me the secret of loneliness and the infinite way of satisfying its desire. To be alone with God we must be intimate with the beauty in the eyes of every face, and yet absolutely detached save from one's family and friend. Life's ideal is to see the end in the beginning, and act the road between. This is no other than the eternal life of the Alpha and Omega. But the essence of it in time is that the whole tide of humanity should ebb and flow in our breast. It requires a crucifixion to drink in all its saltness. I found the dunes beyond the lagoon this morning and sank into God in the wind of the sunlit blue. When I returned, the people were coming from Church. Tonight the Host was quivering gold, and as I write the planets are ringing in my ears. I pray that at the end I may come to the Heart of Eternal Silence. August 19. On the dunes this morning toward Wonder Island ... Eternity is infinite speed. Time is the dragwheel, nothing more. Hence the significance of "when eternity reaffirms the conception of an hour." Flame is the symbol of time as dew is the symbol of eternity. They meet in Christ and through Him in the human race. The moon properly loved is the kindness of time, as the sun is the reflected love of Eternity made Flesh in the Host on the altar. ... Tonight I desire only silence to love. August 20. On the dunes toward Wonder Island this morning I lost space and walked upon the blue ringing a cycle of stars in either hand. But I felt no sense of distance and the seed of the sands blew on the wind which carried me. It taught me how to walk softly through life, and coming home I had the sand in my hair. I know now what clouds are, softer than the breasts of doves. God's flying sorrows are the sandals of the soul. They make us His angels, Mercuries of Light. The sun has not bled for many a night, but has slowly descended in silver splendor, always a second dawn with its fresh, keen, cool surprises. Today was the grace of last night's desire. The wonder of it this morning was my complete surrender, the assurance with which I moved on the singing skies as my native element. I know that only the appearances remained, as in the Eucharist after the Consecration we seem to see the bread and wine. Life was the poise of infinity, and I knew of no horizon, for I could look down upon the dawn. It came two weeks ago Sunday in my heart. I see the mystery of the Resurrection in its beauty, and why white lilies are its deepest symbol. How can there be a prison or a cage? Every twilight is a white horizon. The gulls know that and the sea tonight has lost its sorrow. August 21. By sailboat to P---- and G---- with the silent man, returning with the stars. Their hosting was like the flocking of wild geese, and they followed St. Francis of Assisi as a leader, the captain of the morning stars. In the silence I heard the operation of the divine mathematics. I loved those Chaldean seers to whom God talked directly and wrote His message upon the stars. I lay prone on the deck looking upwards and fell into the Divine Ocean slowly. The moon rode serenely to the southwest, and humanity was with me in the boat. Navigators are now the only men left wise enough to follow the stars. The sunpath was Jacob's ladder, and the Aran islanders know its secret when they see Tir-n'an-Og in the west on calm sunset evenings. The sea had my trust, eternal through yesterday's experience, and I believe that if faith and good works required it of me, I could walk softly over it. If the soul is to control the body, surely spiritual gravity should be able to overcome material gravity. Certainly it would take more than the sea to quench my flame, if God made me worthy. August 22. I looked down from great heights today on all the little smiling intimacies. They are like happy babies to me, and my speech should play with them, if I can ever become worthy of their simplicity. The rhythm of all music is the systole and diastole of the Sacred Heart, which is the ebb and flow of an infinite ocean. This is the meaning, I think, of the old Gaelic rune, _Ri tragadh s'ri lionadh, mar a bha, mar a tha, mar a bhitheas gu bragh ri traghadh s'ri lionadh_. (The ebb and the flow, as it was, as it is, as it ever shall be, the ebb and the flow.) The resolute gaze of the soul toward this in love constitutes prayer in its only form. It shows blood to be the most rich and beautiful of human things, and its salt waves purify the flesh, as the salt waves of Gethsemane and Calvary redeemed the soul and its singing stars. August 23. My life so far has been a word, and not a deed. But the world was not redeemed until the Word BECAME FLESH--AND DWELT AMONGST US. Mary S---- met us on the roads today and said, "I hope that we'll be meeting in Heaven, we seem to meet so often now." I sleep at night in a cruciform position adoring beauty with every faculty save my will, the most necessary of all. August 24. In the open today amid a hurricane of wind ... I walked with a childish old man with a pleasant soul. The wind brought meteor showers of beauty to the body. It rained grace in the sky of noon. I could carry overflowing happiness now even to New York. Today reminded me of the sunlight on the roar of Broadway. God is on the wind tonight, and is beating down my will with his wings. August 25. I lay through a night of tempestuous wind with the open window at my head. I awoke and saw myself face to face in my weakness. It rained all day. ... I can hardly bear my love today. It is a terrific dynamo of silence. But it will be very long before I shall fulfill my worthiness. If one could always remember that he is a saviour, and carry humanity with him, his will would be inflexible and every act an exulting humility. All nature is but a mantle which the wind of my spirit disposes in folds about me, and humanity is the chalice in which I may communicate with God,--a chalice woven of our singing flesh and heart and brain and will, wherein the will is its depth, the Atlas which bears the Sacred Body and Blood when it is given to us. August 26. Sorrow has come at last. Full moon, and life is at the flood. The precept of all adversity is of course that the ebb tide of fortune is our flood toward God. Even the lamp tonight is singing in the room. August 27. The experience still turns inward to the heart of life. I now see the core of it. It burns, of course, but think of the wheel it carries. A few days ago I was on the circumference. Now I have found the center. A day of rain and wind and exterior disturbances. But I have found my cenacle. August 28. A victory for the will. ... It is strange that every vital lesson that experience teaches can never be expressed in words. The past few days have taught me more than the rest of the summer. There will always be a secrecy of the soul, and what this contains constitutes God's image and likeness. Life sings tonight in every atom its marvelous chemistry of change and prophecy. Nature knows no elegies, since it may never triumph over aught but dust. But the highest dream is less worthy than the simplest deed, and we must forget the knowledge of good and evil. I would exchange all the knowledge I have gained for the grace to perform the slightest act of St. Francis. God has made our opportunity infinite by giving us an eternal standard of values,--that is all. August 29. I am afraid to write further for fear that I shall soon become self-conscious. ... It is strange that the will did not come home to me as a complete experience before. I simply had the foreboding of it. This summer on the 9th of August I heard the Fourth Syllable in its awfulness for the first time, and understood the mystery of the Redemption. The time has now come to close this book, for the record is complete, and may not be reopened until I redeem my will. _They departed into their own country another way_. 
16306	----	Transcribed from the 1895 Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk Jacob Behmen an Appreciation by Alexander Whyte author of 'Characters and Characteristics of William Law' etc. Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier 30 St. Mary Street, Edinburgh, and 24 Old Bailey, London 1895 This lecture was delivered at the opening of my Classes for the study of the pre-Reformation, Reformation, and post-Reformation Mystics during Session 1894-5. A Lecture on WILLIAM LAW was delivered at the opening of a former Session as an Introduction to the whole subject of Mysticism. A. W. ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH, 5_th November_ 1894. Jacob Behmen Jacob Behmen, the greatest of the mystics, and the father of German philosophy, was all his life nothing better than a working shoemaker. He was born at Old Seidenberg, a village near Goerlitz in Silesia, in the year 1575, and he died at Goerlitz in the year 1624. Jacob Behmen has no biography. Jacob Behmen's books are his best biography. While working with his hands, Jacob Behmen's whole life was spent in the deepest and the most original thought; in piercing visions of GOD and of nature; in prayer, in praise, and in love to GOD and man. Of Jacob Behmen it may be said with the utmost truth and soberness that he lived and moved and had his being in GOD. Jacob Behmen has no biography because his whole life was hid with CHRIST in GOD. * * * * * While we have nothing that can properly be called a biography of Jacob Behmen, we have ample amends made to us in those priceless morsels of autobiography that lie scattered so plentifully up and down all his books. And nothing could be more charming than just those incidental and unstudied utterances of Behmen about himself. Into the very depths of a passage of the profoundest speculation Behmen will all of a sudden throw a few verses of the most childlike and heart-winning confidences about his own mental history and his own spiritual experience. And thus it is that, without at all intending it, Behmen has left behind him a complete history of his great mind and his holy heart in those outbursts of diffidence, deprecation, explanation, and self-defence, of which his philosophical and theological, as well as his apologetic and experimental, books are all so full. It were an immense service done to our best literature if some of Behmen's students would go through all Behmen's books, so as to make a complete collection and composition of the best of those autobiographic passages. Such a book, if it were well done, would at once take rank with _The Confessions_ of ST. AUGUSTINE, _The Divine Comedy_ of DANTE, and the _Grace Abounding_ of JOHN BUNYAN. It would then be seen by all, what few, till then, will believe, that Jacob Behmen's mind and heart and spiritual experience all combine to give him a foremost place among the most classical masters in that great field. In the nineteenth chapter of the _Aurora_ there occurs a very important passage of this autobiographic nature. In that famous passage Behmen tells his readers that when his eyes first began to be opened, the sight of this world completely overwhelmed him. ASAPH'S experiences, so powerfully set before us in the seventy-third Psalm, will best convey, to those who do not know Behmen, what Behmen also passed through before he drew near to GOD. Like that so thoughtful Psalmist, Behmen's steps had well-nigh slipped when he saw the prosperity of the wicked, and when he saw how waters of a full cup were so often wrung out to the people of GOD. The mystery of life, the sin and misery of life, cast Behmen into a deep and inconsolable melancholy. No Scripture could comfort him. His thoughts of GOD were such that he will not allow himself, even after they are long past, to put them down on paper. In this terrible trouble he lifted up his heart to GOD, little knowing, as yet, what GOD was, or what his own heart was. Only, he wrapped up his whole heart, and mind, and will, and desire in the love and the mercy of GOD: determined not to give over till GOD had heard him and had helped him. 'And then, when I had wholly hazarded my life upon what I was doing, my whole spirit seemed to me suddenly to break through the gates of hell, and to be taken up into the arms and the heart of GOD. I can compare it to nothing else but the resurrection at the last day. For then, with all reverence I say it, with the eyes of my spirit I saw GOD. I saw both what GOD is, and I saw how GOD is what He is. And with that there came a mighty and an incontrollable impulse to set it down, so as to preserve what I had seen. Some men will mock me, and will tell me to stick to my proper trade, and not trouble my mind with philosophy and theology. Let these high matters alone. Leave them to those who have both the time and the talent for them, they will say. So I have often said to myself, but the truth of GOD did burn in my bones till I took pen and ink and began to set down what I had seen. All this time do not mistake me for a saint or an angel. My heart also is full of all evil. In malice, and in hatred, and in lack of brotherly love, after all I have seen and experienced, I am like all other men. I am surely the fullest of all men of all manner of infirmity and malignity.' Behmen protests in every book of his that what he has written he has received immediately from GOD. 'Let it never be imagined that I am any greater or any better than other men. When the Spirit of GOD is taken away from me I cannot even read so as to understand what I have myself written. I have every day to wrestle with the devil and with my own heart, no man in all the world more. Oh no! thou must not for one moment think of me as if I had by my own power or holiness climbed up into heaven or descended into the abyss. Oh no! hear me. I am as thou art. I have no more light than thou hast. Let no man think of me what I am not. But what I am all men may be who will truly believe, and will truly wrestle for truth and goodness under JESUS CHRIST. I marvel every day that GOD should reveal both the Divine Nature and Temporal and Eternal Nature for the first time to such a simple and unlearned man as I am. But what am I to resist what GOD will do? What am I to say but, Behold the son of thine handmaiden! I have often besought Him to take these too high and too deep matters away from off me, and to commit them to men of more learning and of a better style of speech. But He always put my prayer away from Him and continued to kindle His fire in my bones. And with all my striving to quench GOD'S spirit of revelation, I found that I had only by that gathered the more stones for the house that He had ordained me to build for Him and for His children in this world.' Jacob Behmen's first book, his _Aurora_, was not a book at all, but a bundle of loose leaves. Nothing was further from Behmen's mind, when he took up his pen of an evening, than to make a book. He took up his pen after his day's work was over in order to preserve for his own memory and use in after days the revelations that had been made to him, and the experiences and exercises through which GOD had passed him. And, besides, Jacob Behmen could not have written a book even if he had tried it. He was a total stranger to the world of books; and then, over and above that, he had been taken up into a world of things into which no book ever written as yet had dared to enter. Again, and again, and again, till it came to fill his whole life, Behmen would be sitting over his work, or walking abroad under the stars, or worshipping in his pew in the parish church, when, like the captive prophet by the river of Chebar, he would be caught up by the hair of the head and carried away into the visions of GOD to behold the glory of GOD. And then, when he came to himself, there would arise within him a 'fiery instigation' to set down for a 'memorial' what he had again seen and heard. 'The gate of the Divine Mystery was sometimes so opened to me that in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a university. At which I did exceedingly admire, and, though it passed my understanding how it happened, I thereupon turned my heart to GOD to praise Him for it. For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings; the Byss and the Abyss; as, also, the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Spirit. I saw the descent and original of this world also, and of all its creatures. I saw in their order and outcome the Divine world, the angelical world, paradise, and then this fallen and dark world of our own. I saw the beginning of the good and the evil, and the true origin and existence of each of them. All of which did not only cause me great wonder but also a great joy and a great fear. And then it came with commanding power into my mind that I must set down the same in pen and ink for a memorial to myself; albeit, I could hardly contain or express what I had seen. For twelve years this went on in me. Sometimes the truth would hit me like a sudden smiting storm of rain; and then there would be the clear sunshine after the rain. All which was to teach me that GOD will manifest Himself in the soul of man after what manner and what measure it pleases Him and as it seems good in His sight.' No human being knew all this time what Jacob Behmen was passing through, and he never intended that any human being should know. But, with all his humility, and all his love of obscurity, he could not remain hidden. Just how it came about we are not fully told; but, long before his book was finished, a nobleman in the neighbourhood, who was deeply interested in the philosophy and the theology of that day, somehow got hold of Behmen's papers and had them copied out and spread abroad, to Behmen's great surprise and great distress. Copy after copy was stealthily made of Behmen's manuscript, till, most unfortunately for both of them, a copy came into the hands of Behmen's parish minister. But for that accident, so to call it, we would never have heard the name of GREGORY RICHTER, First Minister of Goerlitz, nor could we have believed that any minister of JESUS CHRIST could have gone so absolutely mad with ignorance and envy and anger and ill-will. The libel is still preserved that Behmen's minister drew out against the author of _Aurora_, and the only thing it proves to us is this, that its author must have been a dull-headed, coarse-hearted, foul-mouthed man. Richter's persecution of poor Behmen caused Behmen lifelong trouble; but, at the same time, it served to advertise his genius to his generation, and to manifest to all men the meekness, the humility, the docility, and the love of peace of the persecuted man. 'Pastor-Primarius Richter,' says a bishop of his own communion, 'was a man full of hierarchical arrogance and pride. He had only the most outward apprehension of the dogmatics of his day, and he was totally incapable of understanding Jacob Behmen.' But it is not for the limitations of his understanding that Pastor Richter stands before us so laden with blame. The school is a small one still that, after two centuries of study and prayer and a holy life, can pretend to understand the whole of the _Aurora_. WILLIAM LAW, a man of the best understanding, and of the humblest heart, tells us that his first reading of Behmen put him into a 'perfect sweat' of astonishment and awe. No wonder, then, that a man of Gregory Richter's narrow mind and hard heart was thrown into such a sweat of prejudice and anger and ill-will. I do not propose to take you down into the deep places where Jacob Behmen dwells and works. And that for a very good reason. For I have found no firm footing in those deep places for my own feet. I wade in and in to the utmost of my ability, and still there rise up above me, and stretch out around me, and sink down beneath me, vast reaches of revelation and speculation, attainment and experience, before which I can only wonder and worship. See Jacob Behmen working with his hands in his solitary stall, when he is suddenly caught up into heaven till he beholds in enraptured vision The Most High Himself. And then, after that, see him swept down to hell, down to sin, and down into the bottomless pit of the human heart. Jacob Behmen, almost more than any other man whatsoever, is carried up till he moves like a holy angel or a glorified saint among things unseen and eternal. Jacob Behmen is of the race of the seers, and he stands out a very prince among them. He is full of eyes, and all his eyes are full of light. It does not stagger me to hear his disciples calling him, as HEGEL does, 'a man of a mighty mind,' or, as LAW does, 'the illuminated Behmen,' and 'the blessed Behmen.' 'In speculative power,' says dry DR. KURTZ, 'and in poetic wealth, exhibited with epic and dramatic effect, Behmen's system surpasses everything of the kind ever written.' Some of his disciples have the hardihood to affirm indeed that even ISAAC NEWTON ploughed with Behmen's heifer, but had not the boldness to acknowledge the debt. I entirely accept it when his disciples assert it of their master that he had a privilege and a passport permitted him such as no mortal man has had the like since JOHN'S eyes closed upon his completed Apocalypse. After repeated and prolonged reading of Behmen's amazing books, nothing that has been said by his most ecstatic disciples about their adored master either astonishes or offends me. Dante himself does not beat such a soaring wing as Behmen's; and all the trumpets that sound in _Paradise Lost_ do not swell my heart and chase its blood like Jacob Behmen's broken syllables about the Fall. I would not wonder to have it pointed out to me in the world to come that all that Gichtel, and St. Martin, and Hegel, and Law, and Walton, and Martensen, and Hartmann have said about Jacob Behmen and his visions of GOD and Nature and Man were all but literally true. No doubt,--nay, the thing is certain,--that if you open Jacob Behmen anywhere as Gregory Richter opened the _Aurora_; if a new idea is a pain and a provocation to you; if you have any prejudice in your heart for any reason against Behmen; if you dislike the sound of his name because some one you dislike has discovered him and praised him, or because you do not yourself already know him and love him, then, no doubt, you will find plenty in Behmen at which to stumble, and which will amply justify you in anything you wish to say against him. But if you are a true student and a good man; if you are an open-minded and a humble- minded man; if you are prepared to sit at any man's feet who will engage to lead you a single step out of your ignorance and your evil; if you open Behmen with a predisposition to believe in him, and with the expectation and the determination to get good out of him,--then, in the measure of all that; in the measure of your capacity of mind and your hospitality of heart; in the measure of your humility, seriousness, patience, teachableness, hunger for truth, hunger for righteousness,--in that measure you will find Jacob Behmen to be what MAURICE tells us he found him to be, 'a generative thinker.' Out of much you cannot understand,--wherever the blame for that may lie,--out of much slag and much dross, I am mistaken if you will not lay up some of your finest gold; and out of much straw and chaff some of the finest of the wheat. The Divine Nature, human nature, time, space, matter, life, love, sin, death, holiness, heaven, hell,--Behmen's reader must have lived and moved all his days among such things as these: he must be at home, as far as the mind of man can be at home, among such things as these, and then he will begin to understand Behmen, and will still strive better and better to understand him; and, where he does not as yet understand him, he will set that down to his own inattention, incapacity, want of due preparation, and want of the proper ripeness for such a study. At the same time let all intending students of Jacob Behmen take warning that they will have to learn an absolutely new and an unheard-of language if they would speak with Behmen and have Behmen speak with them. For Behmen's books are written neither in German nor in English of any age or idiom, but in the most original and uncouth Behmenese. Like John Bunyan, but never with John Bunyan's literary grace, Behmen will borrow, now a Latin word or phrase from his reading of learned authors, or, more often, from the conversations of his learned friends; and then he will take some astrological or alchemical expression of AGRIPPA, or PARACELSUS, or some such outlaw, and will, as with his awl and rosin-end, sew together a sentence, and hammer together a page of the most incongruous and unheard- of phraseology, till, as we read Behmen's earlier work especially, we continually exclaim, O for a chapter of John Bunyan's clear, and sweet, and classical English! The _Aurora_ was written in a language, if writing and a language it can be called, that had never been seen written or heard spoken before, or has since, on the face of the earth. And as our students learn Greek in order to read Homer and Plato and Paul and John, and Latin in order to read Virgil and Tacitus, and Italian to read Dante, and German to read Goethe, so William Law tells us that he learned Behmen's Behmenite High Dutch, and that too after he was an old man, in order that he might completely master the _Aurora_ and its kindred books. And as our schoolboys laugh and jeer at the outlandish sounds of Greek and Latin and German, till they have learned to read and love the great authors who have written in those languages, so WESLEY, and SOUTHEY, and even HALLAM himself, jest and flout and call names at Jacob Behmen, because they have not taken the trouble to learn his language, to master his mind, and to drink in his spirit. At the same time, and after all that has been said about Behmen's barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of SCHELLING were surprised and enraptured by a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take sides with the author of _The Serious Call_, and _The Spirit of Prayer_, and _The Spirit of Love_, and _The Way to Divine Knowledge_, in the disputed matter of Jacob Behmen's sanity and sanctity; and I will continue to believe that if I had only had the scholarship, and the intellect, and the patience, and the enterprise, to have mastered, through all their intricacies, the Behmenite grammar and the Behmenite vocabulary, I also would have found in Behmen all that Freher and Pordage and Law and Walton found. Even in the short way into this great man that I have gone, I have come upon such rare and rich mines of divine and eternal truth that I can easily believe that they who have dug deeper have come upon uncounted riches. 'Next to the Scriptures,' writes William Law, 'my only book is the illuminated Behmen. For the whole kingdom of grace and nature was opened in him. In reading Behmen I am always at home, and kept close to the kingdom of GOD that is within me.' 'I am not young,' said CLAUDE DE ST. MARTIN, 'being now near my fiftieth year, nevertheless I have begun to learn German, in order that I may read this incomparable author in his own tongue. I have written some not unacceptable books myself, but I am not worthy to unloose the shoestrings of this wonderful man. I advise you to throw yourself into the depths of Jacob Behmen. There is such a profundity and exaltation of truth in them, and such a simple and delicious nutriment.' The Town Council of Goerlitz, hounded on by their Minister, sentenced Behmen to be banished, and interdicted him from ever writing any more. But in sheer shame at what they had done they immediately recalled Behmen from banishment; only, they insisted that he should confine himself to his shop, and leave all writing of books alone. Behmen had no ambition to write any more, and, as a matter of fact, he kept silence even to himself for seven whole years. But as those years went on it came to be with him, to use his own words, as with so much grain that has been buried in the earth, and which, in spite of storms and tempests, will, out of its own life, spring up, and that even when reason says it is now winter, and that all hope and all power is gone. And thus it was that, under the same instigation which had produced the _Aurora_, Behmen at a rush wrote his very fine if very difficult book, _The Three Principles of the Divine Essence_. He calls _The Three Principles_ his A B C, and the easiest of all his books. And William Law recommends all beginners in Behmen to read alone for some sufficient time the tenth and twelfth chapters of _The Three Principles_. I shall let Behmen describe the contents of his easiest book in his own words. 'In this second book,' he says, 'there is declared what GOD is, what Nature is, what the creatures are, what the love and meekness of GOD are, what GOD'S will is, what the wrath of GOD is, and what joy and sorrow are. As also, how all things took their beginning: with the true difference between eternal and transitory creatures. Specially of man and his soul, what the soul is, and how it is an eternal creature. Also what heaven is, wherein GOD and the holy angels and holy men dwell, and hell wherein the devils dwell: and how all things were originally created and had their being. In sum, what the Essence of all Essences is. And thus I commit my reader to the sweet love of GOD.' _The Three Principles_, according to CHRISTOPHER WALTON, was the first book of Behmen's that William Law ever held in his hand. That, then, was the title-page, and those were the contents, that threw that princely and saintly mind into such a sweat. It was a great day for William Law, and through him it was, and will yet be acknowledged to have been, a great day for English theology when he chanced, at an old bookstall, upon _The Three Principles_, Englished by a Barrister of the Inner Temple. The picture of that bookstall that day is engraven in lines of light and love on the heart of every grateful reader of Jacob Behmen and of William Law's later and richer and riper writings. In three months after he had finished _The Three Principles_, Behmen had composed a companion treatise, entitled _The Threefold Life of Man_. Modest about himself as Behmen always was, he could not be wholly blind about his own incomparable books. And he but spoke the simple truth about his third book when he said of it--as, indeed, he was constantly saying about all his books--that it will serve every reader just according to his constellation, his inclination, his disposition, his complexion, his profession, and his whole condition. 'You will be soon weary of all contentious books,' he wrote to CASPER LINDERN, 'if you entertain and get _The Threefold Life of Man_ into your mind and heart.' 'The subject of regeneration,' says Christopher Walton, 'is the pith and drift of all Behmen's writings, and the student may here be directed to begin his course of study by mastering the first eight chapters of _The Threefold Life_, which appear to have been in great favour with Mr. Law.' Behmen's next book was a very extraordinary piece of work, and it had a very extraordinary origin. A certain BALTHAZAR WALTER, who seems to have been a second Paracelsus in his love of knowledge and in his lifelong pursuit of knowledge, had, like Paracelsus, travelled east, and west, and north, and south in search of that ancient and occult wisdom of which so many men in that day dreamed. But Walter, like his predecessor Paracelsus, had come home from his travels a humbler man, a wiser man, and a man more ready to learn and lay to heart the truth that some of his own countrymen could all the time have taught him. On his return from the east, Walter found the name of Jacob Behmen in everybody's mouth; and, on introducing himself to that little shop in Goerlitz out of which the _Aurora_ and _The Threefold Life_ had come, Walter was wise enough to see and bold enough to confess that he had found a teacher and a friend there such as neither Egypt nor India had provided him with. After many immensely interested visits to Jacob Behmen's workshop, Walter was more than satisfied that Behmen was all, and more than all, that his most devoted admirers had said he was. And, accordingly, Walter laid a plan so as to draw upon Behmen's profound and original mind for a solution of some of the philosophical and theological problems that were agitating and dividing the learned men of that day. With that view Walter made a round of the leading universities of Germany, conversed with the professors and students, collected a long list of the questions that were being debated in that day in those seats of learning, and sent the list to Behmen, asking him to give his mind to them and try to answer them. 'Beloved sir,' wrote Behmen, after three months' meditation and prayer, 'and my good friend: it is impossible for the mind and reason of man to answer all the questions you have put to me. All those things are known to GOD alone. But, that no man may boast, He sometimes makes use of very mean men to make known His truth, that it may be seen and acknowledged to come from His own hand alone.' It is told that when Charles the First read the English translation of Behmen's answers to the _Forty Questions_, he wrote to the publisher that if Jacob Behmen was no scholar, then the Holy Ghost was still with men; and, if he was a learned man, then his book was one of the best inventions that had ever been written. The _Forty Questions_ ran through many editions both on the Continent and in England, and it was this book that gained for Jacob Behmen the denomination of the Teutonic Philosopher, a name by which he is distinguished among authors to this day. The following are some of the university questions that Balthazar Walter took down and sent to Jacob Behmen for his answer: 'What is the soul of man in its innermost essence, and how is it created, soul by soul, in the image of GOD? Is the soul propagated from father to son like the body? or is it every time new created and breathed in from GOD? How comes original sin into each several soul? How does the soul of the saint feed and grow upon the word of GOD? Whence comes the deadly contrariety between the flesh and the spirit? Whither goes the soul when it at death departs from the body? In what does its rest, its awakening, and its glorification consist? What kind of body shall the glorified body be? The soul and spirit of CHRIST, what are they? and are they the same as ours? What and where is Paradise?' Through a hundred and fourteen large quarto pages Behmen's astonishing answers to the forty questions run; after which he adds this: 'Thus, my beloved friend, we have set down, according to our gifts, a round answer to your questions, and we exhort you as a brother not to despise us. For we are not born of art, but of simplicity. We acknowledge all who love such knowledge as our brethren in CHRIST, with whom we hope to rejoice eternally in the heavenly school. For our best knowledge here is but in part, but when we shall attain to perfection, then we shall see what GOD is, and what He can do. Amen.' _A Treatise of the Incarnation of the Son of God_ comes next, and then we have three smaller works written to clear up and to establish several difficult and disputed matters in it and in some of his former works. To write on the Incarnation of the Son of GOD would need, says Behmen, an angel's pen; but his defence is that his is better than any angel's pen, because it is the pen of a sinner's love. The year 1621 saw one of Behmen's most original and most powerful books finished,--the _Signatura Rerum_. In this remarkable book Behmen teaches us that all things have two worlds in which they live,--an inward world and an outward. All created things have an inner and an invisible essence, and an outer and a visible form. And the outward form is always more or less the key to the inward character. This whole world that we see around us, and of which we ourselves are the soul,--it is all a symbol, a 'signature,' of an invisible world. This deep principle runs through the whole of creation. The Creator went upon this principle in all His work; and the thoughtful mind can see that principle coming out in all His work,--in plants, and trees, and beasts. As German Boehme never cared for plants Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed-- Colloquized with the cowslips on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But, best of all, this principle comes out clearest in the speech, behaviour, features, and face of a man. Every day men are signing themselves from within. Every act they perform, every word they speak, every wish they entertain,--it all comes out and is fixed for ever in their character, and even in their appearance. 'Therefore,' says Behmen in the beginning of his book, 'the greatest understanding lies in the signature. For by the external form of all creatures; by their voice and action, as well as by their instigation, inclination, and desire, their hidden spirit is made known. For Nature has given to everything its own language according to its innermost essence. And this is the language of Nature, in which everything continually speaks, manifests, and declares itself for what it is,--so much so, that all that is spoken or written even about GOD, however true, if the writer or speaker has not the Divine Nature within himself, then all he says is dumb to me; he has not got the hammer in his hand that can strike my bell.' _The Way to Christ_ was Behmen's next book, and in the four precious treatises that compose that book our author takes an altogether new departure. In his _Aurora_, in _The Three Principles_, in the _Forty Questions_, and in the _Signatura Rerum_, Jacob Behmen has been writing for philosophers and theologians. Or, if in all these works he has been writing for a memorial to himself in the first place,--even then, it has been for himself on the philosophical and theological side of his own mind. But in _The Way to Christ_ he writes for himself under that character which, once taken up by Jacob Behmen, is never for one day laid down. Behmen's favourite Scripture, after our Lord's promise of the Holy Spirit to them that ask for Him, was the parable of the Prodigal Son. In all his books Behmen is that son, covered with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, but at last beginning to come to himself and to return to his Father. _The Way to Christ_ is a production of the very greatest depth and strength, but it is the depth and the strength of the heart and the conscience rather than the depth and the strength of the understanding and the imagination. This nobly evangelical book is made up of four tracts, entitled respectively, _Of True Repentance_, _Of True Resignation_, _Of Regeneration_, and _Of the Supersensual Life_. And a deep vein of autobiographic life and interest runs through the four tracts and binds them into a quick unity. 'A soldier,' says Behmen, 'who has been in the wars can best tell another soldier how to fight.' And neither Augustine nor Luther nor Bunyan carries deeper wounds, or broader scars, nor tells a nobler story in any of their autobiographic and soldierly books than Behmen does in his _Way to Christ_. At the commencement of _The True Repentance_ he promises us that he will write of a process or way on which he himself has gone. 'The author herewith giveth thee the best jewel that he hath.' And a true jewel it is, as the present speaker will testify. If _The True Repentance_ has a fault at all it is the fault of Rutherford's _Letters_. For the taste of some of his readers Behmen, like Rutherford, draws rather too much on the language and the figures of the married life in setting forth the love of CHRIST to the espoused soul, and the love of the espoused soul to CHRIST. But with that, and all its other drawbacks, _The True Repentance_ is such a treatise that, once discovered by the proper reader, it will be the happy discoverer's constant companion all his earthly and penitential days. As the English reader is carried on through the fourth tract, _The Supersensual Life_, he experiences a new and an increasing sense of ease and pleasure, combined with a mystic height and depth and inwardness all but new to him even in Behmen's books. The new height and depth and inwardness are all Jacob Behmen's own; but the freedom and the ease and the movement and the melody are all William Law's. In his preparations for a new edition of Behmen in English, William Law had re-translated and paraphrased _The Supersensual Life_, and the editor of the 1781 edition of Behmen's works has incorporated Law's beautiful rendering of that tract in room of JOHN SPARROW'S excellent but rather too antique rendering. We are in John Sparrow's everlasting debt for the immense labour he laid out on Behmen, as well as for his own deep piety and personal worth. But it was service enough and honour enough for Sparrow to have Englished Jacob Behmen at all for his fellow-countrymen, even if he was not able to English him as William Law would have done. But take Behmen and Law together, as they meet together in _The Supersensual Life_, and not A Kempis himself comes near them even in his own proper field, or in his immense service in that field. There is all the reality, inwardness, and spirituality of _The Imitation_ in _The Supersensual Life_, together with a sweep of imagination, and a grasp of understanding, as well as with both a sweetness and a bitterness of heart that even A Kempis never comes near. _The Supersensual Life_ of Jacob Behmen, in the English of William Law, is a superb piece of spiritual work, and a treasure-house of masculine English. (If Christopher Walton is right, we must read 'Lee' for 'Law' in this passage. If Walton is right, then there was a master of English in those days we had not before been told of.) _A Treatise of the Four Complexions_, or _A Consolatory Instruction for a Sad and Assaulted Heart_, was Behmen's next book. The four complexions are the four temperaments--the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic, and the melancholy. Behmen's treatise has been well described by Walton as containing the philosophy of temptation; and by Martensen as displaying a most profound knowledge of the human heart. Behmen sets about his task as a _ductor dubitantium_ in a masterly manner. He takes in hand the comfort and direction of sin-distressed souls in a characteristically deep, inward, and thorough-going way. The book is full of Behmen's observation of men. It is the outcome of a close and long-continued study of character and conduct. Every page of _The Four Complexions_ gleams with a keen but tender and wistful insight into our poor human nature. As his customers came and gave their orders in his shop; as his neighbours collected, and gossiped, and debated, and quarrelled around his shop window; as his minister fumed and raged against him in the pulpit; as the Council of Goerlitz sat and swayed, passed sentence upon him, retracted their sentence, and again gave way under the pressure of their minister, and pronounced another sentence,--all this time Behmen was having poor human nature, to all its joints and marrow, and to all the thoughts and instincts of its heart, laid naked and open before him, both in other men and in himself. And then, as always with Behmen, all this observation of men, all this discovery and self-discovery, ran up into philosophy, into theology, into personal and evangelical religion. In all that Behmen better and better saw the original plan, constitution, and operation of human nature; its aboriginal catastrophe; its weakness and openness to all evil; and its need of constant care, protection, instruction, watchfulness, and Divine help. Behmen writes on all the four temperaments with the profoundest insight, and with the fullest sympathy; but over the last of the four he exclaims: 'O hear me! for I know well myself what melancholy is! I also have lodged all my days in the melancholy inn!' As I read that light and elastic book published the other day, _The Life and Letters of Erasmus_, I came on this sentence, 'Erasmus, like all men of real genius, had a light and elastic nature.' When I read that, I could not believe my eyes. I had been used to think of light and elastic natures as being the antipodes of natures of real genius. And as I stopped my reading for a little, a procession of men of real and indisputable genius passed before me, who had all lodged with Behmen in the melancholy inn. Till I remembered that far deeper and far truer saying, that 'simply to say man at all is to say melancholy.' No: with all respect, the real fact is surely as near as possible the exact opposite. A light, elastic, Erasmus- like nature, is the exception among men of real genius. At any rate, Jacob Behmen was the exact opposite of Erasmus, and of all such light and elastic men. Melancholy was Jacob Behmen's special temperament and peculiar complexion. He had long studied, and watched, and wrestled with, and prayed over that complexion at home. And thus it is, no doubt, that he is so full, and so clear, and so sure-footed, and so impressive, and so full of fellow-feeling in his treatment of this special complexion. Behmen's greatest disciple has assimilated his master's teaching in this matter of complexion also, and has given it out again in his own clear, plain, powerful, classical manner, especially in his treatise on _Christian Regeneration_. Let all preachers and pastors who would master the _rationale_ of temptation, and who would ground their directions and their comforts to their people in the nature of things, as well as in the word of GOD, make Jacob Behmen and William Law and Prebendary Clark their constant study. 'I write for no other purpose,' says Behmen, 'than that men may learn how to know themselves. Seek the noble knowledge of thyself. Seek it and you will find a heavenly treasure which will not be eaten by moths, and which no thief shall ever take away.' I shall not attempt to enter on the thorny thicket of Jacob Behmen's polemical and apologetical works. I shall not even load your mind with their unhappy titles. His five apologies occupy in bulk somewhere about a tenth part of his five quarto volumes. And full as his apologies and defences are of autobiographic material, as well as of valuable expansions and explanations of his other books, yet at their best they are all controversial and combative in their cast and complexion; and, nobly as Behmen has written on the subject of controversy, it was not given even to him, amid all the misunderstandings, misrepresentations, injuries, and insults he suffered from, always to write what we are glad and proud and the better to read. About his next book Behmen thus writes: 'Upon the desire of some high persons with whom I did converse in the Christmas holidays, I have written a pretty large treatise upon Election, in which I have done my best to determine that subject upon the deepest grounds. And I hope that the same may put an end to many contentions and controversies, especially of some points betwixt the Lutherans and Calvinists, for I have taken the texts of Holy Scripture which speak of GOD'S will to harden sinners, and then, again, of His unwillingness to harden, and have so tuned and harmonised them that the right understanding and meaning of the same may be seen.' 'This author,' says John Sparrow, 'disputes not at all. He desires only to confer and offer his understanding of the Scriptures on both sides, answering reason's objections, and manifesting the truth for the conjoining, uniting, and reconciling of all parties in love.' And that he has not been wholly unsuccessful we may believe when we hear one of Behmen's ablest commentators writing of his _Election_ as 'a superlatively helpful book,' and again, as a 'profoundly instructive treatise.' The workman-like way in which Behmen sets about his treatment of the _Election of Grace, commonly called Predestination_, will be seen from the titles of some of his chapters. Chap. i. What the One Only GOD is. Chap. ii. Concerning GOD'S Eternal Speaking Word. Chap. v. Of the Origin of Man; Chap. vi. Of the Fall of Man. Chap. viii. Of the sayings of Scripture, and how they oppose one another. Chap. ix. Clearing the Right Understanding of such Scriptures. Chap. xiii. A Conclusion upon all those Questions. And then, true to his constant manner, as if wholly dissatisfied with the result of all his labour in things and in places too deep both for writer and reader, he gave all the next day after he had finished his _Election_ to an _Appendix on Repentance_, in order to making his own and his reader's calling and election sure. And it may safely be said that, than that day's work, than those four quarto pages, not Augustine, not Luther, not Bunyan, not Baxter, not Shepard has ever written anything of more evangelical depth, and strength, and passion, and pathos. It is truly a splendid day's work! But it might not have been possible even for Behmen to perform that day's work had he not for months beforehand been dealing day and night with the deepest and the most heart-searching things both of GOD and man. What a man was Jacob Behmen, and chosen to what a service! At work all that day in his solitary stall, and then all the night after over his rush-light writing for a memorial to himself and to us his incomparable _Compendium of Repentance_. In a letter addressed to one of the nobility in Silesia, and dated February 19, 1623, Behmen says: 'When you have leisure to study I shall send you something still more deep, for I have written this whole autumn and winter without ceasing.' And if he had written nothing else but his great book entitled _Mysterium Magnum_ that autumn and winter, he must have written night and day and done nothing else. Even in size the _Mysterium_ is an immense piece of work. In the English edition it occupies the whole of the third quarto volume of 507 pages; and then for its matter it is a still more amazing production. To say that the _Mysterium Magnum_ is a mystical and allegorical commentary upon the Book of Genesis is to say nothing. Philo himself is a tyro and a timid interpreter beside Jacob Behmen. 'Which things are an allegory,' says the Apostle, after a passing reference to Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael; but if you would see actually every syllable of Genesis allegorised, spiritualised, interpreted of CHRIST, and of the New Testament, from the first verse of its first chapter to the last verse of its last chapter, like the nobleman of Silesia, when you have leisure, read Behmen's deep _Mysterium Magnum_. I would recommend the enterprising and unconquerable student to make leisure so as to master Behmen's Preface to the _Mysterium Magnum_ at the very least. And if he does that, and is not drawn on from that to be a student of Behmen for the rest of his days, then, whatever else his proper field in life may be, it is not mystical or philosophical theology. It is a long step both in time and in thought from Behmen to SCHOPENHAUER; but, speaking of one of Schelling's books, Schopenhauer says that it is all taken from Jacob Behmen's _Mysterium Magnum_; every thought and almost every word of Schelling's work leads Schopenhauer to think of Behmen. 'When I read Behmen's book,' says Schopenhauer, 'I cannot withhold either admiration or emotion.' At his far too early death Behmen left four treatises behind him in an unfinished condition. The _Theoscopia_, or _Divine Vision_, is but a fragment; but, even so, the study of that fragment leads us to believe that, had Behmen lived to the ordinary limit of human life, and had his mind continued to grow as it was now fast growing in clearness, in concentration, and in simplicity, Behmen would have left to us not a few books as classical in their form as all his books are classical in their substance; in their originality, in their truth, in their depth, and in their strength. As it is, the unfinished, the scarcely-begun, _Theoscopia_ only serves to show the student of what a treasure he has been bereft by Behmen's too early death. As I read and re-read the _Theoscopia_ I felt the full truth and force of Hegel's generous words, that German philosophy began with Behmen. This is both German and Christian philosophy, I said to myself as I revelled in the _Theoscopia_. Let the serious student listen to the titles of some of the chapters of the _Theoscopia_, and then let him say what he would not have given to have got such a book from such a pen in its completed shape: 'What GOD is, and how we men shall know the Divine Substance by the Divine Revelation. Why it sometimes seems as if there were no GOD, and as if all things went in the world by chance. Why GOD, who is Love itself, permits an evil will contrary to His own. The reason and the profit, why evil should be found along with good. Of the mind of man, and how it is the image of GOD, and how it can still be filled with God. Why this Temporal Universe is created; to what it is profitable; and how God is so near unto all things': and so on. 'But no amount of quotation,' says Mrs. Penney, that very able student of Behmen, lately deceased, 'can give an adequate glimpse of the light which streams from the _Theoscopia_ when long and patiently studied.' Another unfinished fragment that Behmen's readers seek for and treasure up like very sand of gold is his _Holy Week_. This little work, its author tells us, was undertaken upon the entreaty and desire of some loving and good friends of his for the daily exercise of true religion in their hearts and in the little church of their families. The following is Behmen's method of prayer for Monday, which is the only day's prayer he got finished before his death: 'A short prayer when we awake early and before we rise. A prayer and thanksgiving after we are risen. A prayer while we wash and dress. A prayer when we begin to work at our calling. A prayer at noon. A prayer toward evening. A prayer when we undress. A prayer of thanks for the bitter passion and dying of JESUS CHRIST.' What does the man mean? many of his contemporaries who came upon his _Holy Week_ would say, What does the madman mean? Would he have us pray all day? Would he have us pray and do nothing else? Yes; it would almost seem so. For in his _Supersensual Life_ the Master says to the disciple who has asked, 'How shall I be able to live aright amid all the anxiety and tribulation of this world?': 'If thou dost once every hour throw thyself by faith beyond all creatures into the abysmal mercy of GOD, into the sufferings of CHRIST, and into the fellowship of His intercession, then thou shalt receive power from above to rule over the world, and death, and the devil, and hell itself.' And again, 'O thou of little courage, if thy will could but break itself off every half-hour from all creatures, and plunge itself into that where no creature is or can be, presently it would be penetrated with the splendour of the Divine glory, and would taste a sweetness no tongue can express. Then thou wouldst love thy cross more than all the glory and all the goods of this world.' The author had begun a series of reflections and meditations on the Ten Commandments for devotional use on Tuesday, but got no further than the Fifth. Behmen is so deep and so original in his purely philosophical, theological, and speculative books, that in many places we can only stand back and wonder at the man. But in his _Holy Week_ Behmen kneels down beside us. Not but that his characteristic depth is present in his prayers also; but we all know something of the nature, the manner, and the blessedness of prayer, and thus it is that we are so much more at home with Behmen, the prodigal son, than we are with Behmen, the theosophical theologian. When Behmen begins to teach us to pray, and when the lesson comes to us out of his own closet, then we are able to see in a nearer light something of the originality, the greatness, the strength, and the true and genuine piety of the philosopher and the theologian. When Behmen's philosophy and theology become penitence, prayer, and praise, then by their fruits we know how good his philosophy and his theology must be, away down in their deepest and most hidden nature. I agree with Walton that those prayers are full of unction and instruction, and that some of them are of the 'highest magnetical power'; and that, as rendered into modern phraseology, they are most beautiful devotional compositions, and very models of all that a divinely illuminated mind would address to GOD and CHRIST. For myself, immediately after the Psalms of David I put Jacob Behmen's _Holy Week_ and the prayers scattered up and down through his _True Repentance_, and beside Behmen I put Bishop Andrewes' _Private Devotions_. I have discovered no helps to my own devotional life for a moment to set beside Behmen and Andrewes. _A Treatise on Baptism and the Lord's Supper_; _A Key to the Principal Points and Expressions in the Author's Writings_; and then a most valuable volume of letters--_Epistolae Theosophicae_--complete the extraordinarily rich bibliography of the illuminated and blessed Jacob Behmen. Though there is a great deal of needless and wearisome repetition in Jacob Behmen's writings, at the same time there is scarcely a single subject in the whole range of theology on which he does not throw a new, an intense, and a brilliant light. In his absolutely original and magnificent doctrine of GOD, while all the time loyally true to it, Behmen has confessedly transcended the theology of both the Latin and the Reformed Churches; and, absolutely unlettered man though he is, has taken his stand at the very head of the great Greek theologians. The Reformers concentrated their criticism upon the anthropology and soteriology of the Church of Rome, and especially upon the discipline and worship connected therewith. They saw no need for recasting any of the more fundamental positions of pure theology. And while Jacob Behmen, broadly speaking, accepts as his own confession of faith all that Luther and Calvin and their colleagues taught on sin and salvation, on the corruption and guilt of sinners, and on the redeeming work of our LORD, he rises far above the greatest and best of his teachers in his doctrine of the GODHEAD. Not only does he rise far higher in that doctrine than either Rome or Geneva, he rises far higher and sounds far deeper than either Antioch, or Alexandria, or Nicomedia, or Nice. On this profound point Bishop Martensen has an excellent appreciation of Behmen. After what I have taken upon me to say about Behmen, the learned Bishop's authoritative passage must be quoted:--'If we compare Behmen's doctrine of the Trinity,' says the learned and evangelical Bishop, 'with that which is contained in the otherwise so admirable Athanasian Creed, the latter but displays to us a most abstruse metaphysic; a GOD for mere thought, and in whom there is nothing sympathetic for the heart of man. Behmen, on the contrary, reveals to us the LIVING GOD, the GOD of Goodness, the Eternal Love, of which there is absolutely no hint whatever in the hard Athanasian symbol. By this attitude of his to the affections of the human heart, Behmen's doctrine of the Trinity is in close coherence with the Reformation, and with its evangelical churches. . . . Behmen is anxious to state a conception of GOD that will fill the hiatus between the theological and anthropological sides of the dogmatical development which was bequeathed by the Reformation; he seeks to unite the theological and the anthropological. . . . From careful study of Behmen's theology,' continues Bishop Martensen, 'one gains a prevailing impression that Behmen's GOD is, in His inmost Being, most kindred to man, even as man in his inmost being is still kindred to GOD. And, besides, we recognise in Behmen throughout the pulse-beat of a believing man, who is in all his books supremely anxious about his own salvation and that of his fellow-men.' Now, it is just this super-confessional element in Behmen, both on his speculative and on his practical side, taken along with the immediate and intensely practical bearing of all his speculations, it is just this that is Behmen's true and genuine distinction, his shining and unshared glory. And it is out of that supreme, solitary, and wholly untrodden field of Behmen's super-confessional theology that all that is essential, characteristic, distinctive, and fruitful in Behmen really and originally springs. The distinctions he takes within, and around, and immediately beneath the Godhead, are of themselves full of the noblest light. The Divine Nature, Eternal Nature, Temporal Nature, Human Nature, when evolved out of one another, and when related to one another, as Behmen sees them evolved and related, are categories of the clearest, surest, most necessary, and most intensely instructive kind. And if the height and the depth, the massiveness, the stupendousness, and the grandeur, as well as the sweetness, and the beauty, and the warmth, and the fruitfulness of a doctrine of GOD is any argument or evidence of its truth, then Behmen's magnificent doctrine of the GODHEAD is surely proved to demonstration and delight. GOD is the Essence of all Essences to Behmen. GOD is the deepest Ground, the living and the life-giving Root of all existence. At the same time, the Divine Nature is so Divine; It is so high and so deep; It is so unlike all that is not Itself; It is so beyond and above all language, and all thought, and all imagination of man or angel, that universe after universe have had to come into existence, and have had to be filled, each successive universe after its own kind, with all the fulness of GOD, before that universe of which we form a part, and to which our utmost imagination is confined, could have come into existence, and into recognition of itself. Behmen's Eternal Nature must never be taken for the Eternal GOD. The Divine Nature, the Eternal Godhead, exists in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost; and then, after the Eternal Generation of the Son, and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost, there comes up in order of existence Eternal Nature. Eternal Nature is not the Divine Nature, but it is as near to the Divine Nature in its qualities and in its powers as any created thing can ever by any possibility be. Now, if we are still to follow Behmen, we must not let ourselves indolently think of the production of Eternal Nature as a divine act done and completed in any past either of time or of eternity. There is neither past nor future where we are now walking with Behmen. There is only an everlasting present where he is now leading us. For, as GOD the Father generates the Son eternally and continually; and as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son eternally and continually, so GOD the Word eternally and continually says, 'Let this Beginning of all things be, and let it continue to be.' And, as He speaks, His Word awakens the ever-dawning morning of the ever new-created day. And He beholds Eternal Nature continually rising up before Him, and He pronounces it very good. The Creator so transcends the creation, and, especially, that late and remote creation of which we are a part, that, as the Creator's first step out of Himself, and as a step towards our creation, is His creation, generation, or other production of a nature or universe that shall be capable of receiving immediately into itself all that of the Creator that He has purposed to reveal and to communicate to creatures,--a nature or universe which shall at the same time be itself the beginning of creation, and the source, spring, and quarry out of which all that shall afterwards come can be constructed. Eternal Nature is thus the great storehouse and workshop in which all the created essences, elements, principles, and potentialities of all possible worlds are laid up. Here is the great treasury and laboratory into which the Filial Word enters, when by Him GOD creates, sustains, and perfects the worlds, universe after universe. Here, says Behmen, is the great and universal treasury of that heavenly clay of which all things, even to angels and men, are made; and here is the eternal turning-wheel with which they are all framed and fashioned. Eternal Nature is an invisible essence, and it is the essential ground out of which all the visible and invisible worlds are made. For the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. In that radiant original universe also all the thoughts of GOD which were to usward from everlasting, all the Divine ideas, patterns, and plans of things, are laid open, displayed, copied out and sealed up for future worlds to see carried out. 'Through this Kingdom of Heaven, or Eternal Nature,' says William Law, in his _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 'is the invisible GOD eternally breaking forth and manifesting Himself in a boundless height and depth of blissful wonders, opening and displaying Himself to all His heavenly creatures in an infinite variety and an endless multiplicity of His powers, beauties, joys, and glories. So that all the inhabitants of heaven are for ever knowing, seeing, hearing, feeling, and variously enjoying all that is great, amiable, infinite, and gracious in the Divine Nature.' And again, in his _Way to Divine Knowledge_: 'Out of this transcendent Eternal Nature, which is as universal and immense as the Godhead itself, do all the highest beings, cherubims and seraphims, all the hosts of angels, and all intelligent spirits, receive their birth, existence, substance, and form. And they are one and united in one, GOD in them, and they in GOD, according to the prayer of CHRIST for His disciples, that they, and He, and His Holy Father might be united in one.' A little philosophy, especially when the philosopher does not yet know the plague of his own heart, tends, indeed, to doubt and unbelief in the word of GOD and in the work of CHRIST. But the philosophy of Behmen and Law will deepen the mind and subdue the heart of the student till he is made a prodigal son, a humble believer, and a profound philosopher, both in nature and in grace, like his profound masters. Behmen's teaching on human nature, his doctrine of the heart of man, and of the image of GOD in the heart of man, has a greatness about it that marks it off as being peculiarly Behmen's own doctrine. He agrees with the catechisms and the creeds in their teaching that the heart of man was at first like the heart of GOD in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. But Behmen is above and beyond the catechisms in this also, in the way that he sees the heart of man still opening in upon the Divine Nature, as also upon Eternal and Temporal Nature, somewhat as the heart of GOD opens on all that He has made. On every page of his, wherever you happen to open him, Behmen is found teaching that GOD and CHRIST, heaven and hell, life and death, are in every several human heart. Heaven and all that it contains is every day either being quenched and killed in every human heart, or it is being anew generated, rekindled, and accepted there; and in like manner hell. 'Yea,' he is bold to exclaim, 'GOD Himself is so near thee that the geniture of the Holy Trinity is continually being wrought in thy heart. Yea, all the Three Persons are generated for thee in thy heart.' And, again: 'GOD is in thy dark heart. Knock, and He shall come out within thee into the light. The Holy Ghost holds the key of thy dark heart. Ask, and He shall be given to thee within thee. Do not let any sophister teach thee that thy GOD is far aloft from thee as the stars are. Only offer at this moment to GOD thine heart, and CHRIST, the Son of GOD, will be born and formed within thee. And then thou art His brother, His flesh, and His spirit. Thou also art a child of His Father. GOD is in thee. Power, might, majesty, heaven, paradise, elements, stars, the whole earth--all is thine. Thou art in CHRIST over hell, and all that it contains.' 'Behmen's speculation,' Martensen is always reminding us, 'streams forth from the deepest practical inspiration. His speculations are all saturated with a constant reference to salvation. His whole metaphysic is pervaded by practical applications.' And conspicuously so, we may here point out, is his metaphysic of GOD and of the heart of man. The immanence of GOD, as theologians and philosophers call it; the indwelling of GOD, as the psalmists and the apostles and the saints call it; the Divine Word lightening every man that comes into the world, as John has it,--of the practical and personal bearings of all that Behmen's every book is full. Dost thou not see it and feel it? he continually calls to his readers. Heaven, be sure, is in every holy man, and hell in every bad man. When thou dost work together with GOD then thou art in heaven, and thy soul dwells in GOD. In like manner, also, thou art in hell and among the devils when thou art in any envy, malice, anger, or ill-will. Thou needest not to ask where is heaven or where is hell. Both are within thee, even in thy heart. Now, then, when thou prayest, pray in that heaven that is within thee, and there the Holy Ghost shall meet with thee and will help thee, and thy soul shall be the whole of heaven within thee. It is a fundamental doctrine of Behmen's that the fall would have been immediate and eternal death to Adam and Eve had not the Divine Word, the Seed of the woman, entered their hearts, and kept a footing in their hearts, and in the hearts of all their children, against the fulness of time when He would take our flesh and work out our redemption. And thus it is that Behmen appeals to all his readers, that if they will only go down deep enough into their own hearts--then, there, down there, deeper than indwelling sin, deeper than original sin, deep down and seated in the very substance and centre of their souls--they will come upon secret and unexpected seeds of the Divine Life. Seeds, blades, buddings, and new beginnings of the very life of GOD the Son, in their deepest souls. Secret and small, Behmen exclaims, as those seeds of Eden are, despise them not; destroy them not, for a blessing for thee is in them. Water those secret seeds, sun them, dig about them, and they will grow up in you also. The Divine Life is in you, quench it not, for it is of GOD. Nay, it is GOD Himself in you. It depends upon yourself whether or no that which is at this moment the smallest of all seeds is yet to become in you the greatest and the most fruitful of all trees. 'Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is,' is a characteristic saying of a fellow-countryman of Behmen's. And Behmen's super-confessional and almost super-scriptural treatment of that frequent scriptural anthropomorphism,--'unavoidable and yet intolerable,'--the wrath of GOD, must be left by me in Behmen's own bold pages. Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Behmen's philosophical, theological, and experimental doctrine of sin also, with one example, must be wholly passed by. 'If all trees were clerks,' he exclaims in one place, 'and all their branches pens, and all the hills books, and all the water ink, yet all would not sufficiently declare the evil that sin hath done. For sin has made this house of heavenly light to be a den of darkness; this house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation, and woe; this house of all refreshment to be full of hunger and thirst; this abode of love to be a prison of enmity and ill-will; this seat of meekness to be the haunt of pride and rage and malice. For laughter sin has brought horror; for munificence, beggary; and for heaven, hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For the Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but turn to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in His love.' It was the sin and misery of this world that first made Jacob Behmen a philosopher, and it was the sinfulness of his own heart that at last made him a saint. Behmen's full doctrine and practice of prayer also; his fine and fruitful treatment of what he always calls 'the process of CHRIST'; and, intimately connected with that, his still super- confessional treatment of imputation,--of all that, and much more like that, I cannot now attempt to speak. Nor yet of his superb teaching on love. 'Throw out thy heart upon all men,' he now commands and now beseeches us. 'Throw open and throw out thy heart. For unless thou dost exercise thy heart, and the love of thy heart, upon every man in the world, thy self-love, thy pride, thy contempt, thy envy, thy distaste, thy dislike will still have dominion over thee. The Divine Nature will be quenched and extinguished in thee, till nothing but self and hell is left to thee. In the name, and in the strength of GOD, love all men. Love thy neighbour as thyself, and do to thy neighbour as thou doest to thyself. And do it now. For now is the accepted time; and now is the day of salvation!' Jacob Behmen died in his fiftieth year. He was libelled and maligned, harassed and hunted to death by a world that was not worthy of such a gift of GOD. A sudden and severe sickness came upon Behmen till he sank in death with his _Aurora_ and his _Holy Week_ and his _Divine Vision_ all lying still unfinished at his bedside. 'Open the door and let in more of that music,' the dying man said to his weeping son. Behmen was already hearing the harpers harping with their harps. He was already taking his part in the song they sing in heaven to Him who loved them, and washed them from their sins in His own blood. 'And now,' said the prodigal son, the blessed Behmen, 'I go to-day to be with my Redeemer and my King in Paradise,' and so died. 
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13143	----	MYSTIC CHRISTIANITY Or, The Inner Teachings of the Master by YOGI RAMACHARAKA Author of "Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism," "Hatha Yoga," "Science of Breath," "Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy," "Raja Yoga," "Psychic Healing," "Gnani Yogi," etc. PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. The lessons which compose this volume originally appeared in monthly form, the first of which was issued in October, 1907, and the twelfth in September, 1908. These lessons met with a hearty and generous response from the public, and the present volume is issued in response to the demand for the lessons in a permanent and durable form. There has been no change in the text. The publishers take the liberty to call the attention of the readers to the great amount of information condensed within the space of each lesson. Students have told us that they have found it necessary to read and study each lesson carefully, in order to absorb the varied information contained within its pages. They have also stated that they have found it advisable to re-read the lessons several times, allowing an interval between the readings, and that at each reading they would discover information that had escaped them during the course of the previous study. This has been repeated to us so often that we feel justified in mentioning it, that others may avail themselves of the same plan of study. Following his usual custom, the writer of this volume has declined to write a preface for this book, claiming that the lessons will speak for themselves, and that those for whom they are intended will receive the message contained within them without any prefatory talk. THE YOGI PUBLICATION SOCIETY. September 1, 1908. INDEX LESSON 1. The Coming of the Master 2. The Mystery of the Virgin Birth 3. The Mystic Youth of Jesus 4. The Beginning of the Ministry 5. The Foundation of the Work 6. The Work of Organization 7. The Beginning of the End 8. The End of the Life Work 9. The Inner Teachings 10. The Secret Doctrine 11. The Ancient Wisdom 12. The Message of the Master THE FIRST LESSON. THE COMING OF THE MASTER. THE FORERUNNER. Strange rumors reached the ears of the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding country. It was reported that a new prophet had appeared in the valley of the lower Jordan, and in the wilderness of Northern Judea, preaching startling doctrines. His teachings resembled those of the prophets of old, and his cry of "Repent! Repent ye! for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," awakened strange memories of the ancient teachers of the race, and caused the common people to gaze wonderingly at each other, and the ruling classes to frown and look serious, when the name of the new prophet was mentioned. The man whom the common people called a prophet, and whom the exalted ones styled an impostor, was known as John the Baptist, and dwelt in the wilderness away from the accustomed haunts of men. He was clad in the rude garments of the roaming ascetics, his rough robe of camel's skin being held around his form by a coarse girdle of leather. His diet was frugal and elemental, consisting of the edible locust of the region, together with the wild honey stored by the bees of the wilderness. In appearance John, whom men called "the Baptist," was tall, wiry, and rugged. His skin was tanned a dark brown by the winds and sun which beat upon it unheeded. His long black hair hung loosely around his shoulders, and was tossed like the mane of a lion when he spoke. His beard was rough and untrimmed. His eyes gleamed like glowing coals, and seemed to burn into the very soul of his hearers. His was the face of the religious enthusiastic with a Message for the world. This wild prophet was most strenuous, and his teachings were couched in the most vigorous words. There was no tact, policy, or persuasion in his message. He hurled his verbal thunderbolts right into his crowd, the very force and earnestness emanating from him serving to charge his words with a vitality and magnetism which dashed itself into the crowd like a spark of electricity, knocking men from off their feet, and driving the Truth into them as if by a charge of a powerful explosive. He told them that the spiritual grain was to be gathered into the garners, while the chaff was to be consumed as if by a fiery furnace; that the axe was to be laid to the root of the trees which brought not forth good fruit. Verily, the "Day of Jehovah," long promised by the prophets, was near to hand to his hearers and followers. John soon gathered to himself a following, the people flocking to him from all parts of the country, even from Galilee. His followers began to talk among themselves, asking whether indeed this man were not the long promised Master--the Messiah for whom all Israel had waited for centuries. This talk coming to the ears of the prophet, caused him to answer the question in his discourses, saying: "There cometh one mightier than I, after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose; he that cometh after me is mightier than I." And thus it became gradually known to his following, and the strangers attending his meetings, that this John the Baptist, mighty preacher though he be, was but the herald of one much greater than he, who should follow--that he was the forerunner of the Master, according to the Oriental imagery which pictured the forerunner of the great dignitaries, running ahead of the chariot of his master, crying aloud to all people gathered on the road that they must make way for the approaching great man, shouting constantly, "Make ye a way! make ye a way for the Lord!" And accordingly there was a new wave of excitement among John's following, which spread rapidly to the surrounding country, at this promise of the coming of the Lord--the Master--perhaps even the Messiah of the Jews. And many more came unto John, and with him waited for the Coming of the Master. This John the Baptist was born in the hill country of Judea, nearly thirty years before he appeared as a prophet. His father was of the priestly order, or temple caste, who had reached an advanced age, and who lived with his aged wife in retirement, away from the noise and confusion of the world, waiting the gradual approach of that which cometh to all men alike. Then there came to them a child of their old age, unexpected and unhoped for--coming as a mark of especial favor from God--a son, to whom they gave the name of _Johanan_, which in the Hebrew tongue means "Jehovah is gracious." Reared in the home of his parents--the house of a priest--John saturated himself with all the Inner Teachings reserved for the few, and withheld from the masses. The Secrets of the Kaballah, that system of Hebrew Occultism and Mysticism in which the higher priests of Judea were well versed, were disclosed to him, and occult tradition has it that he was initiated into the Inner Circle of the Hebrew Mystics, composed of only priests of a certain grade, and their sons. John became an Occultist and a Mystic. When the boy reached the age of puberty, he departed from the home of his parents, and went into the wilderness, "looking to the East, from whence cometh all Light." In other words, he became an Ascetic, living in the wilderness, just as in India even to-day youths of the Brahmin or priestly class sometimes forsake their homes, renouncing their luxurious life, and fly to the jungle, where they wander about for years as ascetics, wearing a single garment, subsisting on the most elementary food, and developing their spiritual consciousness. John remained a recluse until he reached the age of about thirty years, when he emerged from the wilderness to preach the "Coming of the Lord," in obedience to the movings of the Spirit. Let us see where he was, and what he did, during the fifteen years of his life in the wilderness and hidden places of Judea. The traditions of the Essenes, preserved among Occultists, state that while John was an ascetic he imbibed the teachings of that strange Occult Brotherhood known as the Essenes, and after having served his apprenticeship, was accepted into the order as an Initiate, and attained their higher degrees reserved only for those of developed spirituality and power. It is said that even when he was a mere boy he claimed and proved his right to be fully initiated into the Mysteries of the Order, and was believed to have been a reincarnation of one of the old Hebrew prophets. THE ESSENES. The Essenes were an ancient Hebrew Occult Brotherhood, which had been in existence many hundred years before John's time. They had their headquarters on the Eastern shores of the Dead Sea, although their influence extended over all of Palestine, and their ascetic brothers were to be found in every wilderness. The requirements of the Order were very strict, and its rites and ceremonies were of the highest mystical and occult degree. The Neophyte was required to serve a preliminary apprenticeship of one year before being admitted to even partial recognition as a member and brother. A further apprenticeship of two more years was required before he was admitted to full membership, and extended the right hand of fellowship. Additional time was required for further advancement, and even time alone did not entitle the member to certain high degrees, the requirements being that actual knowledge, power and attainment must first be manifested. As in all true Occult Orders the candidate must "work out his own salvation," neither money nor influence having any weight. Absolute obedience to the Rules of the Order; absolute poverty of material possessions; absolute sexual continence--these were the conditions of membership to be observed by both Neophyte and Initiate, as well as High-degree Master. Understanding this, one may imagine the disgust inspired in John by the amorous solicitations of Salome, which caused him to lose his life rather than to break the vows of his Order, as is so startlingly pictured in the stage productions of modern times. One of the ceremonies of the Essenes was that of Baptism (literally, "dipping in water") which was administered to Candidates, with appropriate solemnity and rites. The mystic significance of the ceremony which is understood by all members of Occult Orders, even unto this day, was a part of the ritual originated by the Essenes, and the rite itself was a distinctive feature of their Order. The performance of this rite by John the Baptist, in his ministry, and its subsequent acceptance by the Christian Church as a distinctive ceremonial, of which the "sprinkling of infants" of to-day is a reminder and substitute, forms a clear connecting link between the Essenes and Modern Christianity, and impresses the stamp of Mysticism and Occultism firmly upon the latter, as little as the general public may wish to admit it in their ignorant misunderstanding and materialistic tendencies. The Essenes believed in, and taught the doctrine of Reincarnation; the Immanence of God; and many other Occult Truths, the traces of which appear constantly in the Christian Teachings, as we shall see as we progress with these lessons. Through its Exalted Brother, John the Baptist, the Order passed on its teaching to the early Christian Church, thus grafting itself permanently upon a new religious growth, newly appearing on the scene. And the transplanted branches are still there! Of course, the true history of the real connection between the Essenes and Christianity is to be found only in the traditions of the Essenes and other ancient Mystic Orders, much of which has never been printed, but which has passed down from teacher to pupil over the centuries even unto this day, among Occult Fraternities. But in order to show the student that we are not making statements incapable of proof by evidence available to him, we would refer him to any standard work of reference on the subject. For instance, if he will consult the "New International Encyclopedia" (Vol. VII, page 217) article on "Essenes," he will read the following words: "It is an interesting question as to how much Christianity owes to Essenism. It would seem that there was room for definite contact between John the Baptist and this Brotherhood. His time of preparation was spent in the wilderness near the Dead Sea; his preaching of righteousness toward God, and justice toward one's fellow men, was in agreement with Essenism; while his insistence on Baptism was in accord with the Essenic emphasis on lustrations." The same article contains the statement that the Essenic Brotherhood taught a certain "view entertained regarding the origin, present state, and future destiny of the soul, _which was held to be pre-existent, being entrapped in the body as in a prison_," etc. (The above italics are our own.) John emerged from the wilderness when he had reached the age of about thirty years, and began his ministry work, which extended for several years until his death at the hands of Herod. He gathered around him a large and enthusiastic following, beginning with the humbler classes and afterward embracing a number of higher social degree. He formed his more advanced followers into a band of disciples, with prescribed rules regarding fasting, worship, ceremonial, rites, etc., closely modeled upon those favored by the Essenes. This organization was continued until the time of John's death, when it merged with the followers of Jesus, and exerted a marked influence upon the early Christian church. As we have stated, one of his principal requisites enjoined upon all of his followers, was that of "Baptism"--the Essenic rite, from which he derived his familiar appellation, "The Baptist." But, it must be remembered that to John this rite was a most sacred, mystic, symbolic ceremony, possessing a deep occult meaning unperceived by many of his converts who submitted themselves to it under the fervor of religious emotion, and who _naïvely_ regarded it as some magical rite which "washed away sin" from their souls, as the dirt was washed from their bodies, a belief which seems to be still in favor with the multitude. John worked diligently at his mission, and the "Baptists" or "Followers of Johanan," as they were called, increased rapidly. His meetings were events of great moment to thousands who had gathered from all Palestine to see and hear the prophet of the wilderness--the Essene who had emerged from his retirement. His meetings were often attended with startling occurrences, sudden conversions, visions, trances, etc., and many developed possession of unusual powers and faculties. But one day there was held a meeting destined to gain world-wide fame. This was the day when there came to John the Baptist the MASTER, of whose coming John had frequently foretold and promised. JESUS THE CHRIST appeared upon the scene and confronted his Forerunner. The traditions have it that Jesus came unannounced to, and unrecognized by John and the populace. The Forerunner was in ignorance of the nature and degree of his guest and applicant for Baptism. Although the two were cousins, they had not met since childhood, and John did not at first recognize Jesus. The traditions of the Mystic Orders further state that Jesus then gave to John the various signs of the Occult Fraternities to which they both belonged, working from the common signs up until Jesus passed on to degrees to which John had not attained, although he was an eminent high-degree Essene. Whereupon John saw that the man before him was no common applicant for Baptism, but was, instead, a highest-degree Mystic Adept, and Occult Master--his superior in rank and unfoldment. John, perceiving this, remonstrated with Jesus, saying that it was not meet and proper, nor in accordance with the customs of the Brotherhoods, for the inferior to Baptize the superior. Of this event the New Testament takes note in these words: "But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" (_Matt. 3:14._) But Jesus insisted that John perform the rite upon him upon the ground that He wished to go through the ceremonial in order to set His stamp of approval upon it, and to show that he considered himself as a man among men, come forth to live the life of men. In both the occult traditions and the New Testament narrative, it is stated that a mystical occurrence ensued at the baptism, "the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon Him," and a voice from Heaven saying: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And with these words the mission of John the Baptist, as "Forerunner of the Master," was fulfilled. _The Master_ had appeared to take up his work. THE MASTER. And, now, let us turn back the pages of the Book of Time, to a period about thirty years before the happening of the events above mentioned. Let us turn our gaze upon the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, in order that we may trace the Mystic and Occult forces at work from the beginning of Christianity. There are occurrences of the greatest importance embraced in these thirty years. Let us begin the Mystic Narrative of Jesus the Christ, as it is told to the Neophyte of every Occult Order, by the Master Instructor, by a recital of an event preceding his birth by over one year. In Matthew 2:1-2, the following is related: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came Wise Men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him." In these simple words is stated an event that, expressed in a much more extended narrative, forms an important part of the Esoteric Teachings of the Mystic Brotherhoods, and Occult Orders of the Orient, and which is also known to the members of the affiliated secret orders of the Western world. The story of THE MAGI is embedded in the traditions of the Oriental Mystics, and we shall here give you a brief outline of the story as it is told by Hierophant to Neophyte--by Guru to Chela. To understand the story, you must know just who were these "Wise Men of the East"--The Magi. And this you shall now be taught. THE MAGI, OR WISE MEN. The translators of the New Testament have translated the words naming these visitors from afar as "the Wise Men from the East," but in the original Greek, Matthew used the words "_The Magi_" as may be seen by reference to the original Greek versions, or the Revised Translation, which gives the Greek term in a foot-note. Any leading encyclopedia will corroborate this statement. The term "the Magi" was the exact statement of Matthew in the original Greek in which the Gospel was written, the term "the Wise Men" originating with the English translators. There is absolutely no dispute regarding this question among Biblical scholars, although the general public is not aware of the connection, nor do they identify the Wise Men with the Oriental Magians. The word "Magi" comes to the English language direct from the Greek, which in turn acquired it by gradual steps from the Persian, Chaldean, Median, and Assyrian tongues. It means, literally, "wonder worker," and was applied to the members of the occult priestly orders of Persia, Media, and Chaldea, who were Mystic Adepts and Occult Masters. Ancient history is full of references to this body of men. They were the custodians of the world's occult knowledge for centuries, and the priceless treasures of the Inner Teachings held by the race to-day have come through the hands of these men--the Magi--who tended the sacred fires of Mysticism and kept The Flame burning. In thinking of their task, one is reminded of the words of Edward Carpenter, the poet, who sings: "Oh, let not the flame die out! Cherished age after age in its dark caverns, in its holy temples cherished. Fed by pure ministers of love--let not the flame die out." The title of "Magi" was highly esteemed in those ancient days, but it fell into disrepute in the latter times owing to its growing use as an appellation of the practitioners of "Black Magic," or "evil wonder-workers" or sorcerers, of those days. But as a writer in the New International Encyclopedia (Vol. XII, page 674) has truly said: "The term is employed in its true sense by Matthew (2:1) of the wise men who came from the East to Jerusalem to worship Christ. The significance of this event must be observed because the Messianic doctrine was an old and established one in Zoroastrianism." The same article says of the Magi: "... they believed in a resurrection, a future life, and the advent of a savior." To understand the nature of the Magi in connection with their occult "wonder working," we must turn to the dictionaries, where we will see that the word "Magic" is derived from the title "Magi;" the word "Magician" having been originally "Magian", which means "one of the Magi." Webster defines the word "Magic" as follows: "The hidden wisdom supposed to be possessed by the Magi; relating to the occult powers of nature; mastery of secret forces in nature", etc. So you may readily see that we are right in stating to you that these Wise Men--the Magi who came to worship the Christ-child, were in reality the representatives of the great Mystic Brotherhoods and Occult Orders of the Orient--Adepts, Masters, Hierophants! And thus do we find the Occult and Mystic "wonder workers"--the high-degree brethren of the Great Eastern Lodges of Mystic Occultism, appearing at the very beginning of the Story of Christianity, indicating their great interest in the mortal birth of the greater Master whose coming they had long waited--the Master of Masters! And all Occultists and Mystics find pleasure and just pride in the fact that the first recognition of the Divine Nature of this human child came from these Magi from the East--from the very Heart of the Mystic Inner Circles! To those so-called Christians to whom all that is connected with Mysticism and Occultism savors of the fiery sulphur and brimstone, we would call attention to this intimate early relation between The Musters and THE MASTER. THE STAR IN THE EAST. But the Mystic story begins still further back than the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem. Did not the Magi say, "Where is He? We have seen His star in the East and have come to worship him." What is meant by the words, "We have seen his star in the East"? To the majority of Christians the "Star of Bethlehem" means a great star that suddenly appeared in the heavens, like a great beacon light, and which miraculously guided the steps of the Magi, mile by mile, on their weary journey, until at last it rested in the heavens, stationary over the house in which the child Jesus lived, between the ages of one and two years. In other words, they believe that this star had constantly guided these skilled mystics, occultists and astrologers, in their journey from the far East, which occupied over a year, until it at last guided them to Bethlehem and then stopped stationary over the house of Joseph and Mary. Alas! that these vulgar traditions of the ignorant multitude should have served so long to obscure a beautiful mystic occurrence, and which by their utter improbability and unscientific nature should have caused thousands to sneer at the very true legend of the "Star of Bethlehem." It remains for the Mystic traditions to clear away the clouds of ignorance from this beautiful story, and to re-establish it in the minds of men as a natural and scientific occurrence. This story of the "traveling star" arose from the superstitious and ignorant ideas of many of the Christians of the first, second, and third centuries after Christ's death. These tales were injected into the manuscripts left by the disciples, and soon began to be regarded as a part and portion of the authentic Gospels and Epistles, although the skilled Biblical critics and scholars of to-day are rapidly discarding many of these additions as wilful forgeries and interpolations. It must be remembered that the oldest manuscripts of the books of the New Testament are known to Biblical scholars to have been written _not less than three hundred years after the time of the original writing_, and are merely _copies of copies_ of the originals, undoubtedly added to, altered, and adulterated by the writers through whose hands they had passed. This is not merely the statement of an outside critic--it is a fact that is clearly stated in the writings of the scholars in the Churches engaged in the work of Biblical study, and the Higher Criticism, to which works we refer any who may have reason to doubt our statement. That portion of the verse (_Matt. 2:9._) in which it is said that "and lo; the star which they saw in the east went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was," is known to the Mystic and Occult Orders to be a rank interpolation into the story of the Magi. It is contrary to their own traditions and records, and is also contrary to reason and to scientific laws, and this distorted story alone has been the cause of the development of thousands of "infidels" who could not accept the tale. All intelligent men know that a "star" is not a mere tiny point of flame in the dome which shuts us out from a Heaven on the other side of the blue shell, although this view was that of the ancient people, and many ignorant men and women to-day. Educated people know that a "star" is either a planet of our solar system, similar to the sister planet which we called the Earth, or else is a mighty sun, probably many times larger than our sun, countless millions of miles distant from our solar system. And they know that planets have their invariable orbits and courses, over which they travel, unceasingly, so true to their course that their movements may be foretold centuries ahead, or calculated for centuries back. And they know that even the great fixed stars, those distant suns and centers of great solar systems akin to our own, have their own places in the Universe, also their Universal relations and movements. All who have studied even the most elementary school book on astronomy know these things. And yet such people are asked to swallow whole this story of the "moving star," traveling on a little ahead of the shepherds for over a year, and at last standing right over the home of Jesus, and thus indicating that the search was ended. Let us compare this unscientific tale, with the traditions and legends of the Mystics, and then take your choice. Had there been any such star in appearance, the historians of that day would surely have recorded it, for there were learned and wise men in the East in those days, and as astrology was a science closely studied, it would have been noted and passed on to posterity by both writings and tradition. But no such record or tradition is to be found among the Eastern peoples, or the records of the astrologers. But another record and tradition _is_ preserved, as we shall see in a moment. Yes, there really _was_ a "Star of Bethlehem" which led the feet of the Magi to the home of the infant Jesus. We have the following proof of this fact: (1) the traditions and teachings of the Mystic Orders which have been handed down from teacher to student for centuries; (2) the statements and records of the Ancient Astrologers, which may be proven by modern astronomical calculations; and (3) the calculations made by modern astronomers, which shall be stated a few paragraphs further on. These three sources of information give us the same tale, as we shall see. Before proceeding to a consideration of this three-fold evidence, let us pause for a moment and consider the relation of the Magi to Astrology. To understand the narrative of the Magi's Visit to Jesus, we must remember that they were the very Masters of Astrological Lore. Persia and the surrounding Oriental countries were the fountain-head of Astrological Teaching. And these Magi were Masters, and Adepts, and Hierophants, and consequently knew all that was known to the greatest schools of Astrology of that day. Much of their Ancient Astrological Lore has been lost to the race of to-day, but to these ancient learned men it was as much of a science as chemistry and astronomy are to the learned ones of our day. The Magi had long waited for the appearance and incarnation of a Great Master of Masters, whose appearance had been predicted centuries before by some of the great Occult Fathers of the Mystic Orders, and each generation hoped that the event would come in his day. They had been taught that when the event took place, they would be informed by means of the planets, according to the Higher Astrology. All students of even our modern fragmentary astrology will understand this. And so they waited and carefully scanned the heavens for the sign. Now the traditions of the Occult Orders inform us that at last the Magi witnessed a peculiar conjunction of planets; first, the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, in the Constellation of Pisces, the two planets being afterward joined by the planet Mars, the three planets in close relation of position, making a startling and unusual stellar display, and having a deep astrological significance. Now, the Constellation of Pisces, as all astrologers, ancient and modern, know, is the constellation governing the national existence of Judea. Seeing the predicted conjunction of the planets, occurring in the Constellation having to do with Judea (as well as the relative positions of the other planets, all of which played its part in the observation), the Magi knew two things, _i.e._, (1) that the birth of the Master of Masters had occurred; and (2) that He had been born in Judea, as indicated by the constellation in which the conjunction occurred. And, so, making the calculation of the exact moment of the conjunction, they started on their long journey toward Judea in search of the Master of Masters. Now, again, the records of the Astrologers, preserved in the Oriental Occult Brotherhoods, in their monasteries, etc., show that at a period a few years before the Christian Era such a peculiar conjunction and combination of the planets occurred in the Constellation symbolizing the destinies of Judea, which was interpreted as indicating the appearance of an Incarnation or Avatar of a Great Divine Soul--a Master of Masters--a Mystic of Mystics. It must be remembered that these Orders are composed of non-Christians--people that the average Christian would call "heathens," and that therefore this testimony must be regarded as free from bias toward Christianity or the corroboration of its legends. And, in the third place, the calculations of Modern Astronomy show without possibility of contradiction that in the Roman year 747 (or seven years before the Christian Era) _the planets Saturn and Jupiter farmed a conjunction in the Constellation of Pisces_, and that these two planets, still in close position to each other, were joined by the planet Mars in the Spring of 748. The great astronomer Kepler first made this calculation in the year 1604, and it has been since verified by modern calculations. To those who would object that all this occurred seven years before the commonly accepted date of the birth of Christ, we would say that any modern work on New Testament Chronology, or any encyclopedia or reference work on the subject, will show that the former calculations were several years out of the way, and that the records of other events mentioned in the Bible, such as the "enrollment" of the people, which brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, enable modern Biblical scholars to fix the date of the birth of Christ at about six or seven years before the usually accepted time. So that modern research fully corroborates the astrological record and the Mystic traditions. And so it would appear that the coming of the Wise Men--the Magi--was in accordance with the astrological signs, of the interpretation of which they were adepts and masters. When this truth is known, how puerile and petty seems the myth of the "traveling star" of the commonly accepted exoteric version? And the pictures of the Wise Men being led by a moving heavenly body, traveling across the skies and at last standing still over the cottage of Joseph, with which the Sunday school books are filled, must be relegated to the same waste-paper basket which contains the Bible illustrations, formerly so popular, which picture Jehovah as a bald-headed old man with a long white beard, clad in flowing robes designed to hide his body. Is it any wonder that skeptics, infidels, and scoffers of the spiritual truths have arisen in great numbers, when they have been asked to accept these things or be damned? And is not this connection of Astrology with Early Christianity a rebuke to the modern Christian Church which sneers and scoffs at the science of astrology as a "base superstition" fit only for fools and ignoramuses? Does not this picture of the Magi give a clear view of that which was formerly regarded as a mere fable, to be solemnly smiled over and taught to the children, with whom the story has always been a favorite owing to their intuitive perception of an underlying truth. And now with this Mystic version, cannot _you_ enjoy the legend with the children? In this connection let us once more quote from the New International Encyclopedia (Vol. II, 170), a standard reference work, as you know, which says: "Some of the earlier Christian Fathers argued against the doctrines of the earlier astrology, while others received them in a modified form; and indeed it formed a part of the basis of their religion in the Gospel narrative of the visit to Bethlehem of the Wise Men of the East, who were Chaldean Magi or Astrologers." Here is the testimony in all of the standard reference books, and yet how many of you have known it? To understand the importance of the event which drew the steps of the Magi to Bethlehem, we must realize that the Coming of the Master was a favorite subject of speculation and discussion among Occultists and Mystic organizations all over the Oriental countries. It had been foretold, in all tongues, that a Great Master would be given to the world--a mighty _avatar_ or appearance of Deity in human form, who would incarnate in order to redeem the world from the materiality which threatened it. The Sacred Writings of India, Persia, Chaldea, Egypt, Media, Assyria, and other lands had foretold this event for many centuries, and all the mystics and occultists longed for the day "when the Master would appear." The Jews also had many traditions regarding the coming of a Messiah, who would be born of the seed of David, at Bethlehem, but their Messiah was looked upon as likely to be an earthly king, destined to free Israel from the Roman yoke. And so, the tradition of the Jews was regarded as of inferior moment to their own predictions, by the Mystic and Occult Brotherhoods of the East. To them it was to be an _avatar_ of Deity--God in human form come to take his rightful seat as the Grand Master of the Universal Grand Lodge of Mystic--a descent of pure Spirit into matter. This conception certainly was very much higher than that of the Jews. And so, knowing these things, we may readily understand why the Magi pursued their search with such ardor and enthusiasm. They had many weary miles of travel to Bethlehem, over a year being consumed in the journey. They reached Bethlehem over a year after the birth of Christ and the appearance of the Star, the sight of which had started them on their quest. They sought not a new-born babe, as common belief has it--they searched for a child born over a year before. (We refer the student to any reference work, for a verification of this last statement. The illustrations in the Sunday school books showing the Wise Men worshipping a new born babe in the manger are on a par with the others mentioned. The Wise Men had nothing to do with the stable or the manger--for Joseph, Mary and the Babe were lodged in a house by that time, as we shall see as we proceed.) At last after their long and weary wandering over hill and plain, mountain and desert, the Magi found themselves in Jerusalem, inquiring diligently as to the whereabouts of the Master of Masters--the Promised One, whose coming had been the subject of prophecy for centuries among the Eastern peoples. The Jews of whom they inquired, although not familiar with the predictions regarding a Mystic Master, or _avatar_ of Deity, were nevertheless thoroughly familiar with the prophecies of the coming of the Hebrew Messiah, and naturally thought that it was of this expected earthly King of the Jews that the Magi inquired, and so they reported it far and wide that these Great Men from the East had come to Jerusalem to find the Messiah--the King of the Jews, who was to deliver Israel from the Roman yoke. And, as the Gospel of Matthew (2:3) informs us: "When Herod the king heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." Naturally so, when it is remembered that it was an Earthly Kingdom that they expected the Messiah would inherit. And so, gathering the chief priests and scribes of Jerusalem around him, he bade them tell him the particulars regarding the prophecies regarding the Messiah--where he was expected to be born. And they answered him, saying: "In Bethlehem of Judea for so hath the prophets spoken." And hearing the testimony of the scribes and priests, the wily Herod, who feared the realization of this old Hebrew prophecy which threatened to cost him his throne if fulfilled, called the Magi to his palace and in private consultation inquired of them the reason of their search. And when they told him of the astrological indications--of the "Star"--he was still more wrought up, and wished to locate the dangerous child. And so he inquired of them the exact date at which the star had appeared, that he might be better able to find the infant, knowing its date of birth in Bethlehem. (See Matthew 2:7.) And learning this he bade them go to Bethlehem and find the child they sought, and cunningly added, "And when ye have found him, bring me word, that I also may come and worship him." Thus craftily concealing his intentions to seize and kill the child, he endeavored to press the Magi into his service as detectives, by pretending to join in their desire to locate the Divine Child. The Magi traveled on to Bethlehem, and arriving there made diligent inquiry regarding infants that had been born about the time that the star appeared. There were many infants born in Bethlehem during the same month, of course, and the search was difficult. But they soon heard strange rumors about a babe that had been born to travelers in Bethlehem about that time, the birth of whom had been attended by a strange occurrence. This peculiar happening is related in Luke 2:8-20, in which it is stated that at the time of the birth of Jesus in the manger, certain shepherds keeping the night-watch over their flocks saw an angel standing by them, and "the glory of the Lord" shining around about them. And the angel bade them be not afraid, for to them was to be given tidings of great joy, for there was born that very day, in Bethlehem, one who was to be the Anointed Lord of the world. And the angel further directed them that the babe would be found lying in a manger in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes which was to be their sign. And then suddenly the place was filled with a multitude of supernatural beings, praising God, singing, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will among men." And the shepherds flocked to the town, and there found the child in the manger. And they spread abroad the report of the wonderful event accompanying the birth of the child. And consequently the child and its parents became objects of more or less public interest. And so when the Magi instituted their search they were in due time informed of this strange occurrence. And they visited the house of Joseph and Mary and saw the Babe. Making close inquiry of the parents, they found that the time of the child's birth tallied precisely with the moment of the astrological signs. Then they cast the Child's horoscope and they knew that their shepherd's vision coincided with their own science, and that here indeed was He for whom the Eastern Occultists and Mystics had waited for centuries. They had found the Master! The Star Child was before them! Then these Great Men of their own lands--these Adepts, Masters and Hierophants--prostrated themselves on the ground before the child and gave him the salutation due only to the great Occult Master of Masters who was come to take his seat upon the Throne of the Grand Master of the Great Lodge. But the child knew naught of this, and merely smiled sweetly at these strange men in gorgeous foreign robes, and reached out his little hand toward them. But Occult tradition has it that the tiny fingers and thumb of his right hand, outstretched toward the Magi, unconsciously assumed the mystic symbol of the Occult Benediction, used by the Masters and Hierophants (and now used by the Pope in Papal Benediction) and gave to the worshippers that Master's benediction. The tiny Master of Masters thus gave his first blessing to his followers, and exalted worshippers. But His Throne was not that of the Great Lodge, but a still higher place--the knees of a Mother! And the Magi then made mystic and symbolic offerings to the child--Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh offered they Him. Gold, signifying the tribute offered to a Ruler, was the first symbol. Then came Frankincense, the purest and rarest incense used by the Occult and Mystic Brotherhoods and Orders, in their ceremonies and rites, when they were contemplating the sacred symbol of the Absolute Master of the Universe--this Frankincense was their symbol of worship. Then, last symbol of all, was the Myrrh, which in the occult and mystic symbolism indicated the bitterness of mortal life, bitter though pungent, preserving though stinging--this was the meaning of the Myrrh, that this child, though Divine in his inner nature, was still mortal in body and brain, and must accept and experience the bitter tang of life. Myrrh, the strength of which preserves, and prevents decay, and yet which smarts, and tangs, and stings ever and ever--a worthy symbol of Mortal Life, surely. Wise Men, indeed, ye Magi! Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh--a prophecy, symbol, and revelation of the Life of the Son of Man, with His indwelling Pure Spirit. And the Magi, having performed their rites and ceremonies, departed from Bethlehem. But they did not forget the Child--they preserved a careful watch over his movements, until they saw him again. Saw Him again? you ask? _Yes, saw him again!_ Though the Gospels say naught of this, and are silent for a period of many years in the Life of Jesus, yet the records and traditions of the Mystics of the East are filled with this esoteric knowledge of these missing years, as we shall see as we proceed. Left behind by the Magi, but still under their loving care, the Child waxed strong and grew in mind and body. But the Magi, being warned by higher intelligences in a vision, did not return to the wily and crafty Herod, but "departed unto their own country another way." (_Matt. 2:12._) And Herod waited in vain for their return, and finally discovering their escape wrathfully ordered the massacre of all male children that had been born in Bethlehem and its suburbs of two years of age and under. He calculated the two years from the witnessing of the "star" by the Magi. Matthew 2:16 states the story of the fixing of the time as follows: "And slew all the male children that were in Bethlehem, and all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, _according to the time which he exactly learned of the wise men_." Herod sought to kill the feared Messiah--the King of the Jews, who threatened to drive him from his earthly throne--by killing all the male infants in Bethlehem that had been born since the astrological indication as stated by the Magi. But this plot failed, for Joseph had been warned by "an angel in a dream" (which mystics teach was the Astral Form of one of the Magi) and was told to take the mother and child and flee into Egypt, and to stay there until the death of Herod. And so Joseph, Mary, and Jesus then fled from the wrath of Herod, and stole silently away to Egypt. And the Occult traditions have it that the expenses of the journey of this poor carpenter and his family--that journey into strange lands, hurried, and without the chance to earn money along the way--was accomplished by the means of the Gold that the Magi had offered to Jesus, and which they had insisted upon his parents storing away for His use. And so the gold of these Occult Mystics saved the founder of Christianity from massacre. And how poorly has Christianity repaid the debt, when one thinks of the persecutions of the Oriental "heathen" by the so-called Christians of all times! And note this--they carried the child to Egypt, the home of Mystery and Occultism--the land of Isis! A worthy resting place for the Great Occult Master that was to be! And Occult tradition also has it that one night, wearied with their long journey, the family halted and passed the night in the place of the Sphinx and Pyramids. And that the Mother and Babe rested between the outstretched forepaws of the mighty Sphinx, which held them safe and secure, while Joseph threw himself on the base before them, and slept on guard. What a scene--the Master as an infant protected by the Sphinx, that ancient Occult emblem and symbol, while close by, reared like mighty watchful sentinels, stood the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the master work of Egypt's Mystics, every line and inch of which symbolizes an Occult Teaching. Verily, indeed is Christianity cradled in the lap of Mysticism. Thus endeth our First Lesson. The Second Lesson will take up the Mystic Teachings regarding the Divine Incarnation of the Spirit in the mortal body of Jesus--a subject of the greatest importance to all who are troubled with this difficult point. We hope to be able to shed the Mystic light of Truth upon this corner which so many have found dark, non-understandable, and contrary to reason, natural law and science. The Mystic Teachings are the great Reconciler of Faith and Reason. THE SECOND LESSON. THE MYSTERY OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH. One of the points of conflict between Established Theology on the one hand and what is known as Rationalism, the Higher Criticism, and Comparative Mythology, on the other hand, is what is known as "the Virgin Birth" of Jesus. Perhaps we may show the points of difference more clearly by simply stating the opposing views and, afterwards, giving the traditions of the Occult Brotherhoods and Societies on the subject. We are enabled to state the opposing views without prejudice, because we rest upon the Occult Teachings with a feeling of being above and outside of the theological strife raging between the two schools of Christian theologians. We trust that the reader will reserve his decision until the consideration of the matter in this lesson is completed. We think that it will be found that the Occult Teachings give the Key to the Mystery and furnish the Reconciliation between the opposing theological views which threaten to divide the churches into two camps, i.e., (1) the adherents of the established orthodox theology, and (2) the adherents of the views of the Rationalists and the Higher Critics. The school of theology which clings to the old orthodox teachings regarding the Virgin Birth and which teachings are commonly accepted without question by the mass of church-goers, hold as follows: Mary, a young Jewish maiden, or virgin, was betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter of Nazareth in Galilee. Before her marriage, she was informed by an angelic vision that she would miraculously conceive a son, to whom she would give birth, and who would reign on the Throne of David and be called the Son of the Highest. This teaching is based solely upon certain statements contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew's account is as follows: "Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with the child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS, for he shall save his people from their sins. And now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with a child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus." (_Matt. 1:18-25._) Luke's account is as follows: "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (_Luke 1:26-33._) And so, this then is the commonly accepted, orthodox teachings of Christian theology. It is embodied in the two best-known creeds of the church and is made an essential article of belief by the majority of the orthodox churches. In the Apostle's Creed, which has been traced back to about the year A.D. 500, and which is claimed to have been based on an older creed, the doctrine is stated thusly: "... and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," etc. In the Nicene Creed, which dates from A.D. 325, the doctrine is stated thusly: "... and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father ... and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary," etc. And so, the doctrine is plainly stated and firmly insisted upon by the orthodox churches of today, although such was not always the case for the matter was one which gave rise to much conflict and difference of opinion in the early centuries of the Church, the present view, however, overcoming those who opposed it, and finally becoming accepted as beyond doubt or question by the orthodox, believing Christian. But the present time finds many leading minds in the churches, who refuse to accept the doctrine as usually taught, and the voice of the Higher Criticism is heard in the land in increasing volume and many doctrines unquestioningly held by the pews are being abandoned by the pulpits, usually in the way of "discreet silence" being maintained. But here and there courageous voices are heard stating plainly that which their reason and conscience impels. We shall now consider these dissenting opinions. We have to say here, at this point, that we have no sympathy for the so-called "infidel" opinion, which holds that the whole tale of the Virgin Birth was invented to conceal the illegitimate birth of Jesus. Such a view is based neither on intelligent investigation or criticism, or upon the occult teachings. It was merely "invented" itself, by those who were unable to accept current theology and who, when driven from the churches, built up a crude system of reconstructed Biblical History of their own. And so we shall not stop to even consider this view of the matter, but shall pass on to the scholarly objectors and their views and thence to the Occult Teachings. In the first place, the theologians who favor the views of the Higher Criticism object to the idea of the Virgin Birth upon several general grounds, among which the following are the principal ones: (1) That the story of the Divine Conception, that is the conception by a woman of a child without a human father, and by means of a miraculous act on the part of Deity, is one found among the traditions, legends and beliefs of many heathen and pagan nations. Nearly all of the old Oriental religions, antedating Christianity by many centuries, contain stories of this kind concerning their gods, prophets and great leaders. The critics hold that the story of the Virgin Birth and Divine Conception were borrowed outright from these pagan legends and incorporated into the Christian Writings after the death of Christ; (2) that the idea of the Virgin Birth was not an original Christian Doctrine, but was injected into the Teachings at a date about one hundred years, or nearly so, after the beginning of the Christian Era; this view being corroborated by the fact that the New Testament Writings themselves contain very little mention of the idea, the only mention of it being in two of the Gospels, those of St. Matthew and St. Luke--St. Mark and St. John containing no mention of the matter, which would not likely be the case had it been an accepted belief in the early days of Christianity--and no mention being made of it in the Epistles, even Paul being utterly silent on the question. They claim that the Virgin Birth was unknown to the primitive Christians and was not heard of until its "borrowing" from pagan beliefs many years after. In support of their idea, as above stated, they call attention to the fact that the New Testament writings, known to Biblical students as the oldest and earliest, make no mention of the idea; and that Paul ignores it completely, as well as the other writers; (3) that the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke bear internal evidences of the introduction of the story at a later date. This matter we shall now consider, from the point of view of the Higher Criticism within the body of the Church. In the first place, let us consider the Gospel of St. Matthew. The majority of people accept this as having been written by St. Matthew, with his own hand, during his ministry; and that the Gospel, word for word, is the work of this great apostle. This idea, however, is not held for a moment by the educated clergy, as may be seen by a reference to any prominent theological work of late years, or even in the pages of a good encyclopedia. The investigators have made diligent researches concerning the probable authorship of the New Testament books and their reports would surprise many faithful church-goers who are not acquainted with the facts of the case. There is no warrant, outside of tradition and custom, for the belief that Matthew wrote the Gospel accredited to him, at least in its present shape. Without going deeply into the argument of the investigators (which may be found in any recent work on the History of the Gospels) we would say that the generally accepted conclusion now held by the authorities is that the Gospel commonly accredited to St. Matthew is the work of some unknown hand or hands, which was produced during the latter part of the first century A.D., written in Greek, and most likely an enlargement or elaboration of certain Aramaic writings entitled, "Sayings of Jesus," which are thought to have been written by Matthew himself. In other words, even the most conservative of the critics do not claim that the Gospel of St. Matthew is anything more than an enlargement, elaboration or development of Matthew's earlier writings, written many years before the elaboration of the present "Gospel." The more radical critics take an even less respectful view. This being the fact, it may be readily seen how easy it would have been for the latter-day "elaborator" to introduce the then current legend of the Virgin Birth, borrowed from pagan sources. As a further internal evidence of such interpolation of outside matter, the critics point to the fact that while the Gospel of Matthew is made to claim that Joseph was merely the _reputed father_ of the child of Mary, the same Gospel, in its very first chapter (_Matt. 1_) _gives the genealogy of Jesus from David to Joseph_ the husband of Mary, _in order to prove that Jesus came from the "House of David_," in accordance with the Messianic tradition. The chapter begins with the words, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (_Matt. 1_), and then goes on to name fourteen generations from Abraham to David; fourteen generations from David to the days of the carrying away into Babylon; and fourteen generations from the Babylonian days until the birth of Jesus. The critics call attention to this _recital of Jesus's descent, through Joseph, from the House of David_, which is but one of the many indications that the original Matthew inclined quite strongly to the view that Jesus was the Hebrew Messiah, come to reign upon the throne of David, rather than a Divine Avatar or Incarnation. The critics point to the fact that _if Joseph were not the real father of Jesus, where would be the sense and purpose of proving his descent from David through Joseph?_ It is pertinently asked, _"Why the necessity or purpose of the recital of Joseph's genealogy, as applied to Jesus, if indeed Jesus were not truly the son of Joseph_?" The explanation of the critics is that the earlier writings of Matthew contained nothing regarding the Virgin Birth, Matthew having heard nothing of this pagan legend, and that naturally he gave the genealogy of Jesus from David and Abraham. If one omits the verses 18-25 from Matthew's Gospel, he will see the logical relation of the genealogy to the rest of the account--otherwise it is paradoxical, contradictory and ridiculous, and shows the joints and seams where it has been fitted into the older account. "But," you may ask, "what of the Messianic Prophecy mentioned by Matthew (1:23)? Surely this is a direct reference to the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14." Let us examine this so-called "prophecy," of which so much has been said and see just what reference it has to the birth of Jesus. Turning back to Isaiah 7, we find these words, just a little before the "prophecy": "Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?" (_Isaiah 6:13._) Then comes the "prophecy": "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel." This is the "prophecy" quoted by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, and which has been quoted for centuries in Christian churches, as a foretelling of the miraculous birth of Jesus. As a matter of fact, intelligent theologians know that it has no reference to Jesus at all, in any way, but belongs to another occurrence, as we shall see presently, and was injected into the Gospel narrative merely to support the views of the writer thereof. It may be well to add here that many of the best authorities hold that the Greek translation of the Hebrew word "_almah_" into the equivalent of "virgin" in the usual sense of the word is incorrect. The Hebrew word "_almah_" used in the original Hebrew text of Isaiah, does not mean "virgin" as the term is usually employed, but rather "a young woman of marriageable age--a maiden," the Hebrews having an entirely different word for the idea of "virginity," as the term is generally used. The word "_almah_" is used in other parts of the Old Testament to indicate a "young woman--a maiden," notably in Proverbs 30:19, in the reference to "the way of a man with a maid." But we need not enter into discussions of this kind, say the Higher Critics, for the so-called "prophecy" refers to an entirely different matter. It appears, say they, that Ahaz, a weakling king of Judea, was in sore distress because Rezin the Syrian king, and Pekah the ruler of Northern Israel, had formed an offensive alliance against him and were moving their combined forces toward Jerusalem. In his fear he sought an alliance with Assyria, which alliance was disapproved of by Isaiah who remonstrated with Ahaz about the proposed move. The king was too much unnerved by fear to listen to Isaiah's arguments and so the latter dropped into prophecy. He prophesied, after the manner of the Oriental seer, that the land would be laid waste and misery entailed upon Israel, should the suicidal policy be adopted. But he held out a hope for a brighter future after the clouds of adversity had rolled by. A new and wise prince would arise who would bring Israel to her former glory. That prince would be born of a young mother and his name would be Immanuel, which means "God with us." All this had reference to things of a reasonably near future and had no reference to the birth of Jesus _some seven hundred years after_, who _was not a prince_ sitting upon the throne of Israel, and who did not bring national glory and renown to Israel, for such was not his mission. Hebrew scholars and churchmen have often claimed that Isaiah's prophecy was fulfilled by the birth of Hezekiah. There is no evidence whatever in the Jewish history of the seven hundred years between Isaiah and Jesus, that the Hebrews regarded Isaiah's prophecy as relating to the expected Messiah, but on the contrary it was thought to relate to a minor event in their history. As a Jewish writer has truly said, "Throughout the wide extent of Jewish literature there is not a single passage which can bear the construction that the Messiah should be miraculously conceived." Other writers along this line have stated the same thing, showing that the idea of a Virgin Birth was foreign to the Jewish mind, the Hebrews having always respected and highly honored married life and human parentage, regarding their children as blessings and gifts from God. Another writer in the Church has said, "Such a fable as the birth of the Messiah from a _virgin_ could have arisen anywhere else easier than among the Jews; their doctrine of the divine unity placed an impassable gulf between God and the world; their high regard for the marriage relation," etc., would have rendered the idea obnoxious. Other authorities agree with this idea, and insist that the idea of the Virgin Birth never originated in Hebrew prophecy, but was injected into the Christian Doctrine from pagan sources, toward the end of the first century, and received credence owing to the influx of converts from the "heathen" peoples who found in the idea a correspondence with their former beliefs. As Rev. R.J. Campbell, minister of the City Temple, London, says in his "New Theology," "No New Testament passage whatever is directly or indirectly a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. To insist upon this may seem to many like beating a man of straw, but if so, the man of straw still retains a good deal of vitality." Let us now turn to the second account of the Virgin Birth, in the Gospels--the only other place that it is mentioned, outside of the story in Matthew, above considered. We find this second mention in Luke 1:26-35, the verses having been quoted in the first part of this lesson. There has been much dispute regarding the real authorship of the Gospel commonly accredited to Luke, but it is generally agreed upon by Biblical scholars that it was the latest of the first three Gospels (generally known as "the Synoptic Gospels"). It is also generally agreed upon, by such scholars, that the author, whoever he may have been, was not an eye witness of the events in the Life of Christ. Some of the best authorities hold that he was a Gentile (non-Hebrew), probably a Greek, for his Greek literary style is far above the average, his vocabulary being very rich and his diction admirable. It is also generally believed that the same hand wrote the Book of Acts. Tradition holds that the author was one Luke, a Christian convert after the death of Jesus, who was one of Paul's missionary band which traveled from Troas to Macedonia, and who shared Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea; and who shared Paul's shipwreck experiences on the voyage to Rome. He is thought to have written his Gospel long after the death of Paul, for the benefit and instruction of one Theophilus, a man of rank residing in Antioch. It is held by writers of the Higher Criticism that the account of the Virgin Birth was either injected in Luke's narrative, by some later writer, or else that Luke in his old age adopted this view which was beginning to gain credence among the converted Christians of pagan origin, Luke himself being of this class. It is pointed out that as Paul, who was Luke's close friend and teacher, made no mention of the Virgin Birth, and taught nothing of the kind, Luke must have acquired the legend later, if, indeed, the narrative was written by him at all in his Gospel. It is likewise noted that Luke also gives a genealogy of Jesus, from Adam, through Abraham, and David, and Joseph. The words in parenthesis "as was supposed," in Luke 3:23, are supposed to have been inserted in the text by a later writer, as there would be no sense or reason in tracing the genealogy of Jesus through a "supposed" father. The verse in question reads thusly: "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli," etc. Students, of course, notice that the line of descent given by Luke differs very materially from that given by Matthew, showing a lack of knowledge on the part of one or the other writer. On the whole, scholars consider it most remarkable that this account of the Virgin Birth should be given by Luke, who was a most ardent Pauline student and follower, in view of the fact that Paul ignored the whole legend, if, indeed, he had ever heard of it. Surely a man like Paul would have laid great stress upon this wonderful event had he believed in it, or had it formed a part of the Christian Doctrine of his time. That Luke should have written this account is a great mystery--and many feel that it is much easier to accept the theory of the later interpolation of the story into Luke's Gospel, particularly in view of the corroborative indications. Summing up the views of the Higher Criticism, we may say that the general position taken by the opponents and deniers of the Virgin Birth of Jesus is about as follows: 1. The story of the Virgin Birth is found only in the introductory portion of two of the four Gospels--Matthew and Luke--and even in these the story bears the appearance of having been "fitted in" by later writers. 2. Even Matthew and Luke are silent about the matter after the statements in the introductory part of their Gospels, which could scarcely occur had the story been written by and believed in by the writers, such action on their part being contrary to human custom and probability. 3. The Gospels of Mark and John are absolutely silent on the subject; the oldest of the Gospels--that of Mark--bears no trace of the legend; and the latest Gospel--that of John--being equally free from its mention. 4. The rest of the New Testament breathes not a word of the story or doctrine. _The Book of Acts, generally accepted as having also been written by Luke, ignores the subject completely_. Paul, the teacher of Luke, and the great writer of the Early Church, seems to know nothing whatever about the Virgin Birth, or else purposely ignores it entirely, the latter being unbelievable in such a man. Peter, the First Apostle, makes no mention of the story or doctrine in his great Epistles, which fact is inconceivable if he knew of and believed in the legend. The Book of Revelation is likewise silent upon this doctrine which played so important a part in the later history of the Church. The great writings of the New Testament contain no mention of the story, outside of the brief mention in Matthew and Luke, alluded to above. 5. There are many verses in the Gospels and Epistles which go to prove, either that the story was unknown to the writers, or else not accepted by them. _The genealogies of Joseph are cited to prove the descent of Jesus from David, which depends entirely upon the fact of Joseph's actual parentage. Jesus is repeatedly and freely mentioned as the son of Joseph._ Paul and the other Apostles hold firmly to the doctrine of the necessity of the Death of Jesus; his Rising from the Dead; and his Ascension into Heaven, etc. But they had nothing to say regarding any necessity for his Virgin Birth, or the necessity for the acceptance of any such doctrine--they are absolutely silent on this point, although they were careful men, omitting no important detail of doctrine. Paul even speaks of Jesus as "of the seed of David." (_Rom. 1:3._) 6. The Virgin Birth was not a part of the early traditions or doctrine of the Church, but was unknown to it. And it is not referred to in the preaching and teaching of the Apostles, as may have been seen by reference to the Book of Acts. This book, which relates the Acts and Teachings of the Apostles, could not have inadvertently omitted such an important doctrine or point of teaching. It is urged by careful and conscientious Christian scholars that the multitudes converted to Christianity in the early days must have been ignorant of, or uninformed on, this miraculous event, which would seem inexcusable on the part of the Apostles had they known of it and believed in its truth. This condition of affairs must have lasted until nearly the second century, when the pagan beliefs began to filter in by reason of the great influx of pagan converts. 7. There is every reason for believing that the legend arose from other pagan legends, the religions of other peoples being filled with accounts of miraculous births of heroes, gods, and prophets, kings and sages. 8. That acceptance of the legend is not, nor should it be, a proof of belief in Christ and Christianity. This view is well voiced by Rev. Dr. Campbell, in his "New Theology," when he says "The credibility and significance of Christianity are in no way affected by the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, otherwise than that the belief tends to put a barrier between Jesus and the race, and to make him something that cannot properly be called human.... Like many others, I used to take the position that acceptance or non-acceptance of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth was immaterial because Christianity was quite independent of it; but later reflection has convinced me that in point of fact it operates as a hindrance to spiritual religion and a real living faith in Jesus. The simple and natural conclusion is that Jesus was the child of Joseph and Mary, and had an uneventful childhood." The German theologian, Soltau, says, "Whoever makes the further demand that an evangelical Christian shall believe in the words 'conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,' wittingly constitutes himself a sharer in a sin against the Holy Spirit and the true Gospel as transmitted to us by the Apostles and their school in the Apostolic Age." And this then is the summing up of the contention between the conservative school of Christian theologians on the one side and the liberal and radical schools on the other side. We have given you a statement of the positions, merely that you may understand the problem. But, before we pass to the consideration of the Occult Teachings, let us ask one question: _How do the Higher Critics account for the undoubted doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood, as clearly stated all through the New Testament_, in view of the proofs against the Virgin Birth? Why the frequent and repeated mention of Jesus as "the Son of God?" What was the Secret Doctrine underlying the Divine Parentage of Jesus, which the pagan legends corrupted into the story of the Virgin Birth of theology? We fear that the answer is not to be found in the books and preachments of the Higher Criticism, nor yet in those of the Conservative Theologians. Let us now see what light the Occult Teachings can throw on this dark subject! There is an Inner Doctrine which explains the mystery. Now, in the first place, there is no reference in the Occult Teaching to any miraculous features connected with the physical birth of Jesus. It is not expressly denied, it is true, but the Teachings contain no reference to the matter, and all the references to the subject of Jesus' parentage speak of Joseph as being His father, and Mary His mother. In other words, the family is treated as being composed of father, mother and child just as is the case with any family. The Occult Teachings go into great detail concerning the _Spiritual Sonship_ of Jesus, as we shall see presently, but there is no mention of any miraculous _physical_ conception and birth. We can readily understand why the Virgin Birth legend would not appeal to the Occultists, if we will but consider the doctrines of the latter. The Occultists pay but little attention to the physical body, except as a Temple of the Spirit, and a habitation of the soul. The physical body, to the Occultist, is a mere material shell, constantly changing its constituent cells, serving to house the soul of the individual, and which when cast off and discarded is no more than any other bit of disintegrating material. They know of the existence of the soul separate from the body, both after the death of the latter and even during its life, in the case of Astral Travel, etc. And in many other ways it becomes natural for the Occultist to regard his body, and the bodies of others, as mere "shells," to be treated well, used properly, and then willingly discarded or exchanged for another. In view of the above facts, you may readily see that any theory or doctrine which made the Absolute--God--overshadow a human woman's body and cause her to physically conceive a child, would appear crude, barbarous, unnecessary and in defiance of the natural laws established by the Cause of Causes. The Occultist sees in the conception _of every child_, the work of the Divine Will--_every conception and birth a miracle_. But he sees Natural Law underlying each, and he believes that the Divine Will always operates under Natural Laws--the seeming miracles and exceptions thereto, resulting from the mastery and operation of some law not generally known. But the Occultist knows of no law that will operate to produce conception by other than the physiological process. In short, _the Occultist does not regard the physical body of Jesus as Jesus Himself_--he knows that the Real Jesus is something much greater than His body, and, consequently, he sees no more necessity for a miraculous conception of His body than he would for a miraculous creation of His robe. The body of Jesus was only material substance--the Real Jesus was Spirit. The Occultists do not regard Joseph as the father of the Real Jesus--_no human being can produce or create a soul_. And so, the Occultist sees no reason for accepting the old pagan doctrine of the physical Virgin Birth which has crept into Christianity from outside sources. To the Occultist, there is a real Virgin Birth of an entirely different nature, as we shall see presently. But, not so with the people who flocked to the ranks of Christianity toward the close of the first century--coming from pagan people, and bringing with them their pagan legends and doctrines. These people _believed that the Body was the Real Man_, and consequently attached the greatest importance to it. These people were almost materialists as the result of their pagan views of life. They began to exert an influence on the small body of original Christians, and soon the original teachings were smothered by the weight of the pagan doctrines. For instance, they failed to grasp the beautiful ideas of Immortality held by the original Christians, which held that _the soul_ survived the death and disintegration of the body. They could not grasp this transcendental truth--they did not know what was meant by the term "_the soul_," and so they substituted their pagan doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body. They believed that at some future time there would come a great Day, in which the Dead would arise from their graves, and become again alive. The crudeness of this idea, when compared to the beautiful doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul of the original Christians, and by the advanced Christians to-day, is quite painful. And yet these pagan converts actually smothered out the true teachings by their crude doctrine of resurrection of _the body_. These people could not understand how a man could live without his physical body, and to them future life meant a resurrection of their dead bodies which would again become alive. To them the dead bodies would remain dead, until the Great Day, when they would be made alive again. There is no teaching among these people regarding the soul which passes out of the body and lives again on higher planes. No, nothing of this kind was known to these people--they were incapable of such high ideas and ideals--they were materialists and were wedded to their beloved animal bodies, and believed that their dead bodies would in some miraculous way be made alive again at some time in the future, when they would again live on earth. In view of modern knowledge regarding the nature of matter, and the fact that what is one person's body to-day, may be a part of another's to-morrow--that matter is constantly being converted and reconverted--that the universal material is used to form bodies of animals, plants, men, or else dwell in chemical gases, or combinations in inorganic things--in view of these accepted truths the "resurrection of the body" seems a pitiful invention of the minds of a primitive and ignorant people, and not a high spiritual teaching. In fact, there may be many of you who would doubt that the Christians of that day so taught, were it not for the undisputed historical records, and the remnant of the doctrine itself embalmed in the "Apostle's Creed," in the passage _"I believe in the resurrection of the body_" which is read in the Churches daily, but which doctrine is scarcely ever taught in these days, and is believed in by but few Christians--in fact, is ignored or even denied by the majority. Dr. James Beattie has written, "Though mankind have at all times had a persuasion of the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body was a doctrine peculiar to early Christianity." S.T. Coleridge has written, "Some of the most influential of the early Christian writers were materialists, holding the soul to be material--corporeal. It appears that in those days some few held the soul to be incorporeal, according to the views of Plato and others, but that the orthodox Christian divines looked upon this as an impious, unscriptural opinion. Justin Martyr argued against the Platonic nature of the soul. And even some latter-day writers have not hesitated to express their views on the subject, agreeing with the earlier orthodox brethren. For instance, Dr. R.S. Candlish has said, "You live again in the body,--in the very body, as to all essential properties, and to all practical intents and purposes, in which you live now. _I am not to live as a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I live now, in the body_." The reason that the early Church laid so much stress on this doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, was because an inner sect, the Gnostics, held to the contrary, and the partisan spirit of the majority swung them to the other extreme, until they utterly denied any other idea, and insisted upon the resurrection and re-vitalizing of the physical body. But, in spite of the official fostering of this crude theory, it gradually sank into actual insignificance, although its shadow still persists in creed and word. Its spirit has retreated and passed away before the advancing idea of the Immortality of the Soul which returned again and again to Christianity until it won the victory. And as Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt has said, in his article on the subject in a leading encyclopaedia, "... The doctrine of the natural immortality of the human soul became so important a part of Christian thought that the resurrection naturally lost its vital significance, and it has practically held no place in the great systems of philosophy elaborated by the Christian thinkers in modern times." And, yet, the Church continues to repeat the now meaningless words, "I believe in the Resurrection of the Body." And while practically no one now believes it, still the recital of the words, and the statement of one's belief in them, forms a necessary requisite for admission into the Christian Church to-day. Such is the persistent hold of dead forms, and thoughts, upon living people. And, so you can readily see from what has been said, why the early Christians, about the close of the first century A.D., attached so much importance to _the physical conception and birth_ of Jesus. To them the physical body of Jesus was Jesus Himself. The rest follows naturally, including the Virgin Birth and the Physical Resurrection. We trust that you now understand this part of the subject. We have heard devout Christians shocked at the idea that Jesus was born of a human father and mother, in the natural way of the race. They seemed to think that it savored of impurity. Such a notion is the result of a perverted idea of the sacredness of natural functions--a seeing of impurity--where all is pure. What a perversion, this regarding the sacredness of human Fatherhood, and Motherhood, as impure! The man of true spirituality sees in the Divine Trinity of Father, Mother and Child, something most pure and sacred--something that brings man very close indeed to God. Is the beautiful babe, held close in its mother's fond embrace, a symbol and type of impurity? Is the watchful care and love of the Father of the babe, an impure result of an impure cause? Does not one's own heart tell him the contrary? Look at the well known picture of the Journey to Egypt, with Mary carrying the babe, and both guarded and protected by the husband and father--Joseph--is this not a beautiful symbol of the sacredness of Parenthood? We trust that the majority of those who read these pages have advanced spiritually beyond the point where The Family is a thing of impure suggestion and relationship. And, now, what are the Occult Teachings--the Secret Doctrine--regarding the Real Virgin Birth of Jesus? Just this: that the Spirit of Jesus was fresh from the bosom of the Absolute--Spirit of SPIRIT--a Virgin Birth of Spirit. His Spirit had not traveled the weary upward path of Reincarnation and repeated Rebirth, but was Virgin Spirit fresh from the SPIRIT--a very Son of the Father--begotten not created. This Virgin Spirit was incarnated in His body, and there began the life of Man, not fully aware of His own nature, but gradually awakening into knowledge just as does every human soul, until at last the true nature of His Being burst upon him, and he saw that he indeed was God incarnate. In his short life of thirty-three years--thirty years of preparation, and three years of ministry, Jesus typified and symbolized the Life of the Race. Just as he awakened into a perception of his Divine Nature, so shall the race awaken in time. Every act in the Life of Jesus typified and symbolized the life of every individual soul, and of the race. We all have our Garden of Gethsemane--each is Crucified, and Ascends to Higher Planes. This is the Occult Doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Christ. Is it not a worthy one--is it not at least a higher conception of the human mind, than the physical Virgin Birth legend? As we proceed with our lessons, we shall bring out the details of the Occult Teachings concerning the Divine Nature of Christ--the Spirit within the Human Form. And, in these references and instruction, you will see even more clearly that nature of the Spiritual Virgin Birth of Jesus. The original Christians were instructed in the Truth concerning the Virgin Birth, that is, those who were sufficiently intelligent to grasp it. But after the great Teachers passed away, and their successors became overzealous in their desire to convert the outside peoples, the influx of the latter gradually overcame the original teachings, and the physical Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of the Body, became Doctrines and Articles of Faith, held of vital importance by the new orthodox leaders. It has taken centuries of mental struggle, and spiritual unfoldment to bring the Light of the Truth to bear upon this dark corner of the Faith, but the work is now fairly under way, and the great minds in the Church, as well as those out of the Church, are beginning to lay the old legend aside as a worn out relic of primitive days when the cloud of Ignorance overshadowed the Light of Truth. In concluding this lesson, let us glance once more at the words of the eminent divine, Dr. Campbell, in his _New Theology_, in which he states: "But why hesitate about the question? The greatness of Jesus and the value of his revelation to mankind are in no way either assisted or diminished by the manner of his entry into the world. Every birth is just as wonderful as a virgin birth could possibly be, and just as much a direct act of God. A supernatural conception bears no relation whatever to the moral and spiritual worth of the person who is supposed to enter the world in this abnormal way.... Those who insist on the doctrine will find themselves in danger of proving too much, for pressed to its logical conclusion, it removes Jesus altogether from the category of humanity in any real sense." Let us trust that these Higher Critics may become informed upon the truths of the Occult Teachings, which supply the Missing Key, and afford the Reconciliation, and which show how and why Jesus is, in all and very truth, THE SON OF GOD, begotten and not created, of one substance from the Father--a particle of Purest Spirit fresh from the Ocean of Spirit, and free from the Karma of past Incarnations--how He was human and yet more than human. In our next lesson we shall take up the narrative of the secret life of Jesus from the time of his appearance, as a child at the Temple, among the Elders, until when at the age of thirty years he appeared at the scene of the ministry of John the Baptist, and began his own brief ministry of three years which was closed by the Crucifixion and Ascension. This is a phase of the subject of intense interest, and startling nature, because of the lack of knowledge of the occult traditions on the part of the general public. THE THIRD LESSON. THE MYSTIC YOUTH OF JESUS. In our last lesson we promised to tell you the esoteric story of the youth of Jesus. And there is such a story to tell, although the churches know little or nothing about it. The churches have nothing but the husks that have always been the property of the masses. The real kernels of truth have been possessed by but the few elect ones. The legends of the mystic brotherhoods and occult orders have preserved the story intact, and you shall now be given the essence of the mystic legends and traditions. At the end of our first lesson we left Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus in Egypt, the land to which they had flown to escape the wrath of the tyrant Herod. They dwelt in Egypt for a few years, until the death of Herod. Then Joseph retraced his steps, and returned toward his own country, bringing with him his wife and the babe. For some reasons unknown to those familiar with the legends and traditions, Joseph decided not to locate in Judea, but instead, bent his way toward the coast and returned to Nazareth where Mary and he had originally met and become betrothed. And, so, in Nazareth, the humble little mountain town the boyhood days of Jesus were spent, the grinding poverty of the family being relieved (according to the occult legends) by the yearly presents of gold from the hands of disguised messengers of the Magi. The traditions relate that Jesus began His study of the Hebrew Law when He was but five years of age. It is related that He displayed an unusual ability and talent in the direction of mastering not only the text, but also the spirit of the Hebrew Scripture, and far outstripped His fellow students. It is also related that He displayed an early impatience at the dreary formalism of His Hebrew teachers, and a disposition to go right to the heart of the text before Him, that He might discern the spirit animating it. So much was this the case that He frequently brought down upon His head the censure of His instructors who overlooked the spirit of the teachings in their devotion to the forms and words. Nazareth was an old-fashioned place and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important part in the early life of Jesus. Nazareth, by reason of its peculiar location, was on the line of several caravan routes. Travelers from many lands traveled through the town, and rested there overnight, or sometimes for several days. Travelers from Samaria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Greece, Rome, Arabia, Syria, Persia, Phoenicia, and other lands mingled with the Nazarenes. And the traditions relate that Jesus, the child, would steal away and talk with such of these travelers as were versed in occult and mystic lore, and would imbibe from their varied founts of learning, until He was as thoroughly informed on these subjects as many a mystic of middle age. The traditions have it that the boy would often delight and astonish these traveling occultists with His wonderful insight into their secret doctrines and knowledge. And it is also told that some of the wisest of these, seeing the nature of the child, would overstay their allotted time of sojourn, that they might add here and there to the various parts of general occult lore possessed by the child. It is also taught that the Magi informed some of these travelers regarding the boy, that they might impart to him some truth or teaching for which He was ready. And so the boy grew in knowledge and wisdom, day by day, year by year, until, finally, there occurred an event in His life, which has since been the subject of greatest interest to all Christians and students of the New Testament, but which without the above explanation is not readily understood. The Feast of the Passover occurred in its allotted time of the year--April--when Jesus was in his thirteenth year. This feast was one of the most important in the Jewish calendar, and its observance was held as a most sacred duty by all Hebrews. It was the feast set down for the remembrance and perpetuation of that most important event in the history of the Jewish people when the Angel of Death swept over all of Egypt's land smiting the first-born child of every house of the natives, high and low, but sparing all the houses of the captive Hebrews who marked their door-sills with the sacrificial blood as a token of their faith. This is no place to give the explanation of this apparently miraculous event, which students now know to be due to natural causes. We merely mention it in passing. The Law-givers of Israel had appointed the Feast of the Passover as a perpetual symbol of this event so important by the nation, and every self-respecting Jew felt obligated to take part in the observance and sacrament. Every pious Jew made it a point to perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the time of the Feast of the Passover, if he could in any way manage to do so. At the time of the Passover celebration of which we are speaking, Jesus had just entered into His thirteenth year, which age entitled Him, under the ecclesiastical law, to the privilege of sitting with the adult men of His race at the Passover supper, and also to publicly join with the male congregation in the thanksgiving service in the synagogues. And so, on this year, He accompanied His father and mother to Jerusalem and made His _second_ visit to the Holy City. It will be remembered that His _first_ visit there was made when as an infant He was carried thither from Bethlehem in His mother's arms in accordance with the Jewish law, and at which time an aged priest and an old prophetess had publicly acknowledged the divine nature of the child. The father, mother and child--the divine trinity of Human relationship--traveled slowly over the highway that led from Nazareth to Jerusalem. The father and mother were concerned with the details of the journey, mingled with pious thoughts concerning the sacred feast in which they were to take part. But the boy's mind was far away from the things that were occupying his parent's thoughts. He was thinking over the deep mystic truths which He had so readily absorbed during the past few years, and He was looking forward in delightful anticipation to His expected meeting with the older mystics in the temples and public places of Jerusalem. It must be remembered that underlying the Jewish ecclesiastical teachings and formalism, which were all that the mass of the people knew, there was a great store of Jewish occultism and Mysticism known to the few elect. The Kaballah or Jewish occult writings were closely studied by the learned Jews, and this work with other similar teachings were transmitted verbally from teacher to student, and constituted the Secret Doctrine of the Hebrew religion. And it was toward the learned teachers of this Secret Doctrine that Jesus directed His mind and steps, although His parents knew it not. Four or five days were consumed in the journey, and at last the Holy City--Jerusalem--came into full view, the wonderful Temple of Israel showing plainly above the other buildings. The bands of pilgrims, of which the family of Joseph formed a part, formed into orderly array and led by flute-players they solemnly marched into the streets of the Holy City, singing and chanting the Sacred Songs used by the faithful upon this solemn occasion. And the boy walked with the rest, with bowed head, and eyes that seemed to see things far removed from the scene around them. The Passover rites were carried out--the duties were performed--the ceremonies were observed. The Passover Feast extended over a full week, of which the first two days were the most important, and during which two days the obligatory ceremonies were performed. Each family made the offering of the sacrificial lamb--each family baked and ate the unleavened bread. The beautiful idea of the Passover had degenerated into a horrible feast of blood, for it is related that upon these occasions over a quarter-million of poor innocent lambs were slaughtered and offered up as a sacrifice pleasing to Jehovah, who was supposed to delight in this flood of the blood of innocents. In pursuance of this barbarous idea, the altars and courts of the Temple of the Living God ran red with the life-blood of these poor creatures, and the hands and garments of the anointed priests of Jehovah were stained like those of butchers, that the vanity of a barbarous conception of Deity might be fed. All this for "the Glory of God!" Think of it! And think of the feeling that must have been aroused in the mystic mind of Jesus at this horrible sight. How His soul must have been outraged at this prostitution of the sacred rite! And what would have been His thoughts had He known that centuries after, a great religion would stand, bearing His name, the followers of which would be carried away with this same false idea of sacrificial blood, which would be voiced in hymns about "A fountain filled with blood, flowing from Immanuel's veins," and about "sinners plunged beneath that bloody flood losing all their guilty stains?" Alas, for the prostitution of sacred truths and teachings. No wonder that a people so saturated with the abominable ideas of a Deity delighting in this flow of blood should have afterward put to death the greatest man of their race--a Being who came to bring them the highest mystic and occult truths. And their prototypes have survived through the centuries, even unto today, insisting upon this idea of blood sacrifice and death atonement, unworthy of any people except the worshipers of some heathen devil-god in the remote sections of darkest Africa. Disgusted and outraged by this barbarous sight, Jesus, the boy, stole away from the side of His parents, and sought the remote chambers and corridors of the Temple where were to be found the great teachers of the Law and of the Kaballah, surrounded by their students. Here the boy sat and listened to the teachings and disputations of the teachers and exponents of the doctrines. From one group to another He wandered, and listened, and pondered, and thought. He compared the teachings, and submitted the various ideas to the touchstone of the truth as He found it within His own mind. The hours rapidly passed by unnoticed by the boy, who found Himself amidst such congenial environments for the first time. The talks with the travelers of the caravans paled into insignificance when compared with these of the great occult teachers of Israel. For be it remembered that it was the custom of the great teachers of that day to so instruct those who were attracted to their company. And Jerusalem being the centre of the culture and learning of Israel, the great teachers dwelt there. And so it will be seen that Jesus now found Himself at the very fountain-head of the Hebrew Secret Doctrines, and in the actual presence of the great teachers. On the third day, there began a breaking-up of the vast gathering of the two million of people who had made the pilgrimage to the Holy City. Those poorer in purse were the first to leave, after the obligatory rites of the first two days had been performed. And Joseph and Mary were among those preparing to retrace their steps to their distant homes. Their friends and neighbors gathered together, and the preparations for the return were completed. But at the last moment, the parents discovered that the boy, Jesus, was missing. They were alarmed, but friends told them that their boy had been seen in the company of kinsmen and neighbors traveling along the same road, who had preceded them but a few hours. Somewhat reassured, the parents left with their company, hoping that they would overtake the boy before nightfall. But when they reached the first station on the caravan route--a village called Beroth--and the night descended upon them, and the boy failed to appear among the neighbors and kinsmen, the parents were sorely distressed. They slept but little that night, and when the first rays of dawn appeared, they parted from the company, and retraced their way back to Jerusalem, in search of the boy apparently lost in the great capital amid the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Every mother and father will enter into the feelings of Joseph and Mary in their frantic return to the city, and in their subsequent search for the lost child. They inquired here and there for the boy, but not a trace of him was found. And night came without a ray of hope. And the next day was likewise barren of results. And the next day after. For three days the devoted parents searched high and low for their beloved child--but no word of encouragement came to them. The boy had seemingly dropped out of sight in the vast crowds and winding streets. The parents reproached themselves for their lack of care and caution. None but a parent can imagine their anguish and terror. They visited the many courts of the Temple many times, but no sight or word of the boy rewarded their search. The bloody altars, the showy costumes of the priests; the chants; the readings; seemed like mockery to them. They wished themselves back in their humble village, with their boy by their side. They prayed and besought Jehovah to grant their hopes and desire, but no answer came. Then, on the last day, a strange event occurred. The weary and heart broken parents wandered once more into the Temple--this time visiting one of the less frequented courts. They saw a crowd gathered--something of importance was occurring. Almost instinctively they drew near to the crowd. And then amidst the unusual silence of the people they heard a boyish voice raised to a pitch adapted to a large circle of hearers, and speaking in the tones of authority. It was the voice of the boy, Jesus! With eager feet the couple pushed forward, unto the very inner row of the circle. And there, wonder of wonders, they saw their child in the centre of the most celebrated teachers and doctors of the Law in all Israel. With a rapt expression in his eyes, as if He were gazing upon things not of this world, the boy Jesus was standing in a position and attitude of authority, and around him were grouped the greatest minds of the day and land, in respectful attention, while at a further distance stood the great circle of the common people. When one remembers the Jewish racial trait of reverence for age, and the consequent submission of Youth, one will better understand the unusual spectacle that burst upon the gaze of Joseph and Mary. A mere boy--a child--daring to even speak boldly in the presence of the aged teachers was unheard of, and the thought of such a one actually presuming to dispute, argue and teach, in such an assembly, was like unto a miracle. And such it was! The boy spoke with the air and in the tones of a Master. He met the most subtle arguments and objections of the Elders with the power of the keenest intellect and spiritual insight. He brushed aside the sophistries with a contemptuous phrase, and brought back the argument to the vital point. The crowd gathered in greater volume, the gray heads and beards grew more and more respectful. It was evident to all that a Master had arisen in Israel in the form of a boy of thirteen. The MASTER was apparent in tone, gesture, and thought. The Mystic had found his first audience, and his congregation was composed of the leading thinkers and teachers of the land. The insight of the Magi was verified! Then in a momentary pause in the argument, the stifled cry of a woman was heard--the voice of the Mother. The crowd turned impatient, reproachful glances upon Mary, who had been unable to restrain her emotion. But the boy, looking sadly but affectionately at his lost parents, gave her a reassuring glance, which at the same time bade her remain still until he had finished his discourse. And the parents obeyed the newly awakened will of their child. The teaching ended, the boy stepped from his position with the air of one of the Elders, and rejoined his parents, who passed as rapidly as possible from the wondering crowd. Then his mother reproached him, telling him of their distress and wearisome search. The boy listened calmly and patiently until she had finished. Then he asked, with his newly acquired air of authority, "Why sought ye me?" And when they answered him in the customary manner of parents, the boy took on still a greater air of authority, and in tones that though kindly, were full of power, he replied, "Knew ye not, that I must be in my Father's House? I must be about the things of my Father." And the parents, feeling themselves in the presence of the Mystery that had ever been about the child, followed Him silently from the Temple grounds. And here closes the New Testament story of the boy Jesus at the age of thirteen, which story is not resumed until His appearance at the place of the preaching of John the Baptist, _over seventeen years later_, when the boy had reached the age of a man of thirty years. When and how did he spend those seventeen years? The New Testament is totally silent on this score. Can anyone who has read the above imagine that Jesus spent these years as a growing youth and young man, working at His father's carpenter bench in the village of Nazareth? Would not the Master, having found his strength and power, have insisted upon developing the same? Could the Divine Genius once self-recognized be content to be obscured amid material pursuits? The New Testament is silent, but the Occult Traditions and Mystic Legends tell us the story of the missing seventeen years, and these we shall now give to you. * * * * * The legends and traditions of the mystic and occult organizations and brotherhoods tell us that after the occurrence of Jesus and the Elders in the Temple, and his recovery by his parents, the latter were approached by members of the secret organization to which the Magi belonged, who pointed out to the parents the injustice of the plan of keeping the lad at the carpenter's bench when He had shown evidences of such a marvelous spiritual development and such a wonderful intellectual grasp of weighty subjects. It is told that after a long and serious consideration of the matter the parents finally consented to the plan advanced by the Magi, and allowed them to take the lad with them into their own land and retreats that He might there receive the instructions for which His soul craved, and for which His mind was fitted. It is true that the New Testament does not corroborate these occult legends, but it is likewise true that it says nothing to the contrary. It is silent regarding this important period of between seventeen and eighteen years. It is to be remembered that when He appeared upon the scene of John's ministration, the latter did not recognize Him, whereas had Jesus remained about His home, John, his cousin, would have been acquainted with his features and personal appearance. The occult teachings inform us that the seventeen or eighteen years of Jesus' life regarding which the Gospels are silent, were filled with travels in far and distant lands, where the youth and young man was instructed in the occult lore and wisdom of the different schools. It is taught that He was taken into India, and Egypt, and Persia, and other far regions, living for several years at each important center, and being initiated into the various brotherhoods, orders, and bodies having their headquarters there. Some of the Egyptians' orders have traditions of a young Master who sojourned among them, and such is likewise the case in Persia and in India. Even among the lamasaries hidden in Thibet and in the Himalayan Mountains are to be found legends and stories regarding the marvelous young Master who once visited there and absorbed their wisdom and secret knowledge. More than this, there are traditions among the Brahmans, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, telling of a strange young teacher who appeared among them, who taught marvelous truths and who aroused great opposition among the priests of the various religions of India and Persia, owing to his preaching against priestcraft and formalism, and also by his bitter opposition to all forms of caste distinctions and restrictions. And this, too, is in accord with the occult legends which teach that from about the age of twenty-one until the age of nearly thirty years Jesus pursued a ministry among the people of India and Persia and neighboring countries, returning at last to his native land where He conducted a ministry extending over the last three years of His life. The occult legends inform us that He aroused great interest among the people of each land visited by Him, and that He also aroused the most bitter opposition among the priests, for He always opposed formalism and priestcraft, and sought to lead the people back to the Spirit of the Truth, and away from the ceremonies and forms which have always served to dim and becloud the Light of the Spirit. He taught always the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. He sought to bring the great Occult Truths down to the comprehension of the masses of people who had lost the Spirit of the Truth in their observance of outward forms and pretentious ceremonies. It is related that in India He brought down upon His head the wrath of the Brahmin upholders of the caste distinctions, that curse of India. He dwelt in the huts of the Sudras, the lowest of all of the Hindu castes, and was therefore regarded as a pariah by the higher classes. Everywhere He was regarded as a firebrand and a disturber of established social order by the priests and high-caste people. He was an agitator, a rebel, a religious renegade, a socialist, a dangerous man, an "undesirable citizen," to those in authority in those lands. But the seeds of His wisdom were sown right and left, and in the Hindu religions of today, and in the teachings of other Oriental countries, may be found traces of Truth, the resemblance of which to the recorded teachings of Jesus, show that they came from the same source, and have sorely disturbed the Christian missionaries that have since visited these lands. And so, slowly and patiently, Jesus wended his way homeward toward Israel, where He was to complete His ministry by three years' work among His own race, and where He was to again raise up against Himself the opposition of the priests and the upper classes which would finally result in His death. He was a rebel against the established order of things, and He met the fate reserved for those who live ahead of their time. And, as from the first days of His ministry to His last, so it is today, the real teachings of the Man of Sorrows reach more readily the heart of the plain people, while they are reviled and combatted by those in ecclesiastical and temporal authority, even though these people claim allegiance to Him and wear His livery. He was ever the friend of the poor and oppressed, and hated by those in authority. And so, you see the Occult teachings show Jesus to have been a world-wide teacher, instead of a mere Jewish prophet. The world was his audience, and all races His hearers. He planted His seeds of Truth in the bosom of many religions instead of but one, and these seeds are beginning to bear their best fruit even now at this late day, when the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man is beginning to be felt by all nations alike, and is growing strong enough to break down the old which have divided brother from brother, and creed from creed. Christianity--true Christianity--is not a mere creed, but a great human and divine Truth that will rise above all petty distinctions of race and creed and will at last shine on all men alike, gathering them into one fold of Universal Brotherhood. May the Great Day be hastened! * * * * * And so we leave Jesus, wending his way slowly homeward toward Judea, the land of His father and the place of His birth. Dropping a word here--planting a seed there--onward He pursued His way. Visiting this mystic brotherhood, and resting a while in another occult retreat, He slowly retraced the journey of His youth. But while His outward journey was that of a student traveling forth to complete His education, He returned as a Master and Teacher, bearing and sowing the seeds of a great Truth, which was to grow and bring forth great fruit, and which, in time, would spread over all the world in its primitive purity, notwithstanding its betrayal and corruption at the hands of those in whose keeping He left it when he passed away from the scene of His labors. Jesus came as a World Prophet, not as a mere Jewish holy-man, and still less as a Hebrew Messiah destined to sit upon the throne of His father David. And He left His mark upon all of the great peoples of earth by His journey among them. Throughout Persia are found many traditions of Issa, the young Master who appeared in that land centuries ago, and who taught the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. Among the Hindus are found strange traditions of Jesoph or Josa, a young ascetic, who passed through the Hind long since, denouncing the established laws of caste, and consorting with the common people, who, as in Israel, "heard him gladly." Even in China are found similar tales of the young religious firebrand, preaching ever the Brotherhood of Man--ever known as the Friend of the Poor. On and on He went, sowing the seeds of human freedom and the casting off of the yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny and formalism, which seeds are springing unto growth even at this late day. Yea, the Spirit of His real teachings are even now bearing fruit in the hearts of men, and though nearly two thousand years have passed by the "soul" of His social teachings still "goes marching on" round and round the world. THE FOURTH LESSON. THE BEGINNING OF THE MINISTRY. When Jesus reached his native land, after the years of travel in India, Persia and Egypt, he is believed by the occultists to have spent at least one year among the various lodges and retreats of the Essenes. By reference to the first lesson of this series you will see who and what was this great mystic organization--the Essenic Brotherhood. While resting and studying in their retreats His attention was diverted to the work of Johannen--John the Baptist--and He saw there an opening wedge for the great work that He felt called upon to do among His own people. Dreams of converting His own race--the Jews--to His conception of Truth and Life, crept over Him, and he determined to make this work His great life task. The feeling of race is hard to overcome and eradicate, and Jesus felt that, after all, here He was at last, at home, among His own people, and the ties of blood and race reasserted themselves. He put aside His previous thoughts of a world-wandering life, and decided to plant the standard of the Truth in Israel, so that from the capital of the Chosen People the Light of the Spirit might shine forth to all the world. It was Jesus the man--Jesus the Jew--that made this choice. From the broader, higher point of view He had no race; no country; no people;--but His man nature was too strong, and in yielding to it he sowed the seeds for His final undoing. Had he merely passed through Judea as a traveling missionary, as had done many others before Him, he would have escaped the punishment of the government. Although He would have aroused the hatred and opposition of the priests, He would have not laid Himself open to the charge of wishing to become the King of the Jews, or the Jewish Messiah, come to resume the throne of David, His forefather. But it avails us nought to indulge in speculations of this kind, for who knows what part Destiny or Fate plays in the Great Universal plan--who knows where Free-Will terminates and Destiny moves the pieces on the board, that the Great Game of Universal Life be played according to the plan? While among the Essenes, as we have said, Jesus first heard of John, and determined to use the ministry of the latter as an opening wedge for His own great work. He communicated to the Essenic Fathers His determination to travel to John's field of work later on, and the Fathers sent word of this to John. The legends have it that John did not know who was coming, being merely informed that a great Master from foreign parts would join him later on, and that he, John, should prepare the people for his coming. And John followed these instructions from his superiors in the Essenic Brotherhood to the letter, as you will see by reference to our first lesson, and to the New Testament. He preached repentance; righteousness; the Essenic rite of Baptism; and above all the Coming of the Master. He bade his hearers repent--"repent ye! for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"!--"repent ye! for the Master cometh!" cried he in forceful tones. And when his people gathered around him and asked whether he, John, were not indeed the Master, he answered them, saying, "Nay, I am not He whom thou seekest. After me there cometh one whose sandals I am not worthy to unloose. I baptize thee with water, but He shall baptize thee with the Fire of the Spirit that is within Him!" It was ever and always this exhortation toward fitness for the coming of the Master. John was a true Mystic, who sank his personality in the Work he was called on to do, and who was proud to be but the Forerunner of the Master, of whose coming he had been informed by the Brotherhood. And, as we have told you in the first lesson, one day there came before him, a young man, of a dignified, calm appearance, gazing upon him with the expressive eyes of the true Mystic. The stranger asked to be baptized, but John, having perceived the occult rank of the stranger by means of the signs and symbols of the Brotherhood, rebelled at the Master receiving baptism at the hands of himself, one far below the occult rank of the stranger. But Jesus, the stranger, said to John, "Suffer it to be," and stepped into the water to receive the mystic rite again, as a token to the people that He had come as one of them. And then occurred that strange event, with which you are familiar, when a dove descended as if from Heaven and rested over the head of the stranger, and a soft voice, even as the sighing of the wind through the trees, was heard, whispering, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." And then the stranger, evidently awed by the strange message from the Beyond, passed away from the multitude, and bent his way toward the wilderness, as if in need of a retreat in which he could meditate over the events of the day, and regarding the work which He could now dimly see stretching its way before Him. The average student of the New Testament passes over the event of Jesus in the Wilderness, with little or no emotion, regarding it as a mere incident in His early career. Not so with the mystic or occultist, who knows, from the teachings of his order, that in the Wilderness Jesus was subjected to a severe occult test, designed to develop His power, and test His endurance. In fact, as every advanced member of any of the great occult orders knows, the occult degree known as "The Ordeal of the Wilderness" is based upon this mystic experience of Jesus, and is intended to symbolize the tests to which He was subjected. Let us consider this event so fraught with meaning and importance to all true occultists. The Wilderness toward which Jesus diverted His steps, lay afar off from the river in which the rites of Baptism had been performed. Leaving behind him the fertile banks, and acres, of cultivated land, He approached the terrible Wilderness which even the natives of that part of the country regarded with superstitious horror. It was one of the weirdest and dreariest spots in even that weird and dreary portion of the country. The Jews called it "The Abode of Horror"; "The Desolate Place of Terror"; "The Appalling Region"; and other names suggestive of the superstitious dread which it inspired in their hearts. The Mystery of the Desert Places hung heavy over this place, and none but the stoutest hearts ventured within its precincts. Though akin to the desert, the place abounded in dreary and forbidding hills, crags, ridges and canyons. Those of our readers who have ever traveled across the American continent and have seen some of the desolate places of the American Desert, and who have read of the terrors of Death Valley, or the Alkali Lands, may form an idea of the nature of this Wilderness toward which the Master was traveling. All normal vegetation gradually disappeared as He pressed further and further into this terrible place, until naught remained but the scraggy vegetation peculiar to these waste places--those forms of plant life that in their struggle for existence had managed to survive under such adverse conditions as to give the naturalist the impression that the very laws of natural plant life have been defied and overcome. Little by little the teeming animal life of the lower lands disappeared, until at last no signs of such life remained, other than the soaring vultures overhead and the occasional serpent and crawling things under foot. The silence of the waste places was upon the traveler, brooding heavily over Him and all around the places upon which He set His foot, descending more heavily upon Him each moment of His advance. Then came a momentary break in the frightful scene. He passed through the last inhabited spot in the approach to the heart of the Wilderness--the tiny village of Engedi, where were located the ancient limestone reservoirs of water which supplied the lower regions of the territory. The few inhabitants of this remote outpost of primitive civilization gazed in wonder and awe at the lonely figure passing them with unseeing eyes and with gaze seemingly able to pierce the forbidding hills which loomed up in the distance hiding lonely recesses into which the foot of man had never trodden, even the boldest of the desert people being deterred from a visit thereto by the weird tales of unholy creatures and unhallowed things, which made these places the scene of their uncanny meetings and diabolical orgies. On, and on, pressed the Master, giving but slight heed to the desolate scene which now showed naught but gloomy hills, dark canyons, and bare rocks, relieved only by the occasional bunches of stringy desert grass and weird forms of cacti bristling with the protective spines which is their armor against their enemies. At last the wanderer reached the summit of one of the higher foot-hills and gazed at the scene spreading itself before Him. And that scene was one that would have affrighted the heart of an ordinary man. Behind Him was the country through which He had passed, which though black and discouraging was as a paradise to the country which lay ahead of Him. There below and behind Him were the caves and rude dwellings of the outlaws and fugitives from justice who had sought the doubtful advantage of security from the laws of man. And far away in the distance were the scenes of John the Baptist's ministry, where He could see in imagination the multitude discussing the advent of the strange Master, who had been vouched for by the Voice, but who had stolen swiftly away from the scene, and had fled the crowds who would have gladly worshipped Him as a Master and have obeyed His slightest command. Then as the darkness of the succeeding nights fell upon Him, He would sleep on some wild mountain cliff, on the edge of some mighty precipice, the sides of which dropped down a thousand feet or more. But these things disturbed Him not. On and on He pressed at the appearance of each dawn. Without food He boldly moved forward to the Heart of the Hills, where the Spirit guided Him to the scene of some great spiritual struggle which he intuitively knew lay before Him. The Words of the Voice haunted Him still, though He lacked a full understanding of them, for He had not yet unfolded the utmost recesses of His Spiritual Mind. "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"--what meant these words? And still, no answer came to that cry of His soul which sought in vain for a freeing of that riddle. And still on and on He pressed, until at last He mounted the steep sides of the barren forbidding mountain of Quarantana, beyond which He felt that His struggle was to begin. No food was to be found--He must fight the battle unaided by the material sustenance that ordinary men find necessary for life and strength. And still He had not received the answer to the cry of His soul. The rocks beneath His feet--the blue sky above His head--the lofty peaks of Moab and Gilead in the distance--gave no answer to the fierce insistent desire for the answer to the Riddle of the Voice. The answer must come from Within, and from Himself only. And in the Heart of the Wilderness He must remain, without food, without shelter, without human companionship, until the Answer came. And as it was with the Master, so is it with the follower--all who attain the point of unfoldment at which the Answer is alone possible, must experience that awful feeling of "aloneness" and spiritual hunger, and frightful remoteness from all that the world values, before the Answer comes from Within--from the Holy of Holies of the Spirit. * * * * * To realize the nature of the spiritual struggle that awaited Jesus in the Wilderness--that struggle that would bring Him face to face with His own soul, we must understand the Jewish longing and expectation of the Messiah. The Messianic traditions had taken a strong hold upon the minds of the Jewish people, and it needed but the spark of a strong personality to set all Israel into a blaze which would burn fiercely and destroy the foreign influences which have smothered the national spirit. The idea of a Messiah springing from the loins of David, and coming to take His rightful place as the King of the Jews, was imbedded in the heart of every Jew worthy of the name. Israel was oppressed by its conquerors, and made subject to a foreign yoke, but when the Messiah would come to deliver Israel, every Jew would arise to drive out the foreign invaders and conquerors--the yoke of Rome would be thrown off, and Israel would once more take its place among the nations of the earth. Jesus knew full well the fact of this national hope. It had been installed into His mind from childhood. He had pondered over it often during the time of His wanderings and sojourn in foreign lands. The occult legends, however, make no mention of His having ever thought of Himself as the Messiah until he was about to re-enter His own land after His years of foreign study and ministry. It is thought that the idea of His being the long expected Messiah was first suggested by some of the Essenic teachers, when He rested with them for awhile before appearing before John the Baptist. It was pointed out to Him that the marvelous events surrounding His birth indicated that He was a marked individual destined to play an important part in the history of the World. Then why was it not reasonable to believe that that role was to be that of the Messiah come to sit on the throne of His father David, and destined to bring Israel from her now obscure position to once more shine as a bright star in the firmament of nations? Why was it not reasonable that He was to lead the Chosen People to their own? Jesus began to ponder over these things. He had absolutely no material ambitions for Himself and all His impulses and inclinations were for the life of an occult ascetic. But the idea of a redeemed and regenerated Israel was one calculated to fire the blood of any Jew, even though the element of personal ambition might be lacking in him. He had always realized that in some way He was different from other men, and that some great work lay ahead of Him, but He had never understood His own nature, nor the work He was to do. And it is not to be wondered that the talk among the Essenes caused Him to ponder carefully over the idea expressed by them. And then the wonderful event of the dove, and the Voice, upon the occasion of His baptism, seemed almost to verify the idea of the Essenes. Was He indeed the long-expected Deliverer of Israel? Surely He must find this out--He must wring the answer from the inmost recesses of His soul. And so, He sought refuge in the Wilderness, intuitively feeling that there amidst the solitude and desolation, He would fight His fight and receive His answer. He felt that He had come to a most important phase of His life's work, and the question of "What Am I?" must be settled, once and for all,--then and there. And so He left behind Him the admiring and worshipful crowds of John's following, and sought the solitude of the waste places of the Wilderness, in which He felt He would come face to face with His own soul, and demand and receive its answer. * * * * * And up in the inmost recesses of the Heart of the Wilderness, Jesus wrestled in spirit with Himself for many days, without food or nourishment, and without shelter. And the struggle was terrific--worthy of such a great soul. First the body's insistent needs were to be fought and mastered. It is related that the climax of the physical struggle came one day when the Instinctive Mind, which attends to the physical functions, made a desperate and final demand upon Him. It cried aloud for bread with all the force of its nature. It tempted Him with the fact that by His own occult powers He was able to convert the very stones into bread, and it demanded that He work the miracle for His own physical needs--a practice deemed most unworthy by all true occultists and mystics. "Turn this stone into bread, and eat" cried the voice of the Tempter. But Jesus resisted the temptation although He knew that by the power of His concentrated thought He had but first to mentally picture the stone as bread and then _will_ that it be so materialized. The miraculous power which afterward turned water into wine, and which was again used to feed the multitude with the loaves and the fishes, was available to Him at that moment in order to satisfy the cravings of His body, and to break His fast. None but the advanced occultist who has known what it was to be tempted to use his mysterious powers to satisfy his personal wants, can appreciate the nature of the struggle through which Jesus passed, and from which He emerged victorious. And like the occult Master that He was, He summoned His Inner Forces and beat off the Tempter. * * * * * But a still greater temptation than this arose to try Him to the utmost. He found Himself brought face to face with the idea of Messiahship, and Kingship of the Jews, of which we spoke. Was He the Messiah? And if so, what must be His course of life and action? Was He destined to throw aside the robe and staff of the ascetic, and to don the royal purple and the sceptre? Was He to forsake the role of the spiritual guide and teacher, and to become the King and Ruler over the people of Israel? These were the questions He asked His soul, and for which He demanded an answer. And the mystic legends tell us that His Spirit answered by showing Him two sets of mental pictures, with the assurance that _He could choose either, at will, and cause it to become realized_. The first picture showed Him true to His spiritual instincts, and loyal to His mission, but which rendered Him indeed the "Man of Sorrows." He saw himself continuing to sow the seeds of Truth, which would, centuries after, spring up, blossom and bear fruit to nourish the world, but which would now bring down upon His head the hatred and persecution of those in power and authority. And He saw each successive step, each showing the approach of the end, until at last He saw Himself crowned with thorns and meeting the death of a criminal on the cross, between two base criminals of the lowest classes of men. All this He saw and even His brave heart felt a deadly sickness at the ignominious end of it all--the apparent failure of His earthly mission. But it is related that some of the mighty intelligences which dwell upon the higher planes of existence, gathered around Him, and gave Him words of encouragement and hope and resolve. He found Himself literally in the midst of the Heavenly Host, and receiving the inspiration of its presence. Then this picture--and the Host of Invisible Helpers--faded away, and the second picture began to appear before the vision of the lonely dweller of the Wilderness. He saw the picture of Himself descending the mountain, and announcing Himself as the Messiah--the King of the Jews--who had come to lead His Chosen People to victory and deliverance. He saw Himself acclaimed as the Promised One of Israel, and the multitude flocking to His banners. He saw Himself at the head of a great conquering army, marching toward Jerusalem. He saw Himself making use of His highly developed occult powers to read the minds of the enemy and thus know their every movement and intention, and the means to overcome them. He saw Himself miraculously arming and feeding His hosts of battle. He saw Himself smiting the enemy with His occult powers and forces. He saw the yoke of Rome being cast off, and its phalanxes fleeing across the borders in terror and disgraceful defeat. He saw Himself mounting the throne of David, His forefather. He saw Himself instituting a reign of the highest type, which would make of Israel the leading nation of the world. He saw Israel's sphere of influence extending in all directions, until Persia, Egypt, Greece and even the once-feared Rome, become tributary nations. He saw Himself in the triumphant chariot on some great feast day of victory, with Caesar himself tied to the tail of His chariot--a slave to Israel's King. He saw His royal court outrivaling that of Solomon, and becoming the center of the world. He saw Jerusalem as the capital of the world, and He, Jesus of Nazareth, son of David the King, as its Ruler, its hero, its demi-god. The very apotheosis of human success showed in the picture of Himself and His Beloved Israel in the picture. And then the Temple was seen to be the Center of the Religious thought of the World. The Religion of the Jews, as modified by His own advanced views, would be the religion of all men. And he would be the favored mouthpiece of the God of Israel. All the dreams of the Hebrew Fathers would be realized in Him, the Messiah of the New Israel whose capital would be Jerusalem, the Queen of the World. And all this by simply the exercise of his occult powers under the direction of HIS WILL. It is related that accompanying this second picture and attracted by its mighty power, came all the great thought-waves of the world which had been thought by men of all times who thought and acted out the Dreams of Power. These clouds settled down upon Him like a heavy fog, and their vibrations were almost overpowering. And also came the hosts of the disembodied souls of those who while living had sought or gained power. And each strove to beat into His brain the Desire of Power. Never in the history of man have the Powers of Darkness so gathered together for attack upon the mind of a mortal man. Would it have been any wonder had even such a man as Jesus succumbed? But He did not succumb. Rallying His Inner Force to His rescue He beat back the attacking horde, and by an effort of His Will, He swept both picture and tempters away into oblivion, crying indignantly "Thou darest to tempt even me, thy Lord and Master. Get thee behind me thou Fiends of Darkness"! And so the Temptation of the Wilderness failed, and Jesus received His answer from His soul, and He descended the mountains, back to the haunts of men--back to the scene of His three years' labors and suffering, and back to His Death. And He knew full well all that awaited Him there, for had He not seen the First Picture? Jesus had chosen His career. * * * * * The Master descended from the mountains and forsook the Wilderness for the place in which John and his followers were gathered. Resting for a time, and refreshing Himself with food and drink, He gathered together His energies for His great work. The followers of John gathered around Him, filled with the idea that He was the Messiah come to lead them to victory and triumph. But He disappointed them by His calm, simple manner, and His disavowal of royal claims. "What seek ye of me?" he asked them, and many, abashed, left His circle and returned to the crowd. But a few humble souls remained and around these few gathered a few more, until at last a little band of faithful students was formed--the first band of Christian disciples. This band was composed almost entirely of fishermen and men of similar humble occupations. There was an absence of people of rank or social position. His people were of the "plain people" which have furnished the recruits for every great religion. And after a time, Jesus moved away from the place, followed by His band of disciples, which drew new members from each place of gathering. Some stayed but for a short time, while others replaced the faint hearted ones of little faith. But the band steadily grew, until it began to attract the attention of the authorities and the public. Jesus constantly disclaimed being the Messiah, but the report that such indeed He was, began to spread and the authorities began that system of spying and watching which followed His footsteps for three years, and which finally resulted in His death on the Cross. And this suspicion was encouraged by the Jewish priesthood which began to hate the young teacher whose opposition to their tyranny and formalism was quite marked. The band one day came to a small village in Galilee, and Jesus began His usual meetings and teaching. Near where they gathered was a house at which preparations were being made for a wedding feast. The wedding ceremony has always been an important occasion among the Jews. The most elaborate preparations consistent with the size of the purse of the girl's parents are indulged in. Relatives from far and near gather to the feast. Jesus happened to be a distant kinsman of the bride, and according to custom He was bidden to the feast. The guests began to gather, each depositing his sandals in the outer court, and entering the guest chamber barefooted, after carefully bathing his feet and ankles after the custom still prevailing in Oriental countries. Jesus was accompanied by a few of His faithful followers. His mother, and His several brothers were also among the blood-relations present at the feast. His appearance caused much interest and comment among the other guests. To some He was simply a traveling religious teacher, not uncommon in that land, to others He was an inspired prophet, bringing a wonderful Message to the Jewish people, as He had to the Persians, Egyptians and Hindus; to others he was more than this, and whispers of "He is the Messiah"; "The King of Israel," etc., began to circulate among those present, causing interest, uneasiness or disgust, according to the views of the hearers. But whenever He moved, He attracted attention by His manner, attitude and expression. All felt that here indeed was an Individual. Strange stories of His wanderings in strange lands added additional interest to His presence. A feeling that something unusual was about to happen began to creep over the crowd, as is the case often preceding such events. Mary, His mother, watched her son with longing eyes, for she saw that some strange change had come over Him, that was beyond her comprehension. Toward the end of the feast, it began to be whispered around among the near relatives that the supply of wine was about exhausted, the attendance having been much greater than had been expected. This, to a Jewish family, was akin to a family disgrace, and anxious looks began to be exchanged among the members of the immediate family. Tradition has it that Jesus was besought for aid by His mother and other female kinswoman. Just what they expected Him to do is not clear, but it is probable that they unconsciously recognized His greatness, and accorded Him the place of the natural Head of the Family, as being the most prominent member. At any rate, they asked His aid. What arguments they used, or what reasons they urged, we do not know, but whatever they were, they succeeded in winning Him to their side, and gaining from Him a promise of aid and assistance. But not until after He had remonstrated that these things were of no concern of His--that His powers were not to be trifled away in this manner. But His love for His mother, and His desire to reward her devotion and faith in Him, prevailed over the natural disinclination of the mystic to be a "wonder worker" and to exhibit his occult powers to grace a wedding-feast. He had long since learned the necessary but comparatively simple occult feat from His old Masters in far off India, that land of wonder-working. He knew that even the humbler Yogis of that land would smile at the working of such a simple miracle. And so the matter seemed to Him to be of but slight moment, and not as a prostitution of some of the higher occult powers. And feeling thus, He yielded to their requests for aid. Then moving toward the court in which were stored a number of great jars of water, he fixed a keen, burning glance upon them, one by one, passing His hand rapidly over them, in a quick succession, He made the Mental Image that precedes all such manifestations of occult power, and then manifesting His power by using His Will in the manner known to all advanced occultists, He rapidly materialized the elements of the wine in the water, within the jars, and lo! the "miracle" had been wrought. A wave of excitement passed over the crowded house. The guests flocked around the jars to taste of the wine that had been produced by occult power. The priests frowned their displeasure, and the authorities sneered and whispered "charlatan"; "fraud"; "shameful imposture"; and other expressions that always follow an occurrence of this kind. Jesus turned away, in grief and sorrow. Among the Hindus such a simple occult occurrence would have caused but little comment, while here among His own people it was considered to be a wonderful miracle by some, while others regarded it as a trick of a traveling conjurer and charlatan. What manner of people were these to whom He had decided to deliver the Message of Life? And, sighing deeply, He passed from the house, and returned to His camp. THE FIFTH LESSON. THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORK. There is but an imperfect record in the Gospels of the first year of Jesus' ministry among the Jews. Theologians have spoken of it as the "Year of Obscurity," but the Occult traditions speak of it as a most important year of His ministry, for in it He laid firm foundations for His future work. He travelled all over the country, establishing little circles of disciples and centres of interest. In cities, towns, villages and hamlets, He left behind Him little bands of faithful students who kept alive the flame of Truth, which steadily kindled the lamps of others who were attracted by the light. Always among the humblest He labored, seemingly impressed with the idea that the work must be begun on the lowest rounds of society's ladder. But after a while a few of the more pretentious people began to attend the meetings, often brought there by curiosity. They came to smile and be amused, but many were impressed and remained to pray. The leaven had been well mixed in the loaf of Jewish society and it was beginning to work. Once more the season of the Feast of the Passover arrived and found Jesus with His followers in Jerusalem and in the Temple. What memories the scene awakened in His mind. He could see the same scenes in which He had participated seventeen years before. Once more He saw the pitiful slaughter of the innocent lambs, and witnessed the flow of the sacrificed blood over the altars and the stones of the floor of the courts. Once more He saw the senseless mummery of the priestly ceremonies, which seemed more pitiful than ever to His developed mind. He knew that His vision had shown that He was to be slaughtered even as the sacrificial lambs, and there arose in His mind that comparison which stayed with Him ever after--that picture of Himself as the Lamb sacrificed on the Altar of Humanity. As pure as was this figure in His mind, it seems pitiful that in the centuries to come His followers would fall into the error (as equally cruel as that of the Hebrews) of imagining that His death was a sacrifice demanded by a cruel Deity to satisfy the Divine Wrath which had been kindled by the sight of Man's shortcomings and sins. The barbarous conception of a wrathful God whose anger against His people could be appeased only by the bloody slaughter of innocent creatures, is fully equalled by the theological dogmas that the same Divine Wrath could be, and was, appeased by the blood of Jesus, the Master who had come to deliver the Message of Truth. Such a conception is worthy of only the most barbarous and primitive minds. And yet it has been preached and taught for centuries--in the very name of Jesus Himself--and men have been persecuted and put to death because they refused to believe that the Supreme Creator of the Universe could be such a malignant, cruel, revengeful Being, or that the One Mind of All could be flattered and cajoled into forgiveness by the sight of the death of the Man of Sorrows. It seems almost incredible that such a teaching could have arisen from the pure teachings of Jesus, and that such has been Man's incapacity to grasp the Inner Teachings, that the Church built upon Jesus' ministry has adopted and insisted upon the acceptance of such dogmas. But this baneful cloud of ignorance and barbaric thought is gradually lifting, until even now the intelligent minds in the Church refuse to accept or teach the doctrine in its original crudity, they either passing it over in silence, or else dressing it in a more attractive garb. Jesus taught no such barbarous things. His conception of Deity was of the highest, for He had received the most advanced teachings of the Mystics, who had instructed Him in the Mystery of the Immanent God, abiding everywhere and in all things. He had advanced far beyond the conception of Deity which pictured the One as a savage, bloodthirsty, vengeful, hating, tribal deity, ever crying for sacrifices and burnt-offerings, and capable of the meanest of human emotions. He saw this conception as He saw the conception of other races and peoples, all of which had their tribal or national gods, which loved that particular tribe or people, and which hated all other races or nationalities. He saw that back of, and behind, all these barbarous and primitive conceptions of Deity there dwelt an ever calm and serene Being, the Creator and Ruler of countless Universes--millions and millions of worlds--filling all space, and above all of the petty attributes that had been bestowed upon the petty gods of human creation. He knew that the God of each nation, of each person in fact, was but a magnified idea of the characteristics of the nation or individual in question. And he knew that Hebrew conception was no exception to this rule. To anyone having grown to an appreciation of the grandeur and greatness of the idea of an Immanent Universal Being, the dogma of a Deity demanding a blood sacrifice to appease its wrath is too pitiful and degrading to be worth even a moment's serious consideration. And to such a one the prostitution of the high teachings of Jesus by the introduction of such a base conception is a source of righteous indignation and earnest protest. The Mystics in the Christian Church throughout the centuries have never accepted any such teachings, although the persecution of the church authorities have prevented their protests being made openly until of late years. The Mystics alone have kept alive the Light of the Truth through the Dark Ages of the Christian Church. But now has come the dawn of a new day, and the Church itself is seeing the Light, and the pulpits are beginning to resound with the truth of Mystic Christianity. And in the years to come the Teachings of Jesus, the Master, will flow pure and clear, once more freed from the corrupting dogmas which so long polluted the Fount. As Jesus wandered silently through the courts and chambers of the Temple, His indignation was aroused by a sight which seemed to Him to portray more forcibly than aught else the degradation which had fallen upon the Temple by reason of the corruption of the priesthood. Grouped around the steps and outer courts of the Temple He saw the groups of brokers, money-changers and merchants who were doing a thriving business with the thousands of strangers attending the Feast. The money-changers were exchanging the coins of the realm for the inferior coins of the outlying regions, charging a large commission for the exchange. The brokers were buying articles, or loaning money on them, from the poor pilgrims, who were sacrificing their personal belongings for cash with which they might purchase the animals for the sacrifice. The merchants had droves of cattle, flocks of sheep and cages of doves within the sacred precincts of the Temple, which they were selling to the pilgrims who wished to offer sacrifices. Tradition has it that the corrupt priesthood profited by the sale of these "privileges" granted to this horde of traffickers in the Temple precincts. The vile practice had gradually crept in and established a firm foothold in the Temple, although contrary to the ancient practice. To Jesus the horrible scenes of the Temple sacrificial rites seemed to focus in this final exhibition of greed, materialism and lack of spirituality. It seemed to be blasphemy and sacrilege of the most glaring type. And His very soul felt nauseated and outraged by the sight. His fingers twitched, and laying hold of a bundle of knotted cords which had been used by some cattle-driver to urge forward his herd, He rushed forward upon the horde of traffickers, whirling His instrument of chastisement over the shoulders and backs of the offenders, driving them out in a frantic rout, upsetting their benches and paraphernalia, crying in a voice of authority, "Out, ye wretches! This is the House of the Lord, and ye have made it a den of thieves." The "Meek and lowly Nazarene" became an avenger of the prostitution of the Temple. The brokers, money-changers and merchants fled before His mighty charge, leaving their scattered money over the floors of the Temple. They dared not return, for Jesus had aroused the wrath of the people against them, and a cry arose for the old practice of protecting the sacred place against such invasion. But the traffickers sought out the High-priests and complained bitterly of this annulment of their "privileges" and "franchises," for which they had paid so highly. And the High-priests, being compelled to refund the price paid for the concessions, were much wrought up over the matter, and then and there swore vengeance against the Master who had dared interfere with their system of what the world now calls by the suggestive name of "graft." And this vengeance and hatred waxed stronger each moment, and was to a great extent the moving factor in the schemes and intrigues which two years later resulted in the frightful scene on Calvary. The succeeding months were filled with wanderings up and down the land, spreading the work and making new converts and followers. Jesus did not take the position of a great preacher at this time, but seemed to be rather a teacher of the few whom He gathered around Him at each point and place. He observed but few ceremonies, that of Baptism being the principal one, and which, as we have shown, was an Essenic rite having an occult and mystical significance. The students of the New Testament may read between its leaves the history of the ministry of Jesus at this time, noting the working of the leaven in the mass of the Jewish mind. About this time Jesus was sorely distressed at the terrible news which reached Him regarding the fate of his cousin, John the Baptist, who had been His Forerunner. The Baptist had dared to thrust his preachings and rebukes into the very precincts of a corrupt court, and had brought down upon his head the natural consequences of his rashness. Herod had thrust him into a gloomy dungeon and there were rumors of a worse fate yet in store for him. And that fate soon overtook him. Refusing the chance of life and liberty that was promised him if he would but break his vows of asceticism and indulge the passionate desires of a royal princess,--turning away from the base proposal with the horror of the true mystic,--he met his fate like a man knowing the Truth, and the head which graced the royal platter bore upon its face no expression of fear or regret. John had conquered even in Death. Jesus retired once more into the Desert upon the news of John's death reaching him. Added to His sorrow came the conviction that there was a new work set before Him to do. John's death necessitated a combining of the work of the Baptist with that of Jesus' own ministry. The followers of the two teachers must be combined into one great body, under the supervision of the Master Himself, aided by the most worthy and capable of His disciples. The tragic death of John played a most important part in the future ministry of the Master, and He sought the solace and inspiration of the Desert in His consideration of the plans and details of His new work. Students will note that from the time He emerged from the Desert He threw off the cloak of reserve and retirement and stepped boldly before the people as an ardent preacher to multitudes and an impassioned orator and public speaker. No more the little circle of appreciative students--the rostrum with the great crowds of hearers were His from that time. Returning from His work in Samaria and Judea, He once more made Galilee the scene of His principal work. The new spirit which He now threw into His preaching attracted the attention of the public, and enormous crowds attended His meetings. He spoke now with a new air of authority, differing greatly from His former mild tones as a teacher of the few. Parables and allegories and other rich Oriental figures of speech fell from His lips, and many of the educated classes flocked to hear the wonderful young orator and preacher. He seemed to have an intuitive insight into the minds of His hearers, and His appeals reached their hearts as personal calls to righteousness, right thinking and right living. From this time on His ministry assumed the character of an active propaganda, instead of the usual quiet mission of the Mystic. And here began that remarkable series of wonder workings or "miracles" which He evidently employed to attract the attention of the public and at the same time to perform kindly and worthy acts. Not that He used these wonder-workings as a bid for sensational interest or self-glory--the character of Jesus rendered such a course impossible--but He knew that nothing would so attract the interest of an Oriental race as occurrences of this kind, and He hoped to then awaken in them a real spiritual interest and fervor, which would rise far above the demand for "miracles." In adopting this course Jesus followed the example of the holy men in India, with whose works He was personally familiar, owing to His sojourn in that land. And, then let us say, that advanced occultists see nothing "supernatural" nor incredible in these "miracles" of Jesus. On the contrary, they know them to be the result of the application of certain well established natural laws, which, while almost unknown to the masses of people, are still known and occasionally made use of by the advanced occultists of all lands. Skeptics and unbelievers may sneer at these things, and many faint-faith Christians may wish to apologize or "explain" these wonderful happenings, but the advanced occultist needs no "explanations" nor apologies. He has more faith than the church-goer, for he knows of the existence and use of these occult powers latent in Man. There is no material effect or phenomenon that is "supernatural"--the Laws of Nature are in full operation on the material plane and cannot be overcome. But there are among such Natural Laws certain phases and principles that are so little known to the average mind that when they are manifested Nature's Laws seemed to be transcended, and the result is called "a miracle." The occult tradition tells us that Jesus was a past-master in the knowledge and application of the occult forces of nature, and that even the wonders that He wrought during His Jewish ministry were but as child's play when compared with those that He might have manifested had He seen fit to do so. In fact, it is believed that some of His greatest wonder-workings have never been recorded, for He always impressed upon His chosen followers the advisability of refraining from laying too much stress on these things. The "miracles" recorded in the Gospels were only those which were most widely known among the people. The greater-wonders were deemed too sacred for common gossip. When the Master and His followers reached Cana, which, by the way, had been the scene of his first "miracle"--the changing of the water into wine at the wedding feast--one of the most striking of His earlier manifestations of occult power occurred. An influential citizen of Capernaum, a town a score of miles distant, who met Him and besought His aid and power in the interest of his young son, who lay dying at his home. The man besought Jesus to hasten to Capernaum to heal the youth ere he die. Jesus smiled kindly upon him and bade him return to his son, for the youth was even now restored to health and strength and life. His hearers were astounded at the reply and the doubters smiled knowingly, foreseeing a defeat for the young Master when the news of the youth's death should become known. Those of His followers who were faint of heart and weak of faith felt most uncomfortable and began to whisper the "if" of doubt. But Jesus continued His working with a calm air of certainty, without further remarks. It was _the seventh hour_ of the day when the words were spoken. The father hastened homeward to see whether the Master had succeeded or failed. A day or two passed with no word from Capernaum. The scoffers of the wedding feast repeated their sneers and revilings--the word "charlatan" was again heard passing from lip to lip. Then came news from the distant village, and upon its arrival the voice of scorn was stilled, and the hearts of the faint again beat freely. The word came that when the father had reached his house he was greeted by the household with cries of joy and news that _at the seventh hour_ the fever had abated and the crisis had been passed. And yet the "miracle" above recorded was no greater than many occultists have performed in all times--no greater than the many similar cures that have been performed by the modern healers of the many metaphysical cults. It was simply an application of the subtle forces of nature called into operation by mental concentration. It was an instance of what in modern phrase is called "absent treatment" along metaphysical lines. In saying this we wish in no way to detract from the wonder that Jesus had wrought, but merely to let the student know that the power is still possessed by others and is not a "supernatural" thing but the operation of purely natural laws. About this time there occurred another event in His life, and a manifestation of His power which is noted in the New Testament and which is told in the occult tradition with somewhat more detail. It occurred when Jesus visited his home town of Nazareth on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath. He rested over night and then the following morning betook Himself to the regular services in the local synagogue. He took the seat which He had occupied as a young boy with Joseph. No doubt the familiar scene awakened memories of His strange youthful history in His mind. Then, much to His surprise, He heard Himself called to the platform to conduct the service. It must be remembered that Jesus was a regular rabbi, or priest, by birth, education and training, and was entitled to Conduct the Jewish service. No doubt His townspeople wished to hear their young townsman address and exhort them. He took the place of authority in the synagogue and proceeded to read the regular service in the accustomed manner, as prescribed by the custom and laws of the church. The prayers, chantings and readings succeeded each other in their regular order. Then came the preaching of the sermon. Taking the sacred roll from its receptacle, He read the text from Isaiah, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the good tidings," etc. Then He began his exposition of the text He had just read. But instead of the expected customary words and illustrations--technical theological hair-splitting and dreary platitudes--He began to preach in a manner unknown to the Nazarenes. His opening sentence broke the silence and greatly startled and disturbed the congregation. "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," were his opening words. And then He began a statement of His conception of His ministry and His Message. Thrusting aside all precedent and musty authority, He boldly proclaimed that He had come to establish a new conception of the Truth--a conception that would overturn the priestly policy of formalism and lack of spirituality--a conception that would ignore forms and ceremonies, and cleave close to the spirit of the Sacred Teachings. And then He began a scathing denunciation of the lack of spiritual advancement among the Jewish people--their materialism and desire for physical enjoyments and their drifting away from the highest ideals of the race. He preached the mystic doctrine, and insisted that they be applied to the problems of every-day life and conduct. He brought down the teachings of the Kaballah from the cloudy heights, and set them before the people in plain, practical form. He bade them aspire to great spiritual heights, forsaking the base ideals to which they had clung. He ran counter to every custom and prejudice of the people before Him, and showed a lack of reverence for all of their petty forms and traditions. He bade them leave the illusions of material life and follow the Light of the Spirit wherever it might lead them. These and many other things told He them. And then arose a disturbance among the congregation. They began to interrupt and question Him, and many were the contradictions and denials hurled at Him from the benches. Some began to sneer at His pretensions as the Bearer of the Message, and demanded that He work a wonder or "miracle" and give them a sign. This demand He flatly refused to grant, not deeming the same proper, or in accordance with the occult custom which always frowned upon wonder-working in response to such a demand. Then they began to abuse Him and cries of "charlatan" and "fraud" began to resound from the walls of the synagogue. They reminded Him of His humble birth and condition of His parents, and refused to believe that any such person as He had any right to claim extraordinary powers or privileges. Then came from His lips the famous saying, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country." Then He began a fresh assault upon their prejudices and narrow views--their pet superstitions and bigotry. He stripped from them their garb of hypocrisy and assumed piety, and showed them their naked souls in all their ugliness and moral uncleanliness. He poured burning invective and vitriolic denunciations into their midst, and spared no terms that could properly be applied to them. In a short time the congregation was beside itself with rage, and the pretended righteous indignation of a flock of hypocrites and formalists who had heard themselves described in disrespectful terms by one they regarded as an upstart young man from the lower classes of their virtuous community. They felt that they had bestowed a flattering honor upon Him, as a mark of consideration for a young townsman upon His return from a foreign and domestic missionary tour. And now to think that He had thus basely betrayed their courtesy and showed in how little esteem He really held them--surely this was beyond human endurance. And then the storm broke upon Him. Leaving their seats in the synagogue, the congregation rushed upon the young preacher, and tearing Him from the platform, they pushed Him out of the building. And then the jostling, hustling, pushing crowd carried Him before them along the village streets and out into the suburbs. He resisted not, deeming it unworthy to struggle with them. At last, however, He was compelled to defend Himself. He perceived that it was the intention of the mob to push Him over a precipice that had been formed on the side of a hill just beyond the town limits. He waited patiently until they had urged Him to the very brink of the decline, and until it needed but one strong push to press Him over its edge and into the gorge below. And then He exerted His occult forces in a proper self-defense. Not a blow struck He--not a man did He smite with the wondrous occult power at His command, which would have paralyzed their muscles or even have stretched them lifeless at His feet. No, he controlled Himself with a firm hand, and _merely bent upon them a look_. But such a look! A glance in which was concentrated the mighty Will developed by mystic knowledge and occult practice. It was the Gaze of the Occult Master, the power of which ordinary men may not withstand. And the mob, feeling its mighty force, experienced the sensation of abject fear and terror. Their hair arose, their eyes started from their sockets, their knees shook under them, and then, with a wild shout of horror they began to scatter and fly, making a wide pathway for the Man of Mystery who now strode through their ranks with that awful gaze which seemed to pierce the veil of mortality and to peer at things ineffable and beyond human ken. And with His eyes refusing to look again upon the familiar scenes of His youth, He departed from Nazareth, forsaking it forever as His home place. Verily, indeed, the Prophet hath no honor in His own land. Those who should have been His staunchest supporters were the first in His own land to threaten Him with violence. The attempt of Nazareth was the prophecy of Calvary, and Jesus so knew it. But He had set his feet upon The Path, and drew not back from it. Turning His back upon Nazareth, Jesus established a new centre or home in Capernaum, which place remained the nearest approach to home to Him during the remainder of His Ministry and until His death. The traditions have it that His mother came to live also at Capernaum, together with some of His brothers. It is also related that his sisters and brothers, both those remaining at Nazareth and those removing to Capernaum, were sorely vexed with Him at His conduct at the synagogue, which they deemed not "respectable" nor proper, and they accordingly looked upon Him as an eccentric relative whose vagaries had brought disrepute upon the family. He was regarded much in the light of a "black-sheep" and "undesirable relation" by all of His family except His mother, who still clung to her beloved first-born. The mother made her home with some of the brothers and sisters of Jesus, but He was not made welcome there, but was looked upon as an outcast and wanderer. He once spoke of this, saying that while the birds and beasts had nests and homes, He, the Son of Man, had nowhere to lay his head. And so He wandered around in His own land, as He had in foreign countries, an ascetic, living upon the alms of the people who loved Him and listened to His words. And in so doing He followed the plans and life of the Hindu ascetics, who even unto this day so live, "with yellow-robe and begging bowl," and "without money or scrip in their purses." The Jewish ascetic--for such was Jesus--has His counterparts in the wandering holy-men of India and Persia today. But it must be remembered that even in Jesus' time, the spectacle of a rabbi living this ascetic life, forsaking the emoluments of His priestly rank and deliberately taking up the roll of a poverty-stricken mendicant, was a rare one. It ran contrary to all the thrifty and prudent customs and ideals of the race. It was an importation from the Essenes, or from the strange people of far-off lands, and it was not relished by the Jewish authorities, or people who preferred the synagogues and Temple, with their sleek, well-fed priests, with fancy robes and attractive ceremonies. Making His base at Capernaum, Jesus began to form His band of disciples with more show of a working organization. To some He delegated certain authority, and bade them perform certain dues of the ministry. For some reason He selected some of His leading lieutenants from the ranks of the fishermen who plied their vocation along the waters of that port of the country. The fishers of fish became the fishers of men. Jesus became very popular among the fishing fraternity, and the legends, as well as the New Testament narratives, tell of instances in which He bade His poor fishermen friends (who had been unfortunate in their day's haul) to let down their nets at some point indicated by Him, when to their surprise and joy their nets would be filled to overflowing. Little acts of kindness bestowed here and there among the humbler classes tended to have Jesus looked upon and spoken of as a friend of the people, but which reputation excited the jealousy of the authorities who held that such acts could be prompted by none other than a selfish motive, and that motive the incitement of the masses to rebellion in the interest of Himself as a Messiah. And so, we see His very acts of kindness and compassion served to increase the suspicion and hatred which the authorities, both ecclesiastical and temporal, had always felt toward Him. His desire to alleviate the sufferings of the poor and wretched took Him much among these people and away from the so-called higher classes. The "plain people" were regarded by Him as the salt of the earth, and they, in turn, regarded Him as their champion and advisor. And especially to the sick did He devote His time and powers. He made many marvellous cures, a few only of which were recorded in the New Testament narratives. The occult legends state that these cures were of daily occurrence and that wherever He went He left behind Him a trail of people healed of all kinds of disorders, and that people flocked for miles to be healed of their infirmities. The Gospels relate that He cured great numbers of people by the simple process of laying on of hands (a favorite method of occult healers) "he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them." It is related that at Capernaum his attention was directed toward a madman, who suddenly cried out, "I know Thee, Thou Holy One of God," whereupon Jesus spoke a few authoritative words and cured him of his malady, by methods that will describe the nature of the man's psychic disturbance to any advanced student of occultism. Demoniac possession is not believed in by orthodox Christians of today, but Jesus evidently shared the belief in obsession held by students of Psychism and similar subjects, judging from the words He used in relieving this man from his malady. We advise our students to read the Gospel records in connection with these lessons, in order to follow the subject along the old familiar paths, but with the additional light of the interpretation of Mystic Christianity. The growing reputation of Jesus as a healer of the sick soon taxed His physical powers to the utmost. He felt Himself called upon to do the work of a dozen men, and His nature rebelled at the unequal task imposed upon it. It seemed as if all Capernaum were sick. Her streets were crowded by seekers after health and strength. At last He perceived that His work as a Teacher was being submerged in His work as a Healer. And, after a period of prayer and meditation, He put aside from Him the claims of humanity for the healing of physical ills, and turning His back upon the waiting patients at Capernaum, He once more started forward on His pilgrimage as a Preacher of the Message, and thereafter would heal physical ills only occasionally, and, instead, devote the main portion of His time to preaching the Truth to those who were ready to hear it. It was a hard thing for a man with the tender heart of Jesus to leave behind Him the crowd of patients at Capernaum, but it was necessary for Him to do so, else He would have remained merely an occult healer of physical ailments instead of the Messenger of the Truth whose work it was to kindle in many places the Flame of the Spirit, that would serve as the true Light of the World long after the physical bodies of all then living had been again resolved to dust. And so, leaving behind Him Capernaum and its wailing multitudes, He, followed by His disciples, moved out toward the open country, to spread the glad tidings and to bring to the hearts of many "that peace which passeth all understanding." THE SIXTH LESSON. THE WORK OF ORGANIZATION. Leaving Capernaum behind Him, with its crowds of invalids seeking healing, and fighting off the demands that would have rendered Him a professional healer instead of a Teacher and preacher of the Message of Truth, Jesus passed on to other parts of the land, taking with Him the band of disciples and faithful followers who now traveled with Him. But He did not altogether relinquish His healing work. He merely made it an incident of His ministry, and did not allow it to interfere with His preaching and teaching. The Gospel narratives show a number of remarkable cures made by Him at this time, and the few recorded cases are, of course, merely occasional incidents that stand out in the minds of the people among hundreds of less noticeable cases. The cure of the leper is one of such remarkable cases. Leprosy was a foul disease much dreaded by the people of Oriental countries. And the unfortunate person afflicted by it became an outcast and pariah from whom all others fled as from an unclean and impure thing. There was a leper in the part of the country in which Jesus was traveling and teaching. He heard of the wonderful gift of healing accredited to the young preacher, and he determined to get into His presence and beg His aid. How the leper managed to get through the crowds and into the presence of Jesus is not known, but it must have required great strategy on his part, for such people were not permitted to pass in and among crowds of other people. But in some way the leper contrived to come face to face with Jesus as the latter walked alone in meditation, away from his followers. The loathsome creature raised its repulsive form, the picture of human misery and woe, and confronting the Master, demanded from Him the exercise of the Gift of Healing. No doubt of His power was in the leper's mind--his face shone with faith and expectation. Jesus gazed earnestly into the distorted features that shone with the fire of a fervent faith such as is rarely seen on the face of man, and touched with this testimony to His power and motives, He moved toward the leper, defying the laws of the country, which forbade the same. Not only this, but He even laid His hands upon the unclean flesh, defying all the laws of reason in so doing, and fearlessly passed His hand over the leper's face, crying aloud, "Be thou clean!" The leper felt a strange thrill running through his veins and over his nerves, and every atom of his body seemed to be tingling with a peculiar burning and smarting sensation. Even as he looked he saw the color of his flesh changing and taking on the hue of the flesh of the healthy person. The numbness departed from the affected portion of his body, and he could actually feel the thrill and tingle of the life currents that were at work with incredible speed building up new cells, tissue and muscle. And still Jesus held His hands against the flesh of the leper, allowing the life current of highly vitalized _prana_ to pour from His organism into that of the leper, just as a storage battery of great power replenishes and recharges an electrical appliance. And back of it all was the most potent, trained Will of the Master Occultist directing the work. And then He bade the healed man depart and comply with the laws regarding purification and change of garments, including the appearance before the priests to receive a certificate of cleanliness. And He also bade him that nothing should be said regarding the nature or particulars of the cure. For some good reason He wished to escape the notoriety or fame that the report of such a wonderful cure would be sure to excite. But alas! this was asking too much of human nature, and the healed leper, running with great leaps and bounds, began shouting and crying aloud the glad tidings of his marvelous cure, that all men might know what a great blessing had come to him. In spite of the injunction laid upon him, he began to sing aloud the praises of the Master who had manifested such an unheard-of power over the foul disease that had held him in its grasp until a few hours before. With wild gestures and gleaming eyes he told the story again and again, and it was taken up and repeated from person to person, until the whole town and countryside were familiar with the great news. Imagine such an event occurring in a small country town in our own land today, and you will realize what an excitement must have been occasioned in that home place of the leper. And then occurred that which Jesus had doubtless seen when He forbade the leper to repeat the news of the cure. The whole region became excited and immense crowds gathered around Him and His disciples, crying aloud for new wonders and miracles. The curious sensation-seekers were there in full force, crowding out those whom He wished to reach by His teachings. And more than this, great numbers of sick and crippled people crowded around Him crying for aid and cure. The scenes of Capernaum were repeated. Even the lepers began flocking in, in defiance of law and custom, and the authorities were beside themselves with anger and annoyance. Not only the temporal authorities and the priests were arrayed against Him, as of old, but now He managed to arouse the opposition of the physicians of those days, who saw their practice ruined by this man whom they called a charlatan and deceiver threatening and destroying the health of the people, whose physical welfare was safe only in their (the physicians') hands and keeping. And so Jesus was compelled to close His ministry at this place and move on to another village. Another case which attracted much attention was that which occurred in Galilee when He was preaching in a house. In the midst of His discourse both He and His audience were startled by the sight of a figure on a bed being lowered down among the crowd of listeners from the roof surrounding the open court in the center of the house. It was a poor paralyzed man whom friends had contrived to hoist up and then lower down before Jesus in such a manner as could not escape the attention of the Master. It is related that the piteous appeal of the sufferer, and the faith which had inspired such great energy on the part of his friends, attracted the interest and sympathy of Jesus, and He paused in His discourse and made another of those instantaneous cures which are possible only to the most advanced adepts in the science of spiritual healing. Then came the scene of the Wells of Bethesda--a region abounding in "healing waters" to which the sick and afflicted came to regain their health. The crowds of sick were being carried to the springs by friends or paid attendants, who pushed aside the weaker ones and fought their way to the wells. Jesus walked among the crowds, and at last His attention was attracted toward a poor fellow who lay upon his cot away off from the waters. He had no friends to carry him nearer, nor money for paid attendants. And he had not strength enough to crawl there himself. He filled the air with his moans and cries and bewailings of his unfortunate lot. Jesus walked up to him, and holding his attention by a firm look of authority and power, cried to him suddenly in a voice that demanded obedience, "Take up thy bed and walk!" The man, startled into obedience, did as directed, and much to his surprise, and that of the crowd gathered around, found that he was able to move about freely--a well man. This cure also aroused not only the greatest interest but also the antagonism of the ecclesiastical authorities. It appears that the cure had been made on the Sabbath day, and that it was against the ecclesiastical law to heal the sick in any way upon that day; and also that the patient had performed manual work on the Sabbath in carrying his bed upon the orders of the Healer. And the good pious folk, urged on by the priests, began to abuse and condemn the Healer and patient, after the manner of the formal pietists of all lands and times, even of our own. Clinging to the letter of the law, these people overlook its spirit--bound by the forms, they fail to see the meaning lying back of all forms and ceremonies. Braving the storm that was arising around Him, Jesus boldly walked to the Temple. He was plunged in a sea of conflicting opinions and voices. On the one hand was the healed man and those who sympathized with him, in earnest argument concerning the righteousness of the deed. But arrayed against these few were the good folk of the place who loudly denounced the Sabbath-breaker and demanded His punishment. Were the ancient laws of Moses to be thus defied by this presumptuous Nazarene, whose religious ideas were sadly lacking in orthodoxy? Surely not! Punish the upstart! And again Jesus was in actual peril of bodily hurt, or perhaps even death, owing to the religious bigotry of the orthodox people. Jesus was ever a foe to the stupid formalism and ignorant fanaticism regarding "holy days," which is ever a characteristic of certain classes of mind among people. On the above occasion, as well as upon other occasions, and notably upon the occasion of the Sabbath when He directed His hungry disciples to pick corn to satisfy their hunger, Jesus opposed the strict, ironclad law of Sabbath observance. He was ever filled with the idea that the "Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." There was nothing Puritanical about the Master, and in view of His attitude regarding this matter it is surprising to witness the attitude of some in our own time who, wearing His livery, oppose these teachings of His in theory and practice. And so, driven out once more by the intolerance and bigotry of the public, Jesus returned again to Galilee, His land of retreat and rest, and the scene of much of His best work. Galilee was filled with His many followers and admirers, and He was less in danger of disturbance and persecution there than in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. Large congregations attended His ministry there, and His converts were numbered by the thousand. The village contained many persons healed by His power, and His name was a household word. And upon His return He entered into a new stage of His work. He had decided to divide His ministry among His twelve most advanced disciples, as it had now reached proportions beyond His ability to personally control. And, as was customary to Him upon all great occasions, He sought the solitudes for meditation and spiritual strength before finally investing His twelve Apostles with the high authority of their mission. He spent the night on one of the hills near Capernaum, from which He descended the following morning, wearied in body from want of rest, but strong in soul and spirit. Then He gathered the Twelve around Him, and in a secret meeting divulged to them certain deep truths and secrets, adding certain instructions regarding healing work, and calling upon them for the highest allegiance to Him and His work. The Gospel narratives have but very little to say regarding Jesus' work in the instruction of the Twelve for their future mission. And the average student of the narratives goes on without thinking of the marvelous mental and spiritual development that must have been manifested by the Apostles during their transition from humble fishermen, and men of similar vocations, to highly developed teachers of advanced spiritual truths. To the occultist especially this ordinary view seems astounding, for he realizes the many arduous steps necessary to be trodden by the feet of the Neophyte before he becomes an Initiate, and the higher steps awaiting the Initiate before he may become a Master. And such a one realizes the mighty task that Jesus performed in developing and unfolding the spiritual natures of such a body of men until they become worthy to be His chosen representatives and teachers. The occult traditions have it that Jesus had pursued a systematic course of instruction of His chosen disciples, bringing them up rapidly through degree after degree of mystic attainment and occult knowledge, until finally they were ready for the finishing touches at His hands. And the occasion that we are now considering was the time when the final degrees were imparted to them. It must be remembered that the Apostles were endowed with the mastery of the occult forces of nature which enabled them to perform the "miracles" of healing similar to those of Jesus. And it must not be supposed for a moment that an occult Master of so high a degree of attainment as that reached by Jesus would have allowed His disciples to use such mighty power without also instructing them fully in the nature of the forces they were using, and of the best methods of employing the same. And such knowledge could not be imparted without the fundamental truths of nature being understood by them, which understanding was possible only to those who had grasped the great Basic Truths of the Science of Being. In short, the traditions are that the Twelve Apostles were gradually initiated into the great degrees of the Occult Brotherhoods of which and in which Jesus was a Master. He gathered together a great store of occult information and mystic lore, and condensing the same into a plain, practical, simple system, He imparted it fully and thoroughly to those whom He had elected to be His chief co-workers and His successors after His death, which He knew full well was not far off. These facts must be fully understood by the student of Mystic Christianity who wishes to grasp the secret of the early Christian Church after the death of Christ. The wonderful headway manifested by the movement could not have been given by mere followers and believers in the Master. It usually follows that when the great head of an organization dies the movement disintegrates or loses power unless he has been able to "communicate his spirit" to some chosen followers. And this Jesus did. And it was only to men who thoroughly grasped the fundamental truths and principles of His teachings that such "spirit" could have been imparted. There was an exoteric teaching for the multitude, and an esoteric teaching for the Twelve. There are many Scriptural passages which go to show this fact, which was well known to the early Fathers of the Church. And upon the occasion which we have mentioned the last great Basic Truths were explained to the Twelve, and from that time henceforward they were regarded and treated as Masters by Jesus, and not as mere students, as had been the case before that time. And arising from that final instruction came the Sermon of the Mount. The Sermon of the Mount, that most wonderful and complete of any of the public utterances of Jesus, was delivered almost immediately after the Choosing of the Twelve Apostles. And it was intended even more for them than for the multitudes gathered around to hear His preaching. He knew that the Twelve could interpret it by reason of the Inner Teachings that they had received from Him. And almost forgetting the congregation gathered around and about Him, He elucidated the Inner teachings for the benefit of the Chosen Few. The Sermon of the Mount can be understood only by means of the Master Key of the Inner Teachings, which opens the door of the mind to an understanding of the hard sayings and veiled mystic import of many of His precepts. We shall devote considerable space in one of our later lessons of this series to a consideration of the Inner Meaning of this great sermon and teaching, and therefore shall not go into details regarding it in the present lesson, deeming it better to proceed with the story of the Master's Work. A few days after the delivery of the Sermon of the Mount, the Master left Capernaum and traveled from town to town visiting His various centers of teaching, as was His custom. On the journey Jesus performed a feat of occult power that proved Him to be one of the Highest Adepts of the Occult Brotherhoods, for to none other would such a manifestation have been possible. Even some of the highest Oriental Masters would have refused to undertake the task that He set before Himself to do. The company was leisurely proceeding on its way, when nearing a small town they met a funeral procession coming in their direction. Preceded by the band of women chanting the mournful dirges according to the Galileean custom, the cortege slowly wended its way. The etiquette of the land required strangers to join in the mourning when they came in contact with a funeral procession, and the company assumed a mournful and respectful demeanor, and many joined in the dirge which was being chanted by the procession. But Jesus invaded the privacy of the procession in a manner shocking to those who held closely to the familiar forms and customs. Stepping up to the bier, He stood in front of it and bade the carriers halt and set it down. A murmur of indignation ran through the ranks of the mourners, and some strode forward to rebuke the presumptuous stranger who dared to violate the dignity of the funeral in this way. But something in His face held them back. Then a strange feeling passed over the crowd. Jesus was known to a number of the mourners, and some of those who had witnessed some of His wonder-workings began to whisper that strange things were about to happen, and the ranks were broken as the people flocked around the Master at the bier. The corpse was that of a young man, and his widowed mother stood beside the pale figure stretched upon the bier, and spreading her arms in front of it, she seemed to ward off the profaning touch of the strange man who confronted it. But the stranger looked upon her with a look of transcendent love, and in a voice vibrant with the tenderest feeling said unto her, "Mother, weep not--cease thy mourning." Amazed, but impressed, she turned an appealing gaze to Him who had thus bidden her. Her mother love and instinct caught a new expression in His eyes, and her heart bounded with a wonderful hope of something, she knew not what. What did the Nazarene mean? Her boy was dead, and even God Himself never disturbed the slumber of the body from which the spirit had flown. But still what meant that expression--why that leap and throbbing of her heart? Then with a gesture of authority the Master caused the crowd to draw back from the bier, until at last there remained only the corpse, the mother and Himself in a cleared space in the center. Then a strange and wonderful scene began. With His gaze fixed upon the face of the corpse, and in an attitude that indicated a supreme effort of His will, the Master was seen to be making some mighty effort which called into play the highest forces at His command. The Apostles, having been instructed by Him in Occult power, recognized the nature of the manifestation, and their faces paled, for they knew that He was not only pouring out His vital force into the body in order to recharge it with _prana_, but that He was also essaying one of the highest and most difficult of occult feats--that of summoning back from the Astral Plane the higher vehicles and the Astral Body--the very soul of the youth--and forcing it once more into its mortal frame, which He had recharged with vital energy and strength. They knew that He, by the mightiest effort of His will, was reversing the process of death. And with a full appreciation of the real nature of the wonder that was being worked before them, their limbs trembled beneath them and their breath came from them in gasps. Then cried the people, "What saith this man to the corpse?" "Arise, youth! Open thine eyes! Breathe freely! Arise, I say unto thee--arise!" Did this stranger dare to defy God's own decree? The corpse opened its eyes and stared around in wild amaze, the glare not fully faded away! Its chest heaved in great agonizing gasps as if fighting again for life! Then its arms were lifted up--then its legs began to move--now it raised itself upright and began to babble meaningless words--now the look of recognition came into its eyes, and its arms clasped themselves around the mother's neck, while sob after sob broke from its lips! The dead lived--the corpse had come to life. The people fell back overcome with the awful terror of the sight, and the funeral procession scattered in all directions, until only the sobbing mother and the youth remained, weeping in their mutual love and joy, and forgetting even the Master and His followers in their great flood of affection. And, leaving them thus, Jesus and His followers passed away on their pilgrimage. But the fame of the miracle spread from town to town, even up to the great capital, Jerusalem. And men wondered or doubted, according to their natures, while the temporal and ecclesiastical authorities began to again ask themselves and each other whether this man were not a dangerous person and an enemy to established custom and order. In one of His journeys Jesus found Himself invited to the house of a leading citizen of the town in which He was preaching. This citizen was one of the class known as Pharisees, whose characteristics were an extreme devotion and adherence to forms and ceremonies and a bigoted insistence upon the observance of the letter of the law. The Pharisees were the ultra-orthodox center of an orthodox people. They were the straight-laced brethren who walked so erect that they leaned backward. They were the people who thanked God that they were not like unto other men. They were the "uncommonly good" members of church and society. The very name stands even unto this day as a synonym for "pious sham." Just why this Pharisee had invited the Master to dine with him is not easily understood. It is likely that it was a combination of curiosity and a desire to entrap his guest into statements and admissions that might be used against him. At any rate, the invitation was given and accepted. The Master noted that certain little ceremonies usually extended by the Hebrews to a guest of equal standing were omitted by His host. His head was not anointed with the ceremonial oil, as was the custom in houses of this character when the guest was honored as an equal or desirable addition to the family gathering. Clearly He was regarded as a curiosity or "freak" rather than as a friend, and had been invited in such a spirit. But He said nothing, and passed over the slight. And the meal passed along smoothly up to a certain point. The host and his guests were reclining easily, after the Oriental fashion, discussing various topics, when a woman pressed her way into the banquet hall. Her dress proclaimed her to be one of the women of easy virtue abounding in all Oriental towns. She was clad in showy apparel and her hair fell loosely over her shoulders after the custom of the women of her kind in that land. She fixed her eyes upon the Master and moved slowly toward him, much to the annoyance of the host, who feared a scene, for the Master would most likely administer a rebuke to the woman for presuming to intrude upon the presence of Him, a spiritual teacher. But the woman still pressed forward toward Him, and at last, bending down low, her head touching His feet, she burst into tears. She had heard the Master preach some time before, and the seeds of His teaching had taken root and had now blossomed within her heart; and she had come to acknowledge her allegiance and to render an offering to Him whom she revered. The coming into His presence was her token of a spiritual regeneration and a desire to begin a new life. Her tears flowed over His feet, and she dried them off with her long hair. Then she kissed His feet, as a token of her allegiance and worship. From her neck hung a chain holding a little box filled with precious perfumed oil, which she esteemed highly, as did all the people of her race. The oil was of the nature of attar of roses and was the essential oil extracted from fragrant blossoms. She broke the seal and poured the fragrant oil over the hands and feet of the Master, who rebuked her not, but who accepted the tribute even from such a source. The host began to indulge in thoughts not flattering to the intelligence of his guest, and a scarcely concealed sneer appeared on his lips. Then Jesus turned to His host and with a smile said to him: "Simon, in thy mind thou thinkest these words: 'If this man be indeed a prophet, would he not know what manner of woman this be who toucheth him, and would he not rebuke her and drive her from him?'" And the Pharisee was sorely confused, for the Master had read his thought word for word by the method known to occultists as telepathy. And then in gentle raillery the Master called his host's attention to the fact that the woman had performed the service which he, the host, had neglected to observe. Had she not bathed and dried His feet, as the Pharisee would have done had his guest been deemed worthy of honor? Had she not anointed Him with precious oil, as the host would have anointed an honored guest? Had she not impressed upon even His feet the kiss that etiquette required the host to impress upon the cheek of the esteemed visitor to his house? And as for the character of the woman, it had been fully recognized and forgiven. "Much hath been forgiven her, for she hath loved greatly." And, turning to the woman, He added, "Go in peace, for thy sins are forgiven thee." And the woman departed with a new expression on her face and a firm resolve in her heart, for the Master had forgiven and blessed her. But by this act Jesus brought upon His head the hatred of the Pharisee and his friends. He had dared rebuke the host in his own palace, and had moreover arrogated to Himself the sacred rite to pronounce remission of sins, a right vested solely in the high-priest of the Temple, upon the performance of certain ceremonies and sacrifices upon the altar. He had flung defiance at vested ecclesiastical right and functions, even in the house of one of the stanchest adherents of formalism and authority--a Pharisee. In this incident was shown not only the broadness of Jesus' views and the universality of His love, as well as His courage in defying the hated formalism, even in the palace of its stanchest advocates, but also His attitude toward women. The Jews as a race held women in but scant esteem. They were not deemed worthy to sit with the men in the synagogue. It was deemed unworthy of a man to mention his female relations in general company. They were regarded as inferior in every way to men, and were treated as almost unclean in their most sacred natural functions. Toward fallen women especially Jesus was ever considerate. He saw their temptation and the social cruelty of their position. He resented "the double standard" of virtue which allowed a man to commit certain offenses and still be respected, while the woman who committed the same offense was damned socially, reviled and treated as a shameful outcast. He was ever ready to voice a defense for women of this kind, and seemed to be ever actuated by the sense of injustice in the attitude of men toward them, which finally voiced itself on a notable occasion when called upon to pass judgment upon the woman taken in adultery: "Let him among ye who is without sin cast the first stone." No wonder that the outcast woman kissed His feet and poured out the precious ointment upon Him. He was the Friend to such as she. THE SEVENTH LESSON. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. The ministry of Jesus went on in about the same channels. Wandering here and there throughout the country, preaching and teaching in this town and that village, gathering around Him new followers, Jesus continued His work. He adapted Himself to His audience, giving to each what it needed, and not making the mistake of speaking over the heads of the people. He gave the general public the broad general teachings that they required, but He reserved the Inner Teachings for the Inner Circle of His followers whom He knew to be fit to receive the same. In this He showed a deep knowledge of men, and a strict accordance with the established custom of the mystics, who never make the mistake of giving the higher spiritual mathematics to the students who are learning the addition, subtraction and division rules of the occult. He cautioned His apostles regarding this point of teaching, even going so far as warning them positively and strongly against "casting pearls before swine." One night He was in a boat crossing the lake of Gennesaret, in company with some of His fisherman followers. Tired out by the strenuous work of the day, He wrapped Himself up in His robe and fell into a deep sleep, from which He was later awakened by a noise and commotion among the crew and passengers. A terrible lake storm had sprung up, and the little vessel was tossing and pitching about among the waves in a manner which gave concern to even the experienced fishermen who manned her. The sails had been torn off, carrying away with them a portion of the mast, and the boat refused to respond to her rudder, the steering gear being rendered useless. The crew became panic-stricken and rushing to Jesus besought Him to save them from death in the storm. "Master! Master! Help ere we perish. The boat is foundering! Save us, Master!" The Master arose and, using His occult power, caused the winds to cease their tempestuous activity, and the waves to become calm. He followed the Oriental occultists' custom of voicing His commands in words, not that the words had any virtue in themselves, but because they served a vehicle for His concentrated thought and focused will which He was using in his manifestation of occult power. With this knowledge of the process, occultists smile when they read the _naïve_ account of the occurrence in the Gospels, where Jesus is described as addressing and rebuking the rebellious winds and then gently and kindly soothing the waters with words of "Peace, be still!" The fishermen who witnessed the occurrence, and from whom the reports thereof spread among the people, not understanding the nature of occult manifestations, thought that He was addressing the winds as actual entities, rebuking them and bidding them cease their vicious work, and soothing the sea in the same manner. They did not comprehend the mental processes back of the words, and in their simplicity thought that He was actually rebuking the wind and soothing the waters. All occultists know that in "treating" material conditions the process is rendered much easier and simpler if we will but think of and "speak to" the condition as if it had intelligence and actual being, thus more easily directing the forces. Obeying the thought and will of the Master, the winds abated their fury and the waters ceased their troubling. Gradually the boat rested easily upon the bosom of the lake, and the crew breathed freely once more, and then began their work of righting the mast and steering gear. And they wondered as they worked and asked each other "What manner of man is this, whom even the winds and the waters obey?" And Jesus, looking sadly at them, voiced that cry of the mystic who knows of the inherent and latent powers of man over material conditions, awaiting the exercise of the Will that may be exercised only in response to a great Faith. He answered them, saying, "Oh, ye of little Faith. What had you to fear?" To the mystic it seems strange that people are able to read the Gospel accounts of the above and similar events and yet see no more in them than a mere recital of miracles wrought by some supernatural power. To the reader who has learned the fundamental truths, the New Testament record of the wonder-working of Jesus, even as imperfect as that record is, is full of advanced occult instructions stated so plainly that it seems as if even the casual reader must recognize it. But no, the old rule is still in force--each reads only that for which he is ready--each must bring something to a book, before he may expect to take anything away from it--to him that hath shall be given. Ever the same old mystic truth, manifest ever and ever, at all times and in all places. It is a fundamental law of the mind. The journey across the lake was attended by another manifestation of occult power which is often passed over by the church teachers without comment, or at least with a labored endeavor to "explain" the evident meaning of the narrative. The modern materialistic trend of thought has invaded even the churches and has caused the preachers and teachers to endeavor to escape the accusation of "believing in spirits" and similar phenomena of the Astral World. When the company reached the coast of Gergesa, on the opposite side of the lake, it disembarked and Jesus and His disciples pressed in toward the coast towns. As they passed among the cliffs lining the shore, they perceived two uncanny wandering figures which, gibbering, followed them along. The two maniacs, for such they were, approached the party, and one of them began to address the Master in a strange manner, beseeching Him to relieve the two of the devils possessing them. He called aloud, "O Master, thou Son of the Living God, have mercy upon us, and drive away the unclean things that we have allowed to enter into us." The Gospels say nothing regarding the cause of this demoniac obsession, and the preachers prefer to pass over it rapidly, or else to treat it as a delusion of the insane, notwithstanding the direct statement of the New Testament narrative and its sequel or concluding statement. But the occult traditions have it that these two men were victims of their dabbling into certain phases of psychic phenomena, i.e., the "raising up of spirits" by the arts of Black Magic. In other words, these men had been experimenting along the lines of Jewish Necromancy, or Invocation and Evocation of Disembodied Astral Intelligences by means of Conjuration. They had raised up Astral Intelligences that had then refused to retire to their own plane, but which had taken possession of the physical organisms of their invokers and had remained in possession, causing the men to be regarded as maniacs, which resulted in their becoming outcasts among the caves with which the cliffs abounded, the same places being also the tombs of the dead. We do not wish to go into details here regarding this matter, but we wish to give the occult explanation of this little understood "miracle" of Jesus, which, however, is clearly understood by all occultists. Jesus fully understood the nature of the trouble, and began at once to drive out these invading Astral Intelligences by means of his occult power. In a few moments, a cry was heard from the hills near by, and a great herd of swine were seen rushing down the hill, and in a moment were over the precipice and were soon drowned. The Gospel narrative is perfectly plain on this subject--it states that the legions of devils had passed from the men into the swine and the latter had plunged in terror into the water and were drowned. Jesus had distinctly and positively spoken to the demons, calling them "unclean spirits," and bidding them "come out" of the men. And all advanced students of Occultism understand why the pigs were used as intermediate instruments of the driving back of the Astral Intelligences to their own plane of life, which reason, however, is not in place or keeping in this work intended for general public reading. The maniacs were restored to their normal condition, and the traditions say that the Master instructed them regarding the evil courses which they had been pursuing, and bade them desist from their nefarious practices which had wrought such evil consequences upon them. The church and its preachers, with but few exceptions, have seen fit to ignore the frequent Biblical allusions to "devils," "demons," etc.; their position being practically that the writers of the events of Jesus' ministry (whom they otherwise consider to have been "inspired") must have been superstitious, credulous people believing in "the absurd demonology of their times." They ignore the fact that Jesus Himself repeatedly spoke to these intelligences, bidding them depart from the people whom they had been obsessing. Does the church wish to hold that the Master was also an ignorant, credulous peasant, sharing popular superstitions? It would seem so. We must except the Catholic Church from this criticism, for its authorities have recognized the true state of affairs and have warned its followers against indulging in the dark practices of Necromancy or Invocation of Astral Intelligences. Occult science informs its students of the various planes of life, each of which contains its inhabitants. It teaches that on the Astral Plane there are disembodied entities which should not be transplanted to our plane. And it warns all against the dark practices, so common in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, of invoking and evoking these undesirable denizens of that plane. It is to be regretted that some of the modern Psychic Researchers ignore these plain warnings, for some of them are laying themselves open to grave consequences by reason of their wilful folly. We urge upon our readers to refrain from this dabbling in the phenomena of the Astral Plane. Some writer has well compared "Psychism" to a great machine, in the cog-wheels of which persons may become entangled only to be afterward drawn into the machine itself. Keep away from the wheels! This "miracle" of Jesus aroused great excitement, and it was urged against Him that He was going about the country driving devils into people's flocks and herds, causing their destruction. The priests fomented the popular feeling, and encouraged the distrust, hatred and fear which the orthodox portion of the community was beginning to entertain toward the Master. The seeds of Calvary were being sown among the people. And their awful fruit was latent in them. Hate and bigotry were the essence of both seed and fruit. Jesus returned to Capernaum, and once more the little town was crowded with people seeking instruction and crying to be healed. The news of his wonderful healing power spread far and near, and people were carried on litters for many miles in order that they might be touched by the hands of the Master. About this time there came to Him one Jairus, a man of eminence in the community and in the church. Jairus had a little daughter about twelve years of age, who was taken seriously ill, and who had been given up as incurable by the physicians. With his daughter lying at death's door, Jairus hastened to the scene of the Master's meetings, and, throwing himself at His feet, besought Him to heal his beloved child ere she passed beyond the dark portals of the unknown. The Master, feeling compassion for the father's great grief, paused in His teaching and started toward Jairus' home. His mind charged with the concentration of healing thought, and His organism filled with the vital forces aroused to perform the task, He felt some one touch the hem of His garment in search of healing power, and He at once recognized the occurrence, saying, "The power hath been drawn from me. Who touched my garment?" As they approached the house of Jairus, the servants came running out with wild cries and lamentations, announcing that the child had died while awaiting the coming of the Healer. The father broke down at this terrible news, coming at the very moment of his greatest hope. But Jesus bade him to have faith and still believe. Then, accompanied by three of His disciples--John, Peter and James--He entered the chamber of death. Waving back the weeping family and the neighbors who had gathered, "Stand back," He cried, "the child is not dead--she but sleepeth." An indignant cry went up from the orthodox relatives and friends at these words of the Master. How dared He so mock the very presence of the dead, whom the physicians had left, and over whom the priests had already begun the last sacred rites? But, heeding them not, the Master passed His hands over the child's head, and took her little cold palms within his own. Then began a strange happening. The little chest began to heave, and the white wan cheeks began to show traces of color. Then the arms and hands began to move, and the wasted limbs drew slightly up. Then, opening her eyes with a wondering look, the child gazed at the Healer and smiled gently at Him. Then the Master, with a look of gentle tenderness, withdrew from the room, after ordering that nourishing food be brought for the child. Then began the usual dispute. Some declared that another had been raised from the dead, while others declared that the child had but been in a trance and would have awakened anyway. Had not even the Healer declared that she only slept? But Jesus heeded not the disputants, but returned to the scene of His work. The work went on in its accustomed way. He began to send His apostles away on longer and more extended tours, having fully instructed them in the occult methods of healing. Great success attended their efforts and the best reports came in from all sides. The authorities recognized to a still greater extent the growing influence of the young Master, and His actions were still more closely watched by the spies. Reports of His teachings and work were carried to Herod, who, recognizing in them the same note that had been struck by John the Baptist, who had been put to death, perceived that though men might die, the spirit of their teachings would still live on. No wonder the guilty ruler should cry in terror, "This verily is the spirit of John, whom I put to death, risen from the grave to wreak vengeance upon me!" And the authorities reported to Rome that here was a young fanatic, whom many believed to be the Messiah and coming King of the Jews, who had thousands of followers all over the land. And word came back from Rome, in due time, to watch carefully over the man, who was undoubtedly striving to incite an insurrection, and to imprison Him or put Him to death as soon as the evidence was sufficient to convict Him. Jesus about this time was near a small fishing town called Bethseda, on the lake about seven miles from Capernaum. Near this place His boat landed at a place on the beach where He had hoped to take a few days' rest. But, alas, a great crowd had hastened to the place of disembarkation, and now gathered around Him, demanding teaching and healing. Putting aside His mental and physical fatigue, He attended to the wants of the crowd. Healing now, and then teaching, He threw Himself into His work with fervor and zeal. There were over five thousand people gathered together around Him, and toward evening the cry went up that there was not sufficient food in the camp to begin to feed the multitude. A great tumult arose among the crowd, and complaints and even curses began to be heard. The spiritual wants were forgotten, and the physical began to manifest itself in a most insistent manner. What was to be done? He called together those of His company who had been entrusted with the care of the food which the little company carried with it. And, to His sorrow, He learned that the entire stock of food consisted of five loaves of bread and two fishes. And the little band carried practically no money with it, for they depended upon the hospitality of the country and the offerings by the faithful. The disciples advised that the Master order the crowd to disperse and return to Bethseda for food. But Jesus felt loath to do this, particularly when there were so many invalids in the gathering who had traveled so many miles to see Him, and who had not yet been healed. And so He decided to give the company its food by means of His power. He bade His people divide the multitude into little groups of fifty people, who were then instructed to be seated for a meal. Then He ordered the scanty supply of available food to be brought before Him, and, placing His hands over it, He offered a blessing, then ordered His people to serve the throng. They began to serve out the food with looks of wonder and amazement. Had the Master lost His senses? But in some way the food seemed miraculously to increase and multiply, until at last all of the five thousand had been fully supplied and their hunger appeased. And then, after all had been served and had eaten, the scraps and fragments which were gathered up filled many wicker baskets and were distributed to the poorer people in the company for tomorrow's use. But trouble arose. The people, with well filled stomachs, feeling that here indeed was royal bounty and the power with which to feed them forever free of charge, began to wax enthusiastic and shouts ascended. "The Messiah! King of the Jews! Provider of the People! Son of David! Ruler over Israel!" were the words which soon swept the crowd off of its feet. And then some of the bolder ones, or else the hired spies who wished to place Him in a compromising position, began to suggest that the crowd form itself into an army and march from city to city with Jesus at its head, until at last they would place Him upon the throne of Israel at Jerusalem. Jesus, recognizing the peril to His mission, managed to dissuade the hot-heads from their plans, but still fearing that the authorities might come down upon the assemblage, ordered that the Twelve take the boat and put out for the other side of the lake. He sent them off as a precaution, but He, Himself, remained with the crowd and faced the threatened danger. He retired to the hills near by and spent the night in meditation. Then early in the morning, He noticed that a storm was rising over the lake and that the tiny boat containing His disciples would be in great danger. In a few moments they might be overwhelmed. He wished to be with them to comfort and re-assure them. No boat being handy, he stepped boldly out upon the water and walked rapidly toward the direction in which He knew the boat must be. Scarcely conscious of the occult power of levitation that He was using to overcome the power of gravitation, He moved rapidly toward His followers. Soon He overtook them, and they, seeing a white figure moving swiftly over the water toward them, were affrighted, believing it to be a spirit or ghost. "It is I, be not afraid!" called out the Master to them. Then Peter cried out, "Lord, if Thou it be, direct me to walk to Thee also on the waves!" And the Master, smiling, so directed him. And Peter, whose latent occult power was aroused by his great faith in the Master, sprang over the side and took several steps toward Him. But, suddenly losing his faith and courage, his power also left him, and he began to sink beneath the waves. But the Master grasped his hand and led him in safety to the boat and both entered it. Then the crew fell to and with great enthusiasm righted the boat and proceeded to the shore near Capernaum. In the case of Peter and his experience in walking on the water, we have a striking instance of the well known power of the mental attitude of Faith in the manifestation of occult power. All occultists know this, and without feeling an implicit faith in the Power with them, they do not attempt certain forms of manifestation. They know that with Faith miracles may be performed which are impossible otherwise. So long as Peter held his Faith he was able to counteract certain laws of nature by means of other laws not so well known. But as soon as Fear took the place of Faith his power left him. This is an invariable occult principle, and in the recital of this story of Peter on the water is to be found a whole volume of occult instruction--to those who are able to read it. Arriving safely on the shores of the lake, Jesus resumed His work while the ever-present gathering of people went on in its accustomed way. But on the opposite shore of the lake the crowd who had been fed on the loaves and fishes were in an angry mood. They cried out that they had been deserted by their leader, and that the expected loaves and fishes--the free meals that they had expected would continue--had been denied them. They also complained bitterly that the reign of miracles had not continued. And they began to revile the Master that they had acclaimed the night before. And so Jesus experienced the ingratitude and the unreasonable words of the public just as all great teachers have done. The seekers after the loaves and the fishes, demanding to be fed and clothed without their own work--the seekers after miracles, demanding fresh wonder-workings--have ever been the bane of the great Teachers of the Truth. It is a hard and bitter truth, but all teachers and true lovers of the Truth must learn to meet and understand it. The mob which reveres a spiritual Master today is equally ready to rend him to pieces tomorrow. And still more trouble arose from this mistaken kindness which led Jesus to feed the crowd by His occult powers, which, by the way, He knew to be in opposition to the well-established custom of the Occult Brotherhoods. The formalists, Pharisees and Scribes, having heard of the occurrence, gathered about the Master and accused Him of violating one of the forms and ceremonies prescribed by the ecclesiastical authorities--the rite which required the faithful to wash their hands before beginning a meal. They accused Him of heresy and false teaching, which tended to lead the people away from their accustomed ceremonies and observances. Jesus waxed indignant and, turning on His critics, hurled burning replies upon them. "Ye hypocrites!" He cried, "You cling to the commandments of men and neglect the commandments of God! You cleanse your hands but not your souls! You are the blind leaders of the blind, and both yourselves and your followers fall in the mire and ditches! Away with you and your hypocrisy!" But the adverse comment aroused by His actions would not down, and, discouraged and disheartened by the evidences of the barrenness of the soil in which He had been sowing the precious seeds of the Truth, He gathered together His followers and departed into Tyre and Sidon, a quieter region, that He might rest and meditate over new plans and work. He could see the beginning of the end. To understand the nature of the position of the Master at this time, it must be remembered that His strong hold had ever been with the masses of the people, who were His enthusiastic admirers. So long as He remained entrenched in the heart of the populace, the temporal and ecclesiastical authorities dared not attack Him without a popular uprising of no mean proportions. But now that they had managed to wean away His public from Him they pressed Him harder and harder with their persecutions and complaints. And so at last they had managed to render Him almost an unpopular outcast. They forced Him away from the larger towns, and now He was wandering among the less populous regions of the country, and even there the spies and agents of the authorities hunted Him down, seeking to further entrap and compromise Him. About this time Jesus revealed to His apostles the facts of His Divine origin which was now plain to Him. He also told them of the fate which awaited Him, and which He had willingly chosen. He told them not to expect the fruits of His work at this time, for He was but sowing the seeds of the fruit which would not grow and bear fruit for many centuries. He gave them the Mystic secret of the nature of His work, which is taught to the Initiates of the Occult Brotherhoods even unto this day. But even these chosen men scarcely grasped the true import of His teachings, and once He was rendered almost broken hearted at over-hearing a discussion among them regarding high offices which they hoped to acquire. Jesus now felt that the time had come for Him to move on to Jerusalem to meet there the crowning act of His strange career. And, knowing full well that such a course would be virtually thrusting His head into the very jaws of the lion of ecclesiastical and temporal authority, He set His feet firmly on the road which led to Jerusalem, the capital city, and the center of ecclesiastical influence. And that road was a hard one to travel, for, as He neared the capital, His enemies increased in number and the opposition to Him grew stronger. At one village He had been denied the right of shelter, an indignity almost unknown in Oriental lands. In another place a large rock was hurled at Him and wounded Him severely. The mob had turned against Him and was repaying His kind services with abuse and personal violence. And this is ever the lot of the teacher of the Truth who scatters the sacred pearls of Truth before the swine of the unworthy multitude of people. Over and over again has this fact been brought home to those who would labor for the good of the world. And still we hear the querulous complaint that the Inner Teaching is reserved for the Few--why not scatter it broadcast among the people? The stake, the rack, the stones, the prison cell, the cross and their modern prototypes--these are the silent answers to the question. Moving on toward Jerusalem the little company reached Perea, a number of miles from Bethany, at which latter place dwelt a family of His friends--the two sisters, Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus. At this place He was met by a messenger from Bethany, who bore the sad news that His friend Lazarus was sick unto death, and who also begged the Master to return to Bethany and cure the man. But this Jesus refused to do, and allowed several days to pass without answering the summons. At the end of the several days He started toward Bethany, telling His disciples that Lazarus was dead. And reaching Bethany they found that it was indeed so--Lazarus was dead and in the tomb. Jesus was received with scowling antagonism. The people seemed to say, "Here is this heretical imposter again. He feared to come even to the aid of His dying friend. His power has failed Him and He now stands discredited and exposed!" Then came Martha, who reproached the Master with His indifference and delay. He answered her that Lazarus should rise again, but she doubted His word. Then came Mary, whose grief brought tears even from the Master, who had seen so much of human suffering as to have found his eyes refuse to weep. Then asked the Master, "Where have you laid him away?" and they took Him to the tomb, followed by the curious mob hungering for the sight of more wonders from the man whom they feared even while hating and reviling Him. Jesus stood before the dreary tomb and bade the men roll away the stone that closed the mouth of the tomb. The men hesitated, for they knew that a corpse lay within, and they even perceived the characteristic odor of the tomb issuing therefrom. But the Master insisting upon it, they rolled away the stone and Jesus stood full in front of the dark opening to the cavern. He stood there for a few moments wrapt in meditation and showing evidences of strong mental concentration. His eyes took on a strange look, and in every muscle He showed that He was summoning to the task every particle of the power at His command. He was throwing off the matters that had been occupying His mind during the past weeks, that He might hold his mind "one-pointed," as the Oriental occultists term it--that He might concentrate clearly and forcibly upon the task before Him. Then, arousing His reserve force, in a mighty effort, He cried loudly, in a voice of authority and power, "Lazarus! Lazarus! Come forth!" The people gasped with horror at this calling forth a corpse which was in the process of disintegration and decay, and a cry of remonstrance went up, but Jesus heeded it not. "Lazarus! Lazarus! Come forth, I command thee!" he cried again. And then at the mouth of the cavern could be seen something startling. It was a ghastly figure, bound and clad in the grave-clothes of that country, which was struggling to free itself and to move toward the light. It was indeed Lazarus! And, after tearing off the stained grave-clothes which still retained the horrid stench of decaying matter, his body was found to be sweet and clean and pure as that of the infant. Jesus had performed a wonder-work far beyond any manifestation He had heretofore shown to the world. The excitement occasioned by this crowning wonder, coming to Jerusalem after a lull in which it had thought that the Master had retired into insignificant seclusion, aroused again into activity the authorities, who now determined to make an end to the matter and to suppress this pestilent charlatan once and for all. Raising a decaying corpse from the tomb, indeed! What new fraudulent marvels would He not work next in order to delude the credulous people and to bring them once more around his rebellious standard? The man was dangerous without doubt, and must be put where He could do no harm--and that at once. Within a few hours after the receipt of news that Lazarus had walked from the tomb, the Sanhedrin, the great Jewish ecclesiastical council, was in session, called hastily by its officers to take vigorous action concerning this impious, heretical imposter who had been allowed to mock at established order and religion for too long a time. He must be quieted ere he arouse the people once more. The Roman authorities were warned by the Jewish ecclesiastics that this dangerous man now approaching the capital claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, and that His aims were to overturn the Temple authorities first, and then establish Himself as King of the Jews, and place Himself at the head of a revolutionary army which would attempt to defy and defeat the rule of mighty Rome herself. And so all the machinery was set in motion, and the officers of the law were all on the alert to take advantage of the first overt act of Jesus and His followers, and to throw them into prison as enemies of society, religion and of the state. The Roman authorities were agitated at the reports coming to them from the highest Jewish authorities, and were prepared to crush the rebellion at the first sign. The Jewish priests were in solemn convocation and at the instigation of Caiaphas, the high priest of the Jews, they determined that nothing but the death of this false Messiah would put an end to the agitation which threatened to drive them from power and authority. And so the die was cast. And meanwhile Jesus was resting in Bethany, surrounded by great throngs who were pouring into the place to see Lazarus, and to renew their allegiance to the Master whom they had so basely forsaken. Time-servers ever, the latest miracles had revived their fading interest and waning faith, and they flocked around the Master as noisy, enthusiastic and as full of fulsome praise as ever. And yesterday they had damned Him, and tomorrow they would cry "Crucify Him!" For such is the nature of the multitude of men. Of the multitudes of Jesus' followers, none remained to acknowledge allegiance in His hour of arrest--even among the chosen twelve, one betrayed Him, one denied Him, and _all_ fled away when He was taken captive. And for _such_ the Son of Man lived and taught and suffered. Surely His _life_ was the greatest miracle of all. THE EIGHTH LESSON. THE END OF THE LIFE WORK. Resting for a short time before His formal entry into Jerusalem, the Master sought the seclusion of the sparsely settled districts near the wilderness. In and around the village of Ephraim, in Perea, in parts of Galilee, He wandered with the Twelve. But even there He continued His work of healing and teaching. But even this temporary respite from the inevitable lasted but a short time. Jesus determined to march direct to the seat of the ecclesiastical and temporal authority which was arrayed against Him. And so, just before the coming of the Passover time, He gathered together the Twelve and set out on the final stage of the journey. The pilgrims journeying to the capital were burning with curiosity and excitement concerning this journey of the Master to the home of His foes. Rumors were circulated that He intended to gather His forces together and sweep the enemy from its seats of power. It was known that the Sanhedrin intended to attempt to punish Him, and the people asked why should He move on to face His foes unless He contemplated a fight to the finish? This belief in His determination caused a revulsion of feeling of the people in His favor, and many who had deserted Him now again gathered around Him. They dreamt again of victory, and scented again an unfailing supply of loaves and fishes. They crowded around Him wishing to be among the victorious host. But He encouraged them not--neither spoke He a word to them. He knew them for the time-servers that they were. The crowds of Jerusalem hearing of His approach, and moved by curiosity to witness His triumphant entry into the City, flocked around the suburbs through which He would approach. At last the cry went up, "Here He comes!" and to their amazement and disgust the crowd saw Him riding quietly info the City mounted on an ass, without display, pretense or pose. The crowd scattered, sneering and reviling Him. But the pilgrims were becoming more and more enthusiastic, and they strewed His way with palms, shouting, "Blessed be our Messiah! The King of Israel approacheth." The Master proceeded directly to the Temple and performed the customary rites. So amazed were the authorities by His fearless demeanor, that they deferred laying violent hands upon Him. They feared a trap, and moved cautiously. They even allowed Him to retire to Bethany and spend the night. The next morning He returned to the city and dwelt among His friends there. He attended the Temple regularly, and pursued His work of teaching and healing in its very shadows. Meanwhile the clouds of the persecuting forces gathered closely around His head. One of the Twelve, Judas Iscariot, who was sorely disappointed at the Master having refused to take advantage of the support of the crowd to assist His claim as the Messiah and King of the Jews, and also fearing that he would become involved in His inevitable downfall, began a series of bargainings and dickerings with the authorities, which had for their object the betrayal of the Master into the hands of the authorities, the reward to be immunity from persecution for himself and a few pieces of silver for his pocket in addition. And so the time passed on, the nights being spent at Bethany and the days at the Temple in the capital. Finally the priests made an important move. They confronted Him in their official capacity and demanded that He prove His ordination as a Jewish Rabbi and consequent right to preach to the orthodox members of the church. Jesus answered them by asking questions that they feared to answer. Then they began to question Him, hoping to involve Him in ecclesiastical heresies which would give them their excuse to arrest Him. But He evaded them skilfully. They sought also to compel Him to state opinions contrary to the Roman authority, but He likewise escaped this net. Finally, however, they drew from Him a savage attack upon authority, and He cried out in indignation: "Woe unto you, ye generation of vipers! Ye serpents! Ye hypocrites! Ye oppressors of the poor! Ye professed shepherds, who are but as wolves in disguise, seeking but to devour the sheep whom ye have in charge! Woe unto you, ye Scribes, Hypocrites, Pharisees!" Then He left the Temple and returned to Bethany to spend the night, after foretelling the destruction of the Temple, when there should not be left one of its stones upon another. That night he had a heart-to-heart talk with the Twelve. He told them that the end was in sight--that He was to die before many hours had passed--that they, the Twelve, were to become wanderers on the face of the earth--hunted and persecuted in His name and for His sake. A terrible revelation to some among them who had dreamt of earthly grandeur and high positions for themselves! And then Judas felt that the time to act had come, and he stole away to meet the High-priest and to close the frightful bargain with him which was to make his name the synonym for treachery throughout the ages. The next day, Wednesday, He rested in Bethany the whole twenty-four hours, evidently gathering together his reserve forces to meet the ordeal which He now knew was before Him. He kept apart from even His disciples and spent the time in meditation. And likewise was passed the early part of the following day, Thursday. But when the even time had come, He sent for the Twelve and gathered them around Him for the Paschal Supper, one of the rites of the Passover time. Even this last solemn occasion was marred by a petty squabble among the disciples regarding the order of precedence to be observed in their seats at the table. Judas succeeded in gaining the seat of honor next to the Master. Jesus startled the company by insisting upon washing the feet of the Twelve, an act which placed them on a pedestal above Him. This occult ceremony, which was not comprehended by the Twelve, apparently was one which the Hierophants of the Occult Brotherhoods performed for their associates when the latter had been chosen to carry out some important office or mission, or when a successor was about to take the place of one of them. And Jesus evidently so intended it. Then He bade them wash one another's feet, in token of the recognition of each of the high mission of the others. Then Jesus, overcome by the knowledge of the morrow, burst out in anguished tones, saying: "And even one of you, my chosen ones, shall betray me!" And several asked Him in turn, in a tone of reproach, "Is it I?" And Jesus shook His head at each question. But Judas asked not, but overcome with confusion he reached over and took a portion of bread from the plate before the Master. Then Jesus took a bit of bread and, moistening it from His plate, handed it to Judas, saying to him firmly, "Judas, do thy work without loss of time." And Judas, abashed, slunk away from the table. Then began that remarkable conversation of the Last Supper, as recorded in the Gospels. Then also was performed that first celebration of the Holy Communion, the Mystic significance of which shall be explained in a later lesson. Then Jesus chanted the Passover hymn. Then shortly after, the company left the room and walked into the streets, and over the meadows near by. Then under the trees of the Garden of Gethsemane, apart from His disciples, now reduced to Eleven, He gave Himself up to prayer and meditation. He called aloud to The Father to give Him strength for the final ordeal. Struggling with His doubts and fears and misgivings--conquering His physical inclination and impulses--He gave utterance to that supreme cry: "O Father, Thy will, not mine, be done!" and in so saying He cast behind Him forever His right of choice to stay the awful course of events which was pressing upon Him. Resigning His mighty occult power of defense, He laid Himself upon the altar of sacrifice even as the Paschal Lamb. Leaving behind Him the Garden in which He had just performed this greatest miracle of all--the miracle of Renunciation--He stepped out among His disciples, saying, "The hour has come--the betrayer is here to do his work." Then were heard sounds of clanking arms, and martial tread, and in a moment the military guard appeared on the scene, accompanied by a delegation of ecclesiastics, and with them, walking in advance, was Judas Iscariot. Judas, walking as one in a trance, approached the Master and, saluting Him with a kiss, cried, "Hail, Master," which was the signal to the guard, arranged between Judas and the High Priest. Then cried Jesus, "Ah, with a kiss--thou, Judas, betrayeth the Son of Man with a kiss! Oh!" And in that moment it seemed that the Master's grief had reached its utmost limit. Then the guard closed around Him and carried Him away. But He resisted them not. As they approached Him He called out, "Whom seek ye?" And the leader answered, "We seek him whom men call Jesus of Nazareth." Then answered the Master, "I am He whom thou seeketh!" But the disciples resisted the arrest, and Peter cut off the ear of one of the party, a servant of the High-priest. But Jesus bade His followers desist, and, approaching the wounded man, placed his severed ear in place and healed it instantly. Then He rebuked His disciples, telling them that, had He so desired, the whole of the legions of heaven would have come to His assistance. Then He bade the leader conduct Him from the place. But alas! as He left, He turned to bid farewell to His disciples, and lo! to a man they had fled and deserted Him, leaving Him alone in His hour of trial--yea! as every humble soul must be alone in its moments of supreme struggle--alone with its Creator. Then down toward the city they led Him--the Master of All Power, an humble captive, non-resistant and awaiting the course of The Will. They took Him to the palace of the Jewish High-priest, where the Sanhedrin was assembled in secret session awaiting His coming. And there He stood erect before these ecclesiastical tyrants to be judged--bound with the cord as a common criminal. He, whose single effort of His will would have shattered the whole palace to pieces and have destroyed every human being within its walls! And this was but the beginning. During the next eight hours He was subjected to six separate trials, if indeed such mock proceedings might be so designated. Subjected to blows, and all manner of low insults, the Master remained a Master. Perjured witnesses testified, and all manner of crimes and heresies were charged against Him. Then Caiaphas asked Him the all-important question, "Art thou the Christ?" and Jesus broke His silence to answer positively, "I am!" Then the High-priest cried out vehemently, rending His sacred robes in his pious indignation, "He has blasphemed!" From that moment there was no possible chance of escape for the Master. He had virtually condemned Himself by His own words. There was no retreat or reprieve. He was roughly pushed from the hall and like a common criminal was turned over to the taunts and revilings of the mob, which availed itself of its privileges to the full in this case. Insults, curses, revilings, taunts, and even blows, came fast and furiously upon Him. But He stood it all without a murmur. Already His thoughts had left earthly things behind, and dwelt on planes of being far above the wildest dreams of men. With His mind firmly fixed on the Real, the Unreal vanished from His consciousness. In the early part of the day following the night of His arrest, Jesus was taken before Pontius Pilate, the Roman official, for His trial by the civil authorities. Pilate, in his heart, was not disposed to condemn Jesus, for he believed that the whole trouble consisted in theological and ecclesiastical differences with which the civil law should not concern itself. His wife had warned him against becoming involved in the dispute, for she had a secret sympathy for the Master, for some reason. But he found arrayed against him the solid influence of the Jewish priesthood, whose power must not be opposed lightly, according to the policy of Rome. Then the priests had made out a civil case against Jesus, claiming that He had sought to incite a rebellion and proclaim Himself King of the Jews; that He had created public disorder; that He had urged the people to refuse to pay taxes to Rome. The case against Him was weak, and Pilate was at a loss what to do. Then some one of the priests suggested that as Jesus was a Galilean, He be turned over for trial to Herod, in whose territory the principal crimes were committed, and Pilate gladly availed himself of this technical excuse to rid himself of responsibility in the matter. And so the case was transferred to Herod, who happened to be in Jerusalem at that time on a visit. To Herod's palace the captive was taken, and after suffering indignities and humiliation at the hand of the tyrant, He was remanded back to Pilate for trial, under Herod's orders. Back to Pilate's court, followed by the crowd, went Jesus. Pilate was greatly annoyed that Herod should have shifted the responsibility once more upon his (Pilate's) court. Then he bethought himself of an expedient. He took advantage of the Jewish custom, observed by the Roman rulers, which led to the pardoning of a notorious criminal on the occasion of the Passover. And so he announced that he would pardon Jesus according to custom. But from the Jewish authorities came back the answer that they would not accept Jesus as the subject of the pardon, but demanded that Barabbas, a celebrated criminal, be pardoned instead of the Nazarene. Pilate found himself unable to escape the designs of the Jewish priesthood, and so, yielding in disgust, he pardoned Barabbas, and condemned Jesus to death. The cries of the mob, incited by the priests, sounded around the court. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Pilate appeared before the priests and the populace, and, washing his hands in a basin, according to the Oriental custom, he cried to the Jews, "I wash my hands of this man's blood--upon you be it!" And the crowd responded with a great shout, "Upon us and our children be his blood!" Jesus, in the meantime, had been cruelly scourged by the barbarous instruments of torture of the time. His body was lacerated and bleeding, and He was faint from the torture and loss of blood. Upon His head had been thrust, in ghastly mockery, a crown of thorns which pressed deep into His flesh. He was refused the usual respite of several days before sentence and execution--He was to die that very day. His cross was tied to His back and He was compelled to carry it, fainting though He was from fatigue and torture. He staggered along and fell, unable to bear His heavy burden. Finally Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion, was reached, and the Man of Sorrows was nailed to the cross and raised aloft to die a lingering and painful death. On either side was a criminal--two thieves--His companions in suffering. He refused to partake of the drug which was granted to criminals to relieve their intense suffering. He preferred to die in full possession of His faculties. Above His head was a tablet bearing the inscription, "The King of the Jews," which had been placed there by Pilate in a spirit of ironical mockery of the Jews who had forced him to place this man on the cross. As the cross was raised into position the Master cried aloud, "O Father, forgive them--they know not what they do." Taunted by the crowds, He hung and suffered the terrible agonies of the cross. Even one of the crucified criminals reviled Him, asking Him why He did not save Himself and them? The crowd asked Him why He who saved others could not save Himself? But He, who could have brought forces to bear which would have wrought the miracle they demanded, answered not, but awaited the end. Then set in the delirium of death in which He cried aloud to the Father, asking if He had been forsaken in His misery. But the end was near. There arose a strange storm--darkness fell over the place--weird electrical disturbances manifested themselves. The winds abated and a strange quiet fell over all the scene, which was lighted by a ghastly glow. And then came the earthquake, with strange groanings and moanings of the earth; with frightful stenches of sulphur and gas. And the very foundations of Jerusalem quaked and shivered. The rocks before the tombs flew off, and the dead bodies were exposed to view. In the Temple, the veil before the Holy of Holies was rent in twain. The cries of the people as they rushed to and fro in mortal terror took the attention of all from the cross. Then the Roman officer in charge of the execution, glancing upward, saw that all was over, and, falling before the cross, he cried out, "Verily, this man was a god!" Jesus the Master had passed out from the body which had served as His tenement for thirty-three years. His body was borne away for burial, in a secret place. Embalmed by loving friends, it was carried to a place of last earthly rest. * * * * * And now we come to a portion of the narrative in which the occult traditions and teachings diverge from the account stated in the Gospels. We should have said _apparently_ diverge, for the two accounts vary only because of the varying points of view and different degrees of understanding of the teachers. We allude to the events of the Resurrection. It must be remembered that Jesus had informed His disciples that in three days He would "rise from the dead" and appear once more among them. To the ordinary understanding these events seem to indicate that the Master would once more occupy His physical body, and that His reappearance was to be so understood. And the Gospel narrative certainly seems to verify this idea, and was undoubtedly so stated that it might be more readily understood by the popular mind. But the occult traditions hold otherwise. They hold that Jesus really appeared to His disciples three days after His death, and abode with them for a time teaching and instructing them in the deeper mysteries and secret doctrines. But the mystics have always held and taught that His reappearance _was in the Astral Body_, and not in the discarded physical form. To the popular mind the physical body was almost everything, as we have shown in one of the earlier lessons of this series. So much was this so that the mass of the people expected that all mankind would arise from the dead at the Last Day clad in their former physical forms. And so, any other teaching would have been unintelligible to them. But to the occultists and mystics who understood the truth about the more ethereal vehicles of the soul, such an idea appeared crude and unscientific, and they readily grasped the Inner Teachings regarding the Resurrection, and understood the reason why Jesus would use the Astral Body as the vehicle of His reappearance. The Gospel narrative informs us that a guard was placed around the tomb to prevent the body being stolen and a consequent assertion of the Resurrection which the priests well knew to be expected. It further states that the tomb was sealed and guarded by a squad of Roman soldiers, but that notwithstanding these precautions the body of the Master actually came to life and emerged from the tomb, and that His followers were disturbed by the evidences that His body had been stolen. The occult traditions, however, state that the close friends of Jesus, aided by a prominent Jew who was a secret believer, obtained from the willing Pilate a secret order which enabled them to deposit the body in a safe and secret resting place where it gradually resolved itself into the dust to which all that is mortal must return. These men knew that the Resurrection of the Master had naught to do with mortal fleshly form or body. They knew that the immaterial soul of the Master still lived and would reappear to them clad in the more ethereal body made manifest to their mortal senses. Every occultist will understand this without further comment. To others we advise that they read the occult teachings concerning the Astral Body and its characteristics. This is no place in which to again describe at length the phenomena of the Astral Body of Man. * * * * * The first to see the Master in His Astral Form was Mary of Magdala, a woman admirer and follower of her Lord. She was weeping beside the empty tomb, when looking up she saw a form approaching. The Astral Form was indistinct and unfamiliar, and at first she did not recognize it. Then a voice called her name, and looking up she saw the form growing more distinct and familiar, and she recognized the features of her Master. * * * * * More than this, the occult legends assert the truth of some of the traditions of the early Christian Church, namely, that in the three days succeeding the scene of Calvary there appeared in and around Jerusalem the disembodied forms of many persons who had died a short time previously. It is said that the Astral Bodies of many dead Jews revisited the scenes of their former life, and were witnessed by friends and relatives. * * * * * Then Jesus appeared in His Astral Body to the disciples. The traditions have it that two of the eleven met Him on the afternoon of the day when He first appeared to Mary--Easter Sunday. Strange to say, they did not at first recognize Him, although they walked the road with Him and afterward ate at the same table. This failure to recognize the Master is wholly beyond ordinary explanation and the churches make no real attempt to make it understandable. But the occult traditions say that Jesus had not wholly materialized His Astral Body at first, for reason of prudence, and that consequently His features were not distinctly and clearly marked; then at the meal He caused His features to be fully materialized so that the disciples might readily recognize Him. All occultists who have witnessed the materialization of an Astral Body will readily understand this statement. The orthodox theory of Jesus having reappeared in His physical body wholly fails to explain this nonrecognition by His disciples, who had been His everyday companions before His death. The slightest consideration should show which statement is nearer the bounds of reasonable probability. Jesus remained visible to the chosen few for forty days. The testimony of several hundred people attested the fact. There are a number of mystic legends about some of His appearances, which are not mentioned in the Gospel narratives. One of these states that He appeared before Pontius Pilate and forgave him for the part he had played in the tragedy. Another that Herod witnessed His form in his bedchamber. Another that He confronted the High-priests in the Temple and brought them to their knees in terror. Another that He came one night to the Eleven, who sat behind bolted doors in hiding, and saying to them, "Peace be unto you, my beloved," vanished from sight. The Gospels record another appearance before the Eleven, upon which occasion Thomas, the doubter, satisfied himself of the identity of the Astral Body by placing his fingers in the wounds, which, of course, were reproduced in the Astral Form according to the well known laws regarding the same. This coming and going of Jesus--these sudden appearances and disappearances--these manifestations of His form only to those whom He wished to see Him, and His concealment from those whom He desired to remain in ignorance of His return, all show conclusively to every occultist the nature of the vehicle which He used for manifestation upon His return. It would seem incredible that there could be any general doubt on the subject were the public informed on the laws concerning the Astral World phenomena. * * * * * The Gospel narrative shows that the disciples recognized that Jesus was not a "spirit" in the sense of being an airy, unsubstantial form. They felt His body, and saw Him eat--but what of that? The laws of materialization of Astral forms make it possible, under certain conditions, that the Astral Form become so thoroughly materialized that it may not only be seen but actually felt. Even the records of the English Society for Psychical Research prove this fact, leaving out of account the phenomena with which all advanced occultists are familiar. Then, one day He appeared to the disciples, and they accompanied Him to the hills, Jesus talking to them regarding their future work on earth. He then bade them farewell, and began to fade away from their sight. The common account pictures Him as ascending into the air until out of sight, but the mystic account informs us that His astral form began to slowly dematerialize and He gradually faded away from the sight of His beloved followers, who stood gazing in wistful longing at His form which, each moment, grew more and more ethereal in structure, until finally the dematerialization was complete and His soul had cast off all material form, shape and substance, and so passed on to the higher planes of being. * * * * * In view of this explanation, does not the commonly accepted version seem childish and crude? Can any one at all familiar with the laws and phenomena of the land Behind the Veil, suppose that _a physical body_ could or would pass on to the planes in which the ordinary forms of matter do not exist? Such ideas are fit only for minds which find it necessary to think of the "resurrection of the body" of all departed souls, in order to conceive of Immortality. To the occultist, the physical body is merely a temporary vehicle for the soul which the latter discards at the proper time. It has nothing to do with the real being of the soul. It is merely the shell which is discarded by the soul, as the chrysalis shell is discarded by the butterfly when it spreads its wings for its aerial flight into a new world. All these ideas about the immortality of the mortal body are the product of materialistic minds unused to thinking of the higher planes of life, and unable to grasp even the mental concept regarding the same. Of the earth, earthly, are these conceptions and ideas. And the sooner that Christianity sheds them as discarded shells the sooner will the church experience that revival of true spirituality that devout souls see the need of, and for which they are so earnestly praying. The churches are so wedded to materialistic thought that a preacher does not even hint at the existence of phases of life above the physical lest he be termed "a spiritualist" or accused of being "spooky." In the name of Truth, is the teaching, that _man is a spiritual being_, inconsistent with the teachings of Christ and the records of the Scripture? Must one forego all such beliefs, in favor of a heathenish creed of "physical body" resurrection of the dead--an immortality in the worn-out mortal body long since discarded? Which is the true spiritual teaching? Can there be any doubt regarding the same in a mind willing to think for itself? It seems sad that the orthodox churches do not see this, and cease forcing out of their congregations all thinkers who dare assert the existence of a soul independent of the physical body. What is the use of a soul, if the physical bodies of the dead are to be resurrected in order that their owners may enjoy immortality? And where are the souls of these dead bodies now residing and abiding pending the coming of the Last Day? Are the souls of the dead with their bodies? If not, then they must be living a life independent of the physical body--and if such be the case, why should they afterward be required to take on their worn-out physical bodies which they have managed so well without during their disembodied life? What becomes of those who had diseased, deformed or frail bodies during their mortal life--will they be compelled to inhabit these bodies through all eternity? Will the owners of aged, worn out bodies be compelled to re-assume them at the Last Day? If not, why the necessity of a physical body at all, in the future life? Do the angels have physical bodies? If not, why should souls require them on higher planes? Think over these questions and then realize how materialistic is the current Christian conception, when compared with that of Mystic Christianity, which teaches spiritual evolution from lower to higher planes of being, and on to planes of being beyond even the faintest conception of men of the present day. * * * * * The occult traditions teach that during the forty days of Jesus' appearance in the Astral Body, He imparted many of the Higher Truths to His disciples. They state that He even took some of them out of their bodies and showed them the higher Astral Planes of Being. He also informed them regarding the real nature of His mission which He now clearly saw with His spiritual mind, the cloud of His mortal mind being now removed. He told them that the real work of His followers was the sowing of the seed of the Truth, without regard to immediate results. He told them that the real fruition would not come for many centuries--yea, not until the passing of over two thousand years or more. He told them that the passage of the centuries would be like the preparing of the soil for the great work of the Truth, and that afar in the distance would be the real fruit season. He taught them regarding the Second Coming of Christ, when the real Truth of His teachings should become apparent to mankind and the true Life of the Spirit should be lived by the race. He taught them that their work was to keep alight the Flame of the Spirit and to pass it on to worthy followers. This and many other things He told them, before He passed on. And the mystics teach that He still lives in the world, diffused among all the living souls on earth, striving ever to lead them to a recognition of the Real Self--the Spirit Within. He is with us ever as an Abiding Spirit, a Comforter, a Helper, an Elder Brother. He is not gone from us! He is here with us now and forever, in Actual Spirit Communion! The Lord hath indeed Risen--Risen from Mortal Form to Immortal Spiritual Existence! THE NINTH LESSON. THE INNER TEACHINGS. The first and main phase of the Inner Teachings of Mystic Christianity is that connected with the Mystery of the Life of Jesus. The outer teachings give but an imperfect view of the real life and nature of the Master, and theologians have built up an edifice of dogmatic theory around the same. The Mystery of the Life of Jesus forms the subject of some important Inner Teachings of the Mystic Fraternities and Occult Brotherhoods, and is considered by them to be the foundation of the other teachings. And so we shall consider this phase of the subject at this point. In the first place we must remember that the soul of Jesus was different from the souls of other men. His was a "virgin birth"--not in the commonly accepted sense of the term, but in the occult sense as explained in the second lesson of this series. His soul was fresh from the hand of the Creator--His spirit had not been compelled to work through repeated incarnations, pressing forward for expression through humble and ignoble forms. It was free from taint, and as pure as the Fountain from which is flowed. It was a virgin soul in every sense of the term. This being so, it follows that it was not bound by the Karma of previous incarnations--as is the case with the ordinary soul. It had no entangling ties--it had no seeds of desire and action planted in previous lives, which were pressing forward toward expression in His life. He was a Free Spirit--an Unbound Soul. And therefore He was not only unbound by any Karma of His own, but was also free (by nature) from the Karma of the race or of the world. The absence of personal Karma left Him free from the selfish personal Desire which binds men to the wheel of action and personal ambition. He had no desire or thought for personal aggrandizement or glory, and was perfectly free (by nature) to work for the good of the race as an outside observer and helper, without suffering the pains and sorrows of race-life, had He so wished. But He chose otherwise, as we shall see in a moment. The absence of Race-Karma, or World-Karma, freed Him from the necessity of the pains of humanity, which are a part of its collective Karma. He would have been perfectly able to live a life absolutely free from the pains, trials and troubles that are the common lot of Man, owing to the Race-Karma. He would have escaped persecution, physical and mental pains, and even death, had He so elected. But He chose these things of His own free will, in order to accomplish the great work that He saw before Him as a World-Savior. In order for Jesus to enact His part as the Redeemer and Savior of the race, it was necessary for Him to take upon Himself His share of the Karma of the race--virtually taking upon Himself the "sins of the world." Before He could lift the burden from the race of men, He must become a man among men. To understand this more clearly we must remember that to a being such as Jesus--a soul free from Karma--there would be no such thing as temptation, longings, desires, or any of the mental states of the ordinary man with the Karma of successive past incarnations resting within him as seeds of action pressing forward ever for unfoldment and expression. Jesus, the free soul, would have been practically an outside observer of the world's affairs, and not influenced by any of its ordinary incentives to action. In this state He could have aided the world as a teacher and instructor, but He would not have been able to accomplish His great task of Redeeming the world, in its highest spiritual significance, as we shall see as we proceed. It was necessary for Him to take upon Himself the burden of the earth-life in order to become the Savior of the people of the earth. The occult teachings inform us that during His sojourn abroad, Jesus was simply a teacher, with but a dim perception of His real mission. But gradually He began to experience periods of Illumination in which He recognized His real nature and the difference between Himself and other men. Then came to Him the conviction of the mighty work that lay before Him in the redemption of the race, and He began to see the necessity of entering into the Karmic circle of the race in order to carry out the plan. This came gradually, by slow degrees, and the final sacrifice was made only in the Wilderness after His Baptism by John. In the Wilderness, after His long fast and His days of meditation, the way opened up for Him to take upon Himself the burden of the Karma of the earth people. In that scene of the most tremendous spiritual struggle that the earth has ever witnessed, Jesus deliberately bent His shoulders that the weight be placed upon His back. From that moment the earth-souls received a blessing far beyond the comprehension of the mind of the ordinary man. Into the Karma-bound circle came this mighty soul, animated by Pure Spirit, for the purpose of lifting a great portion of the burden, and of joining in the work of the actual unfoldment and redemption of the race. For be it remembered that, being a free soul animated by Pure Spirit, Jesus was A GOD--not a man, although inhabiting the fleshly garments of humanity. His power was superior to that of many of the high intelligences scattered throughout the universe, and playing important parts in the cosmic processes. Jesus was Pure Spirit incarnate in human form, with all the powers of a God. Although of course _subordinate in expression_ to the Absolute--the Great Spirit of Spirit--He was in His essential nature the same in substance. Verily, as He Himself said, "I and the Father are One." His youthful mind was not able to grasp the truth of His real nature, but as that human instrument became perfected by age and training, He realized the Truth and perceived His own Divinity. But even a God, such as he, could not raise up the world from its burden of Karma, by acting _from the outside_. Under the Cosmic Laws, established by the Absolute, such work could be performed only _from within_ the circle of earth-life. And so Jesus saw that to raise up Man, He must become a Man. That is, to help lift the earth's Karma, He must enter into it, and place Himself within its Circle of Influence. _And this He did_. We wonder if our readers can realize, even faintly, just what this sacrifice meant? Think of a Pure Spirit--a Free Soul--so filled with the love for the race of men as to renounce deliberately, for aeons of time, total immunity from all mortal existence, and willingly to place itself under the burden of pain, woe, misery and sin which formed the earth-people's Karma. It was a thousand-fold greater sacrifice than would be that of a Man of the Highest spiritual and mental development--an Emerson, for example--who, in order to raise up the race of earth-worms, would deliberately place himself within the being and nature of the Group-Soul animating the race of earthworms, and then stay within its influence, striving ever upward and onward until finally, after aeons and aeons of time, he was able to bring up the earthworm Group Soul to the level of Man. Think of this, and then realize what a sacrifice Jesus made of Himself. In the Wilderness, when Jesus took the final steps of renunciation and sacrifice, He at once passed within the circle of the Race Karma and laid Himself open to all the pain, misery, temptations and limitations of a Man. His power, of course, remained with Him, but He was no longer a God outside of the world-life, but an imprisoned God working from within the race, using His mighty power, but bound by the Karmic Law. He became open to influences from which previously He had been immune. For instance when He was "tempted" by the Devil of Personal Attainment, and urged to seek worldly glory and renown, He was tempted only because He had taken on the world's Karma and was subject to its laws. As a God, He would not have felt the temptation any more than a man would feel the temptation of the earthworm. But as a man He was subject to the desires and ambitions that perplex and "devil" the race. And according to the rule that the greater the mental development the greater the power of such temptation toward self-aggrandizement (because of the mind being able to see more clearly the opportunities), Jesus was subjected to a test that would have been impossible to an ordinary man. Jesus, knowing full well that He had in His possession the power to manifest the things with which He was tempted, was compelled to fight off the temptation to place Himself at the head of the race as its ruler--as the King of the World. He was shown this picture to compare with the other whose last scene was Calvary--and He was called upon to feel the desire of the race for such things, even unto its highest degree. Imagine the desire for personal aggrandizement of all the world thought beating upon His mind demanding the expression which could be had through Him alone. And then imagine the struggle required to defeat this opposing power. Think of what the ordinary man has to meet and overcome to conquer the desire for Personal Aggrandizement--and then think of what the Master had to fight, with the focussed desire of the entire Race-Thought striving to express itself through Him! Truly the Sins of the World bore down upon Him with their mighty weight. And yet He knew that He had taken upon Himself this affliction by entering upon the Life of Man. And He met it like a Man of Men. It was only by fixing His mind fully and firmly upon what He knew to be His Real Self--the Spirit Within His soul, and holding His mind "one-pointed" upon the fact--that He was able to fight the fight and conquer. Seeing the Truth, He could see the folly and illusion of all that the world had to offer, and He could put forth His mighty Will bidding the Tempter retire from the scene and from His mind. It was in this full knowledge of His Spirit--His Real Self--that He was able to rebuke the Tempter, saying, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God!" He held fast to His realization of the God Within--the Spirit that was within Him and all men--and thus denied out of existence the power of the earth-things--the illusions of mortality--the _maya_ of the race. But not alone this and other weaknesses of man's mortal nature were constantly besieging the mind of the Master after He had taken upon Himself the Karma of the Earth. He had also taken upon Himself the mortal life consequent of the human frame which He inhabited. He must live, suffer and die--even as all men--and according to the law of mortality. And so He moved forward toward the end, knowing fully what lay before Him. He, a God, had taken upon Himself all these attributes of mortality, in order to be able to perform His work as the Redeemer and Savior of the race. And so, He lived, and suffered and died--even as you and I. He drank the cup to the dregs, suffering as only such a finely organized mental nature could suffer. And, men, poor creatures, speak of His sufferings as terminating with the last breath upon the cross. Why, they only _began_ there! For know ye, that Jesus the Christ is still within the race of men, suffering their woes, paying with them their penalty, every day, every hour--yea, and must remain so throughout the ages, until finally the soul of every man, yea, even that of the last man; the most degraded man in the world, is fully cleansed of the Karmic taint, and thus fully "redeemed" and "saved." And within the soul of every man is found the Christ Principle, striving ever to elevate and lift up the individual toward that realization of the Real Self--and this is what "redemption" and "salvation" really means. Not a saving from hell-fire, but a saving from the fire of carnality, and mortality. Not a redemption from imaginary sins, but a redemption from the muck and mire of earth-life. The God within you is like the fabled Hindu god who descended into the body of a pig and then forgot Himself. It is to bring you to a realization that you are a god and not a pig, that Jesus, the Master, is working within your soul as the Christ Principle. Have you never heard His voice, crying from within your soul, "Come out--come out of your pig-nature and realize the god that you verily are!" It is this "recognition, realization and manifestation of the god within you" that constitutes "salvation" and "redemption." The Occult Teachings tell us that Jesus, after His final disappearance from before the eyes of His apostles, passed on to the higher planes of the Astral World where He rapidly discarded all of His astral and mental vehicles which the soul had used in its manifestation. The Astral Body and its corresponding higher sheaths were cast off and discarded. That is, all except the very highest of all. Had He discarded every vestige of individual soul-existence His spirit would have immediately merged itself with the One Spirit--the Absolute--from which it had originally proceeded and Jesus, as an entity, would have disappeared entirely within the Ocean of the One Spirit. _This highest state of all He had deliberately resigned until the passage of ages, in order that He might accomplish His work as the World-Savior_. He retained the highest vehicle--the Spiritual Mind in its highest shade of expression--in order that as an entity He might labor for the race. And so, He exists at this time--one in substance with the Father, but yet maintaining an apparently separate entity-existence. But this must be remembered, that Jesus, _as Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph_, no longer exists. When He cast off the lower vehicles of His personality, His personality disappeared. But His _individuality_ persisted--that is, He is still HE, although His personality has disappeared, leaving Him--the real Him--existing as the CHRIST PRINCIPLE. By the above statement, we mean that when a soul reaches the highest spiritual stage short of absolute absorption into the One Spirit, _it is no longer a person_, but exists as _a principle_. But that principle is not an inanimate mechanical force--it is a living, knowing, acting principle of life. This occult fact cannot be explained in the words of men, for no terms have been coined by which men can speak of it. It is only indirectly that we can hope to have even the advanced student grasp the fact. Jesus exists today, as the Christ Principle which _actually lives_ and acts, but which is not confined in a body of any kind, using the word "body" in its accustomed sense. As the Christ Principle or "The Christ" He is mingled with the life of the human race, and may be found immanent in the mind of every man, woman and child that has ever existed, does now exist, or will exist _so long as Man is Man_. Not only is this true of those who have lived since His passage from the physical body, but it is equally true of those who lived before His birth. This apparently paradoxical statement may be understood when we remember that these souls did not "die," but only "passed on" to the Astral Plane, from whence they re-incarnated in due time. The Christ (for so we shall speak of the present-state of Jesus) even entered into, and still abides in, the Astral Plane, as well as upon the Material Plane, for wherever the souls of men abide--or whatever place their residence may be--there is found The Christ, ever working for the salvation and redemption of the race. On the Astral Plane He is working in the minds of the souls abiding there, urging them to cast off the dross of earth-desires and to fix the aim upon higher things, to the end that their re-incarnations may be under improved conditions. On the Physical Plane He is working in the hearts and minds of the earth-people, striving ever to uplift to higher things. His aim is ever toward the liberation of the Spirit from its material bonds--the Realization of the Real Self. And so, in the hearts of all men, Christ is living, suffering, and being crucified every day, and this must continue until Man is redeemed and saved, even the last man. This wonderful sacrifice of Christ far surpasses the physical sacrifice of Jesus, the man. Try to imagine, if you can, even the faintest pangs of a being so exalted compelled to dwell in the world of the hearts and minds of a humanity so steeped in materiality as our race, knowing always the possibilities of the souls if they would but reach upward to higher things, and yet constantly suffering the knowledge of the base, carnal, material thoughts and acts flowing from these souls. Is not this the extreme refinement of torture? Does not the agony of the cross sink into insignificance beside such spiritual agony? You rail at the cruelty of the Jews who crucified their Savior, and yet you crucify _your_ Savior, with a thousandfold degree of torture, every day of your life, by your persistence in the carnalities and foolishness of mortal thought and action. The mighty uplift of the world since the death of Jesus, of which the present is but a faint prophecy of the future, has been due largely to the energizing influence of The Christ in the hearts and minds of the race. The sense of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, which is now manifesting so powerfully in the world of Men, is but an instance of the work of the Christ--the Savior and Redeemer. And the highest dreams of the exalted souls of this generation are but inadequate visions of what the future will hold for the race. The work is just beginning to bud--the blossom and the fruit will render this earth a far more glorious place than even the highest ideals of heaven entertained by the faithful in the past. But even these things of the future will be poor things, when compared with the life of the higher planes which await the race when it has demonstrated its fitness to pass on and on and on to these greater glories. And ever and ever The Christ is working, and toiling and striving and suffering, in His efforts to raise humanity even one petty degree in the spiritual scale of being. The Christ is always with us, and if we but recognize His presence we shall be able to feel that warm, loving response to our soul-hunger and spiritual thirst which will result in our being given that we are so longingly craving. Here within us dwells The Christ, ever responding to the cry of Faith, "Believe in Me and ye shall be saved." What a promise this is seen to be when properly understood! What a source of power and comfort is opened up to every human soul when the Inner Truth underlying the teachings is understood! Mystic Christianity brings this Message of Truth to each and all of you who read these lines. Will you accept it? We would ask our students to pause at this point and contrast the teachings of Mystic Christianity regarding the doctrine of Christ, the Savior, with the corresponding teachings of the current Orthodox Theology. On the one hand we have Jesus the God-Man deliberately choosing the work of the World Redemption and Salvation, and descending into the circle of the World-Karma, relinquishing the privilege of His Godhood and taking upon Himself the penalties of Manhood; not only undergoing the sufferings of the physical man, but also binding Himself upon the Cross of Humanity for ages, that by His spiritual presence in and of the race He might lift up humanity to godhood. On the other hand, we have a picture of an angry Deity, manifesting purely human emotion and temper, bent on revenging himself upon the race which he had created, and demanding its eternal punishment in hell-fire; then the same Deity creating a Son whom he sent into the world, that this Son might be the victim of a blood-atonement and death upon the cross, that the Deity's wrath might be appeased and the blood of this Divine Lamb be accepted to wash out the sins of the world. Can you not see which is The Truth and which is the perversion? The one is from the pure fountain of Spiritual knowledge--the other originated in the minds of ignorant theologians who were unable to grasp and understand the Mystic teachings, but who built up a system of theology in accordance with their own undeveloped minds; making a God who was but a reflection of their own cruel animal natures, demanding, as did they themselves, blood and pain--physical torture and death--in order to appease a most un-Divine wrath and vengeance. Which of the two conceptions seems most in accord with the intuitive promptings of the Something Within? Which brings the greater approval from The Christ within your heart? THE CHRISTIAN CREED. There are three creeds recognized by the Christian Church--the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Of these, the first two are commonly used, the third being not so well known and being seldom used. The Apostles' Creed, which is the most commonly used, is believed (in its present form) to be of later origin than the Nicene Creed, and many authorities believe it to be a corrupted rendering of the original declaration of faith of the Early Christians. It is as follows: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he arose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." The Nicene Creed was drawn up and adopted by the Council of Nice in the year A.D. 325. As originally adopted it ended with the words "I believe in the Holy Ghost," the present concluding clauses being added by the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, excepting the words "and the Son," which were inserted by the Council of Toledo, A.D. 589. It is as follows: "I believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets; and I believe in one catholic and apostolic church; I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." Let us now briefly examine the principal statements of these creeds, which were compiled centuries after Jesus' death, viewing them by the light of Mystic Christianity. "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible."--(_Nicene Creed_.) The form of the above fundamental principle of Christian belief is taken from the Nicene Creed, which is somewhat fuller than the similar declaration in the Apostles' Creed. It requires no comment. It is a statement of belief in a One Creative Power, from which all things have proceeded. There is no attempt made to "explain" the nature of the Absolute, or to endow it with any of the human attributes which theologians have delighted in bestowing upon the One. It merely asserts a belief in the existence of One Supreme Being--which is all that is possible to man--all else is ignorant impertinence. "And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost."--(_Apostles' Creed_.) "And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father."--(_Nicene Creed_.) In this declaration, the belief in the Divinity of Jesus is made. The Apostles' Creed shows the cruder conception, rather inclining toward the perverted idea of the conception of the Virgin by the aid of the Holy Ghost, similar to the origin of the hero-gods of the different religions in which the father was one of the gods and the mother a woman. But the Nicene creed gives at least a strong hint of the mystic teachings. It speaks of Him as "begotten of his Father"--"begotten, not made." The expressions, "God of God; Light of Light; very God of very God," show the idea of identical spiritual substance in the Spirit. And then the remarkable expression, "being of one substance with the Father," shows a wonderful understanding of the Mystery of The Christ. For, as the mystic teachings show, Jesus was a pure Spirit, free from the entangling desires and clogging Karma of the world. Identical in substance with the Father. "The Father and I are one," as He said. Is there anything in the Orthodox Theology that throws such light on this subject as is shed by Mystic Christianity's teaching regarding the nature of the soul of Jesus? "Born of the Virgin Mary."--(_Apostles' Creed_.) "Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man."--(_Nicene Creed_.) The Nicene Creed here gives a surprisingly clear statement of the Mystic teachings. "Who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven" shows the purpose of the incarnation. "Came down from heaven" shows pre-existence in the bosom of the Absolute. "And was incarnate" shows the descent of the Spirit into the flesh in the womb of Mary. "And was made man" shows the taking on of the physical body of the infant in the womb. Does not the Mystic teaching give a clearer light on this statement of the Creed? "Was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead."--(_Apostles' Creed_.) "He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father."--(_Nicene Creed_.) The "descent into hell" of the Apostles' Creed of course meant the passing to the place of disembodied souls--the lower Astral Plane. Even the orthodox teachers do not now pretend that the term "hell" meant the place of torture presided over by the Devil, which theology has invented to frighten people into the churches. "The third day he arose from the dead" (and the corresponding passage in the Nicene Creed) refers to the appearance in the Astral Body--the return from the Astral Plane in which He had sojourned for the three days following the crucifixion. "And ascended into heaven"--this passage shows the belief that He returned to the place from which He came, for the Nicene Creed has stated that he "_came down from heaven_ and was incarnate ... and was made man." The passage in both creeds stating that He then took his place "on the right hand of the Father" is intended to show that He took the place of the highest honor in the gift of the Father. The mystic teachings explain this by showing that The Christ is separated from The Father by but the most ethereal intervening of spiritual substance, and that He is a Cosmic Principle second in importance only to the Father. Truly this is the place of honor on "the right hand of the Father." "He shall come to fudge the quick and the dead." In this passage we see the intimation that not only with the "quick" or living people is The Christ concerned, but also with the "dead," that is, with those who "passed out" before and after His time and who have passed on to the Astral World, as we have explained in this lesson. Whether or not the framers of the Creed so understood it--whether or not they were deluded by the tradition of the "Day of Judgment"--certainly the Early Christians, or rather, the mystics among them, understood the teachings as we have given them and spoke of Him as "living in the dead as well as in the living," as one of the occult records expresses it. "The communion of saints" is the spiritual understanding of the Mysteries by the Illumined Ones. "The forgiveness of sins" is the overcoming of the carnal mind and desires. "The resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" is the promise of life beyond the grave, and not the crude idea of the physical resurrection of the body, which has crept into the Apostles' Creed, evidently having been inserted at a later date in order to bolster up the pet theories of a school of theologians. Note that the Nicene Creed says merely "the dead" and not "the body." The version of the teachings preserved by the Mystics has a corresponding passage, "And we know the _truth_ of the _deathlessness of the soul_." (The italics are ours.) The consideration of remaining passages in the creeds, relating to the existence of the "Holy Ghost," must be deferred until our next lesson. THE TENTH LESSON THE SECRET DOCTRINE. The concluding statement of the Creeds (brought over from the preceding lesson) refers to the Holy Ghost. "I believe in the Holy Ghost." (_Apostles' Creed_.) "And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life." (_Nicene Creed_.) To the average Christian the nature of the Holy Ghost--one of the beings of the Trinity--is veiled in obscurity, and is generally pronounced "not to be understood." A careful examination of the orthodox Christian writings will show the student that the Church is very much at sea regarding this subject, which should be of the greatest importance to its priests and congregations. Ask the average intelligent churchman regarding the nature of the Holy Ghost, and see for yourself the vague, contradictory and unsatisfactory concepts held by the person questioned. Then turn to the encyclopaedias and other books of reference, and see how little is known or taught regarding this important subject. It is only when the teachings of Mystic Christianity are consulted that one receives any light on the subject. The Occult Teachings are quite explicit on this subject so fraught with difficulty and lack of comprehension on the part of the orthodox teachers and students. The teaching of Mystic Christianity, regarding the Holy Ghost, may be summed up by the great general statement that: _The Holy Ghost is the Absolute in its phase of Manifestation, as compared to its phase of Unmanifestation_--_Manifest Being as compared with Unmanifest Being_--_God Create as compared with God Uncreate_--_God acting as the Creative Principle as compared to God as The Absolute Being_. The student is asked to read over the above general statement a number of times and to concentrate his or her attention carefully upon it, before proceeding further with the lesson. To understand the above statement it is necessary for the student to remember that the Absolute may be thought of as existing in _two phases. Not as two persons or beings_, remember, but as in _two phases_. There is but One Being--there can be but One--but we may think of that One as existing in two phases. One of these phases is Being Unmanifest; the other, Being Manifest. _Being Unmanifest_ is the One in its phase of Absolute Being, undifferentiated, unmanifested, uncreated; without attributes, qualities, or natures. It is impossible for the human mind to grasp the above concept of Being Manifest in the sense of being able to think of it as a "Thing, or Something." This because of the essential being of it. If it were like anything that we can think of, it would not be the Absolute, nor would it be Unmanifest. Everything that we can think of as a "thing" is a relative thing--a manifestation into objective being. But we are compelled by the very laws of our reason to admit that the Absolute Being Unmanifest exists, for the Manifest and Relative Universe and Life _must have_ proceeded and emanated from a Fundamental Reality, which must be Absolute and Unmanifest. And this Being which our highest reason causes us to assume to exist is Being Unmanifest--God the Father--who cannot be known through the senses--whose existence is made known to us only through Pure Reason, or through the workings of the Spirit within us. In the material sense "God is Unknowable"--but in the higher sense He may be known to the Spirit of Man, and His existence may be _known_ and proven by the exercise of the highest faculties of the reason. Being Unmanifest is the One in its _actual_ existence and being. If all the world of objective life and manifestation, even to its highest forms, were withdrawn from manifestation, then there would be left--what? Simply and solely, Being Unmanifest--God the Father, alone. Into His Being all else would be withdrawn. Outside of Him there would be _nothing_. He would be Himself--One--existing in the phase of Being Unmanifest. We are aware that this idea may seem to be "too abstruse" for the minds of some of our students at first reading--it may appear like an assertion of a Being who is Non-Being. But, be not too hasty--take time--and your mind will assimilate the concept, and will find that it has a corresponding Truth imbedded in its inmost recesses, and then it will know this to be the Truth. And then will it recognize the existence of God the Father, as compared with God, the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, as we have said, is the Absolute in its phase of Manifest Being. That is, it is God as manifest in the Spirit of Life, which is immanent in, and manifest in, all objective life and phenomena in the Cosmos or Universe. In previous series of lessons in the Yogi Philosophy, we have shown you that there was a Spirit of Life immanent in, and manifesting through, all forms of life. We have also shown you that everything in the Universe is alive--down to even the minerals, and the atoms composing matter. We have shown you that inasmuch as the Spirit of Life is the source of all Manifestations in the universe, and the "God in the machine" of all phenomena of force, matter and life, then it naturally follows that there can be nothing dead in the world--that there is LIFE manifesting in every object, varying only in the degree of manifestation. In our "Advanced Lessons" and in "Gnani Yoga" this subject is considered in detail. Then what is this Spirit of Life? If God is All, then it cannot be Something other than God. But it cannot well be God the Uncreate--the Absolute in its Absolute phase--the Being Unmanifest. Then what can it be? The student will see that the natural and logical answer to the question with which we have closed the preceding paragraph must be: Being Manifest--God in Creation--the Holy Ghost! And this is the Occult Teaching concerning this great mystery of Christianity. And see how well the framers of the Nicene Creed grasped the traditions of the Early Church, when it said: "And I believe in the Holy Ghost, _the Lord and Giver of Life_." The teaching regarding the Immanent God lies at the foundation of all of the Mystic teachings of all peoples, races, and times. No matter under what names the teaching is promulgated--no matter what the name of the creed or religion in which it is found imbedded--it is still the Truth regarding the God Immanent in all forms of life, force, and matter. And it always is found forming the Secret Doctrine of the philosophy, creed or religion. The Outer Teaching generally confines itself to the instruction of the undeveloped minds of the people, and cloaks the real Truth behind some conception of a Personal Deity, or Deities--gods and demi-gods, who are supposed to dwell afar off in some heavenly realm--some great Being who created the world and then left it to run itself, giving it but occasional attention, and reserving his consideration principally for the purpose of rewarding those who gave him homage, worship and sacrifices and punishing those who failed to conform with the said requirements. These personal deities are believed generally to favor the particular people who give them their names and temples, and accordingly to hate the enemies of the said tribe or nation. But the Secret Doctrine or Esoteric Teaching of all religions has brushed aside these primitive conceptions of undeveloped minds, and teach the Truth of the Immanent God--the Power inherent in and abiding in all life and manifestations. And Christianity is no exception to the rule, and in its declaration of faith in the Holy Ghost its esoteric principle is stated. While the tendency of the orthodox churches today is to say very little about God the Holy Ghost, for the reason that it cannot explain the meaning of the term, Mystic Christianity boldly declares its allegiance to this principle of the earlier teachings and reverently repeats the words of the Nicene Creed, "I believe in the Holy Ghost, THE LORD AND GIVER OF LIFE." * * * * * That there is a Secret Doctrine of Christianity is not generally known to the majority who claim the name of "Christian." But it has always been known to the mystics in and out of the church, and its flame has been kept steadily alight by a few devoted souls who were chosen for this sacred task. The Secret Doctrine of Christianity did not originate with Jesus, for He, Himself, was an Initiate of Mysteries which had been known and taught for centuries before His birth. As St. Augustine has said: "That which is called the Christian Religion existed among the ancients _and never did not exist_, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity." We would like to quote here a few paragraphs from the writings of a well known writer on religious subjects, with which statement we heartily agree, although our views on certain other points of teaching do not agree with those of this writer. He says: "It may be said that in the present day these doctrines are simply not taught in the churches; how is that? It is because Christianity has forgotten much of its original teachings, because it is now satisfied with only part, and a very small part, of what it originally knew. 'They still have the same scriptures,' you will say. Yes, but those very scriptures tell you often of something more, which is now lost. What is meant by Christ's constant references to the 'Mysteries of the Kingdom of God'--by His frequent statement to His disciples that the full and true interpretation could be given only to them, and that to others He must speak in parables? Why does He perpetually use the technical terms connected with the well known mystery-teaching of antiquity? What does St. Paul mean when he says, 'We speak wisdom among them which are perfect'--a well known technical term for the men at a certain stage of initiation? Again and again he uses terms of the same sort; he speaks of 'the wisdom of God in mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world began, and which none even of the princes of this world know'--a statement which could not by any possibility have been truthfully made if he had been referring merely to ordinary Christian teaching which is openly preached before all men. His immediate followers, the Fathers of the Church, knew perfectly well what he meant, for they all use precisely the same phraseology. Clement of Alexandria, one of the earliest and greatest of all, tells us that 'It is not lawful to reveal to the profane persons the Mysteries of the Word.'" "Another consideration shows us clearly how much of this early teaching has been lost. The church now devotes herself solely to producing good men, and points to the _saint_ as her crowning glory and achievement. But in older days she claimed to be able to do much more than that. When she had made a man a saint, her work with him was only just beginning, for then only was he fit for the training and teaching which she _could_ give him then, but cannot now, because she has forgotten her ancient knowledge. Then she had three definite stages in her course of training--Purification, Illumination and Perfection. Now she contents herself with the preliminary Purification, and has no Illumination to give." "Read what Clement says: 'Purity is only a negative state, valuable chiefly as the condition of insight. He who has been purified in Baptism and then initiated into the Little Mysteries (has acquired, that is to say, the habits of self-control and reflection) becomes rife for the Greater Mysteries for the Gnosis, the scientific knowledge of God.' In another place he says: 'Knowledge is more than faith. Faith is a summary knowledge of urgent truths, suitable for people who are in a hurry; but knowledge is scientific faith.' And his pupil Origen writes of 'the popular, irrational faith' which leads to what he calls physical Christianity, based upon the gospel history, as opposed to the spiritual Christianity conferred by the Gnosis of Wisdom. Speaking of teaching founded upon historical narrative, he says, 'What better method could be devised to assist the masses?' But for those who are wise he has always the higher teachings, which are given only to those who have proved themselves worthy of it. This teaching is not lost; the church cast it out when she expelled the great Gnostic Doctors, but it has nevertheless been preserved, and it is precisely that Wisdom which we are studying--precisely that which we find to answer all the problems of life, to give us a rational rule by which to live, to be to us a veritable gospel of good news from on high." St. Paul indicates the existence of the Secret Doctrine of Christianity, when he says to the Corinthians: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for ye were not yet able to bear it; nay, not even now are ye able, for ye are yet carnal." (_I Cor. 3:1._) Jesus said: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you." (_Matt. 7:6._) St. Clement of Alexandria has said regarding the above saying of Jesus: "Even now I fear, as it is said, 'to cast the pearls before swine, lest they tread them underfoot, and turn and rend us.' For it is difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent words respecting the true Light to swinish and untrained hearers." In the first century after Christ, the term "The Mysteries of Jesus" was frequently used by the Christian teachers, and the Inner Circle of Christians was recognized as a body of advanced souls who had developed so far as to be able to comprehend these mysteries. The following passage from St. Mark (4:10-12) is interesting in this connection: "And when He was alone, they that were about Him with the twelve asked of Him the parables. And He said unto them, 'Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand.'" The same writer says (4:33-34): "And with many such parables spake He the word unto them, as they were able to hear it; and without a parable spake He not unto them; but privately to His own disciples He expounded all things." Jesus said to His disciples (_John 16:12._): "I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now." The Occult Teachings state that when He returned in His astral form, after the crucifixion, He taught them many important and advanced mystic truths, "speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." (_Acts 1:3._) The early Christian Fathers spake and wrote openly regarding the Christian Mysteries, as all students of Church History well know. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, writes to certain others hoping that they are "well versed in the sacred Scriptures and that nothing is hidden from you; but to me this privilege is not yet granted." (_The Epistle of Polycarp, chapter 7._) Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, says that he is "not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. For I now begin to be a disciple, and I speak to you as my fellow disciple." He also addresses them as being "initiated into the Mysteries of the Gospel, with St. Paul, the holy, the martyred." Again: "Might I not write to you things more full of mystery? But I fear to do so, lest I should inflict injury on you who are but babes. Pardon me in this respect, lest, as not being able to receive their weighty import, ye should be strangled by them. For even I, though I am bound and am able to understand heavenly things, the angelic orders, and the different sorts of angels and hosts, the distinction between powers and dominions, and the diversities between thrones and authorities, the mightiness of the aeons, and the preëminence of the cherubim and seraphim, the sublimity of the Spirit, the kingdom of the Lord, and above all the incomparable majesty of Almighty God--though I am acquainted with these things, yet am I not therefore by any means perfect, nor am I such a disciple as Paul or Peter." Ignatius also speaks of the High Priest or Hierophant, of whom he asserts that he was the one "to whom the holy of holies has been committed, and who alone has been entrusted with the secrets of God." (_Epistles of Ignatius._) St. Clement of Alexandria was a mystic of high rank in the Inner Circle of the Church. His writings are full of allusions to the Christian Mysteries. He says among other things that his writings were "a miscellany of Gnostic notes, according to the time philosophy," which teachings he had received from Pontaemus, his instructor or spiritual teacher. He says of these teachings: "The Lord allowed us to communicate of those divine Mysteries and of that holy light, to those who are able to receive them. He did not certainly disclose to the many what did not belong to the many; but to the few to whom He knew that they belonged, who were capable of receiving and being moulded according to them. But secret things are intrusted to speech, not to writing, as is the case with God. And if one say that it is written, 'There is nothing secret which shall not be revealed, nor hidden, which shall not be disclosed,' let him also hear from us, that to him who hears secretly, even what is secret shall be manifested. This is what was predicted by this oracle. And to him who is able secretly to observe what is delivered to him, that which is veiled shall be disclosed as truth; and what is hidden to the many shall appear manifest to the few. The mysteries are delivered mystically, that what is spoken may be in the mouth of the speaker; rather not in his voice, but in his understanding. The writing of these memoranda of mine, I well know, is weak when compared with that spirit full of grace, which I was privileged to hear. But it will be an image to recall the archetype to him who was struck with the Thyrsus." (We may state here that the Thyrsus was the mystic-wand carried by the Initiates in the Mystic Brotherhoods--the Initiate being first tapped with it, and then receiving it from the Hierophant, at the ceremony of formal Initiation.) Clement adds: "We profess not to explain secret things sufficiently--far from it--but only to recall them to memory, whether we have forgot aught, or whether for the purpose of not forgetting. Many things, well I know, have escaped us, through length of time, that have dropped away unwritten. There are then some things of which we have no recollection; for the power that was in the blessed men was great." "There are also some things which remain unnoted long, which have now escaped; and others which are effaced, having faded away in the mind itself, since such a task is not easy to those not experienced; these I revive in my commentaries. Some things I purposely omit, in the exercise of a wise selection, afraid to write what I guarded against speaking; not grudging--for that were wrong--but fearing for my readers lest they should stumble by taking them in a wrong sense; and, as the proverb says, we should be found 'reaching a sword to a child.' For it is impossible that what has been written should not escape, although remaining published by me. But being always revolved, using the one only voice, that of writing, they answer nothing to him that makes inquiries beyond what is written; for they require of necessity the aid of someone, either of him who wrote or of someone else, who walked in his footsteps. Some things my treatise will hint; on some it will linger; some it will merely mention. It will try to speak imperceptibly, to exhibit secretly, and to demonstrate silently." (_The Stromata of St. Clement._) St. Clement, in the same work from which the above quotation was taken, has a chapter entitled "The Mysteries of the Faith, not to be Divulged to all." In it he states that inasmuch as his writings might be seen by all men, the unwise as well as the wise, "it is requisite, therefore, to hide in a Mystery the wisdom spoken, in which the Son of God is taught." He then adds, "For it is difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent words to swinish and untrained hearers. For scarcely could anything which they could bear be more ludicrous than these to the multitude; nor any subjects on the other hand more admirable or more inspiring to those of noble nature. But the wise do not utter with their mouths what they reason in council. 'But what ye hear in the ear,' said the Lord, 'proclaim upon the houses; bidding them receive the _secret traditions of the true knowledge_, and expound them aloft and conspicuously; and as we have said in the ear, so to deliver them to whom it is requisite; but _not enjoining us to communicate to all without distinction_ what is said to them in parables. But there is only a delineation in the memoranda, which have the truth sown sparse and broadcast, that it may escape the notice of those who pick up seeds like jackdaws; but when they find a good husbandman, each of them will germinate and will produce corn." "Those who are still blind and dumb, not having understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the contemplative soul, must stand outside of the divine choir. Wherefore, in accordance with the method of concealment, the truly sacred Word, truly divine and most necessary for us, deposited in the shrine of truth, was by the Egyptians indicated by what were called among them _adyta_, and by the Hebrews 'the veil.' Only the consecrated were allowed access to them. For Plato also thought it not lawful for 'the impure to touch the pure.' Thence the prophecies and oracles are spoken in enigmas, and to the untrained and uninstructed people. Now, then, it is not wished that all things should be exposed indiscriminately to all and sundry, or the benefits of wisdom communicated to those who have not even in a dream been purified in soul, for it is not allowable to hand to every chance comer what has been procured with such laborious efforts. Nor are the Mysteries of the Word to be expounded to the profane. The Mysteries were established for the reason that it was more beneficial that the holy and the blessed contemplation of realities be conceded. So that, on the other hand, then, there are the Mysteries which were hid till the time of the apostles, and were delivered by them as they received from the Lord, and, concealed in the Old Testament, were manifested to the saints. And on the other hand, there is the riches of the glory of the mysteries of the Gentiles, which is faith and hope in Christ. Instruction, which reveals hidden things, is called Illumination, as it is the teacher only who uncovers the lid of the ark." (_The Stromata of St. Clement_.) St. Clement also quotes approvingly the saying of Plato, that: "We must speak in enigmas; that should the tablet come by any mischance on its leaves either by sea or land he who reads may remain ignorant." He also says, concerning certain Gnostic writings: "Let the specimen suffice to those who have ears. For it is not required to unfold the mystery, but only to indicate what is sufficient for those who are partakers in knowledge to bring it to mind." We have quoted freely from St. Clement, for the purpose of showing that he, a man in a very exalted position in the Early Christian Church, recognized, and actually taught, the Inner Teachings, or Secret Doctrine of Mystic Christianity--that the Early Christian Church was an organization having a Mystic Centre for the few, and Common Outer for the multitude. Can there be any doubt of this after reading the above words from his pen? But not only St. Clement so wrote and taught, but many others in authority in the Early Christian Church likewise voiced their knowledge of, and approval in, the Inner Teachings. For example, Origen, the pupil of St. Clement, a man whose influence was felt on all sides in the early days of the Church. Origen defended Christianity from the attacks of Celsus, who charged the Church with being a secret organization which taught the Truth only to a few, while it satisfied the multitude with popular teachings and half-truths. Origen replied that, while it was true that there were Inner Teachings in the Church which were not revealed to the general public, still the Church, in that respect, was but following the example of all teachers of Truth, who always maintained an esoteric side of their teachings for those fitted to participate in them, while giving the exoteric side to the general body of followers. He writes: "And yet the Mystery of the Resurrection, not being understood, is made a subject of ridicule among unbelievers. In these circumstances, to speak of the Christian doctrine as a _secret system_ is altogether absurd. But that there should be certain doctrines, not made known to the multitude, which are divulged after the exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric. Some of the hearers of Pythagoras were content with his _ipse dixit;_ while others were taught in secret those doctrines which were not deemed fit to be communicated to profane and insufficiently prepared ears. Moreover, all the Mysteries that are celebrated everywhere throughout Greece and barbarous countries, although held in secret, have no discredit thrown upon them, so that it is in vain he endeavors to calumniate the secret doctrines of Christianity, seeing that he does not correctly understand its nature." "I have not yet spoken of the observance of all that is written in the Gospels, each one of which contains much doctrine difficult to be understood, not merely by the multitude, but even by certain of the more intelligent, including a very profound explanation of the parables, which Jesus delivered to 'those without' while reserving the exhibition of their full meaning for those who had passed beyond the stage of exoteric teaching, and who came to Him privately in the house. And when he comes to understand it, he will admire the reason why some are said to be 'without' and others 'in the house.'" (_Origen against Celsus_.) In the same work Origen considers the story of the Syria-Phoenician woman (_Matt. Chap. 15_) and says concerning it: "And perhaps, also, of the words of Jesus there are some loaves which it is possible to give to the more rational, as to the children, only; and others as it were crumbs from the great house and table of the well-born, which may be used by some souls like dogs." And, again, "He whose soul has, for a long time, been conscious of no evil, especially since he yielded himself to the healing of the Word, let such a one hear _the doctrines which were spoken in private by Jesus to His genuine disciples_." And, again, "But on these subjects much, and that of a mystical kind, might be said: in keeping with which is the following: 'It is good to keep close to the secret of a king,' in order that _the doctrine of the entrance of souls into bodies_ may not be thrown before the common understanding, nor what is holy given to the dogs, nor pearls be cast before swine. For such a procedure would be impious, being equivalent to a betrayal of the mysterious declaration of God's wisdom. It is sufficient, however, to represent in the style of a historic narrative what is intended to convey a secret meaning in the garb of history, that those who have the capacity may work out for themselves all that relates to the subject." He also says, in the same work: "If you come to the books written after the time of Jesus, you will find that those multitudes of believers who hear the parables are, as it were, 'without,' and worthy only of exoteric doctrines, while the disciples learn in private the explanation of the parables. _For, privately, to His own disciples did Jesus open up all things, esteeming above the multitudes those who desired to know His wisdom._ And He promises to those who believe on Him to send them wise men and scribes." In another work, Origen states that: "The Scriptures have a meaning, not only such as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most men. For such is written in the forms of certain Mysteries, and the image of divine things. Respecting which there is one opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law is indeed spiritual; _but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all_, but to those only on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and knowledge." (_De Principiis_.) We could fill page after page with live quotations from the writings of the Early Christian Fathers, and their successors, showing the existence of the Inner Teachings. But we must rest content with those which we have given you, which are clear and to the point, and which _come from undoubted authority_. The departure of the Church from these Inner Teachings was a great calamity, from which the Church is still suffering. As that well-known occultist, Eliphias Levi, has said: "A great misfortune befell Christianity. The betrayal of the Mysteries by the false Gnostics--for the Gnostics, that is, _those who know_, were the Initiates of primitive Christianity--caused the Gnosis to be rejected, and alienated the Church from the supreme truths of the Kabbala, which contains all the secrets of transcendental theology.... Let the most absolute science, let the highest reason become once more the patrimony of the leaders of the people; let the sarcerdotal art and the royal art take the double sceptre of antique initiations and the social world will once more issue from its chaos. Burn the holy images no longer; demolish the temples no more; temples and images are necessary for men; but drive the hirelings from the house of prayer; let the blind be no longer leaders of the blind; reconstruct the hierarchy of intelligence and holiness, and recognize only _those who know_ as the teachers of _those who believe_." (_The Mysteries of Magic, Waite translation_.) And now, you ask, what were taught in these Christian Mysteries--what is the Inner Teaching--what the Secret Doctrine? Simply this, good students--the Occult Philosophy and Mystic Lore which has been taught to the Elect in all times and ages, and which is embodied in our several series of lessons on THE YOGI PHILOSOPHY AND ORIENTAL OCCULTISM, _plus the special teaching regarding the nature, mission, and sacrifice of Jesus the Christ, as we have tried to explain in the present series of lessons_. The Truth is the same no matter under what name it is taught, or who teaches it. Strip it of the personal coloring of the teacher and it is seen to be the same--THE TRUTH. In these lessons we have tried to give you the Key to the Mysteries, but unless you have studied the other lessons in which the Occult Teachings have been set forth, you will not be able to see their application in Mystic Christianity. You must bring Knowledge to these lessons, in order to take away knowledge. THE ELEVENTH LESSON THE ANCIENT WISDOM. The doctrine of Metempsychosis or Re-incarnation has its roots deeply imbedded in the soil of all religions--that is, in the Inner Teachings or Esoteric phase of all religious systems. And this is true of the Inner Teachings of the Christian Church as well as of the other systems. The Christian Mysteries comprised this as well as the other fundamental occult doctrines, and the Early Church held such teachings in its Inner Circle. And, in its essence, the doctrine of Re-birth is the only one that is in full accord with the Christian conception of ultimate justice and "fairness." As a well known writer has said concerning this subject: "It relieves us of many and great difficulties. It is impossible for any one who looks around him and sees the sorrow and suffering in the world, and the horrible inequality in the lives of men--not inequality in wealth merely, but inequality in opportunity of progress--to harmonize these facts with the love and justice of God, unless he is willing to accept this theory that this one life is not all, but that it is only a day in the real life of the soul, and that each soul therefore has made its place for itself, and is receiving just such training as is best for its evolution. Surely the only theory which enables a man rationally to believe in Divine justice, without shutting his eyes to obvious facts, is a theory worthy of study. "Modern theology concerns itself principally with a plan for evading divine justice, which it elects to call 'Salvation,' and it makes this plan depend entirely upon what a man believes, or rather upon what he says that he believes. This whole theory of 'salvation,' and indeed the theory that there is anything to be 'saved' from, seems to be based upon a misunderstanding of a few texts of scripture. We do not believe in this idea of a so-called divine wrath; we think that to attribute to God our own vices of anger and cruelty is a terrible blasphemy. We hold to the theory of steady evolution and final attainment for all; and we think that the man's progress depends not upon what he believes, but upon what he does. And there is surely very much in the bible to support this idea. Do you remember St. Paul's remark, 'Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'? And again, Christ said that 'They that _have done good_ shall go unto the resurrection of life'--not they that have believed some particular doctrine. And when He describes the day of judgment, you will notice that no question is raised as to what anybody has believed, but only as to the works which he has done." In this connection, we think that it is advisable to quote from the address of a well known English churchman upon this important subject. The gentleman in question is The Ven. Archdeacon Colley, Rector of Stockton, Warwickshire, England, who said: "In the realm of the occult and transcendental, moved to its exploration from the Sadducean bias of my early days, I have for the best part of half a century had experiences rarely equaled by any, and I am sure, surpassed by none; yet have they led me up till now, I admit, to no very definite conclusions. With suspension of judgment, therefore, not being given to dogmatize on anything, and with open mind I trust, in equipoise of thought desiring to hold an even balance of opinion 'twixt this and that, I am studious still of being receptive of light from every source--rejecting nothing that in the least degree makes for righteousness, hence my taking the chair here tonight, hoping to learn what may help to resolve a few of the many perplexities of life, to wit: Why some live to the ripe old age of my dear father while others live but for a moment, to be born, gasp and die. Why some are born rich and others poor; some having wealth only to corrupt, defile, deprave others therewith, while meritorious poverty struggles and toils for human betterment all unaided. Some gifted with mentality; others pitiably lacking capacity. Some royal-souled from the first naturally, others with brutal, criminal propensities from beginning to end. "The sins of the fathers visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation may in heredity account for much, but I want to see through the mystery of a good father at times having a bad son, as also of one showing genius and splendid faculties--the offspring of parentage the reverse of anything suggesting qualities contributive thereto. Then as a clergyman, I have in my reading noted texts of Holy Scripture, and come across passages in the writings of the Fathers of the Early Church which seem to be root-thoughts, or survivals of the old classic idea of re-incarnation. "The prophet Jeremiah (1:5) writes, 'The word of the Lord came unto me saying, before I formed thee, I knew thee, and before thou wast born I sanctified thee and ordained thee a prophet.' "Does this mean that the Eternal-Uncreate chose, from foreknowledge of what Jeremiah would be, the created Ego of His immaterialized servant in heaven ere he clothed his soul with the mortal integument of flesh in human birth--schooling him above for the part he had to play here below as a prophet to dramatize in his life and teaching the will of the Unseen? To the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda, whose infirmity was the cruel experience of eight and thirty years, the Founder of our religion said (_John 5:14._), 'Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.' Was it (fitting the punishment to the crime proportionately) some outrageous sin as a boy, in the spring of years and days of his inexperienced youth of bodily life, that brought on him such physical sorrow, which youthful sin in its repetition would necessitate an even worse ill than this nearly forty years of sore affliction? 'Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' (_John 9:2._), was the question of the disciples to Jesus. And our query is--Sinned _before_ he was born to deserve the penalty of being born blind? "Then of John the Baptist--was he a reincarnation of Elijah, the prophet, who was to come again? (_Malachi 4:5._). Jesus said he _was_ Elijah, who indeed had come, and the evil-minded Jews had done unto him whatsoever they listed. Herod had beheaded him (_Matt. 11:14_ and _17:12._). "Elijah and John the Baptist appear from our reference Bibles and Cruden's Concordance to concur and commingle in one. The eighth verse of the first chapter of the second Book of Kings and the fourth verse of the third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel note similarities in them and peculiarities of dress. Elijah, as we read, was a 'hairy man and girt a leathern girdle about his loins,' while John the Baptist had 'his raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins.' Their home was the solitude of the desert. Elijah journeyed forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, the mount of God in the Wilderness of Sinai. John the Baptist was in the wilderness of Judea beyond Jordan baptizing. And their life in exile--a self-renunciating and voluntary withdrawal from the haunts of men--was sustained in a parallel remarkable way by food (bird--brought on wing--borne). 'I have commanded the ravens to feed thee,' said the voice of Divinity to the prophet; while locusts and wild honey were the food of the Baptist. "'And above all,' said our Lord of John the Baptist to the disciples, 'if ye _will_ receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.' "Origen, in the second century, one of the most learned of the Fathers of the early Church, says that this declares the pre-existence of John the Baptist as Elijah before his decreed later existence as Christ's forerunner. "Origen also says on the text, 'Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,' that if our course be not marked out according to our works before this present life that now is, how would it not be untrue and unjust in God that the elder brother should serve the younger and be hated by God (though blessed of righteous Abraham's son, of Isaac) before Esau had done anything deserving of servitude or given any occasion for the merciful Almighty's hatred? "Further, on the text (_Ephesians 1:4._), 'God who hath chosen us before the foundation of the world,' Origen says that this suggests our pre-existence ere the world was. "While Jerome, agreeing with Origen, speaks of our rest above, where rational creatures dwell before their descent to this lower world, and prior to their removal from the invisible life of the spiritual sphere to the visible life here on earth, teaching, as he says, the necessity of their again having material bodies ere, as saints and men made 'perfect as our Father which is in heaven is perfect,' they once more enjoy in the angel-world their _former_ blessedness. "Justin Martyr also speaks of the soul inhabiting the human body more than once, but thinks as a rule (instanced in the case of John the Baptist forgetting that he had been Elijah) it is not permitted us to remember our former experiences of this life while yet again we are in exile here as strangers and pilgrims in an uncongenial clime away from our heavenly home. "Clemens Alexandrinus, and others of the Fathers, refer to re-incarnation (or transmigration or metempsychosis, as it is called in the years that are passed of classic times and later now as _re-birth_) to remind us of the vital truth taught by our Lord in the words, '_Ye must be born again_.'" These words, falling from the lips of a man so eminent in the staid conservative ranks of the Church of England, must attract the attention of every earnest seeker after the Truth of Christian Doctrine. If such a man, reared in such an environment, could find himself able to bear such eloquent testimony to the truth of a philosophy usually deemed foreign to his accepted creed, what might we not expect from a Church liberated from the narrow formal bounds of orthodoxy, and once more free to consider, learn and teach those noble doctrines originally held and taught by the Early Fathers of the Church of Christ? While the majority of modern Christians bitterly oppose the idea that the doctrine of Metempsychosis ever formed any part of the Christian Doctrine, and prefer to regard it as a "heathenish" teaching, still the fact remains that the careful and unprejudiced student will find indisputable evidence in the writings of the Early Christian Fathers pointing surely to the conclusion that the doctrine of Metempsychosis was believed and taught in the Inner Circle of the Early Church. The doctrine unquestionably formed a part of the Christian Mysteries, and has faded into comparative obscurity with the decay of spirituality in the Church, until now the average churchman no longer holds to it, and in fact regards as barbarous and heathenish that part of the teachings originally imparted and taught by the Early Fathers of the Church--the Saints and Leaders. The Early Christians were somewhat divided in their beliefs concerning the details of Re-birth. One sect or body held to the idea that the soul of man was eternal, coming from the Father. Also that there were many degrees and kinds of souls, some of which have never incarnated in human bodies but which are living on many planes of life unknown to us, passing from plane to plane, world to world. This sect held that some of these souls had chosen to experiment with life on the physical plane, and were now passing through the various stages of the physical-plane life, with all of its pains and sorrows, being held by the Law of Re-birth until a full experience had been gained, when they would pass out of the circle of influence of the physical plane, and return to their original freedom. Another sect held to the more scientific occult form of the gradual evolution of the soul, by repeated rebirth, on the physical plane, from Lower to Higher, as we have set forth in our lessons on "Gnani Yoga." The difference in the teachings arose from the different conceptions of the great leaders, some being influenced by the Jewish Occult Teachings which held to the first above mentioned doctrine, while the second school held to the doctrine taught by the Greek Mystics and the Hindu Occultists. And each interpreted the Inner Teachings by the light of his previous affiliations. And so, some of the early writings speak of "pre-existence," while others speak of repeated "rebirth." But the underlying principle is the same, and in a sense they were both right, as the advanced occultists know full well. The fundamental principle of both conceptions is that the soul comes forth as an emanation from the Father in the shape of Spirit; that the Spirit becomes plunged in the confining sheaths of Matter, and is then known as "a soul," losing for a time its pristine purity; that the soul passes on through rebirth, from lower to higher, gaining fresh experiences at each incarnation; that the advancing soul passes from world to world, returning at last to its home laden with the varied experiences of life and becomes once more pure Spirit. The early Christian Fathers became involved in a bitter controversy with the Greek and Roman philosophers, over the conception held by some of the latter concerning the absurd doctrine of the transmigration of the human soul into the body of an animal. The Fathers of the Church fought this erroneous teaching with great energy, their arguments bringing out forcibly the distinction between the true occult teachings and this erroneous and degenerate perversion in the doctrines of transmigration into animal bodies. This conflict caused a vigorous denunciation of the teachings of the Pythagorean and Platonic schools, which held to the perverted doctrine that a human soul could degenerate into the state of the animal. Among other passages quoted by Origen and Jerome to prove the pre-existence of the soul was that from Jeremiah (1:5): "Before thou comest from the womb I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet." The early writers held that this passage confirmed their particular views regarding the pre-existence of the soul and the possession of certain characteristics and qualities acquired during previous birth, for, they argued, it would be injustice that a man, before birth, be endowed with uncarnal qualities; and that such qualities and ability could justly be the result only of best work and action. They also dwelt upon the prophecy of the return of Elijah, in Malachi 4:5. And also upon the (uncanonical) book "The Wisdom of Solomon," in which Solomon says: "I was a witty child, and had a good Spirit. Yea, rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled." They also quoted from Josephus, in his book styled "De Bello Judico," in which the eminent Jewish writer says: "They say that all souls are incorruptible; but that the souls of good men are only removed into other bodies--but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment." They also quoted from Josephus, regarding the Jewish belief in Rebirth as evidenced by the recital of the instance in which, at the siege of the fortress of Jotapota, he sought the shelter of a cave in which were a number of soldiers, who discussed the advisability of committing suicide for the purpose of avoiding being taken prisoners by the Romans. Josephus remonstrated with them as follows: "Do ye not remember that all pure spirits who are in conformity with the divine dispensation live on in the loveliest of heavenly places, and in the course of time they are sent down to inhabit sinless bodies; but the souls of those who have committed self-destruction are doomed to a region in the darkness of the underworld?" Recent writers hold that this shows that he accepted the doctrine of Re-birth himself, and also as showing that it must have been familiar to the Jewish soldiery. There seems to be no doubt regarding the familiarity of the Jewish people of that time with the general teachings regarding Metempsychosis. Philo positively states the doctrine as forming part of the teachings of the Jewish Alexandrian school. And again the question asked Jesus regarding the "sin of the man born blind" shows how familiar the people were with the general doctrine. And so, the teachings of Jesus on that point did not need to be particularly emphasized to the common people, He reserving this instruction on the inner teachings regarding the details of Re-birth for his chosen disciples. But still the subject is mentioned in a number of places in the New Testament, as we shall see. Jesus stated positively that John the Baptist was "Elias," whose return had been predicted by Malachi (4:5). Jesus stated this twice, positively, i.e., "This is Elijah that is to come" (_Matt. 11:14_); and again, "But I say unto you that Elijah is come already, but they knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they would.... Then understood the disciples that he spoke unto them of John the Baptist." (_Matt. 17:12-13._) The Mystics point out that Jesus saw clearly the fact that John was Elijah re-incarnated, although John had denied this fact, owing to his lack of memory of his past incarnation. Jesus the Master saw clearly that which John the Forerunner had failed to perceive concerning himself. The plainly perceptible characteristics of Elijah reappearing in John bear out the twice-repeated, positive assertion of the Master that John the Baptist was the re-incarnated Elijah. And this surely is sufficient authority for Christians to accept the doctrine of Re-birth as having a place in the Church Teachings. But still, the orthodox churchmen murmur "He meant _something else_!" There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Another notable instance of the recognition of the doctrine by Jesus and His disciples occurs in the case of "the man born blind." It may be well to quote the story. "And as he passed by he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither did this man sin nor his parents.'" (_John 9:1-3._) Surely there can be no mistake about the meaning of this question, "Who did sin, this man or his parents?"--for how could a man sin before his birth, unless he had lived in a previous incarnation? And the answer of Jesus simply states that the man was born blind neither from the sins of a past life, nor from those of his parents, but from a third cause. Had the idea of re-incarnation been repugnant to the teachings, would not He have denounced it to His disciples? Does not the fact that His disciples asked Him the question show that they were in the habit of discoursing the problems of Re-birth and Karma with Him, and receiving instructions and answers to questions propounded to Him along these lines? There are many other passages of the New Testament which go to prove the familiarity of the disciples and followers of Jesus with the doctrine of Re-birth, but we prefer to pass on to a consideration of the writings of the Early Christian Fathers in order to show what they thought and taught regarding the matter of Re-birth and Karma. Among the great authorities and writers in the Early Church, Origen stands out pre-eminently as a great light. Let us quote from a leading writer, regarding this man and his teachings: "In Origen's writings we have a mine of information as to the teachings of the early Christians. Origen held a splendid and grandiose view of the whole of the evolution of our system. I put it to you briefly. You can read it in all its carefully, logically-worked-out arguments, if you will have the patience to read his treatise for yourselves. His view, then, was the evolutionary view. He taught that forth from God came all Spirits that exist, all being dowered with free-will; that some of these refused to turn aside from the path of righteousness, and, as a reward, took the place which we speak of as that of the angels; that then there came others who, in the exercise of their free-will, turned aside from the path of deity, and then passed into the human race to recover, by righteous and noble living, the angel condition which they had not been able to preserve; that others, still in the exercise of their free-will, descended still deeper into evil and became evil spirits or devils. So that all these Spirits were originally good; but good by innocence, not by knowledge. And he points out also that angels may become men, and even the evil ones themselves may climb up once more, and become men and angels again. Some of you will remember that one of the doctrines condemned in Origen in later days was that glorious doctrine that, even for the worst of men, redemption and restoration were possible, and that there was no such thing as an eternity of evil in a universe that came from the Eternal Goodness, and would return whence it came." And from the writings of this great man we shall now quote. In his great work "De Principiis," Origen begins with the statement that only God Himself is fundamentally and by virtue of His essential nature, Good. God is the only Good--the absolute perfect Good. When we consider the lesser stages of Good, we find that the Goodness is derived and acquired, instead of being fundamental and essential. Origen then says that God bestows free-will upon all spirits alike, and that if they do not use the same in the direction of righteousness, then they fall to lower estates "one more rapidly, another more slowly, one in a greater, another in a less degree, each being the cause of his own downfall." He refers to John the Baptist being filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother's womb and says that it is a false notion to imagine "that God fills individuals with His Holy Spirit, and bestows upon them sanctification, not on the grounds of justice and according to their deserts, but undeservedly. And how shall we escape the declaration, 'Is there respect of persons with God?' God forbid. Or this, 'Is there unrighteousness with God?' God forbid this also. For such is the defense of those who maintain that souls come into existence with bodies." He then shows his belief in re-birth by arguing that John had earned the Divine favor by reason of right-living in a previous incarnation. Then he considers the important question of the apparent injustice displayed in the matter of the inequalities existing among men. He says, "Some are barbarians, others Greeks, and of the barbarians some are savage and fierce and others of a milder disposition, and certain of them live under laws that have been thoroughly approved, others, again, under laws of a more common or severe kind; while, some, again, possess customs of an inhumane and savage character rather than laws; and certain of them, from the hour of their birth, are reduced to humiliation and subjection, and brought up as slaves, being placed under the dominion either of masters, or princes, or tyrants. Some with sound bodies, some with bodies diseased from their early years, some defective in vision, others in bearing and speech; some born in that condition, others deprived of the use of their senses immediately after birth. But why should I repeat and enumerate all the horrors of human misery? Why should this be?" Origen then goes on to combat the ideas advanced by some thinkers of his times, that the differences were caused by some essential difference in the nature and quality of the souls of individuals. He states emphatically that all souls are essentially equal in nature and quality and that the differences arise from the various exercise of their power of free-will. He says of his opponents: "Their argument accordingly is this: If there be this great diversity of circumstances, and this diverse and varying condition by birth, in which the faculty of free-will has no scope (for no one chooses for himself either where, or with whom, or in what condition he is born); if, then, this is not caused by the difference in the nature of souls, i.e., that a soul of an evil nature is destined for a wicked nation and a good soul for a righteous nation, what other conclusion remains than that these things must be supposed to be regulated by accident or chance? And, if that be admitted, then it will be no longer believed that the world was made by God, or administered by His providence." Origen continues: "God who deemed it just to arrange His creatures according to their merit, brought down these different understandings into the harmony of one world, that He might adorn, as it were, one dwelling, in which there ought to be not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay (and some, indeed, to honor, and others to dishonor) with their different vessels, or souls, or understandings. On which account the Creator will neither appear to be unjust in distributing (for the causes already mentioned) to every one according to his wants, nor will the happiness or unhappiness of each one's birth, or whatever be the condition that falls to his lot, be accidental." He then asserts that the condition of each man is the result of his own deeds. He then considers the case of Jacob and Esau, which a certain set of thinkers had used to illustrate the unjust and cruel discrimination of the Creator toward His creatures. Origen contended that in this case it would be most unjust for God to love Jacob and hate Esau before the children were born, and that the only true interpretation of the matter was the theory that Jacob was being rewarded for the good deeds of past lives, while Esau was being punished for his misdeeds in past incarnations. And not only Origen takes this stand, but Jerome also, for the latter says: "If we examine the case of Esau we may find he was condemned because of his ancient sins in a worse course of life." (_Jerome's letter to Avitus_.) Origen says: "It is found not to be unrighteous that even in womb Jacob supplanted his brother, if we feel that he was worthily beloved by God, according to the deserts of his previous life, so as to deserve to be preferred before his brother." Origen adds, "This must be carefully applied to the case of all other creatures, because, as we formerly remarked, the righteousness of the Creator ought to appear in everything." And again, "The inequality of circumstances preserves the justice of a retribution according to merit." Annie Besant (to whom we are indebted for a number of these quotations), says, concerning this position of Origen: "Thus we find this doctrine made the defense of the justice of God. If a soul can be made good, then to make a soul evil is to a God of justice and love impossible. It cannot be done. There is no justification for it, and the moment you recognize that men are born criminal, you are either forced into the blasphemous position that a perfect and loving God creates a ruined soul and then punishes it for being what He has made it, or else that He is dealing with growing, developing creatures whom He is training for ultimate blessedness, and if in any life a man is born wicked and evil, it is because he has done amiss and must reap in sorrow the results of evil in order that he may learn wisdom and turn to good." Origen also considers the story of Pharaoh, of whom the Biblical writers say that "his heart was hardened by God." Origen declares that the hardening of the heart was caused by God so that Pharaoh would more readily learn the effect of evil, so that in his future incarnations he might profit by his bitter experience. He says: "Sometimes it does not lead to good results for a man to be cured too quickly, especially if the disease, being shut up in the inner parts of the body, rage with greater fierceness. The growth of the soul must be understood as being brought about not suddenly, but slowly and gradually, seeing that the process of amendment and correction will take place imperceptibly in the individual instances, during the lapse of countless and unmeasured ages, some outstripping others, and tending by a swifter course towards perfection, while others, again, follow close at hand, and some, again, a long way behind." He also says: "Those who, departing this life in virtue of that death which is common to all, are arranged in conformity with their actions and deserts--according as they shall be deemed worthy--some in the place called the 'infernus,' others in the bosom of Abraham, and in different localities or mansions. So also from these places, as if dying there, if the expression can be used, they come down from the 'upper world' to this 'hell.' For that 'hell' to which the souls of the dead are conducted from this world is, I believe, on account of this destruction, called 'the lower hell.' Everyone accordingly of those who descend to the earth is, according to his deserts, or agreeably to the position that he occupied there, ordained to be born in this world in a different country, or among a different nation, or in a different mode of life, or surrounded by infirmities of a different kind, or to be descended from religious parents, or parents who are not religious; so that it may sometimes happen that an Israelite descends among the Scythians, and a poor Egyptian is brought down to Judea." (_Origen against Celsus_.) Can you doubt, after reading the above quotation that Metempsychosis, Re-incarnation or Re-birth and Karma was held and taught as a true doctrine by the Fathers of the Early Christian Church? Can you not see that imbedded in the very bosom of the Early Church were the twin-doctrine of Re-incarnation and Karma. Then why persist in treating it as a thing imported from India, Egypt or Persia to disturb the peaceful slumber of the Christian Church? It is but the return home of a part of the original Inner Doctrine--so long an outcast from the home of its childhood. The Teaching was rendered an outlaw by certain influences in the Church in the Sixth Century. The Second Council of Constantinople (A.D. 553) condemned it as a heresy, and from that time official Christianity frowned upon it, and drove it out by sword, stake and prison cell. The light was kept burning for many years, however, by that sect so persecuted by the Church--the Albigenses--who furnished hundreds of martyrs to the tyranny of the Church authorities, by reason of their clinging faith to the Inner Teachings of the Church concerning Reincarnation and Karma. Smothered by the pall of superstition that descended like a dense cloud over Europe in the Middle Ages, the Truth has nevertheless survived, and, after many fitful attempts to again burst out into flame, has at last, in this glorious Twentieth Century, managed to again show forth its light and heat to the world, bringing back Christianity to the original conceptions of those glorious minds of the Early Church. Once more returned to its own, the Truth will move forward, brushing from its path all the petty objections and obstacles that held it captive for so many centuries. Let us conclude this lesson with those inspiring words of the poet Wordsworth, whose soul rose to a perception of the Truth, in spite of the conventional restrictions placed upon him by his age and land. "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere had its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home." THE TWELFTH LESSON. THE MESSAGE OF THE MASTER. Running throughout nearly all of the teachings and messages of Jesus, is to be found the constant Mystic Message regarding the existence of the Spirit within the soul of each individual--that Something Within to which all can turn in time of pain and trouble--that Guide and Monitor which stands ever ready to counsel, advise and direct if one opens himself to the Voice. "Seek ye first the Kingdom, and all things shall be added unto you." And, again, as if to explain: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." This is the Mystic Message which gives one a key to the Mysteries of the Inner Teachings. Let us take up a few of His sayings and endeavor to interpret them by the light of these teachings. But before doing so we must call the attention of the student to the fact that, in order to understand intelligently what we are saying, he must carefully re-read the "Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy" wherein the details of the teachings are set forth--that is the fundamental truths are explained. In the "Advanced Course" and in "Gnani Yoga" the higher phases of the teachings are presented. And, although in the said works there is little or no reference made to Christianity, yet the teachings are so fundamental that the Inner Teachings of all religions--including Christianity--may be understood by one who has acquainted himself with these fundamental truths. There is but one real Occult Philosophy, and we find it in evidence everywhere--once the Truth is grasped, it is found to be the Master Key with which to unlock the various doors leading to the esoteric phase of any and all religions or philosophies. The Yogi Fathers, centuries and centuries ago, solved the Riddle of the Universe, and the highest efforts of the human mind since that time have but corroborated, proven and exemplified the original Truth as voiced by these Venerable Sages. Let us read the words of Jesus in the light of this Ancient Wisdom. Let us consider the Sermon on the Mount as given in Matthew (_Chapters 5; 6; 7_). "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." (_Matt. 5:3._) By these words Jesus indicated the occult teachings that those who renounced the vain glory and petty ambitions of this world would be on the road to the realization of the Real Self--the Something Within--the Spirit. For is it not written that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you"? "Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted." (_Matt. 5:4._) By these words Jesus pointed out the occult teachings that those who had so far advanced that they could see the folly of human ambition, and who consequently felt the pain that comes to all who stand above the crowd, and who mourned by reason of their realization of the folly and uselessness of all for which men strive so hard? would, in the end, be comforted by that "peace which passeth all understanding" which comes only to those who enter into a realization of the Kingdom of Heaven which is within them. "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth." (_Matt. 5:5._) By these words Jesus sought to teach that those who had acquired the attitude of obedience to the Power of the Spirit Within them would become as Masters of the things of earth. This message is frequently misunderstood by reason of the lack of perception of the Mystic meaning contained in the words. The word "meek" does not mean that "I'm so meek and humble" attitude and expression of the hypocritical followers of form. Jesus never taught this--and never acted it. He was always the Master, and never sought to make of his followers cringing creatures and whining and sniveling supplicants. He asserted His Mastery in many ways and accepted the respect due him--as for instance when the vial of precious ointment was poured upon Him. His use of the word, which has been poorly translated as "meek," was in the sense of a calm, dignified bearing toward the Power of the Spirit, and a reverent submission to its guidance--not a hypocritical and cowardly "meekness" toward other men. The assurance that such should "inherit the earth" means that they should become masters of things temporal--that is, that they should be able to rise above them--should become lords of the earth by reason of their "entering into the Kingdom of Heaven" within them. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled." (_Matt. 5:6._) This is the promise of the Master that they who sought the Kingdom of Heaven (within them) should find it--that their spiritual hunger and thirst should be satisfied in the only way possible. "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy." (_Matt. 5:7._) Here is taught the blessing for forbearance, kindness, tolerance and absence of bigotry, and the reward that comes as a natural consequence of such a mental attitude. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." (_Matt. 5:8._) Here is the assurance that "to those who are pure all things are pure"--that the purity of one's own heart, and the recognition of the God Within, leads to a perception of the God within everything. "He who sees God within himself, sees Him in everything," says an old Persian writer. And verily such a one "sees God" where He abides--and that is _Everywhere_. "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called sons of God." (_Matt. 5:9._) Here is the call to the disciple to use his wisdom and power in the direction of remedying the strife that arises from the differing conceptions of Deity and Truth prevailing among men. He who is able to point out the Truth underlying all religions and beliefs indeed becomes as a beloved son of God. He who is able to show that under all forms and ceremonies, under various names and titles, behind various creeds and dogmas, there is but one God, to whom all worship ascends--he is a Peacemaker and a Son of God. "Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you." (_Matt. 5:10-12._) In these words Jesus sought to comfort and encourage those who would be called upon to carry the Message in the centuries to follow. And one has but to look over the list of names of the courageous souls who have sought to keep the flame alight--to preserve the teachings in their original purity--to protect them from the cant, hypocrisy, self-seeking and formalism of those who sought and obtained places of power in the Church. The gibbet; the stake; the dungeon;--was their reward. But the Faith that was called into manifestation during the persecutions served to bring them to the realization of the Spirit, and thus indeed "theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "But ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor wherewith shall it be salted? It is henceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men." (_Matt. 5:13._) Here Jesus warned against the failure of the Illumined to serve as the yeast which should leaven the mass of men by their thoughts and actions. The use of the term "salt" in this connection is familiar to all students of ancient mysticism. Food without salt was deemed unpalatable and undesirable. The Few were the salt of the earth, designed to render it worthy and perfect as a whole. But where a grain of salt had parted with its savor, there was naught else that could impart saltiness to it, and it became worthless and fit only for the refuse heap. The duty of the "salt" is to impart savor--the duty of the Elect is to impart savor to the race of men. "Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." (_Matt. 5:14-16._) These words, like those preceding it, teach the Elect to shed abroad the light which has come to them. They are warned against concealing it beneath the cover of conventional conduct, but are urged to live and act so that men may perceive the light that is within them--the Light of the Spirit--and may see the right road by means of its rays. A man having the Light of the Spirit shining bright within him is able to rouse the lamps of understanding in the minds of other men, to become kindled and alight. That is the experience of the majority of those who read these words--they have had their lamps of knowledge kindled by the rays of the Spirit emanating from some soul, either by word of mouth, writings, or by personal contact. Spirituality is contagious! Therefore spread it! This is the meaning of this passage. "Think not that I came to destroy the law of the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished." (_Matt. 5:17-18._) In this passage Jesus asserted positively the fact that He was not teaching a new doctrine, but had come simply to carry on the work of those who had preceded Him. He asserted the validity of the Ancient Wisdom, and told that the Law that had been in force would so continue until heaven and earth should pass away--that is, until the end of this great World Cycle. In these words Jesus proclaimed His allegiance to the Occult Teachings. To those who would claim that He referred to the current Jewish teachings we would point out the fact that these he _did_ come to destroy, for Christianity is opposed to the Jewish formalism and outer teachings. Jesus referred to the Inner Teachings, not to the outer religious creeds or forms. He came not to destroy the old Teachings, but merely to "fulfill," that is, to give a new impetus to the Ancient Wisdom. "Whoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." (_Matt. 5:19-20._) Here Jesus cautions against violating the fundamental occult teachings, or of teaching false doctrines. He also again bids men to do and preach the truth. Note the reference to the "kingdom of heaven." Again He points out that the "righteousness" required to gain the "kingdom of heaven" is a far different thing from the formalism, ceremonialism and "churchism" of the scribes and pharisees--people who, in that day, stood for that which the "churchy" preachers and their bigoted, narrow flock of sheep-like parishioners stand for today. It requires more than "faithful performance of church duties" to enter into the real "kingdom of heaven." Jesus was ever a foe of the narrow formalism which clings close to the empty forms and words, and which ignores the Spirit. Were He to return today, He would drive from the temples the horde of money-making preachers and hypocritical followers who make a mock of sacred things. "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shall not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother 'Raca,' shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say 'Thou fool' shall be in danger of the hell of fire. If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art with him; lest haply thine adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the last farthing." (_Matt. 5:21-26._) These verses emphasize the teachings that sin consists not only of deeds and actions performed, but equally of _thoughts and desires entertained and encouraged in the mind_. The desire and thought, made welcome in the mind of a person, is the seed and germ of the sin or crime, even though they may never be manifested in action. To wish to kill is a sin, just as is the deed of killing. This is an old occult teaching, imparted to all candidates for Initiation. "Ye have heard that it was said Thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to offend, cut it off and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body go into hell. It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement, but I say unto you that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress, and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery." (_Matt. 5:27-32._) In this passage, Jesus expressed the abhorrence of all advanced occultists for the abuse of the functions of sex. Not only the act, but the thought behind the act was condemned by him. The advanced occult teaching is that the function of the sex organization is entirely that of procreation--aught else is a perversion of nature. Jesus speaks in strong words to men and women, in this passage, regarding this great question. The concluding portion of the passage is a condemnation of the abuse of the marriage relation, and the privilege of divorce, which was being strongly agitated in His time. He aimed a blow at the careless contracting of marriages, and the consequent careless dissolution of the tie. Jesus believed in the sacredness of the home life, and the welfare of the family. His utterance on this subject is unmistakably clear and forcible. "Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King; neither shall thou swear by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your speech be Yea, yea, Nay, nay: for whatever is more than these is of the evil one." (_Matt. 5:33-37._) Here Jesus attacks the custom of swearing, which was so prevalent in His time among the Jews and other Oriental peoples. He urges simplicity and moderation of speech. In this He is true to the Occult traditions, which teach the value of simple thought and simple speech to all the Initiates and the Neophytes. "Ye have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil, but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if any man would go to law with thee and take away thy coat, let him have. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away." (_Matt. 5:38-42._) In this passage Jesus alludes to the Law of Non-Resistance, which in its esoteric aspect is fully understood by all Initiates. This law is for application on the Mental Plane, and those who understand it, know that the precepts refer to the Mental Attitude of the Initiates toward others, which attitude is in itself a defense against imposition. Love turneth away Hate and Anger. The high thought neutralizes the evil designs of others. "Ye have heard that it was said Thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." (_Matt. 5:43-48._) Here is taught that broad tolerance, charity and love that form such an important part of all of the mystic teachings. It is a doctrine entirely at variance with the orthodox idea of tolerance only to those who agree with one, or who may live in accordance with one's own views of life and conduct. It is the great broad doctrine of Human Brotherhood. Jesus teaches that God's love is bestowed upon all--the just and the unjust--and that this perfect love is the aim and goal of all who desire to attain to "the kingdom" of Spirit. "Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them; else ye have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. When, therefore, thou doest alms sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you They have received their reward. But when thou doest alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall recompense thee." (_Matt. 6:1-4._) This is another denunciation of ostentatious "churchiness" and "goodness," and religious posing. It is a lesson needed as much today as in the time of Jesus. "And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors; And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (_Matt. 6:5-15._) Here are the words of Jesus regarding the subject of Prayer. He cautions against the ostentatious exhibition of "piety," so prevalent in all churches, in all lands, in all times. He bids one approach the Father in a reverent spirit, devoid of all public notice. Then He gives to his disciples the famous "Lord's Prayer," in which is condensed a wealth of true religious instruction and precept. This glorious prayer needs no special interpretation. _Let all students read the words themselves, filled with the realisation of the Spirit; and each will receive a message fitted to his requirements and development. The Lord's Prayer is a very Arcanum of the Mystic Message_. "Moreover, when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But, thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face, that thou be not seen of men to fast, but of thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall recompense thee." (_Matt. 6:16-18._) This is a caution against the "sanctimonious" attitude and pose assumed by certain "good" people of the churches, who would make a display of their adherence to and observance of forms. Jesus, as a true mystic, detested all religious posing and neglected no opportunities to condemn the same. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through and steal: for where thy treasure is there will thy heart be also. The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness! No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first then his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow; for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (_Matt. 6:19-34._) This is the most remarkable passage in the New Testament. It is the most remarkable saying of Jesus of Nazareth. In it is condensed the whole of the occult teachings regarding the Conduct of Life. It condenses, in a few lines the entire doctrine of Karma Yoga--that branch of the Yogi Philosophy. It forms a veritable epitome of that which has been styled "The New Thought" as taught and expounded by its various cults and schools. There is no need of one reading and studying the various Metaphysical "Sciences" which have sprung into such favor of late years, if one will but read, ponder, study and practice the precepts of this wonderful passage of the Sermon on the Mount. Every sentence is a gem--a crystal of the highest mystic and occult philosophy. Book after book could be written on this one passage, and even then the subject would be but merely approached. The doctrine of single-mindedness toward the Spirit and the things of the Spirit, is taught. The folly of being tied to material things is pointed out. The lesson of non-attachment is forcibly put. But the great Truth expounded in this passage is the Power of FAITH. Faith is the Great Secret of all Occult Teachings and is the Key to its Inner Mysteries. Faith is the Master-Key that unlocks the doors of the Castle of Attainment. We trust that all students of these lessons will take this single passage from the Sermon on the Mount and memorize it. Make it a part of yourself--make it a part of your life--make it your rule of action and living. The life taught by this passage is the true life of the Spirit. Here is the true Light on the Path, for the guidance of the feet of all Mystics and Occultists! "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye, and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." (_Matt. 7:1-5._) Here Jesus deals another powerful blow to the self-righteousness of the Pharisaical "good" people of the sects, creeds and cults of all lands, time and religions. He warns against that "Thank God! I am holier than thou" attitude that so many vain formalists affect in their dealings with other men. In these immortal words Jesus has sent ringing down the aeons of time a scathing rebuke to the hypocritical judges of other men--those men who wish to "reform" others to conform to their own standards. Out of the mouth of their Master are many so-called followers rebuked. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet and turn and rend you." (_Matt. 7:6._) Here is the warning to Initiates not to spread out a feast of their highest teachings to the mob, who with swinish instincts would defile the Divine Feast, and tear to pieces those who had spread it for them. The truth of this warning has been attested by the fate of those glorious souls who, disregarding it, attempted to give the Truth to the animal minds of the mob and were done to death for their folly. Even Jesus Himself met His fate from neglecting this very rule,--for allowing His sympathy to overcome His judgment. "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you who if his son ask him for a loaf will give him a stone, or if he shall ask for a fish will give him a serpent? If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, for this is the law and the prophecy." (_Matt. 7:7-12._) Here is another burning message to men to live by the light of Faith in the Spirit. And a warning that unless one would act toward other men rightly, he could not expect to be dealt with rightly. It is the lesson of sowing and reaping--the lesson of the Law of Karma. Jesus is most emphatic in these statements. He does not alone say "Do this! Do that!" He states emphatically: "This is _the Law_!" And so it is--men are punished by their wrong deeds, not _for_ them. "Enter ye in by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it." (_Matt. 7:13-14._) This is the highest occult teaching. How few are they who find their way to the Realization of their own Divinity? Narrow indeed is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth to the goal. The masses follow the broad path, like fools--but few even see the narrow entrance to The Path. "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of the Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity." (_Matt. 7:15-23._) Here is the notable warning against the perverted use of the occult powers--the prostitution of the Gifts of the Spirit--Black Magic, in short. For, as all well know, the occult forces may be applied to base as well as worthy uses. By their fruits shall ye know the good from the evil. He whose teachings render men weak, sheeplike and cringing, credulous leaners upon leaders, is a tree that bringeth forth evil fruit. Such are wolves in sheep's clothing, who fatten upon the bodies, substance and souls of their dupes. But those who lead men to be Men--yea, Super-Men--bring forth the good fruit of the Spirit. Be ye not deceived by names, words, creeds nor claims--nay, not even by miracles. Look always at the effect produced--the fruits of the tree--and govern yourself accordingly. "Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine and doeth them shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock, and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon the rock. And every one that heareth these words of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and smote upon that house and it fell, and great was the fall thereof." (_Matt. 7:24-27._) In these parting words of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave a Message to all who would hear, or read His words, and profess to be His followers. He bade such build upon the eternal rock of the Truth--the rock of ages, that had its foundations in the very basic principles of Being. He warned them against building upon the shifting sands of theology and dogmatism, which would be surely swept away by the storms of Time. Upon the eternal Mystic Truths is Mystic Christianity founded. And it is still standing untouched by the storms of criticism, opposition and knowledge that have swept away many theological edifices in the past, and which are now beating with renewed vigor upon the remaining frail structures, which are even this day quivering under the strain. Mystic Christianity invites the "New Theology," the "Higher Criticism," the "Criticism of Science"; for these will only tend to prove the truths of its fundamental principles. In Mystic Christianity, Religion, Philosophy and Science are known to be one and the same thing. There is no conflict between Science and Religion; Philosophy and Religion; or Philosophy and Science. They are all but names for the One Truth. There be but one Truth--there cannot be more than one. And so call it by the name of Religion--the name of Science, the name of Philosophy--it matters not, for the same thing is meant. There is naught but Truth--nothing else really exists. All that is not Truth is Illusion, _Maya_, Nothing. And Mystic Christianity is based upon the Rock of Truth, fearing not the winds nor the storms that try out the stability of all structures of thought. Like its founder, it has always existed--always will exist--from the Beginningless Beginning to the Endless Ending. The same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. A SERIES OF LESSONS IN GNANI YOGA (THE YOGA OF WISDOM) By YOGI RAMACHARAKA This course gives the highest Yogi teachings regarding the Absolute and its Manifestations--the relations between the One and the Many--the Secret of the One Life--the Mystery of the Evolution of the Soul--the Law of Spiritual Cause and Effect--the Group-Soul--the Birth of the Ego--the Unfoldment of the Self--the Cycles of the Race--the Chain of Worlds--the Truth about Nirvana--the Divine Paradox--the Problem of Consciousness--the Reality and the Illusory--the offices of Will and Desire--the Future of the Race--the Past History of Man and the Races--the Adepts and Masters--the Brotherhoods--the Problems of Life--the Riddle of Existence. These and many other subjects of equal importance are taken up, explained and the dark corners illuminated. Some of the teachings to be given are entirely new to the general Western public, and partake of the nature of the Inner Teachings of the occultists. Bound in Blue Silk Cloth, 302 Pages. PRICE $1.10 POSTPAID. E.B., North Side, Pittsburgh, Pa., writes she has just finished reading your book "Science of Breath," and considers it priceless. I have studied many Occult and Mental Science works, but none Of which ever developed Spiritual Illumination or produced that Tranquil state of mind that I derived by studying the Yogi Philosophy.---N.R.B. New Zealand. JESUS THE LAST GREAT INITIATE By EDOUARD SCHURE Mr. Schure in this volume, has done much to strengthen the belief that Jesus was an Essene, in whom a Messianic consciousness was awakened by special initiation. A remarkable full account is given of his experiences among the Essenes and how his early life, (about which the Bible is so reticent) was spent studying with the advanced Occult masters. The problem of how Jesus became the Messiah, he holds to be not capable of solution without the aid of intuition and esoteric tradition. 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21774	----	Transcriber's note: In the original book, the Table of Contents was located after the Preface, but I have placed it at the beginning of the text for this online version. PRACTICAL MYSTICISM by EVELYN UNDERHILL Author of "Mysticism," "The Mystic Way," "Immanence: A Book of Verses." "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern." WILLIAM BLAKE New York E.P. Dutton & Company 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright 1915 by E.P. Dutton & Company TO THE UNSEEN FUTURE CONTENTS Preface vii I. What is Mysticism 1 II. The World of Reality 13 III. The Preparation of the Mystic 21 IV. Meditation and Recollection 56 V. Self-Adjustment 29 VI. Love and Will 74 VII. The First Form of Contemplation 87 VIII. The Second Form of Contemplation 105 XI. The Third Form of Contemplation 126 X. The Mystical Life 148 PREFACE This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to press in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book which deals with that which is called the "contemplative" attitude to existence is wholly out of place. So obvious, indeed, is this point of view, that I had at first thought of postponing its publication. On the one hand, it seems as though the dreams of a spiritual renaissance, which promised so fairly but a little time ago, had perished in the sudden explosion of brute force. On the other hand, the thoughts of the English race are now turned, and rightly, towards the most concrete forms of action--struggle and endurance, practical sacrifices, difficult and long-continued effort--rather than towards the passive attitude of self-surrender which is all that the practice of mysticism seems, at first sight, to demand. Moreover, that deep conviction of the dependence of all human worth upon eternal values, the immanence of the Divine Spirit within the human soul, which lies at the root of a mystical concept of life, is hard indeed to reconcile with much of the human history now being poured red-hot from the cauldron of war. For all these reasons, we are likely during the present crisis to witness a revolt from those superficially mystical notions which threatened to become too popular during the immediate past. Yet, the title deliberately chosen for this book--that of "Practical" Mysticism--means nothing if the attitude and the discipline which it recommends be adapted to fair weather alone: if the principles for which it stands break down when subjected to the pressure of events, and cannot be reconciled with the sterner duties of the national life. To accept this position is to reduce mysticism to the status of a spiritual plaything. On the contrary, if the experiences on which it is based have indeed the transcendent value for humanity which the mystics claim for them--if they reveal to us a world of higher truth and greater reality than the world of concrete happenings in which we seem to be immersed--then that value is increased rather than lessened when confronted by the overwhelming disharmonies and sufferings of the present time. It is significant that many of these experiences are reported to us from periods of war and distress: that the stronger the forces of destruction appeared, the more intense grew the spiritual vision which opposed them. We learn from these records that the mystical consciousness has the power of lifting those who possess it to a plane of reality which no struggle, no cruelty, can disturb: of conferring a certitude which no catastrophe can wreck. Yet it does not wrap its initiates in a selfish and otherworldly calm, isolate them from the pain and effort of the common life. Rather, it gives them renewed vitality; administering to the human spirit not--as some suppose--a soothing draught, but the most powerful of stimulants. Stayed upon eternal realities, that spirit will be far better able to endure and profit by the stern discipline which the race is now called to undergo, than those who are wholly at the mercy of events; better able to discern the real from the illusory issues, and to pronounce judgment on the new problems, new difficulties, new fields of activity now disclosed. Perhaps it is worth while to remind ourselves that the two women who have left the deepest mark upon the military history of France and England--Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale--both acted under mystical compulsion. So, too, did one of the noblest of modern soldiers, General Gordon. Their national value was directly connected with their deep spiritual consciousness: their intensely practical energies were the flowers of a contemplative life. We are often told, that in the critical periods of history it is the national soul which counts: that "where there is no vision, the people perish." No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge with soul unstained. If this be so, it becomes a part of true patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual citizen and of the social group, active and vigorous; its vision of realities unsullied by the entangled interests and passions of the time. This is a task in which all may do their part. The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised it he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers. It is therefore the function of a practical mysticism to increase, not diminish, the total efficiency, the wisdom and steadfastness, of those who try to practise it. It will help them to enter, more completely than ever before, into the life of the group to which they belong. It will teach them to see the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate them in a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on them an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even in the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." As a contribution, then, to these purposes, this little book is now published. It is addressed neither to the learned nor to the devout, who are already in possession of a wide literature dealing from many points of view with the experiences and philosophy of the mystics. Such readers are warned that they will find here nothing but the re-statement of elementary and familiar propositions, and invitations to a discipline immemorially old. Far from presuming to instruct those to whom first-hand information is both accessible and palatable, I write only for the larger class which, repelled by the formidable appearance of more elaborate works on the subject, would yet like to know what is meant by mysticism, and what it has to offer to the average man: how it helps to solve his problems, how it harmonises with the duties and ideals of his active life. For this reason, I presuppose in my readers no knowledge whatever of the subject, either upon the philosophic, religious, or historical side. Nor, since I wish my appeal to be general, do I urge the special claim of any one theological system, any one metaphysical school. I have merely attempted to put the view of the universe and man's place in it which is common to all mystics in plain and untechnical language: and to suggest the practical conditions under which ordinary persons may participate in their experience. Therefore the abnormal states of consciousness which sometimes appear in connection with mystical genius are not discussed: my business being confined to the description of a faculty which all men possess in a greater or less degree. The reality and importance of this faculty are considered in the first three chapters. In the fourth and fifth is described the preliminary training of attention necessary for its use; in the sixth, the general self-discipline and attitude toward life which it involves. The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters treat in an elementary way of the three great forms of contemplation; and in the tenth, the practical value of the life in which they have been actualised is examined. Those kind enough to attempt the perusal of the book are begged to read the first sections with some attention before passing to the latter part. E. U. _September_ 12, 1914. CHAPTER I WHAT IS MYSTICISM? Those who are interested in that special attitude towards the universe which is now loosely called "mystical," find themselves beset by a multitude of persons who are constantly asking--some with real fervour, some with curiosity, and some with disdain-- "What _is_ mysticism?" When referred to the writings of the mystics themselves, and to other works in which this question appears to be answered, these people reply that such books are wholly incomprehensible to them. On the other hand, the genuine inquirer will find before long a number of self-appointed apostles who are eager to answer his question in many strange and inconsistent ways, calculated to increase rather than resolve the obscurity of his mind. He will learn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of religion, a disease; that it means having visions, performing conjuring tricks, leading an idle, dreamy, and selfish life, neglecting one's business, wallowing in vague spiritual emotions, and being "in tune with the infinite." He will discover that it emancipates him from all dogmas--sometimes from all morality-- and at the same time that it is very superstitious. One expert tells him that it is simply "Catholic piety," another that Walt Whitman was a typical mystic; a third assures him that all mysticism comes from the East, and supports his statement by an appeal to the mango trick. At the end of a prolonged course of lectures, sermons, tea-parties, and talks with earnest persons, the inquirer is still heard saying--too often in tones of exasperation--"What _is_ mysticism?" I dare not pretend to solve a problem which has provided so much good hunting in the past. It is indeed the object of this little essay to persuade the practical man to the one satisfactory course: that of discovering the answer for himself. Yet perhaps it will give confidence if I confess pears to cover all the ground; or at least, all that part of the ground which is worth covering. It will hardly stretch to the mango trick; but it finds room at once for the visionaries and the philosophers, for Walt Whitman and the saints. Here is the definition:-- _Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment_. It is not expected that the inquirer will find great comfort in this sentence when first it meets his eye. The ultimate question, "What is Reality?"--a question, perhaps, which never occurred to him before--is already forming in his mind; and he knows that it will cause him infinite distress. Only a mystic can answer it: and he, in terms which other mystics alone will understand. Therefore, for the time being, the practical man may put it on one side. All that he is asked to consider now is this: that the word "union" represents not so much a rare and unimaginable operation, as something which he is doing, in a vague, imperfect fashion, at every moment of his conscious life; and doing with intensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments of that life. We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it; by an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us, just in so far as we give ourselves to it; and it is because our outflow towards things is usually so perfunctory and so languid, that our comprehension of things is so perfunctory and languid too. The great Sufi who said that "Pilgrimage to the place of the wise, is to escape the flame of separation" spoke the literal truth. Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who "keep themselves to themselves," and stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have never truly known. Because he has surrendered himself to it, "united" with it, the patriot knows his country, the artist knows the subject of his art, the lover his beloved, the saint his God, in a manner which is inconceivable as well as unattainable by the looker-on. Real knowledge, since it always implies an intuitive sympathy more or less intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of touch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True, analytic thought follows swiftly upon the contact, the apprehension, the union: and we, in our muddle-headed way, have persuaded ourselves that this is the essential part of knowledge--that it is, in fact, more important to cook the hare than to catch it. But when we get rid of this illusion and go back to the more primitive activities through which our mental kitchen gets its supplies, we see that the distinction between mystic and non-mystic is not merely that between the rationalist and the dreamer, between intellect and intuition. The question which divides them is really this: What, out of the mass of material offered to it, shall consciousness seize upon--with what aspects of the universe shall it "unite"? It is notorious that the operations of the average human consciousness unite the self, not with things as they really are, but with images, notions, aspects of things. The verb "to be," which he uses so lightly, does not truly apply to any of the objects amongst which the practical man supposes himself to dwell. For him the hare of Reality is always ready-jugged: he conceives not the living lovely, wild, swift-moving creature which has been sacrificed in order that he may be fed on the deplorable dish which he calls "things as they really are." So complete, indeed, is the separation of his consciousness from the facts of being, that he feels no sense of loss. He is happy enough "understanding," garnishing, assimilating the carcass from which the principle of life and growth has been ejected, and whereof only the most digestible portions have been retained. He is not "mystical." But sometimes it is suggested to him that his knowledge is not quite so thorough as he supposed. Philosophers in particular have a way of pointing out its clumsy and superficial character; of demonstrating the fact that he habitually mistakes his own private sensations for qualities inherent in the mysterious objects of the external world. From those few qualities of colour, size, texture, and the rest, which his mind has been able to register and classify, he makes a label which registers the sum of his own experiences. This he knows, with this he "unites"; for it is his own creature. It is neat, flat, unchanging, with edges well defined: a thing one can trust. He forgets the existence of other conscious creatures, provided with their own standards of reality. Yet the sea as the fish feels it, the borage as the bee sees it, the intricate sounds of the hedgerow as heard by the rabbit, the impact of light on the eager face of the primrose, the landscape as known in its vastness to the wood-louse and ant--all these experiences, denied to him for ever, have just as much claim to the attribute of Being as his own partial and subjective interpretations of things. Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent. We simply do not attempt to unite with Reality. But now and then that symbolic character is suddenly brought home to us. Some great emotion, some devastating visitation of beauty, love, or pain, lifts us to another level of consciousness; and we are aware for a moment of the difference between the neat collection of discrete objects and experiences which we call the world, and the height, the depth, the breadth of that living, growing, changing Fact, of which thought, life, and energy are parts, and in which we "live and move and have our being." Then we realise that our whole life is enmeshed in great and living forces; terrible because unknown. Even the power which lurks in every coal-scuttle, shines in the electric lamp, pants in the motor-omnibus, declares itself in the ineffable wonders of reproduction and growth, is supersensual. We do but perceive its results. The more sacred plane of life and energy which seems to be manifested in the forces we call "spiritual" and "emotional"--in love, anguish, ecstasy, adoration--is hidden from us too. Symptoms, appearances, are all that our intellects can discern: sudden irresistible inroads from it, all that our hearts can apprehend. The material for an intenser life, a wider, sharper consciousness, a more profound understanding of our own existence, lies at our gates. But we are separated from it, we cannot assimilate it; except in abnormal moments, we hardly know that it is. We now begin to attach at least a fragmentary meaning to the statement that "mysticism is the art of union with Reality." We see that the claim of such a poet as Whitman to be a mystic lies in the fact that he has achieved a passionate communion with deeper levels of life than those with which we usually deal--has thrust past the current notion to the Fact: that the claim of such a saint as Teresa is bound up with her declaration that she has achieved union with the Divine Essence itself. The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reach of the senses. The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active man is a mystic when he knows his actions to be a part of a greater activity. Blake, Plotinus, Joan of Arc, and John of the Cross-- there is a link which binds all these together: but if he is to make use of it, the inquirer must find that link for himself. All four exhibit different forms of the working of the contemplative consciousness; a faculty which is proper to all men, though few take the trouble to develop it. Their attention to life has changed its character, sharpened its focus: and as a result they see, some a wider landscape, some a more brilliant, more significant, more detailed world than that which is apparent to the less educated, less observant vision of common sense. The old story of Eyes and No-Eyes is really the story of the mystical and unmystical types. "No-Eyes" has fixed his attention on the fact that he is obliged to take a walk. For him the chief factor of existence is his own movement along the road; a movement which he intends to accomplish as efficiently and comfortably as he can. He asks not to know what may be on either side of the hedges. He ignores the caress of the wind until it threatens to remove his hat. He trudges along, steadily, diligently; avoiding the muddy pools, but oblivious of the light which they reflect. "Eyes" takes the walk too: and for him it is a perpetual revelation of beauty and wonder. The sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very effort of the journey is a joy. Magic presences throng the roadside, or cry salutations to him from the hidden fields. The rich world through which he moves lies in the fore-ground of his consciousness; and it gives up new secrets to him at every step. "No-Eyes," when told of his adventures, usually refuses to believe that both have gone by the same road. He fancies that his companion has been floating about in the air, or beset by agreeable hallucinations. We shall never persuade him to the contrary unless we persuade him to look for himself. Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception--this "ordinary contemplation," as the specialists call it--is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician. As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone-- though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men--so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire. "For heaven ghostly," says _The Cloud of Unknowing_, "is as nigh down as up, and up as down; behind as before, before as behind, on one side as other. Inasmuch, that whoso had a true desire for to be at heaven, then that same time he were in heaven ghostly. For the high and the next way thither is run by desires, and not by paces of feet." None therefore is condemned, save by his own pride, sloth, or perversity, to the horrors of that which Blake called "single vision"--perpetual and undivided attention to the continuous cinematograph performance, which the mind has conspired with the senses to interpose between ourselves and the living world. CHAPTER II THE WORLD OF REALITY The practical man may justly observe at this point that the world of single vision is the only world he knows: that it appears to him to be real, solid, and self-consistent: and that until the existence-- at least, the probability--of other planes of reality is made clear to him, all talk of uniting with them is mere moonshine, which confirms his opinion of mysticism as a game fit only for idle women and inferior poets. Plainly, then, it is the first business of the missionary to create, if he can, some feeling of dissatisfaction with the world within which the practical man has always lived and acted; to suggest something of its fragmentary and subjective character. We turn back therefore to a further examination of the truism--so obvious to those who are philosophers, so exasperating to those who are not--that man dwells, under normal conditions, in a world of imagination rather than a world of facts; that the universe in which he lives and at which he looks is but a construction which the mind has made from some few amongst the wealth of materials at its disposal. The relation of this universe to the world of fact is not unlike the relation between a tapestry picture and the scene which it imitates. You, practical man, are obliged to weave your image of the outer world upon the hard warp of your own mentality; which perpetually imposes its own convention, and checks the free representation of life. As a tapestry picture, however various and full of meaning, is ultimately reducible to little squares; so the world of common sense is ultimately reducible to a series of static elements conditioned by the machinery of the brain. Subtle curves, swift movement, delicate gradation, that machinery cannot represent. It leaves them out. From the countless suggestions, the tangle of many-coloured wools which the real world presents to you, you snatch one here and there. Of these you weave together those which are the most useful, the most obvious, the most often repeated: which make a tidy and coherent pattern when seen on the right side. Shut up with this symbolic picture, you soon drop into the habit of behaving to it as though it were not a representation but a thing. On it you fix your attention; with it you "unite." Yet, did you look at the wrong side, at the many short ends, the clumsy joins and patches, this simple philosophy might be disturbed. You would be forced to acknowledge the conventional character of the picture you have made so cleverly, the wholesale waste of material involved in the weaving of it: for only a few amongst the wealth of impressions we receive are seized and incorporated into our picture of the world. Further, it might occur to you that a slight alteration in the rhythm of the senses would place at your disposal a complete new range of material; opening your eyes and ears to sounds, colours, and movements now inaudible and invisible, removing from your universe those which you now regard as part of the established order of things. Even the strands which you have made use of might have been combined in some other way; with disastrous results to the "world of common sense," yet without any diminution of their own reality. Nor can you regard these strands themselves as ultimate. As the most prudent of logicians might venture to deduce from a skein of wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which transcends the reproductive powers of your loom. Even the camera of the photographer, more apt at contemplation than the mind of man, has shown us how limited are these powers in some directions, and enlightened us as to a few of the cruder errors of the person who accepts its products at face-value; or, as he would say, believes his own eyes. It has shown us, for instance, that the galloping race-horse, with legs stretched out as we are used to see it, is a mythical animal, probably founded on the mental image of a running dog. No horse has ever galloped thus: but its real action is too quick for us, and we explain it to ourselves as something resembling the more deliberate dog-action which we have caught and registered as it passed. The plain man's universe is full of race-horses which are really running dogs: of conventional waves, first seen in pictures and then imagined upon the sea: of psychological situations taken from books and applied to human life: of racial peculiarities generalised from insufficient data, and then "discovered" in actuality: of theological diagrams and scientific "laws," flung upon the background of eternity as the magic lantern's image is reflected on the screen. The coloured scene at which you look so trustfully owes, in fact, much of its character to the activities of the seer: to that process of thought--concept--cogitation, from which Keats prayed with so great an ardour to escape, when he exclaimed in words which will seem to you, according to the temper of your mind, either an invitation to the higher laziness or one of the most profound aspirations of the soul, "O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts!" He felt--as all the poets have felt with him--that another, lovelier world, tinted with unimaginable wonders, alive with ultimate music, awaited those who could free themselves from the fetters of the mind, lay down the shuttle and the weaver's comb, and reach out beyond the conceptual image to intuitive contact with the Thing. There are certain happy accidents which have the power of inducting man for a moment into this richer and more vital world. These stop, as one old mystic said, the "wheel of his imagination," the dreadful energy of his image-making power weaving up and transmuting the incoming messages of sense. They snatch him from the loom and place him, in the naked simplicity of his spirit, face to face with that Other than himself whence the materials of his industry have come. In these hours human consciousness ascends from thought to contemplation; becomes at least aware of the world in which the mystics dwell; and perceives for an instant, as St. Augustine did, "the light that never changes, above the eye of the soul, above the intelligence." This experience might be called in essence "absolute sensation." It is a pure feeling-state; in which the fragmentary contacts with Reality achieved through the senses are merged in a wholeness of communion which feels and knows all at once, yet in a way which the reason can never understand, that Totality of which fragments are known by the lover, the musician, and the artist. If the doors of perception were cleansed, said Blake, everything would appear to man as it is--Infinite. But the doors of perception are hung with the cobwebs of thought; prejudice, cowardice, sloth. Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond: too arrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition: for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of morning-glory; where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life. There will be many who feel a certain scepticism as to the possibility of the undertaking here suggested to them; a prudent unwillingness to sacrifice their old comfortably upholstered universe, on the mere promise that they will receive a new heaven and a new earth in exchange. These careful ones may like to remind themselves that the vision of the world presented to us by all the great artists and poets--those creatures whose very existence would seem so strange to us, were we not accustomed to them--perpetually demonstrates the many-graded character of human consciousness; the new worlds which await it, once it frees itself from the tyranny of those labour-saving contrivances with which it usually works. Leaving on one side the more subtle apprehensions which we call "spiritual," even the pictures of the old Chinese draughtsmen and the modern impressionists, of Watteau and of Turner, of Manet, Degas, and Cezanne; the poems of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman--these, and countless others, assure you that their creators have enjoyed direct communion, not with some vague world of fancy, but with a visible natural order which you have never known. These have seized and woven into their pictures strands which never presented themselves to you; significant forms which elude you, tones and relations to which you are blind, living facts for which your conventional world provides no place. They prove by their works that Blake was right when he said that "a fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees"; and that psychologists, insisting on the selective action of the mind, the fact that our preconceptions govern the character of our universe, do but teach the most demonstrable of truths. Did you take them seriously, as you should, their ardent reports might well disgust you with the dull and narrow character of your own consciousness. What is it, then, which distinguishes the outlook of great poets and artists from the arrogant subjectivism of common sense? Innocence and humility distinguish it. These persons prejudge nothing, criticise nothing. To some extent, their attitude to the universe is that of children: and because this is so, they participate to that extent in the Heaven of Reality. According to their measure, they have fulfilled Keats' aspiration, they do live a life in which the emphasis lies on sensation rather than on thought: for the state which he then struggled to describe was that ideal state of pure receptivity, of perfect correspondence with the essence of things, of which all artists have a share, and which a few great mystics appear to have possessed--not indeed in its entirety, but to an extent which made them, as they say, "one with the Reality of things." The greater the artist is, the wider and deeper is the range of this pure sensation: the more sharply he is aware of the torrent of life and loveliness, the rich profusion of possible beauties and shapes. He always wants to press deeper and deeper, to let the span of his perception spread wider and wider; till he unites with the whole of that Reality which he feels all about him, and of which his own life is a part. He is always tending, in fact, to pass over from the artistic to the mystical state. In artistic experience, then, in the artist's perennial effort to actualise the ideal which Keats expressed, we may find a point of departure for our exploration of the contemplative life. What would it mean for a soul that truly captured it; this life in which the emphasis should lie on the immediate percepts, the messages the world pours in on us, instead of on the sophisticated universe into which our clever brains transmute them? Plainly, it would mean the achievement of a new universe, a new order of reality: escape from the terrible museum-like world of daily life, where everything is classified and labelled, and all the graded fluid facts which have no label are ignored. It would mean an innocence of eye and innocence of ear impossible for us to conceive; the impassioned contemplation of pure form, freed from all the meanings with which the mind has draped and disguised it; the recapturing of the lost mysteries of touch and fragrance, most wonderful amongst the avenues of sense. It would mean the exchanging of the neat conceptual world our thoughts build up, fenced in by the solid ramparts of the possible, for the inconceivable richness of that unwalled world from which we have subtracted it. It would mean that we should receive from every flower, not merely a beautiful image to which the label "flower" has been affixed, but the full impact of its unimaginable beauty and wonder, the direct sensation of life having communion with life: that the scents of ceasing rain, the voice of trees, the deep softness of the kitten's fur, the acrid touch of sorrel on the tongue, should be in themselves profound, complete, and simple experiences, calling forth simplicity of response in our souls. Thus understood, the life of pure sensation is the meat and drink of poetry, and one of the most accessible avenues to that union with Reality which the mystic declares to us as the very object of life. But the poet must take that living stuff direct from the field and river, without sophistication, without criticism, as the life of the soul is taken direct from the altar; with an awe that admits not of analysis. He must not subject it to the cooking, filtering process of the brain. It is because he knows how to elude this dreadful sophistication of Reality, because his attitude to the universe is governed by the supreme artistic virtues of humility and love, that poetry is what it is: and I include in the sweep of poetic art the coloured poetry of the painter, and the wordless poetry of the musician and the dancer too. At this point the critical reader will certainly offer an objection. "You have been inviting me," he will say, "to do nothing more or less than trust my senses: and this too on the authority of those impracticable dreamers the poets. Now it is notorious that our senses deceive us. Every one knows that; and even your own remarks have already suggested it. How, then, can a wholesale and uncritical acceptance of my sensations help me to unite with Reality? Many of these sensations we share with the animals: in some, the animals obviously surpass us. Will you suggest that my terrier, smelling his way through an uncoordinated universe, is a better mystic than I?" To this I reply, that the terrier's contacts with the world are doubtless crude and imperfect; yet he has indeed preserved a directness of apprehension which you have lost. He gets, and responds to, the real smell; not a notion or a name. Certainly the senses, when taken at face-value, do deceive us: yet the deception resides not so much in them, as in that conceptual world which we insist on building up from their reports, and for which we make them responsible. They deceive us less when we receive these reports uncooked and unclassified, as simple and direct experiences. Then, behind the special and imperfect stammerings which we call colour, sound, fragrance, and the rest, we sometimes discern a _whole fact_--at once divinely simple and infinitely various--from which these partial messages proceed; and which seeks as it were to utter itself in them. And we feel, when this is so, that the fact thus glimpsed is of an immense significance; imparting to that aspect of the world which we are able to perceive all the significance, all the character which it possesses. The more of the artist there is in us, the more intense that significance, that character will seem: the more complete, too, will be our conviction that our uneasiness, the vagueness of our reactions to things, would be cured could we reach and unite with the fact, instead of our notion of it. And it is just such an act of union, reached through the clarified channels of sense and unadulterated by the content of thought, which the great artist or poet achieves. We seem in these words to have come far from the mystic, and that contemplative consciousness wherewith he ascends to the contact of Truth. As a matter of fact, we are merely considering that consciousness in its most natural and accessible form: for contemplation is, on the one hand, the essential activity of all artists; on the other, the art through which those who choose to learn and practise it may share in some fragmentary degree, according to their measure, the special experience of the mystic and the poet. By it they may achieve that virginal outlook upon things, that celestial power of communion with veritable life, which comes when that which we call "sensation" is freed from the tyranny of that which we call "thought." The artist is no more and no less than a contemplative who has learned to express himself, and who tells his love in colour, speech, or sound: the mystic, upon one side of his nature, is an artist of a special and exalted kind, who tries to express something of the revelation he has received, mediates between Reality and the race. In the game of give and take which goes on between the human consciousness and the external world, both have learned to put the emphasis upon the message from without, rather than on their own reaction to and rearrangement of it. Both have exchanged the false imagination which draws the sensations and intuitions of the self into its own narrow circle, and there distorts and transforms them, for the true imagination which pours itself out, eager, adventurous, and self-giving, towards the greater universe. CHAPTER III THE PREPARATION OF THE MYSTIC Here the practical man will naturally say: And pray how am I going to do this? How shall I detach myself from the artificial world to which I am accustomed? Where is the brake that shall stop the wheel of my image-making mind? I answer: You are going to do it by an educative process; a drill, of which the first stages will, indeed, be hard enough. You have already acknowledged the need of such mental drill, such deliberate selective acts, in respect to the smaller matters of life. You willingly spend time and money over that narrowing and sharpening of attention which you call a "business training," a "legal education," the "acquirement of a scientific method." But this new undertaking will involve the development and the training of a layer of your consciousness which has lain fallow in the past; the acquirement of a method you have never used before. It is reasonable, even reassuring, that hard work and discipline should be needed for this: that it should demand of you, if not the renunciation of the cloister, at least the virtues of the golf course. The education of the mystical sense begins in self-simplification. The feeling, willing, seeing self is to move from the various and the analytic to the simple and the synthetic: a sentence which may cause hard breathing and mopping of the brows on the part of the practical man. Yet it is to you, practical man, reading these pages as you rush through the tube to the practical work of rearranging unimportant fragments of your universe, that this message so needed by your time--or rather, by your want of time-- is addressed. To you, unconscious analyst, so busy reading the advertisements upon the carriage wall, that you hardly observe the stages of your unceasing flight: so anxiously acquisitive of the crumbs that you never lift your eyes to the loaf. The essence of mystical contemplation is summed in these two experiences-- union with the flux of life, and union with the Whole in which all lesser realities are resumed--and these experiences are well within your reach. Though it is likely that the accusation will annoy you, you are already in fact a potential contemplative: for this act, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, is proper to all men--is, indeed, the characteristic human activity. More, it is probable that you are, or have been, an actual contemplative too. Has it never happened to you to lose yourself for a moment in a swift and satisfying experience for which you found no name? When the world took on a strangeness, and you rushed out to meet it, in a mood at once exultant and ashamed? Was there not an instant when you took the lady who now orders your dinner into your arms, and she suddenly interpreted to you the whole of the universe? a universe so great, charged with so terrible an intensity, that you have hardly dared to think of it since. Do you remember that horrid moment at the concert, when you became wholly unaware of your comfortable seven-and-sixpenny seat? Those were onsets of involuntary contemplation; sudden partings of the conceptual veil. Dare you call them the least significant, moments of your life? Did you not then, like the African saint, "thrill with love and dread," though you were not provided with a label for that which you adored? It will not help you to speak of these experiences as "mere emotion." Mere emotion then inducted you into a world which you recognised as more valid--in the highest sense, more rational-- than that in which you usually dwell: a world which had a wholeness, a meaning, which exceeded the sum of its parts. Mere emotion then brought you to your knees, made you at once proud and humble, showed you your place. It simplified and unified existence: it stripped off the little accidents and ornaments which perpetually deflect our vagrant attention, and gathered up the whole being of you into one state, which felt and knew a Reality that your intelligence could not comprehend. Such an emotion is the driving power of spirit, an august and ultimate thing: and this your innermost inhabitant felt it to be, whilst your eyes were open to the light. Now that simplifying act, which is the preliminary of all mystical experience, that gathering of the scattered bits of personality into the _one_ which is really you--into the "unity of your spirit," as the mystics say--the great forces of love, beauty, wonder, grief, may do for you now and again. These lift you perforce from the consideration of the details to the contemplation of the All: turn you from the tidy world of image to the ineffable world of fact. But they are fleeting and ungovernable experiences, descending with dreadful violence on the soul. Are you willing that your participation in Reality shall depend wholly on these incalculable visitations: on the sudden wind and rain that wash your windows, and let in the vision of the landscape at your gates? You can, if you like, keep those windows clear. You can, if you choose to turn your attention that way, learn to look out of them. These are the two great phases in the education of every contemplative: and they are called in the language of the mystics the purification of the senses and the purification of the will. Those who are so fortunate as to experience in one of its many forms the crisis which is called "conversion" are seized, as it seems to them, by some power stronger than themselves and turned perforce in the right direction. They find that this irresistible power has cleansed the windows of their homely coat of grime; and they look out, literally, upon a new heaven and new earth. The long quiet work of adjustment which others must undertake before any certitude rewards them is for these concentrated into one violent shattering and rearranging of the self, which can now begin its true career of correspondence with the Reality it has perceived. To persons of this type I do not address myself: but rather to the ordinary plodding scholar of life, who must reach the same goal by a more gradual road. What is it that smears the windows of the senses? Thought, convention, self-interest. We throw a mist of thought between ourselves and the external world: and through this we discern, as in a glass darkly, that which we have arranged to see. We see it in the way in which our neighbours see it; sometimes through a pink veil, sometimes through a grey. Religion, indigestion, priggishness, or discontent may drape the panes. The prismatic colours of a fashionable school of art may stain them. Inevitably, too, we see the narrow world our windows show us, not "in itself," but in relation to our own needs, moods, and preferences; which exercise a selective control upon those few aspects of the whole which penetrate to the field of consciousness and dictate the order in which we arrange them, for the universe of the natural man is strictly egocentric. We continue to name the living creatures with all the placid assurance of Adam: and whatsoever we call them, that is the name thereof. Unless we happen to be artists--and then but rarely--we never know the "thing seen" in its purity; never, from birth to death, look at it with disinterested eyes. Our vision and understanding of it are governed by all that we bring with us, and mix with it, to form an amalgam with which the mind can deal. To "purify" the senses is to release them, so far as human beings may, from the tyranny of egocentric judgments; to make of them the organs of direct perception. This means that we must crush our deep-seated passion for classification and correspondences; ignore the instinctive, selfish question, "What does it mean to _me_?" learn to dip ourselves in the universe at our gates, and know it, not from without by comprehension, but from within by self-mergence. Richard of St. Victor has said, that the essence of all purification is self-simplification; the doing away of the unnecessary and unreal, the tangles and complications of consciousness: and we must remember that when these masters of the spiritual life speak of purity, they have in their minds no thin, abstract notion of a rule of conduct stripped of all colour and compounded chiefly of refusals, such as a more modern, more arid asceticism set up. Their purity is an affirmative state; something strong, clean, and crystalline, capable of a wholeness of adjustment to the wholeness of a God-inhabited world. The pure soul is like a lens from which all irrelevancies and excrescences, all the beams and motes of egotism and prejudice, have been removed; so that it may reflect a clear image of the one Transcendent Fact within which all others facts are held. "All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms." All the details of existence, all satisfactions of the heart and mind, are resumed within that Transcendent Fact, as all the colours of the spectrum are included in white light: and we possess them best by passing beyond them, by following back the many to the One. The "Simple Eye" of Contemplation, about which the mystic writers say so much, is then a synthetic sense; which sees that white light in which all colour is, without discrete analysis of its properties. The Simple Ear which discerns the celestial melody, hears that Tone in which all music is resumed; thus achieving that ecstatic life of "sensation without thought" which Keats perceived to be the substance of true happiness. But you, practical man, have lived all your days amongst the illusions of multiplicity. Though you are using at every instant your innate tendency to synthesis and simplification, since this alone creates the semblance of order in your universe--though what you call seeing and hearing are themselves great unifying acts--yet your attention to life has been deliberately adjusted to a world of frittered values and prismatic refracted lights: full of incompatible interests, of people, principles, things. Ambitions and affections, tastes and prejudices, are fighting for your attention. Your poor, worried consciousness flies to and fro amongst them; it has become a restless and a complicated thing. At this very moment your thoughts are buzzing like a swarm of bees. The reduction of this fevered complex to a unity appears to be a task beyond all human power. Yet the situation is not as hopeless for you as it seems. All this is only happening upon the periphery of the mind, where it touches and reacts to the world of appearance. At the centre there is a stillness which even you are not able to break. There, the rhythm of your duration is one with the rhythm of the Universal Life. There, your essential self exists: the permanent being which persists through and behind the flow and change of your conscious states. You have been snatched to that centre once or twice. Turn your consciousness inward to it deliberately. Retreat to that point whence all the various lines of your activities flow, and to which at last they must return. Since this alone of all that you call your "selfhood" is possessed of eternal reality, it is surely a counsel of prudence to acquaint yourself with its peculiarities and its powers. "Take your seat within the heart of the thousand-petaled lotus," cries the Eastern visionary. "Hold thou to thy Centre," says his Christian brother, "and all things shall be thine." This is a practical recipe, not a pious exhortation. The thing may sound absurd to you, but you can do it if you will: standing back, as it were, from the vague and purposeless reactions in which most men fritter their vital energies. Then you can survey with a certain calm, a certain detachment, your universe and the possibilities of life within it: can discern too, if you be at all inclined to mystical adventure, the stages of the road along which you must pass on your way towards harmony with the Real. This universe, these possibilities, are far richer, yet far simpler than you have supposed. Seen from the true centre of personality, instead of the usual angle of self-interest, their scattered parts arrange themselves in order: you begin to perceive those graduated levels of Reality with which a purified and intensified consciousness can unite. So, too, the road is more logically planned, falls into more comprehensible stages, than those who dwell in a world of single vision are willing to believe. Now it is a paradox of human life, often observed even by the most concrete and unimaginative of philosophers, that man seems to be poised between two contradictory orders of Reality. Two planes of existence--or, perhaps, two ways of apprehending existence--lie within the possible span of his consciousness. That great pair of opposites which metaphysicians call Being and Becoming, Eternity and Time, Unity and Multiplicity, and others mean, when they speak of the Spiritual and the Natural Worlds, represents the two extreme forms under which the universe can be realised by him. The greatest men, those whose consciousness is extended to full span, can grasp, be aware of, both. They know themselves to live, both in the discrete, manifested, ever-changeful parts and appearances, and also in the Whole Fact. They react fully to both: for them there is no conflict between the parochial and the patriotic sense. More than this, a deep instinct sometimes assures them that the inner spring or secret of that Whole Fact is also the inner spring and secret of their individual lives: and that here, in this third factor, the disharmonies between the part and the whole are resolved. As they know themselves to dwell in the world of time and yet to be capable of transcending it, so the Ultimate Reality, they think, inhabits yet inconceivably exceeds all that they know to be--as the soul of the musician controls and exceeds not merely each note of the flowing melody, but also the whole of that symphony in which these cadences must play their part. That invulnerable spark of vivid life, that "inward light" which these men find at their own centres when they seek for it, is for them an earnest of the Uncreated Light, the ineffable splendour of God, dwelling at, and energising within the heart of things: for this spark is at once one with, yet separate from, the Universal Soul. So then, man, in the person of his greatest and most living representatives, feels himself to have implicit correspondences with three levels of existence; which we may call the Natural, the Spiritual, and the Divine. The road on which he is to travel therefore, the mystical education which he is to undertake, shall successively unite him with these three worlds; stretching his consciousness to the point at which he finds them first as three, and at last as One. Under normal circumstances even the first of them, the natural world of Becoming, is only present to him-- unless he be an artist--in a vague and fragmentary way. He is, of course, aware of the temporal order, a ceaseless change and movement, birth, growth, and death, of which he is a part. But the rapture and splendour of that everlasting flux which India calls the Sport of God hardly reaches his understanding; he is too busy with his own little movements to feel the full current of the stream. But under those abnormal circumstances on which we have touched, a deeper level of his consciousness comes into focus; he hears the music of surrounding things. Then he rises, through and with his awareness of the great life of Nature, to the knowledge that he is part of another greater life, transcending succession. In this his durational spirit is immersed. Here all the highest values of existence are stored for him: and it is because of his existence within this Eternal Reality, his patriotic relationship to it, that the efforts and experiences of the time-world have significance for him. It is from the vantage point gained when he realises his contacts with this higher order, that he can see with the clear eye of the artist or the mystic the World of Becoming itself-- recognise its proportions--even reach out to some faint intuition of its ultimate worth. So, if he would be a whole man, if he would realise all that is implicit in his humanity, he must actualise his relationship with this supernal plane of Being: and he shall do it, as we have seen, by simplification, by a deliberate withdrawal of attention from the bewildering multiplicity of things, a deliberate humble surrender of his image-making consciousness. He already possesses, at that gathering point of personality which the old writers sometimes called the "apex" and sometimes the "ground" of the soul, a medium of communication with Reality. But this spiritual principle, this gathering point of his selfhood, is just that aspect of him which is furthest removed from the active surface consciousness. He treats it as the busy citizen treats his national monuments. It is there, it is important, a possession which adds dignity to his existence; but he never has time to go in. Yet as the purified sense, cleansed of prejudice and self-interest, can give us fleeting communications from the actual broken-up world of duration at our gates: so the purified and educated will can wholly withdraw the self's attention from its usual concentration on small useful aspects of the time-world, refuse to react to its perpetually incoming messages, retreat to the unity of its spirit, and there make itself ready for messages from another plane. This is the process which the mystics call Recollection: the first stage in the training of the contemplative consciousness. We begin, therefore, to see that the task of union with Reality will involve certain stages of preparation as well as stages of attainment; and these stages of preparation--for some disinterested souls easy and rapid, for others long and full of pain--may be grouped under two heads. First, the disciplining and simplifying of the attention, which is the essence of Recollection. Next, the disciplining and simplifying of the affections and will, the orientation of the heart; which is sometimes called by the formidable name of Purgation. So the practical mysticism of the plain man will best be grasped by him as a five-fold scheme of training and growth: in which the first two stages prepare the self for union with Reality, and the last three unite it successively with the World of Becoming, the World of Being, and finally with that Ultimate Fact which the philosopher calls the Absolute and the religious mystic calls God. CHAPTER IV MEDITATION AND RECOLLECTION Recollection, the art which the practical man is now invited to learn, is in essence no more and no less than the subjection of the attention to the control of the will. It is not, therefore, a purely mystical activity. In one form or another it is demanded of all who would get control of their own mental processes; and does or should represent the first great step in the education of the human consciousness. So slothful, however, is man in all that concerns his higher faculties, that few deliberately undertake this education at all. They are content to make their contacts with things by a vague, unregulated power, ever apt to play truant, ever apt to fail them. Unless they be spurred to it by that passion for ultimate things which expresses itself in religion, philosophy, or art, they seldom learn the secret of a voluntary concentration of the mind. Since the philosopher's interests are mainly objective, and the artist seldom cogitates on his own processes, it is, in the end, to the initiate of religion that we are forced to go, if we would learn how to undertake this training for ourselves. The religious contemplative has this further attraction for us: that he is by nature a missionary as well. The vision which he has achieved is the vision of an intensely loving heart; and love, which cannot keep itself to itself, urges him to tell the news as widely and as clearly as he may. In his works, he is ever trying to reveal the secret of his own deeper life and wider vision, and to help his fellow men to share it: hence he provides the clearest, most orderly, most practical teachings on the art of contemplation that we are likely to find. True, our purpose in attempting this art may seem to us very different from his: though if we carry out the principles involved to their last term, we shall probably find that they have brought us to the place at which he aimed from the first. But the method, in its earlier stages, must be the same; whether we call the Reality which is the object of our quest aesthetic, cosmic, or divine. The athlete must develop much the same muscles, endure much the same discipline, whatever be the game he means to play. So we will go straight to St. Teresa, and inquire of her what was the method by which she taught her daughters to gather themselves together, to capture and hold the attitude most favourable to communion with the spiritual world. She tells us-- and here she accords with the great tradition of the Christian contemplatives, a tradition which was evolved under the pressure of long experience--that the process is a gradual one. The method to be employed is a slow, patient training of material which the licence of years has made intractable; not the sudden easy turning of the mind in a new direction, that it may minister to a new fancy for "the mystical view of things." Recollection begins, she says, in the deliberate and regular practice of meditation; a perfectly natural form of mental exercise, though at first a hard one. Now meditation is a half-way house between thinking and contemplating: and as a discipline, it derives its chief value from this transitional character. The real mystical life, which is the truly practical life, begins at the beginning; not with supernatural acts and ecstatic apprehensions, but with the normal faculties of the normal man. "I do not require of you," says Teresa to her pupils in meditation, "to form great and curious considerations in your understanding: I require of you no more than to _look_." It might be thought that such looking at the spiritual world, simply, intensely, without cleverness--such an opening of the Eye of Eternity--was the essence of contemplation itself: and indeed one of the best definitions has described that art as a "loving sight," a "peering into heaven with the ghostly eye." But the self who is yet at this early stage of the pathway to Reality is not asked to look at anything new, to peer into the deeps of things: only to gaze with a new and cleansed vision on the ordinary intellectual images, the labels and the formula, the "objects" and ideas--even the external symbols--amongst which it has always dwelt. It is not yet advanced to the seeing of fresh landscapes: it is only able to re-examine the furniture of its home, and obtain from this exercise a skill, and a control of the attention, which shall afterwards be applied to greater purposes. Its task is here to _consider_ that furniture, as the Victorines called this preliminary training: to take, that is, a more starry view of it: standing back from the whirl of the earth, and observing the process of things. Take, then, an idea, an object, from amongst the common stock, and hold it before your mind. The selection is large enough: all sentient beings may find subjects of meditation to their taste, for there lies a universal behind every particular of thought, however concrete it may appear, and within the most rational propositions the meditative eye may glimpse a dream. "Reason has moons, but moons not hers Lie mirror'd on her sea, Confounding her astronomers But, O delighting me." Even those objects which minister to our sense-life may well be used to nourish our spirits too. Who has not watched the intent meditations of a comfortable cat brooding upon the Absolute Mouse? You, if you have a philosophic twist, may transcend such relative views of Reality, and try to meditate on Time, Succession, even Being itself: or again on human intercourse, birth, growth, and death, on a flower, a river, the various tapestries of the sky. Even your own emotional life will provide you with the ideas of love, joy, peace, mercy, conflict, desire. You may range, with Kant, from the stars to the moral law. If your turn be to religion, the richest and most evocative of fields is open to your choice: from the plaster image to the mysteries of Faith. But, the choice made, it must be held and defended during the time of meditation against all invasions from without, however insidious their encroachments, however "spiritual" their disguise. It must be brooded upon, gazed at, seized again and again, as distractions seem to snatch it from your grasp. A restless boredom, a dreary conviction of your own incapacity, will presently attack you. This, too, must be resisted at sword-point. The first quarter of an hour thus spent in attempted meditation will be, indeed, a time of warfare; which should at least convince you how unruly, how ill-educated is your attention, how miserably ineffective your will, how far away you are from the captaincy of your own soul. It should convince, too, the most common-sense of philosophers of the distinction between real time, the true stream of duration which is life, and the sequence of seconds so carefully measured by the clock. Never before has the stream flowed so slowly, or fifteen minutes taken so long to pass. Consciousness has been lifted to a longer, slower rhythm, and is not yet adjusted to its solemn march. But, striving for this new poise, intent on the achievement of it, presently it will happen to you to find that you have indeed--though how you know not--entered upon a fresh plane of perception, altered your relation with things. First, the subject of your meditation begins, as you surrender to its influence, to exhibit unsuspected meaning, beauty, power. A perpetual growth of significance keeps pace with the increase of attention which you bring to bear on it; that attention which is the one agent of all your apprehensions, physical and mental alike. It ceases to be thin and abstract. You sink as it were into the deeps of it, rest in it, "unite" with it; and learn, in this still, intent communion, something of its depth and breadth and height, as we learn by direct intercourse to know our friends. Moreover, as your meditation becomes deeper it will defend you from the perpetual assaults of the outer world. You will hear the busy hum of that world as a distant exterior melody, and know yourself to be in some sort withdrawn from it. You have set a ring of silence between you and it; and behold! within that silence you are free. You will look at the coloured scene, and it will seem to you thin and papery: only one amongst countless possible images of a deeper life as yet beyond your reach. And gradually, you will come to be aware of an entity, a _You_, who can thus hold at arm's length, be aware of, look at, an idea--a universe--other than itself. By this voluntary painful act of concentration, this first step upon the ladder which goes--as the mystics would say--from "multiplicity to unity," you have to some extent withdrawn yourself from that union with unrealities, with notions and concepts, which has hitherto contented you; and at once all the values of existence are changed. "The road to a Yea lies through a Nay." You, in this preliminary movement of recollection, are saying your first deliberate No to the claim which the world of appearance makes to a total possession of your consciousness: and are thus making possible some contact between that consciousness and the World of Reality. Now turn this new purified and universalised gaze back upon yourself. Observe your own being in a fresh relation with things, and surrender yourself willingly to the moods of astonishment, humility, joy--perhaps of deep shame or sudden love--which invade your heart as you look. So doing patiently, day after day, constantly recapturing the vagrant attention, ever renewing the struggle for simplicity of sight, you will at last discover that there is something within you--something behind the fractious, conflicting life of desire--which you can recollect, gather up, make effective for new life. You will, in fact, know your own soul for the first time: and learn that there is a sense in which this real _You_ is distinct from, an alien within, the world in which you find yourself, as an actor has another life when he is not on the stage. When you do not merely believe this but know it; when you have achieved this power of withdrawing yourself, of making this first crude distinction between appearance and reality, the initial stage of the contemplative life has been won. It is not much more of an achievement than that first proud effort in which the baby stands upright for a moment and then relapses to the more natural and convenient crawl: but it holds within it the same earnest of future development. CHAPTER V SELF-ADJUSTMENT So, in a measure, you have found yourself: have retreated behind all that flowing appearance, that busy, unstable consciousness with its moods and obsessions, its feverish alternations of interest and apathy, its conflicts and irrational impulses, which even the psychologists mistake for You. Thanks to this recollective act, you have discovered in your inmost sanctuary a being not wholly practical, who refuses to be satisfied by your busy life of correspondences with the world of normal men, and hungers for communion with a spiritual universe. And this thing so foreign to your surface consciousness, yet familiar to it and continuous with it, you recognise as the true Self whose existence you always took for granted, but whom you have only known hitherto in its scattered manifestations. "That art thou." This climb up the mountain of self-knowledge, said the Victorine mystics, is the necessary prelude to all illumination. Only at its summit do we discover, as Dante did, the beginning of the pathway to Reality. It is a lonely and an arduous excursion, a sufficient test of courage and sincerity: for most men prefer to dwell in comfortable ignorance upon the lower slopes, and there to make of their more obvious characteristics a drapery which shall veil the naked truth. True and complete self-knowledge, indeed, is the privilege of the strongest alone. Few can bear to contemplate themselves face to face; for the vision is strange and terrible, and brings awe and contrition in its wake. The life of the seer is changed by it for ever. He is converted, in the deepest and most drastic sense; is forced to take up a new attitude towards himself and all other things. Likely enough, if you really knew yourself--saw your own dim character, perpetually at the mercy of its environment; your true motives, stripped for inspection and measured against eternal values; your unacknowledged self-indulgences; your irrational loves and hates--you would be compelled to remodel your whole existence, and become for the first time a practical man. But you have done what you can in this direction; have at last discovered your own deeper being, your eternal spark, the agent of all your contacts with Reality. You have often read about it. Now you have met it; know for a fact that it is there. What next? What changes, what readjustments will this self-revelation involve for you? You will have noticed, as with practice your familiarity with the state of Recollection has increased, that the kind of consciousness which it brings with it, the sort of attitude which it demands of you, conflict sharply with the consciousness and the attitude which you have found so appropriate to your ordinary life in the past. They make this old attitude appear childish, unworthy, at last absurd. By this first deliberate effort to attend to Reality you are at once brought face to face with that dreadful revelation of disharmony, unrealness, and interior muddle which the blunt moralists call "conviction of sin." Never again need those moralists point out to you the inherent silliness of your earnest pursuit of impermanent things: your solemn concentration upon the game of getting on. None the less, this attitude persists. Again and again you swing back to it. Something more than realisation is needed if you are to adjust yourself to your new vision of the world. This game which you have played so long has formed and conditioned you, developing certain qualities and perceptions, leaving the rest in abeyance: so that now, suddenly asked to play another, which demands fresh movements, alertness of a different sort, your mental muscles are intractable, your attention refuses to respond. Nothing less will serve you here than that drastic remodelling of character which the mystics call "Purgation," the second stage in the training of the human consciousness for participation in Reality. It is not merely that your intellect has assimilated, united with a superficial and unreal view of the world. Far worse: your will, your desire, the sum total of your energy, has been turned the wrong way, harnessed to the wrong machine. You have become accustomed to the idea that you want, or ought to want, certain valueless things, certain specific positions. For years your treasure has been in the Stock Exchange, or the House of Commons, or the Salon, or the reviews that "really count" (if they still exist), or the drawing-rooms of Mayfair; and thither your heart perpetually tends to stray. Habit has you in its chains. You are not free. The awakening, then, of your deeper self, which knows not habit and desires nothing but free correspondence with the Real, awakens you at once to the fact of a disharmony between the simple but inexorable longings and instincts of the buried spirit, now beginning to assert themselves in your hours of meditation--pushing out, as it were, towards the light--and the various changeful, but insistent longings and instincts of the surface-self. Between these two no peace is possible: they conflict at every turn. It becomes apparent to you that the declaration of Plotinus, accepted or repeated by all the mystics, concerning a "higher" and a "lower" life, and the cleavage that exists between them, has a certain justification even in the experience of the ordinary man. That great thinker and ecstatic said, that all human personality was thus two-fold: thus capable of correspondence with two orders of existence. The "higher life" was always tending towards union with Reality; towards the gathering of it self up into One. The "lower life," framed for correspondence with the outward world of multiplicity, was always tending to fall downwards, and fritter the powers of the self among external things. This is but a restatement, in terms of practical existence, of the fact which Recollection brought home to us: that the human self is transitional, neither angel nor animal, capable of living towards either Eternity or Time. But it is one thing to frame beautiful theories on these subjects: another when the unresolved dualism of your own personality (though you may not give it this high-sounding name) becomes the main fact of consciousness, perpetually reasserts itself as a vital problem, and refuses to take academic rank. This state of things means the acute discomfort which ensues on being pulled two ways at once. The uneasy swaying of attention between two incompatible ideals, the alternating conviction that there is something wrong, perverse, poisonous, about life as you have always lived it, and something hopelessly ethereal about the life which your innermost inhabitant wants to live--these disagreeable sensations grow stronger and stronger. First one and then the other asserts itself. You fluctuate miserably between their attractions and their claims; and will have no peace until these claims have been met, and the apparent opposition between them resolved. You are sure now that there is another, more durable and more "reasonable," life possible to the human consciousness than that on which it usually spends itself. But it is also clear to you that you must yourself be something more, or other, than you are now, if you are to achieve this life, dwell in it, and breathe its air. You have had in your brief spells of recollection a first quick vision of that plane of being which Augustine called "the land of peace," the "beauty old and new." You know for evermore that it exists: that the real thing within yourself belongs to it, might live in it, is being all the time invited and enticed to it. You begin, in fact, to feel and know in every fibre of your being the mystical need of "union with Reality"; and to realise that the natural scene which you have accepted so trustfully cannot provide the correspondences toward which you are stretching out. Nevertheless, it is to correspondences with this natural order that you have given for many years your full attention, your desire, your will. The surface-self, left for so long in undisputed possession of the conscious field, has grown strong, and cemented itself like a limpet to the rock of the obvious; gladly exchanging freedom for apparent security, and building up, from a selection amongst the more concrete elements offered it by the rich stream of life, a defensive shell of "fixed ideas." It is useless to speak kindly to the limpet. You must detach it by main force. That old comfortable clinging life, protected by its hard shell from the living waters of the sea, must now come to an end. A conflict of some kind--a severance of old habits, old notions, old prejudices--is here inevitable for you; and a decision as to the form which the new adjustments must take. Now although in a general way we may regard the practical man's attitude to existence as a limpet-like adherence to the unreal; yet, from another point of view, fixity of purpose and desire is the last thing we can attribute to him. His mind is full of little whirlpools, twists and currents, conflicting systems, incompatible desires. One after another, he centres himself on ambition, love, duty, friendship, social convention, politics, religion, self-interest in one of its myriad forms; making of each a core round which whole sections of his life are arranged. One after another, these things either fail him or enslave him. Sometimes they become obsessions, distorting his judgment, narrowing his outlook, colouring his whole existence. Sometimes they develop inconsistent characters which involve him in public difficulties, private compromises and self-deceptions of every kind. They split his attention, fritter his powers. This state of affairs, which usually passes for an "active life," begins to take on a different complexion when looked at with the simple eye of meditation. Then we observe that the plain man's world is in a muddle, just because he has tried to arrange its major interests round himself as round a centre; and he is neither strong enough nor clever enough for the job. He has made a wretched little whirlpool in the mighty River of Becoming, interrupting--as he imagines, in his own interest--its even flow: and within that whirlpool are numerous petty complexes and counter-currents, amongst which his will and attention fly to and fro in a continual state of unrest. The man who makes a success of his life, in any department, is he who has chosen one from amongst these claims and interests, and devoted to it his energetic powers of heart and will; "unifying" himself about it, and from within it resisting all counter-claims. He has one objective, one centre; has killed out the lesser ones, and simplified himself. Now the artist, the discoverer, the philosopher, the lover, the patriot--the true enthusiast for any form of life--can only achieve the full reality to which his special art or passion gives access by innumerable renunciations. He must kill out the smaller centres of interest, in order that his whole will, love, and attention may pour itself out towards, seize upon, unite with, that special manifestation of the beauty and significance of the universe to which he is drawn. So, too, a deliberate self-simplification, a "purgation" of the heart and will, is demanded of those who would develop the form of consciousness called "mystical." All your power, all your resolution, is needed if you are to succeed in this adventure: there must be no frittering of energy, no mixture of motives. We hear much of the mystical temperament, the mystical vision. The mystical character is far more important: and its chief ingredients are courage, singleness of heart, and self-control. It is towards the perfecting of these military virtues, not to the production of a pious softness, that the discipline of asceticism is largely directed; and the ascetic foundation, in one form or another, is the only enduring foundation of a sane contemplative life. You cannot, until you have steadied yourself, found a poise, and begun to resist some amongst the innumerable claims which the world of appearance perpetually makes upon your attention and your desire, make much use of the new power which Recollection has disclosed to you; and this Recollection itself, so long as it remains merely a matter of attention and does not involve the heart, is no better than a psychic trick. You are committed therefore, as the fruit of your first attempts at self-knowledge, to a deliberate--probably a difficult--rearrangement of your character; to the stern course of self-discipline, the voluntary acts of choice on the one hand and of rejection on the other, which ascetic writers describe under the formidable names of Detachment and Mortification. By Detachment they mean the eviction of the limpet from its crevice; the refusal to anchor yourself to material things, to regard existence from the personal standpoint, or confuse custom with necessity. By Mortification, they mean the resolving of the turbulent whirlpools and currents of your own conflicting passions, interests, desires; the killing out of all those tendencies which the peaceful vision of Recollection would condemn, and which create the fundamental opposition between your interior and exterior life. What then, in the last resort, is the source of this opposition; the true reason of your uneasiness, your unrest? The reason lies, not in any real incompatibility between the interests of the temporal and the eternal orders; which are but two aspects of one Fact, two expressions of one Love. It lies solely in yourself; in your attitude towards the world of things. You are enslaved by the verb "to have": all your reactions to life consist in corporate or individual demands, appetites, wants. That "love of life" of which we sometimes speak is mostly cupboard-love. We are quick to snap at her ankles when she locks the larder door: a proceeding which we dignify by the name of pessimism. The mystic knows not this attitude of demand. He tells us again and again, that "he is rid of all his asking"; that "henceforth the heat of having shall never scorch him more." Compare this with your normal attitude to the world, practical man: your quiet certitude that you are well within your rights in pushing the claims of "the I, the Me, the Mine"; your habit, if you be religious, of asking for the weather and the government that you want, of persuading the Supernal Powers to take a special interest in your national or personal health and prosperity. How often in each day do you deliberately revert to an attitude of disinterested adoration? Yet this is the only attitude in which true communion with the universe is possible. The very mainspring of your activity is a demand, either for a continued possession of that which you have, or for something which as yet you have not: wealth, honour, success, social position, love, friendship, comfort, amusement. You feel that you have a right to some of these things: to a certain recognition of your powers, a certain immunity from failure or humiliation. You resent anything which opposes you in these matters. You become restless when you see other selves more skilful in the game of acquisition than yourself. You hold tight against all comers your own share of the spoils. You are rather inclined to shirk boring responsibilities and unattractive, unremunerative toil; are greedy of pleasure and excitement, devoted to the art of having a good time. If you possess a social sense, you demand these things not only for yourself but for your tribe--the domestic or racial group to which you belong. These dispositions, so ordinary that they almost pass unnoticed, were named by our blunt forefathers the Seven Deadly Sins of Pride, Anger, Envy, Avarice, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust. Perhaps you would rather call them--as indeed they are--the seven common forms of egotism. They represent the natural reactions to life of the self-centred human consciousness, enslaved by the "world of multiplicity"; and constitute absolute barriers to its attainment of Reality. So long as these dispositions govern character we can never see or feel things as they are; but only as they affect ourselves, our family, our party, our business, our church, our empire--the I, the Me, the Mine, in its narrower or wider manifestations. Only the detached and purified heart can view all things--the irrational cruelty of circumstance, the tortures of war, the apparent injustice of life, the acts and beliefs of enemy and friend--in true proportion; and reckon with calm mind the sum of evil and good. Therefore the mystics tell us perpetually that "selfhood must be killed" before Reality can be attained. "Feel sin a lump, thou wottest never what, but none other thing than _thyself_," says _The Cloud of Unknowing_. "When the I, the Me, and the Mine are dead, the work of the Lord is done," says Kabir. The substance of that wrongness of act and relation which constitutes "sin" is the separation of the individual spirit from the whole; the ridiculous megalomania which makes each man the centre of his universe. Hence comes the turning inwards and condensation of his energies and desires, till they do indeed form a "lump"; a hard, tight core about which all the currents of his existence swirl. This heavy weight within the heart resists every outgoing impulse of the spirit; and tends to draw all things inward and downward to itself, never to pour itself forth in love, enthusiasm, sacrifice. "So long," says the _Theologia Germanica_, "as a man seeketh his own will and his own highest good, because it is his, and for his own sake, he will never find it: for so long as he doeth this, he is not seeking his own highest good, and how then should he find it? For so long as he doeth this, he seeketh himself, and dreameth that he is himself the highest good. . . . But whosoever seeketh, loveth, and pursueth goodness, as goodness and for the sake of goodness, and maketh that his end--for nothing but the love of goodness, not for love of the I, Me, Mine, Self, and the like--he will find the highest good, for he seeketh it aright, and they who seek it otherwise do err." So it is disinterestedness, the saint's and poet's love of things for their own sakes, the vision of the charitable heart, which is the secret of union with Reality and the condition of all real knowledge. This brings with it the precious quality of suppleness, the power of responding with ease and simplicity to the great rhythms of life; and this will only come when the ungainly "lump" of sin is broken, and the verb "to have," which expresses its reaction to existence, is ejected from the centre of your consciousness. Then your attitude to life will cease to be commercial, and become artistic. Then the guardian at the gate, scrutinising and sorting the incoming impressions, will no longer ask, "What use is this to _me_?" before admitting the angel of beauty or significance who demands your hospitality. Then things will cease to have power over you. You will become free. "Son," says a Kempis, "thou oughtest diligently to attend to this; that in every place, every action or outward occupation, thou be inwardly free and mighty in thyself, and all things be under thee, and thou not under them; that thou be lord and governor of thy deeds, not servant." It is therefore by the withdrawal of your will from its feverish attachment to things, till "they are under thee and thou not under them," that you will gradually resolve the opposition between the recollective and the active sides of your personality. By diligent self-discipline, that mental attitude which the mystics sometimes call poverty and sometimes perfect freedom--for these are two aspects of one thing--will become possible to you. Ascending the mountain of self-knowledge and throwing aside your superfluous luggage as you go, you shall at last arrive at the point which they call the summit of the spirit; where the various forces of your character--brute energy, keen intellect, desirous heart--long dissipated amongst a thousand little wants and preferences, are gathered into one, and become a strong and disciplined instrument wherewith your true self can force a path deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality. CHAPTER VI LOVE AND WILL This steady effort towards the simplifying of your tangled character, its gradual emancipation from the fetters of the unreal, is not to dispense you from that other special training of the attention which the diligent practice of meditation and recollection effects. Your pursuit of the one must never involve neglect of the other; for these are the two sides--one moral, the other mental--of that unique process of self-conquest which Ruysbroeck calls "the gathering of the forces of the soul into the unity of the spirit": the welding together of all your powers, the focussing of them upon one point. Hence they should never, either in theory or practice, be separated. Only the act of recollection, the constantly renewed retreat to the quiet centre of the spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer and more valid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain of self-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of the world's cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent character-building alone, with its perpetual untiring efforts at self-adjustment, its bracing, purging discipline, checks the human tendency to relapse into and react to the obvious, and makes possible the further development of the contemplative power. So it is through and by these two great changes in your attitude towards things--first, the change of attention, which enables you to perceive a truer universe; next, the deliberate rearrangement of your ideas, energies, and desires in harmony with that which you have seen--that a progressive uniformity of life and experience is secured to you, and you are defended against the dangers of an indolent and useless mysticality. Only the real, say the mystics, can know Reality, for "we behold that which we are," the universe which we see is conditioned by the character of the mind that sees it: and this realness--since that which you seek is no mere glimpse of Eternal Life, but complete possession of it-- must apply to every aspect of your being, the rich totality of character, all the "forces of the soul," not to some thin and isolated "spiritual sense" alone. This is why recollection and self-simplification--perception of, and adaptation to, the Spiritual World in which we dwell--are the essential preparations for the mystical life, and neither can exist in a wholesome and well-balanced form without the other. By them the mind, the will, the heart, which so long had dissipated their energies over a thousand scattered notions, wants, and loves, are gradually detached from their old exclusive preoccupation with the ephemeral interests of the self, or of the group to which the self belongs. You, if you practise them, will find after a time--perhaps a long time--that the hard work which they involve has indeed brought about a profound and definite change in you. A new suppleness has taken the place of that rigidity which you have been accustomed to mistake for strength of character: an easier attitude towards the accidents of life. Your whole scale of values has undergone a silent transformation, since you have ceased to fight for your own hand and regard the nearest-at-hand world as the only one that counts. You have become, as the mystics would say, "free from inordinate attachments," the "heat of having" does not scorch you any more; and because of this you possess great inward liberty, a sense of spaciousness and peace. Released from the obsessions which so long had governed them, will, heart, and mind are now all bent to the purposes of your deepest being: "gathered in the unity of the spirit," they have fused to become an agent with which it can act. What form, then, shall this action take? It shall take a practical form, shall express itself in terms of movement: the pressing outwards of the whole personality, the eager and trustful stretching of it towards the fresh universe which awaits you. As all scattered thinking was cut off in recollection, as all vagrant and unworthy desires have been killed by the exercises of detachment; so now all scattered willing, all hesitations between the indrawing and outflowing instincts of the soul, shall be checked and resolved. You are to _push_ with all your power: not to absorb ideas, but to pour forth will and love. With this "conative act," as the psychologists would call it, the true contemplative life begins. Contemplation, you see, has no very close connection with dreaminess and idle musing: it is more like the intense effort of vision, the passionate and self-forgetful act of communion, presupposed in all creative art. It is, says one old English mystic, "a blind intent stretching . . . a privy love pressed" in the direction of Ultimate Beauty, athwart all the checks, hindrances, and contradictions of the restless world: a "loving stretching out" towards Reality, says the great Ruysbroeck, than whom none has gone further on this path. Tension, ardour, are of its essence: it demands the perpetual exercise of industry and courage. We observe in such definitions as these a strange neglect of that glory of man, the Pure Intellect, with which the spiritual prig enjoys to believe that he can climb up to the Empyrean itself. It almost seems as though the mystics shared Keats' view of the supremacy of feeling over thought; and reached out towards some new and higher range of sensation, rather than towards new and more accurate ideas. They are ever eager to assure us that man's most sublime thoughts of the Transcendent are but a little better than his worst: that loving intuition is the only certain guide. "By love may He be gotten and holden, but by thought never." Yet here you are not to fall into the clumsy error of supposing that the things which are beyond the grasp of reason are necessarily unreasonable things. Immediate feeling, so far as it is true, does not oppose but transcends and completes the highest results of thought. It contains within itself the sum of all the processes through which thought would pass in the act of attaining the same goal: supposing thought to have reached--as it has not--the high pitch at which it was capable of thinking its way all along this road. In the preliminary act of gathering yourself together, and in those unremitting explorations through which you came to "a knowing and a feeling of yourself as you are," thought assuredly had its place. There the powers of analysis, criticism, and deduction found work that they could do. But now it is the love and will-- the feeling, the intent, the passionate desire--of the self, which shall govern your activities and make possible your success. Few would care to brave the horrors of a courtship conducted upon strictly intellectual lines: and contemplation is an act of love, the wooing, not the critical study, of Divine Reality. It is an eager outpouring of ourselves towards a Somewhat Other for which we feel a passion of desire; a seeking, touching, and tasting, not a considering and analysing, of the beautiful and true wherever found. It is, as it were, a responsive act of the organism to those Supernal Powers without, which touch and stir it. Deep humility as towards those Powers, a willing surrender to their control, is the first condition of success. The mystics speak much of these elusive contacts; felt more and more in the soul, as it becomes increasingly sensitive to the subtle movements of its spiritual environment. "Sense, feeling, taste, complacency, and sight, These are the true and real joys, The living, flowing, inward, melting, bright And heavenly pleasures; all the rest are toys; All which are founded in Desire As light in flame and heat in fire." But this new method of correspondence with the universe is not to be identified with "mere feeling" in its lowest and least orderly forms. Contemplation does not mean abject surrender to every "mystical" impression that comes in. It is no sentimental aestheticism or emotional piety to which you are being invited: nor shall the transcending of reason ever be achieved by way of spiritual silliness. All the powers of the self, raised to their intensest form, shall be used in it; though used perhaps in a new way. These, the three great faculties of love, thought, and will-- with which you have been accustomed to make great show on the periphery of consciousness--you have, as it were, drawn inwards during the course of your inward retreat: and by your education in detachment have cured them of their tendency to fritter their powers amongst a multiplicity of objects. Now, at the very heart of personality, you are alone with them; you hold with you in that "Interior Castle," and undistracted for the moment by the demands of practical existence, the three great tools wherewith the soul deals with life. As regards the life you have hitherto looked upon as "normal," love--understood in its widest sense, as desire, emotional inclination--has throughout directed your activities. You did things, sought things, learned things, even suffered things, because at bottom you wanted to. Will has done the work to which love spurred it: thought has assimilated the results of their activities and made for them pictures, analyses, "explanations" of the world with which they had to deal. But now your purified love discerns and desires, your will is set towards, something which thought cannot really assimilate--still less explain. "Contemplation," says Ruysbroeck, "is a knowing that is in no wise . . . therein all the workings of the reason fail." That reason has been trained to deal with the stuff of temporal existence. It will only make mincemeat of your experience of Eternity if you give it a chance; trimming, transforming, rationalising that ineffable vision, trying to force it into a symbolic system with which the intellect can cope. This is why the great contemplatives utter again and again their solemn warning against the deceptiveness of thought when it ventures to deal with the spiritual intuitions of man; crying with the author of _The Cloud of Unknowing_, "Look that _nothing_ live in thy working mind but a naked intent stretching"--the voluntary tension of your ever-growing, ever-moving personality pushing out towards the Real. "Love, and _do_ what you like," said the wise Augustine: so little does mere surface activity count, against the deep motive that begets it. The dynamic power of love and will, the fact that the heart's desire--if it be intense and industrious--is a better earnest of possible fulfilment than the most elegant theories of the spiritual world; this is the perpetual theme of all the Christian mystics. By such love, they think, the worlds themselves were made. By an eager outstretching towards Reality, they tell us, we tend to move towards Reality, to enter into its rhythm: by a humble and unquestioning surrender to it we permit its entrance into our souls. This twofold act, in which we find the double character of all true love--which both gives and takes, yields and demands--is assured, if we be patient and single-hearted, of ultimate success. At last our ignorance shall be done away; and we shall "apprehend" the real and the eternal, as we apprehend the sunshine when the sky is free from cloud. Therefore "Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love"-- and suddenly it shall part, and disclose the blue. "Smite," "press," "push," "strive"--these are strong words: yet they are constantly upon the lips of the contemplatives when describing the earlier stages of their art. Clearly, the abolition of discursive thought is not to absolve you from the obligations of industry. You are to "energise enthusiastically" upon new planes, where you shall see more intensely, hear more intensely, touch and taste more intensely than ever before: for the modes of communion which these senses make possible to you are now to operate as parts of the one single state of perfect intuition, of loving knowledge by union, to which you are growing up. And gradually you come to see that, if this be so, it is the ardent will that shall be the prime agent of your undertaking: a will which has now become the active expression of your deepest and purest desires. About this the recollected and simplified self is to gather itself as a centre; and thence to look out--steadily, deliberately-- with eyes of love towards the world. To "look with the eyes of love" seems a vague and sentimental recommendation: yet the whole art of spiritual communion is summed in it, and exact and important results flow from this exercise. The attitude which it involves is an attitude of complete humility and of receptiveness; without criticism, without clever analysis of the thing seen. When you look thus, you surrender your I-hood; see things at last as the artist does, for their sake, not for your own. The fundamental unity that is in you reaches out to the unity that is in them: and you achieve the "Simple Vision" of the poet and the mystic--that synthetic and undistorted apprehension of things which is the antithesis of the single vision of practical men. The doors of perception are cleansed, and everything appears as it is. The disfiguring results of hate, rivalry, prejudice, vanish away. Into that silent place to which recollection has brought you, new music, new colour, new light, are poured from the outward world. The conscious love which achieves this vision may, indeed must, fluctuate--"As long as thou livest thou art subject to mutability; yea, though thou wilt not!" But the _will_ which that love has enkindled can hold attention in the right direction. It can refuse to relapse to unreal and egotistic correspondences; and continue, even in darkness, and in the suffering which such darkness brings to the awakened spirit, its appointed task, cutting a way into new levels of Reality. Therefore this transitional stage in the development of the contemplative powers--in one sense the completion of their elementary schooling, in another the beginning of their true activities--is concerned with the toughening and further training of that will which self-simplification has detached from its old concentration upon the unreal wants and interests of the self. Merged with your intuitive love, this is to become the true agent of your encounter with Reality; for that Simple Eye of Intention, which is so supremely your own, and in the last resort the maker of your universe and controller of your destiny, is nothing else but a synthesis of such energetic will and such uncorrupt desire, turned and held in the direction of the Best. CHAPTER VII THE FIRST FORM OF CONTEMPLATION Concentration, recollection, a profound self-criticism, the stilling of his busy surface-intellect, his restless emotions of enmity and desire, the voluntary achievement of an attitude of disinterested love--by these strange paths the practical man has now been led, in order that he may know by communion something of the greater Life in which he is immersed and which he has so long and so successfully ignored. He has managed in his own small way something equivalent to those drastic purifications, those searching readjustments, which are undertaken by the heroic seekers for Reality; the arts whereby they defeat the tyranny of "the I, the Me, the Mine" and achieve the freedom of a wider life. Now, perhaps, he may share to some extent in that illumination, that extended and intensified perception of things, which they declare to be the heritage of the liberated consciousness. This illumination shall be gradual. The attainment of it depends not so much upon a philosophy accepted, or a new gift of vision suddenly received, as upon an uninterrupted changing and widening of character; a progressive growth towards the Real, an ever more profound harmonisation of the self's life with the greater and inclusive rhythms of existence. It shall therefore develop in width and depth as the sphere of that self's intuitive love extends. As your own practical sympathy with and understanding of other lives, your realisation of them, may be narrowed and stiffened to include no more than the family group, or spread over your fellow-workers, your class, your city, party, country, or religion--even perhaps the whole race--till you feel yourself utterly part of it, moving with it, suffering with it, and partake of its whole conscious life; so here. Self-mergence is a gradual process, dependent on a progressive unlimiting of personality. The apprehension of Reality which rewards it is gradual too. In essence, it is one continuous out-flowing movement towards that boundless heavenly consciousness where the "flaming ramparts" which shut you from true communion with all other selves and things is done away; an unbroken process of expansion and simplification, which is nothing more or less than the growth of the spirit of love, the full flowering of the patriotic sense. By this perpetually-renewed casting down of the hard barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the compelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary individual or even of the human group--by this perpetual widening, deepening, and unselfing of your attentiveness--you are to enlarge your boundaries and become the citizen of a greater, more joyous, more poignant world, the partaker of a more abundant life. The limits of this enlargement have not yet been discovered. The greatest contemplatives, returning from their highest ascents, can only tell us of a world that is "unwalled." But this growth into higher realities, this blossoming of your contemplative consciousness--though it be, like all else we know in life, an unbroken process of movement and change--must be broken up and reduced to the series of concrete forms which we call "order" if our inelastic minds are to grasp it. So, we will consider it as the successive achievement of those three levels or manifestations of Reality, which we have agreed to call the Natural World of Becoming, the Metaphysical World of Being, and--last and highest--that Divine Reality within which these opposites are found as one. Though these three worlds of experience are so plaited together, that intimations from the deeper layers of being constantly reach you through the natural scene, it is in this order of realisation that you may best think of them, and of your own gradual upgrowth to the full stature of humanity. To elude nature, to refuse her friendship, and attempt to leap the river of life in the hope of finding God on the other side, is the common error of a perverted mysticality. It is as fatal in result as the opposite error of deliberately arrested development, which, being attuned to the wonderful rhythms of natural life, is content with this increase of sensibility; and, becoming a "nature-mystic," asks no more. So you are to begin with that first form of contemplation which the old mystics sometimes called the "discovery of God in His creatures." Not with some ecstatic adventure in supersensuous regions, but with the loving and patient exploration of the world that lies at your gates; the "ebb and flow and ever-during power" of which your own existence forms a part. You are to push back the self's barriers bit by bit, till at last all duration is included in the widening circles of its intuitive love: till you find in every manifestation of life--even those which you have petulantly classified as cruel or obscene--the ardent self-expression of that Immanent Being whose spark burns deep in your own soul. The Indian mystics speak perpetually of the visible universe as the _Lila_ or Sport of God: the Infinite deliberately expressing Himself in finite form, the musical manifestation of His creative joy. All gracious and all courteous souls, they think, will gladly join His play; considering rather the wonder and achievement of the whole--its vivid movement, its strange and terrible evocations of beauty from torment, nobility from conflict and death, its mingled splendour of sacrifice and triumph--than their personal conquests, disappointments, and fatigues. In the first form of contemplation you are to realise the movement of this game, in which you have played so long a languid and involuntary part, and find your own place in it. It is flowing, growing, changing, making perpetual unexpected patterns within the evolving melody of the Divine Thought. In all things it is incomplete, unstable; and so are you. Your fellow-men, enduring on the battlefield, living and breeding in the slum, adventurous and studious, sensuous and pure--more, your great comrades, the hills, the trees, the rivers, the darting birds, the scuttering insects, the little soft populations of the grass--all these are playing with you. They move one to another in delicate responsive measures, now violent, now gentle, now in conflict, now in peace; yet ever weaving the pattern of a ritual dance, and obedient to the music of that invisible Choragus whom Boehme and Plotinus knew. What is that great wind which blows without, in continuous and ineffable harmonies? Part of you, practical man. There is but one music in the world: and to it you contribute perpetually, whether you will or no, your one little ditty of no tone. "Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music: The hills and the sea and the earth dance: The world of man dances in laughter and tears." It seems a pity to remain in ignorance of this, to keep as it were a plate-glass window between yourself and your fellow-dancers-- all those other thoughts of God, perpetually becoming, changing and growing beside you--and commit yourself to the unsocial attitude of the "cat that walks by itself." Begin therefore at once. Gather yourself up, as the exercises of recollection have taught you to do. Then--with attention no longer frittered amongst the petty accidents and interests of your personal life, but poised, tense, ready for the work you shall demand of it--stretch out by a distinct act of loving will towards one of the myriad manifestations of life that surround you: and which, in an ordinary way, you hardly notice unless you happen to need them. Pour yourself out towards it, do not draw its image towards you. Deliberate--more, impassioned--attentiveness, an attentiveness which soon transcends all consciousness of yourself, as separate from and attending to the thing seen; this is the condition of success. As to the object of contemplation, it matters little. From Alp to insect, anything will do, provided that your attitude be right: for all things in this world towards which you are stretching out are linked together, and one truly apprehended will be the gateway to the rest. Look with the eye of contemplation on the most dissipated tabby of the streets, and you shall discern the celestial quality of life set like an aureole about his tattered ears, and hear in his strident mew an echo of "The deep enthusiastic joy, The rapture of the hallelujah sent From all that breathes and is." The sooty tree up which he scrambles to escape your earnest gaze is holy too. It contains for you the whole divine cycle of the seasons; upon the plane of quiet, its inward pulse is clearly to be heard. But you must look at these things as you would look into the eyes of a friend: ardently, selflessly, without considering his reputation, his practical uses, his anatomical peculiarities, or the vices which might emerge were he subjected to psycho-analysis. Such a simple exercise, if entered upon with singleness of heart, will soon repay you. By this quiet yet tense act of communion, this loving gaze, you will presently discover a relationship--far more intimate than anything you imagined--between yourself and the surrounding "objects of sense"; and in those objects of sense a profound significance, a personal quality, and actual power of response, which you might in cooler moments think absurd. Making good your correspondences with these fellow-travellers, you will learn to say with Whitman: "You air that serves me with breath to speak! You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape! You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadside! I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me." A subtle interpenetration of your spirit with the spirit of those "unseen existences," now so deeply and thrillingly felt by you, will take place. Old barriers will vanish: and you will become aware that St. Francis was accurate as well as charming when he spoke of Brother Wind and Sister Water; and that Stevenson was obviously right when he said, that since: "The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we ought all to be happy as kings." Those glad and vivid "things" will speak to you. They will offer you news at least as definite and credible as that which the paper-boy is hawking in the street: direct messages from that Beauty which the artist reports at best at second hand. Because of your new sensitiveness, anthems will be heard of you from every gutter; poems of intolerable loveliness will bud for you on every weed. Best and greatest, your fellowmen will shine for you with new significance and light. Humility and awe will be evoked in you by the beautiful and patient figures of the poor, their long dumb heroisms, their willing acceptance of the burden of life. All the various members of the human group, the little children and the aged, those who stand for energy, those dedicated to skill, to thought, to plainest service, or to prayer, will have for you fresh vivid significance, be felt as part of your own wider being. All adventurous endeavours, all splendour of pain and all beauty of play--more, that grey unceasing effort of existence which makes up the groundwork of the social web, and the ineffective hopes, enthusiasms, and loves which transfuse it--all these will be seen and felt by you at last as full of glory, full of meaning; for you will see them with innocent, attentive, disinterested eyes, feel them as infinitely significant and adorable parts of the Transcendent Whole in which you also are immersed. This discovery of your fraternal link with all living things, this down-sinking of your arrogant personality into the great generous stream of life, marks an important stage in your apprehension of that Science of Love which contemplation is to teach. You are not to confuse it with pretty fancies about nature, such as all imaginative persons enjoy; still less, with a self-conscious and deliberate humanitarianism. It is a veritable condition of awareness; a direct perception, not an opinion or an idea. For those who attain it, the span of the senses is extended. These live in a world which is lit with an intenser light; has, as George Fox insisted, "another smell than before." They hear all about them the delicate music of growth, and see the "new colour" of which the mystics speak. Further, you will observe that this act, and the attitude which is proper to it, differs in a very important way even from that special attentiveness which characterised the stage of meditation, and which seems at first sight to resemble it in many respects. Then, it was an idea or image from amongst the common stock-- one of those conceptual labels with which the human paste-brush has decorated the surface of the universe--which you were encouraged to hold before your mind. Now, turning away from the label, you shall surrender yourself to the direct message poured out towards you by the _thing_. Then, you considered: now, you are to absorb. This experience will be, in the very highest sense, the experience of sensation without thought: the essential sensation, the "savouring" to which some of the mystics invite us, of which our fragmentary bodily senses offer us a transient sacrament. So here at last, in this intimate communion, this "simple seeing," this total surrender of you to the impress of things, you are using to the full the sacred powers of sense: and so using them, because you are concentrating upon them, accepting their reports in simplicity. You have, in this contemplative outlook, carried the peculiar methods of artistic apprehension to their highest stage: with the result that the sense-world has become for you, as Erigena said that all creatures were, "a theophany, or appearance of God." Not, you observe, a symbol, but a showing: a very different thing. You have begun now the Plotinian ascent from multiplicity to unity, and therefore begin to perceive in the Many the clear and actual presence of the One: the changeless and absolute Life, manifesting itself in all the myriad nascent, crescent, cadent lives. Poets, gazing thus at the "flower in the crannied wall" or the "green thing that stands in the way," have been led deep into the heart of its life; there to discern the secret of the universe. All the greater poems of Wordsworth and Walt Whitman represent an attempt to translate direct contemplative experience of this kind into words and rhythms which might convey its secret to other men: all Blake's philosophy is but a desperate effort to persuade us to exchange the false world of "Nature" on which we usually look--and which is not really Nature at all--for this, the true world, to which he gave the confusing name of "Imagination." For these, the contemplation of the World of Becoming assumes the intense form which we call genius: even to read their poems is to feel the beating of a heart, the upleap of a joy, greater than anything that we have known. Yet your own little efforts towards the attainment of this level of consciousness will at least give to you, together with a more vivid universe, a wholly new comprehension of their works; and that of other poets and artists who have drunk from the chalice of the Spirit of Life. These works are now observed by you to be the only artistic creations to which the name of Realism is appropriate; and it is by the standard of reality that you shall now criticise them, recognising in utterances which you once dismissed as rhetoric the desperate efforts of the clear-sighted towards the exact description of things veritably seen in that simplified state of consciousness which Blake called "imagination uncorrupt." It was from those purified and heightened levels of perception to which the first form of contemplation inducts the soul, that Julian of Norwich, gazing upon "a little thing, the quantity of an hazel nut," found in it the epitome of all that was made; for therein she perceived the royal character of life. So small and helpless in its mightiest forms, so august even in its meanest, that life in its wholeness was then realised by her as the direct outbirth of, and the meek dependant upon, the Energy of Divine Love. She felt at once the fugitive character of its apparent existence, the perdurable Reality within which it was held. "I marvelled," she said, "how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: _It lasteth, and ever shall, for that God loveth it_. And so All-thing hath the being by the love of God." To this same apprehension of Reality, this linking up of each finite expression with its Origin, this search for the inner significance of every fragment of life, one of the greatest and most balanced contemplatives of the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale, reached out when she exclaimed in an hour of self-examination, "I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats." Yet it is not the self-tormenting strife of introspective and self-conscious aspiration, but rather an unrelaxed, diligent intention, a steady acquiescence, a simple and loyal surrender to the great currents of life, a holding on to results achieved in your best moments, that shall do it for you: a surrender not limp but deliberate, a trustful self-donation, a "living faith." "A pleasing stirring of love," says _The Cloud of Unknowing_, not a desperate anxious struggle for more light. True contemplation can only thrive when defended from two opposite exaggerations: quietism on the one hand, and spiritual fuss upon the other. Neither from passivity nor from anxiety has it anything to gain. Though the way may be long, the material of your mind intractable, to the eager lover of Reality ultimate success is assured. The strong tide of Transcendent Life will inevitably invade, clarify, uplift the consciousness which is open to receive it; a movement from without--subtle yet actual--answering each willed movement from within. "Your opening and His entering," says Eckhart, "are but one moment." When, therefore, you put aside your preconceived ideas, your self-centred scale of values, and let intuition have its way with you, you open up by this act new levels of the world. Such an opening-up is the most practical of all activities; for then and then only will your diurnal existence, and the natural scene in which that existence is set, begin to give up to you its richness and meaning. Its paradoxes and inequalities will be disclosed as true constituents of its beauty, an inconceivable splendour will be shaken out from its dingiest folds. Then, and only then, escaping the single vision of the selfish, you will begin to guess all that your senses were meant to be. "I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken." CHAPTER VIII THE SECOND FORM OF CONTEMPLATION "And here," says Ruysbroeck of the self which has reached this point, "there begins a hunger and a thirst which shall never more be stilled." In the First Form of Contemplation that self has been striving to know better its own natural plane of existence. It has stretched out the feelers of its intuitive love into the general stream of duration of which it is a part. Breaking down the fences of personality, merging itself in a larger consciousness, it has learned to know the World of Becoming from within--as a citizen, a member of the great society of life, not merely as a spectator. But the more deeply and completely you become immersed in and aware of this life, the greater the extension of your consciousness; the more insistently will rumours and intimations of a higher plane of experience, a closer unity and more complete synthesis, begin to besiege you. You feel that hitherto you nave received the messages of life in a series of disconnected words and notes, from which your mind constructed as best it could certain coherent sentences and tunes--laws, classifications, relations, and the rest. But now you reach out towards the ultimate sentence and melody, which exist independently of your own constructive efforts; and realise that the words and notes which so often puzzled you by displaying an intensity that exceeded the demands of your little world, only have beauty and meaning just because and in so far as you discern them to be the partial expressions of a greater whole which is still beyond your reach. You have long been like a child tearing up the petals of flowers in order to make a mosaic on the garden path; and the results of this murderous diligence you mistook for a knowledge of the world. When the bits fitted with unusual exactitude, you called it science. Now at last you have perceived the greater truth and loveliness of the living plant from which you broke them: have, in fact, entered into direct communion with it, "united" with its reality. But this very recognition of the living growing plant does and must entail for you a consciousness of deeper realities, which, as yet, you have not touched: of the intangible things and forces which feed and support it; of the whole universe that touches you through its life. A mere cataloguing of all the plants-- though this were far better than your old game of indexing your own poor photographs of them--will never give you access to the Unity, the Fact, whatever it may be, which manifests itself through them. To suppose that it can do so is the cardinal error of the "nature mystic": an error parallel with that of the psychologist who looks for the soul in "psychic states." The deeper your realisation of the plant in its wonder, the more perfect your union with the world of growth and change, the quicker, the more subtle your response to its countless suggestions; so much the more acute will become your craving for Something More. You will now find and feel the Infinite and Eternal, making as it were veiled and sacramental contacts with you under these accidents--through these its ceaseless creative activities--and you will want to press through and beyond them, to a fuller realisation of, a more perfect and unmediated union with, the Substance of all That Is. With the great widening and deepening of your life that has ensued from the abolition of a narrow selfhood, your entrance into the larger consciousness of living things, there has necessarily come to you an instinctive knowledge of a final and absolute group-relation, transcending and including all lesser unions in its sweep. To this, the second stage of contemplation, in which human consciousness enters into its peculiar heritage, something within you now seems to urge you on. If you obey this inward push, pressing forward with the "sharp dart of your longing love," forcing the point of your wilful attention further and further into the web of things, such an ever-deepening realisation, such an extension of your conscious life, will indeed become possible to you. Nothing but your own apathy, your feeble and limited desire, limits this realisation. Here there is a strict relation between demand and supply--your achievement shall be in proportion to the greatness of your desire. The fact, and the in-pressing energy, of the Reality without does not vary. Only the extent to which you are able to receive it depends upon your courage and generosity, the measure in which you give yourself to its embrace. Those minds which set a limit to their self-donation must feel as they attain it, not a sense of satisfaction but a sense of constriction. It is useless to offer your spirit a garden--even a garden inhabited by saints and angels--and pretend that it has been made free of the universe. You will not have peace until you do away with all banks and hedges, and exchange the garden for the wilderness that is unwalled; that wild strange place of silence where "lovers lose themselves." Yet you must begin this great adventure humbly; and take, as Julian of Norwich did, the first stage of your new outward-going journey along the road that lies nearest at hand. When Julian looked with the eye of contemplation upon that "little thing" which revealed to her the oneness of the created universe, her deep and loving sight perceived in it successively three properties, which she expressed as well as she might under the symbols of her own theology: "The first is that God made it; the second is that God loveth it; the third is that God keepeth it." Here are three phases in the ever-widening contemplative apprehension of Reality. Not three opinions, but three facts, for which she struggles to find words. The first is that each separate living thing, budding "like an hazel nut" upon the tree of life, and there destined to mature, age, and die, is the outbirth of another power, of a creative push: that the World of Becoming in all its richness and variety is not ultimate, but formed by Something other than, and utterly transcendent to, itself. This, of course, the religious mind invariably takes for granted: but we are concerned with immediate experience rather than faith. To feel and know those two aspects of Reality which we call "created" and "uncreated," nature and spirit--to be as sharply aware of them, as sure of them, as we are of land and sea--is to be made free of the supersensual world. It is to stand for an instant at the Poet's side, and see that Poem of which you have deciphered separate phrases in the earlier form of contemplation. Then you were learning to read: and found in the words, the lines, the stanzas, an astonishing meaning and loveliness. But how much greater the significance of every detail would appear to you, how much more truly you would possess its life, were you acquainted with the Poem: not as a mere succession of such lines and stanzas, but as a non-successional whole. From this Julian passes to that deeper knowledge of the heart which comes from a humble and disinterested acceptance of life; that this Creation, this whole changeful natural order, with all its apparent collisions, cruelties, and waste, yet springs from an ardour, an immeasurable love, a perpetual donation, which generates it, upholds it, drives it; for "_all-thing_ hath the being by the love of God." Blake's anguished question here receives its answer: the Mind that conceived the lamb conceived the tiger too. Everything, says Julian in effect, whether gracious, terrible, or malignant, is enwrapped in love: and is part of a world produced, not by mechanical necessity, but by passionate desire. Therefore nothing can really be mean, nothing despicable; nothing, however perverted, irredeemable. The blasphemous other-worldliness of the false mystic who conceives of matter as an evil thing and flies from its "deceits," is corrected by this loving sight. Hence, the more beautiful and noble a thing appears to us, the more we love it--so much the more truly do we see it: for then we perceive within it the Divine ardour surging up towards expression, and share that simplicity and purity of vision in which most saints and some poets see all things "as they are in God." Lastly, this love-driven world of duration--this work within which the Divine Artist passionately and patiently expresses His infinite dream under finite forms--is held in another, mightier embrace. It is "kept," says Julian. Paradoxically, the perpetual changeful energies of love and creation which inspire it are gathered up and made complete within the unchanging fact of Being: the Eternal and Absolute, within which the world of things is set as the tree is set in the supporting earth, the enfolding air. There, finally, is the rock and refuge of the seeking consciousness wearied by the ceaseless process of the flux. There that flux exists in its wholeness, "all at once"; in a manner which we can never comprehend, but which in hours of withdrawal we may sometimes taste and feel. It is in man's moments of contact with this, when he penetrates beyond all images, however lovely, however significant, to that ineffable awareness which the mystics call "Naked Contemplation"--since it is stripped of all the clothing with which reason and imagination drape and disguise both our devils and our gods--that the hunger and thirst of the heart is satisfied, and we receive indeed an assurance of ultimate Reality. This assurance is not the cool conclusion of a successful argument. It is rather the seizing at last of Something which we have ever felt near us and enticing us: the unspeakably simple because completely inclusive solution of all the puzzles of life. As, then, you gave yourself to the broken-up yet actual reality of the natural world, in order that it might give itself to you, and your possession of its secret was achieved, first by surrender of selfhood, next by a diligent thrusting out of your attention, last by a union of love; so now by a repetition upon fresh levels of that same process, you are to mount up to higher unions still. Held tight as it seems to you in the finite, committed to the perpetual rhythmic changes, the unceasing flux of "natural" life--compelled to pass on from state to state, to grow, to age, to die--there is yet, as you discovered in the first exercise of recollection, something in you which endures through and therefore transcends this world of change. This inhabitant, this mobile spirit, can spread and merge in the general consciousness, and gather itself again to one intense point of personality. It has too an innate knowledge of--an instinct for--another, greater rhythm, another order of Reality, as yet outside its conscious field; or as we say, a capacity for the Infinite. This capacity, this unfulfilled craving, which the cunning mind of the practical man suppresses and disguises as best it can, is the source of all your unrest. More, it is the true origin of all your best loves and enthusiasms, the inspiring cause of your heroisms and achievements; which are but oblique and tentative efforts to still that strange hunger for some final object of devotion, some completing and elucidating vision, some total self-donation, some great and perfect Act within which your little activity can be merged. St. Thomas Aquinas says, that a man is only withheld from this desired vision of the Divine Essence, this discovery of the Pure Act (which indeed is everywhere pressing in on him and supporting him), by the apparent necessity which he is under of turning to bodily images, of breaking up his continuous and living intuition into Conceptual scraps; in other words, because he cannot live the life of sensation without thought. But it is not the man, it is merely his mental machinery which is under this "necessity." This it is which translates, analyses, incorporates in finite images the boundless perceptions of the spirit: passing through its prism the White Light of Reality, and shattering it to a succession of coloured rays. Therefore the man who would know the Divine Secret must unshackle himself more thoroughly than ever before from the tyranny of the image-making power. As it is not by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life, so it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know God. "For of all other creatures and their works," says the author of _The Cloud of Unknowing_, "yea, and of the works of God's self, may a man through grace have full-head of knowing, and well he can think of them: but of God Himself can no man think. And therefore I would leave all that thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing that I cannot think. For why; He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never." "Gotten and holden": homely words, that suggest rather the outstretching of the hand to take something lying at your very gates, than the long outward journey or terrific ascent of the contemplative soul. Reality indeed, the mystics say, is "near and far"; far from our thoughts, but saturating and supporting our lives. Nothing would be nearer, nothing dearer, nothing sweeter, were the doors of our perception truly cleansed. You have then but to focus attention upon your own deep reality, "realise your own soul," in order to find it. "We dwell in Him and He in us": you participate in the Eternal Order now. The vision of the Divine Essence--the participation of its own small activity in the Supernal Act--is for the spark of your soul a perpetual process. On the apex of your personality, spirit ever gazes upon Spirit, melts and merges in it: from and by this encounter its life arises and is sustained. But you have been busy from your childhood with other matters. All the urgent affairs of "life," as you absurdly called it, have monopolised your field of consciousness. Thus all the important events of your real life, physical and spiritual--the mysterious perpetual growth of you, the knitting up of fresh bits of the universe into the unstable body which you confuse with yourself, the hum and whirr of the machine which preserves your contacts with the material world, the more delicate movements which condition your correspondences with, and growth within, the spiritual order--all these have gone on unperceived by you. All the time you have been kept and nourished, like the "Little Thing," by an enfolding and creative love; yet of this you are less conscious than you are of the air that you breathe. Now, as in the first stage of contemplation you learned and established, as a patent and experienced fact, your fraternal relation with all the other children of God, entering into the rhythm of their existence, participating in their stress and their joy; will you not at least try to make patent this your filial relation too? This actualisation of your true status, your place in the Eternal World, is waiting for you. It represents the next phase in your gradual achievement of Reality. The method by which you will attain to it is strictly analogous to that by which you obtained a more vivid awareness of the natural world in which you grow and move. Here too it shall be direct intuitive contact, sensation rather than thought, which shall bring you certitude-- "tasting food, not talking about it," as St. Bonaventura says. Yet there is a marked difference between these two stages. In the first, the deliberate inward retreat and gathering together of your faculties which was effected by recollection, was the prelude to a new coming forth, an outflow from the narrow limits of a merely personal life to the better and truer apprehension of the created world. Now, in the second stage, the disciplined and recollected attention seems to take an opposite course. It is directed towards a plane of existence with which your bodily senses have no attachments: which is not merely misrepresented by your ordinary concepts, but cannot be represented by them at all. It must therefore sink inwards towards its own centre, "away from all that can be thought or felt," as the mystics say, "away from every image, every notion, every thing," towards that strange condition of obscurity which St. John of the Cross calls the "Night of Sense." Do this steadily, checking each vagrant instinct, each insistent thought, however "spiritual" it may seem; pressing ever more deeply inwards towards that ground, that simple and undifferentiated Being from which your diverse faculties emerge. Presently you will find yourself, emptied and freed, in a place stripped bare of all the machinery of thought; and achieve the condition of simplicity which those same specialists call nakedness of spirit or "Wayless Love," and which they declare to be above all human images and ideas--a state of consciousness in which "all the workings of the reason fail." Then you will observe that you have entered into an intense and vivid silence: a silence which exists in itself, through and in spite of the ceaseless noises of your normal world. Within this world of silence you seem as it were to lose yourself, "to ebb and to flow, to wander and be lost in the Imageless Ground," says Ruysbroeck, struggling to describe the sensations of the self in this, its first initiation into the "wayless world, beyond image," where "all is, yet in no wise." Yet in spite of the darkness that enfolds you, the Cloud of Unknowing into which you have plunged, you are sure that it is well to be here. A peculiar certitude which you cannot analyse, a strange satisfaction and peace, is distilled into you. You begin to understand what the Psalmist meant, when he said, "Be still, and know." You are lost in a wilderness, a solitude, a dim strange state of which you can say nothing, since it offers no material to your image-making mind. But this wilderness, from one point of view so bare and desolate, from another is yet strangely homely. In it, all your sorrowful questionings are answered without utterance; it is the All, and you are within it and part of it, and know that it is good. It calls forth the utmost adoration of which you are capable; and, mysteriously, gives love for love. You have ascended now, say the mystics, into the Freedom of the Will of God; are become part of a higher, slower duration, which carries you as it were upon its bosom and--though never perhaps before has your soul been so truly active--seems to you a stillness, a rest. The doctrine of Plotinus concerning a higher life of unity, a lower life of multiplicity, possible to every human spirit, will now appear to you not a fantastic theory, but a plain statement of fact, which you have verified in your own experience. You perceive that these are the two complementary ways of apprehending and uniting with Reality--the one as a dynamic process, the other as an eternal whole. Thus understood, they do not conflict. You know that the flow, the broken-up world of change and multiplicity, is still going on; and that you, as a creature of the time-world, are moving and growing with it. But, thanks to the development of the higher side of your consciousness, you are now lifted to a new poise; a direct participation in that simple, transcendent life "broken, yet not divided," which gives to this time-world all its meaning and validity. And you know, without derogation from the realness of that life of flux within which you first made good your attachments to the universe, that you are also a true constituent of the greater whole; that since you are man, you are also spirit, and are living Eternal Life now, in the midst of time. The effect of this form of contemplation, in the degree in which the ordinary man may learn to practise it, is like the sudden change of atmosphere, the shifting of values, which we experience when we pass from the busy streets into a quiet church; where a lamp burns, and a silence reigns, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Thence is poured forth a stillness which strikes through the tumult without. Eluding the flicker of the arc-lamps, thence through an upper window we may glimpse a perpetual star. The walls of the church, limiting the range of our attention, shutting out the torrent of life, with its insistent demands and appeals, make possible our apprehension of this deep eternal peace. The character of our consciousness, intermediate between Eternity and Time, and ever ready to swing between them, makes such a device, such a concrete aid to concentration, essential to us. But the peace, the presence, is everywhere--for us, not for it, is the altar and the sanctuary required--and your deliberate, humble practice of contemplation will teach you at last to find it; outside the sheltering walls of recollection as well as within. You will realise then what Julian meant, when she declared the ultimate property of all that was made to be that "God keepeth it": will _feel_ the violent consciousness of an enfolding Presence, utterly transcending the fluid changeful nature-life, and incomprehensible to the intelligence which that nature-life has developed and trained. And as you knew the secret of that nature-life best by surrendering yourself to it, by entering its currents, and refusing to analyse or arrange: so here, by a deliberate giving of yourself to the silence, the rich "nothingness," the "Cloud," you will draw nearest to the Reality it conceals from the eye of sense. "Lovers put out the candle and draw the curtains," says Patmore, "when they wish to see the God and the Goddess: and in the higher communion, the night of thought is the light of perception." Such an experience of Eternity, the attainment of that intuitive awareness, that meek and simple self-mergence, which the mystics call sometimes, according to its degree and special circumstances, the Quiet, the Desert of God, the Divine Dark, represents the utmost that human consciousness can do of itself towards the achievement of union with Reality. To some it brings joy and peace, to others fear: to all a paradoxical sense of the lowliness and greatness of the soul, which now at last can measure itself by the august standards of the Infinite. Though the trained and diligent will of the contemplative can, if control of the attention be really established, recapture this state of awareness, retreat into the Quiet again and again, yet it is of necessity a fleeting experience; for man is immersed in duration, subject to it. Its demands upon his attention can only cease with the cessation of physical life--perhaps not then. Perpetual absorption in the Transcendent is a human impossibility, and the effort to achieve it is both unsocial and silly. But this experience, this "ascent to the Nought," changes for ever the proportions of the life that once has known it; gives to it depth and height, and prepares the way for those further experiences, that great transfiguration of existence which comes when the personal activity of the finite will gives place to the great and compelling action of another Power. CHAPTER IX THE THIRD FORM OF CONTEMPLATION The hard separation which some mystical writers insist upon making between "natural" and "supernatural" contemplation, has been on the whole productive of confusion rather than clearness: for the word "supernatural" has many unfortunate associations for the mind of the plain man. It at once suggests to him visions and ecstasies, superstitious beliefs, ghosts, and other disagreeable interferences with the order which he calls "natural"; and inclines him to his old attitude of suspicion in respect of all mystical things. But some word we must have, to indicate the real cleavage which exists between the second and third stages in the development of the contemplative consciousness: the real change which, if you would go further on these interior paths, must now take place in the manner of your apprehension of Reality. Hitherto, all that you have attained has been--or at least has seemed to you--the direct result of your own hard work. A difficult self-discipline, the slowly achieved control of your vagrant thoughts and desires, the steady daily practice of recollection, a diligent pushing out of your consciousness from the superficial to the fundamental, an unselfish loving attention; all this has been rewarded by the gradual broadening and deepening of your perceptions, by an initiation into the movements of a larger life, You have been a knocker, a seeker, an asker: have beat upon the Cloud of Unknowing "with a sharp dart of longing love." A perpetual effort of the will has characterised your inner development. Your contemplation, in fact, as the specialists would say, has been "active," not "infused." But now, having achieved an awareness--obscure and indescribable indeed, yet actual--of the enfolding presence of Reality, under those two forms which the theologians call the "immanence" and the "transcendence" of the Divine, a change is to take place in the relation between your finite human spirit and the Infinite Life in which at last it knows itself to dwell. All that will now come to you--and much perhaps will come--will happen as it seems without effort on your own part: though really it will be the direct result of that long stress and discipline which has gone before, and has made it possible for you to feel the subtle contact of deeper realities. It will depend also on the steady continuance--often perhaps through long periods of darkness and boredom--of that poise to which you have been trained: the stretching-out of the loving and surrendered will into the dimness and silence, the continued trustful habitation of the soul in the atmosphere of the Essential World. You are like a traveller arrived in a new country. The journey has been a long one; and the hardships and obstacles involved in it, the effort, the perpetual conscious pressing forward, have at last come to seem the chief features of your inner life. Now, with their cessation, you feel curiously lost; as if the chief object of your existence had been taken away. No need to push on any further: yet, though there is no more that you can do of yourself, there is much that may and must be done to you. The place that you have come to seems strange and bewildering, for it lies far beyond the horizons of human thought. There are no familiar landmarks, nothing on which you can lay hold. You "wander to and fro," as the mystics say, "in this fathomless ground"; surrounded by silence and darkness, struggling to breathe this rarefied air. Like those who go to live in new latitudes, you must become acclimatised. Your state, then, should now be wisely passive; in order that the great influences which surround you may take and adjust your spirit, that the unaccustomed light, which now seems to you a darkness, may clarify your eyes, and that you may be transformed from a visitor into an inhabitant of that supernal Country which St. Augustine described as "no mere vision, but a home." You are therefore to let yourself go; to cease all conscious, anxious striving and pushing. Finding yourself in this place of darkness and quietude, this "Night of the Spirit," as St. John of the Cross has called it, you are to dwell there meekly; asking nothing, seeking nothing, but with your doors flung wide open towards God. And as you do thus, there will come to you an ever clearer certitude that this darkness enveils the goal for which you have been seeking from the first; the final Reality with which you are destined to unite, the perfect satisfaction of your most ardent and most sacred desires. It is there, but you cannot by your efforts reach it. This realisation of your own complete impotence, of the resistance which the Transcendent--long sought and faithfully served--now seems to offer to your busy outgoing will and love, your ardour, your deliberate self-donation, is at once the most painful and most essential phase in the training of the human soul. It brings you into that state of passive suffering which is to complete the decentralisation of your character, test the purity of your love, and perfect your education in humility. Here, you must oppose more thoroughly than ever before the instincts and suggestions of your separate, clever, energetic self; which, hating silence and dimness, is always trying to take the methods of Martha into the domain of Mary, and seldom discriminates between passivity and sloth. Perhaps you will find, when you try to achieve this perfect self-abandonment, that a further, more drastic self-exploration, a deeper, more searching purification than that which was forced upon you by your first experience of the recollective state is needed. The last fragments of selfhood, the very desire for spiritual satisfaction--the fundamental human tendency to drag down the Simple Fact and make it ours, instead of offering ourselves to it--must be sought out and killed. In this deep contemplation, this profound Quiet, your soul gradually becomes conscious of a constriction, a dreadful narrowness of personality; something still existing in itself, still tending to draw inwards to its own centre, and keeping it from that absolute surrender which is the only way to peace. An attitude of perfect generosity, complete submission, willing acquiescence in anything that may happen--even in failure and death--is here your only hope: for union with Reality can only be a union of love, a glad and humble self-mergence in the universal life. You must, so far as you are able, give yourself up to, "die into," melt into the Whole; abandon all efforts to lay hold of It. More, you must be willing that it should lay hold of you. "A pure bare going forth," says Tauler, trying to describe the sensations of the self at this moment. "None," says Ruysbroeck, putting this same experience, this meek outstreaming of the bewildered spirit, into other language, "is sure of Eternal Life, unless he has died with his own attributes wholly into God." It is unlikely that agreeable emotions will accompany this utter self-surrender; for everything will now seem to be taken from you, nothing given in exchange. But if you are able to make it, a mighty transformation will result. From the transitional plane of darkness, you will be reborn into another "world," another stage of realisation: and find yourself, literally, to be other than you were before. Ascetic writers tell us that the essence of the change now effected consists in the fact that "God's _action_ takes the place of man's _activity_"--that the surrendered self "does not act, but receives." By this they mean to describe, as well as our concrete language will permit, the new and vivid consciousness which now invades the contemplative; the sense which he has of being as it were helpless in the grasp of another Power, so utterly part of him, so completely different from him--so rich and various, so transfused with life and feeling, so urgent and so all-transcending--that he can only think of it as God. It is for this that the dimness and steadily increasing passivity of the stage of Quiet has been preparing him; and it is out of this willing quietude and ever-deepening obscurity that the new experiences come. "O night that didst lead thus, O night more lovely than the dawn of light, O night that broughtest us Lover to lover's sight-- Lover with loved in marriage of delight," says St. John of the Cross in the most wonderful of all mystical poems. "He who has had experience of this," says St. Teresa of the same stage of apprehension, "will understand it in some measure: but it cannot be more clearly described because what then takes place is so obscure. All I am able to say is, that the soul is represented as being close to God; and that there abide a conviction thereof so certain and strong, that it cannot possibly help believing so." This sense, this conviction, which may be translated by the imagination into many different forms, is the substance of the greatest experiences and highest joys of the mystical saints. The intensity with which it is realised will depend upon the ardour, purity, and humility of the experiencing soul: but even those who feel it faintly are convinced by it for evermore. In some great and generous spirits, able to endure the terrific onslaught of Reality, it may even reach a vividness by which all other things are obliterated; and the self, utterly helpless under the inundations of this transcendent life-force, passes into that simple state of consciousness which is called Ecstasy. But you are not to be frightened by these special manifestations; or to suppose that here the road is barred against you. Though these great spirits have as it were a genius for Reality, a susceptibility to supernal impressions, so far beyond your own small talent that there seems no link between you: yet you have, since you are human, a capacity for the Infinite too. With less intensity, less splendour, but with a certitude which no arguments will ever shake, this sense of the Living Fact, and of its mysterious contacts with and invasions of the human spirit, may assuredly be realised by you. This realisation--sometimes felt under the symbols of personality, sometimes under those of an impersonal but life-giving Force, Light, Energy, or Heat--is the ruling character of the third phase of contemplation; and the reward of that meek passivity, that "busy idleness" as the mystics sometimes call it, which you have been striving to attain. Sooner or later, if you are patient, it will come to you through the darkness: a mysterious contact, a clear certitude of intercourse and of possession--perhaps so gradual in its approach that the break, the change from the ever-deepening stillness and peace of the second phase, is hardly felt by you; perhaps, if your nature be ardent and unstable, with a sudden shattering violence, in a "storm of love." In either case, the advent of this experience is incalculable, and completely outside your own control. So far, to use St. Teresa's well-known image, you have been watering the garden of your spirit by hand; a poor and laborious method, yet one in which there is a definite relation between effort and result. But now the watering-can is taken from you, and you must depend upon the rain: more generous, more fruitful, than anything which your own efforts could manage, but, in its incalculable visitations, utterly beyond your control. Here all one can say is this: that if you acquiesce in the heroic demands which the spiritual life now makes upon you, if you let yourself go, eradicate the last traces of self-interest even of the most spiritual kind--then, you have established conditions under which the forces of the spiritual world can work on you, heightening your susceptibilities, deepening and purifying your attention, so that you are able to taste and feel more and more of the inexhaustible riches of Reality. Thus dying to your own will, waiting for what is given, infused, you will presently find that a change in your apprehension has indeed taken place: and that those who said self-loss was the only way to realisation taught no pious fiction but the truth. The highest contemplative experience to which you have yet attained has seemed above all else a still awareness. The cessation of your own striving, a resting upon and within the Absolute World-- these were its main characteristics for your consciousness. But now, this Ocean of Being is no longer felt by you as an emptiness, a solitude without bourne. Suddenly you know it to be instinct with a movement and life too great for you to apprehend. You are thrilled by a mighty energy, uncontrolled by you, unsolicited by you: its higher vitality is poured into your soul. You enter upon an experience for which all the terms of power, thought, motion, even of love, are inadequate: yet which contains within itself the only complete expression of all these things. Your strength is now literally made perfect in weakness: because of the completeness of your dependence, a fresh life is infused into you, such as your old separate existence never knew. Moreover, to that diffused and impersonal sense of the Infinite, in which you have dipped yourself, and which swallows up and completes all the ideas your mind has ever built up with the help of the categories of time and space, is now added the consciousness of a Living Fact which includes, transcends, completes all that you mean by the categories of personality and of life. Those ineffective, half-conscious attempts towards free action, clear apprehension, true union, which we dignify by the names of will, thought, and love are now seen matched by an Absolute Will, Thought, and Love; instantly recognised by the contemplating spirit as the highest reality it yet has known, and evoking in it a passionate and a humble joy. This unmistakable experience has been achieved by the mystics of every religion; and when we read their statements, we know that all are speaking of the same thing. None who have had it have ever been able to doubt its validity. It has always become for them the central fact, by which all other realities must be tested and graduated. It has brought to them the deep consciousness of sources of abundant life now made accessible to man; of the impact of a mighty energy, gentle, passionate, self-giving, creative, which they can only call Absolute Love. Sometimes they feel this strange life moving and stirring within them. Sometimes it seems to pursue, entice, and besiege them. In every case, they are the passive objects upon which it works. It is now another Power which seeks the separated spirit and demands it; which knocks at the closed door of the narrow personality; which penetrates the contemplative consciousness through and through, speaking, stirring, compelling it; which sometimes, by its secret irresistible pressure, wins even the most recalcitrant in spite of themselves. Sometimes this Power is felt as an impersonal force, the unifying cosmic energy, the indrawing love which gathers all things into One; sometimes as a sudden access of vitality, a light and heat, enfolding and penetrating the self and making its languid life more vivid and more real; sometimes as a personal and friendly Presence which counsels and entreats the soul. In each case, the mystics insist again that this is God; that here under these diverse manners the soul has immediate intercourse with Him. But we must remember that when they make this declaration, they are speaking from a plane of consciousness far above the ideas and images of popular religion; and from a place which is beyond the judiciously adjusted horizon of philosophy. They mean by this word, not a notion, however august; but an experienced Fact so vivid, that against it the so-called facts of daily life look shadowy and insecure. They say that this Fact is "immanent"; dwelling in, transfusing, and discoverable through every aspect of the universe, every movement of the game of life--as you have found in the first stage of contemplation. There you may hear its melody and discern its form. And further, that It is "transcendent"; in essence exceeding and including the sum of those glimpses and contacts which we obtain by self-mergence in life, and in Its simplest manifestations above and beyond anything to which reason can attain--"the Nameless Being, of Whom nought can be said." This you discovered to be true in the second stage. But in addition to this, they say also, that this all-pervasive, all-changing, and yet changeless One, Whose melody is heard in all movement, and within Whose Being "the worlds are being told like beads," calls the human spirit to an immediate intercourse, a _unity_, a fruition, a divine give-and-take, for which the contradictory symbols of feeding, of touching, of marriage, of immersion, are all too poor; and which evokes in the fully conscious soul a passionate and a humble love. "He devours us and He feeds us!" exclaims Ruysbroeck. "Here," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "the soul in a wonderful and unspeakable manner both seizes and is seized upon, devours and is herself devoured, embraces and is violently embraced: and by the knot of love she unites herself with God, and is with Him as the Alone with the Alone." The marvellous love-poetry of mysticism, the rhapsodies which extol the spirit's Lover, Friend, Companion, Bridegroom; which describe the "deliberate speed, majestic instancy" of the Hound of Heaven chasing the separated soul, the onslaughts, demands, and caresses of this "stormy, generous, and unfathomable love"--all this is an attempt, often of course oblique and symbolic in method, to express and impart this transcendent secret, to describe that intense yet elusive state in which alone union with the living heart of Reality is possible. "How delicately Thou teachest love to me!" cries St. John of the Cross; and here indeed we find all the ardours of all earthly lovers justified by an imperishable Objective, which reveals Itself in all things that we truly love, and beyond all these things both seeks us and compels us, "giving more than we can take and asking more than we can pay." You do not, you never will know, _what_ this Objective is: for as Dionysius teaches, "if any one saw God and understood what he saw, then it was not God that he saw, but something that belongs to Him." But you do know now that it exists, with an intensity which makes all other existences unreal; save in so far as they participate in this one Fact. "Some contemplate the Formless, and others meditate on Form: but the wise man knows that Brahma is beyond both." As you yield yourself more and more completely to the impulses of this intimate yet unseizable Presence, so much the sweeter and stronger--so much the more constant and steady-- will your intercourse with it become. The imperfect music of your adoration will be answered and reinforced by another music, gentle, deep, and strange; your out-going movement, the stretching forth of your desire from yourself to something other, will be answered by a movement, a stirring, within you yet not conditioned by you. The wonder and variety of this intercourse is never-ending. It includes in its sweep every phase of human love and self-devotion, all beauty and all power, all suffering and effort, all gentleness and rapture: here found in synthesis. Going forth into the bareness and darkness of this unwalled world of high contemplation, you there find stored for you, and at last made real, all the highest values, all the dearest and noblest experiences of the world of growth and change. You see now what it is that you have been doing in the course of your mystical development. As your narrow heart stretched to a wider sympathy with life, you have been surrendering progressively to larger and larger existences, more and more complete realities: have been learning to know them, to share their very being, through the magic of disinterested love. First, the manifested, flowing, evolving life of multiplicity: felt by you in its wonder and wholeness, once you learned to yield yourself to its rhythms, received in simplicity the undistorted messages of sense. Then, the actual unchanging ground of life, the eternal and unconditioned Whole, transcending all succession: a world inaccessible alike to senses and intelligence, but felt--vaguely, darkly, yet intensely--by the quiet and surrendered consciousness. But now you are solicited, whether you will or no, by a greater Reality, the final inclusive Fact, the Unmeasured Love, which "is through all things everlastingly": and yielding yourself to it, receiving and responding to its obscure yet ardent communications, you pass beyond the cosmic experience to the personal encounter, the simple yet utterly inexpressible union of the soul with its God. And this threefold union with Reality, as your attention is focussed now on one aspect, now on another, of its rich simplicity, will be actualised by you in many different ways: for you are not to suppose that an unchanging barren ecstasy is now to characterise your inner life. Though the sense of your own dwelling within the Eternal transfuses and illuminates it, the sense of your own necessary efforts, a perpetual renewal of contact with the Spiritual World, a perpetual self-donation, shall animate it too. When the greater love overwhelms the lesser, and your small self-consciousness is lost in the consciousness of the Whole, it will be felt as an intense stillness, a quiet fruition of Reality. Then, your very selfhood seems to cease, as it does in all your moments of great passion; and you are "satisfied and overflowing, and with Him beyond yourself eternally fulfilled." Again, when your own necessary activity comes into the foreground, your small energetic love perpetually pressing to deeper and deeper realisation--"tasting through and through, and seeking through and through, the fathomless ground" of the Infinite and Eternal--it seems rather a perpetually renewed encounter than a final achievement. Since you are a child of Time as well as of Eternity, such effort and satisfaction, active and passive love are both needed by you, if your whole life is to be brought into union with the inconceivably rich yet simple One in Whom these apparent opposites are harmonised. Therefore seeking and finding, work and rest, conflict and peace, feeding on God and self-immersion in God, spiritual marriage and spiritual death--these contradictory images are all wanted, if we are to represent the changing moods of the living, growing human spirit; the diverse aspects under which it realises the simple fact of its intercourse with the Divine. Each new stage achieved in the mystical development of the spirit has meant, not the leaving behind of the previous stages, but an adding on to them: an ever greater extension of experience, and enrichment of personality. So that the total result of this change, this steady growth of your transcendental self, is not an impoverishment of the sense-life in the supposed interests of the super-sensual, but the addition to it of another life--a huge widening and deepening of the field over which your attention can play. Sometimes the mature contemplative consciousness narrows to an intense point of feeling, in which it seems indeed "alone with the Alone": sometimes it spreads to a vast apprehension of the Universal Life, or perceives the common things of sense aflame with God. It moves easily and with no sense of incongruity from hours of close personal communion with its Friend and Lover to self-loss in the "deep yet dazzling darkness" of the Divine Abyss: or, re-entering that living world of change which the first form of contemplation disclosed to it, passes beyond those discrete manifestations of Reality to realise the Whole which dwells in and inspires every part. Thus ascending to the mysterious fruition of that Reality which is beyond image, and descending again to the loving contemplation and service of all struggling growing things, it now finds and adores everywhere--in the sky and the nest, the soul and the void--one Energetic Love which "is measureless, since it is all that exists," and of which the patient up-climb of the individual soul, the passionate outpouring of the Divine Mind, form the completing opposites. CHAPTER X THE MYSTICAL LIFE And here the practical man, who has been strangely silent during the last stages of our discourse, shakes himself like a terrier which has achieved dry land again after a bath; and asks once more, with a certain explosive violence, his dear old question, "What is the _use_ of all this?" "You have introduced me," he says further, "to some curious states of consciousness, interesting enough in their way; and to a lot of peculiar emotions, many of which are no doubt most valuable to poets and so on. But it is all so remote from daily life. How is it going to fit in with ordinary existence? How, above all, is it all going to help _me_?" Well, put upon its lowest plane, this new way of attending to life-- this deepening and widening of outlook--may at least be as helpful to you as many things to which you have unhesitatingly consecrated much time and diligence in the past: your long journeys to new countries, for instance, or long hours spent in acquiring new "facts," relabelling old experiences, gaining skill in new arts and games. These, it is true, were quite worth the effort expended on them: for they gave you, in exchange for your labour and attention, a fresh view of certain fragmentary things, a new point of contact with the rich world of possibilities, a tiny enlargement of your universe in one direction or another. Your love and patient study of nature, art, science, politics, business-- even of sport--repaid you thus. But I have offered you, in exchange for a meek and industrious attention to another aspect of the world, hitherto somewhat neglected by you, an enlargement which shall include and transcend all these; and be conditioned only by the perfection of your generosity, courage, and surrender. Nor are you to suppose that this enlargement will be limited to certain new spiritual perceptions, which the art of contemplation has made possible for you: that it will merely draw the curtain from a window out of which you have never looked. This new wide world is not to be for you something seen, but something lived in: and you--since man is a creature of responses--will insensibly change under its influence, growing up into a more perfect conformity with it. Living in this atmosphere of Reality, you will, in fact, yourself become more real. Hence, if you accept in a spirit of trust the suggestions which have been made to you-- and I acknowledge that here at the beginning an attitude of faith is essential--and if you practise with diligence the arts which I have described: then, sooner or later, you will inevitably find yourself deeply and permanently changed by them--will perceive that you have become a "new man." Not merely have you acquired new powers of perception and new ideas of Reality; but a quiet and complete transformation, a strengthening and maturing of your personality has taken place. You are still, it is true, living the ordinary life of the body. You are immersed in the stream of duration; a part of the human, the social, the national group. The emotions, instincts, needs, of that group affect you. Your changing scrap of vitality contributes to its corporate life; and contributes the more effectively since a new, intuitive sympathy has now made its interests your own. Because of that corporate life, transfusing you, giving to you and taking from you--conditioning, you as it does in countless oblique and unapparent ways--you are still compelled to react to many suggestions which you are no longer able to respect: controlled, to the last moment of your bodily existence and perhaps afterwards, by habit, custom, the good old average way of misunderstanding the world. To this extent, the crowd-spirit has you in its grasp. Yet in spite of all this, you are now released from that crowd's tyrannically overwhelming consciousness as you never were before. You feel yourself now a separate vivid entity, a real, whole man: dependent on the Whole, and gladly so dependent, yet within that Whole a free self-governing thing. Perhaps you always fancied that your will was free--that you were actually, as you sometimes said, the "captain of your soul." If so, this was merely one amongst the many illusions which supported your old, enslaved career. As a matter of fact, you were driven along a road, unaware of anything that lay beyond the hedges, pressed on every side by other members of the flock; getting perhaps a certain satisfaction out of the deep warm stir of the collective life, but ignorant of your destination, and with your personal initiative limited to the snatching of grass as you went along, the pushing of your way to the softer side of the track. These operations made up together that which you called Success. But now, because you have achieved a certain power of gathering yourself together, perceiving yourself as a person, a spirit, and observing your relation with these other individual lives--because too, hearing now and again the mysterious piping of the Shepherd, you realise your own perpetual forward movement and that of the flock, in its relation to that living guide--you have a far deeper, truer knowledge than ever before both of the general and the individual existence; and so are able to handle life with a surer hand. Do not suppose from this that your new career is to be perpetually supported by agreeable spiritual contacts, or occupy itself in the mild contemplation of the great world through which you move. True, it is said of the Shepherd that he carries the lambs in his bosom: but the sheep are expected to walk, and put up with the inequalities of the road, the bunts and blunders of the flock. It is to vigour rather than to comfort that you are called. Since the transcendental aspect of your being has been brought into focus you are now raised out of the mere push-forward, the blind passage through time of the flock, into a position of creative responsibility. You are aware of personal correspondences with the Shepherd. You correspond, too, with a larger, deeper, broader world. The sky and the hedges, the wide lands through which you are moving, the corporate character and meaning of the group to which you belong--all these are now within the circle of your consciousness; and each little event, each separate demand or invitation which comes to you is now seen in a truer proportion, because you bring to it your awareness of the Whole. Your journey ceases to be an automatic progress, and takes on some of the characters of a free act: for "things" are now under you, you are no longer under them. You will hardly deny that this is a practical gain: that this widening and deepening of the range over which your powers of perception work makes you more of a man than you were before, and thus adds to rather than subtracts from your total practical efficiency. It is indeed only when he reaches these levels, and feels within himself this creative freedom--this full actualisation of himself--on the one hand: on the other hand the sense of a world-order, a love and energy on which he depends and with whose interests he is now at one, that man becomes fully human, capable of living the real life of Eternity in the midst of the world of time. And what, when you have come to it, do you suppose to be your own function in this vast twofold scheme? Is it for nothing, do you think, that you are thus a meeting-place of two orders? Surely it is your business, so far as you may, to express in action something of the real character of that universe within which you now know yourself to live? Artists, aware of a more vivid and more beautiful world than other men, are always driven by their love and enthusiasm to try and express, bring into direct manifestation, those deeper significances of form, sound, rhythm, which they have been able to apprehend: and, doing this, they taste deeper and deeper truths, make ever closer unions with the Real. For them, the duty of creation is tightly bound up with the gift of love. In their passionate outflowing to the universe which offers itself under one of its many aspects to their adoration, that other-worldly fruition of beauty is always followed, balanced, completed, by a this-world impulse to creation: a desire to fix within the time-order, and share with other men, the vision by which they were possessed. Each one, thus bringing new aspects of beauty, new ways of seeing and hearing within the reach of the race, does something to amend the sorry universe of common sense, the more hideous universe of greed, and redeem his fellows from their old, slack servitude to a lower range of significances. It is in action, then, that these find their truest and safest point of insertion into the living, active world of Reality: in sharing and furthering its work of manifestation they know its secrets best. For them contemplation and action are not opposites, but two interdependent forms of a life that is _one_--a life that rushes out to a passionate communion with the true and beautiful, only that it may draw from this direct experience of Reality a new intensity wherewith to handle the world of things; and remake it, or at least some little bit of it, "nearer to the heart's desire." Again, the great mystics tell us that the "vision of God in His own light"--the direct contact of the soul's substance with the Absolute--to which awful experience you drew as near as the quality of your spirit would permit in the third degree of contemplation, is the prelude, not to a further revelation of the eternal order given to you, but to an utter change, a vivid life springing up within you, which they sometimes call the "transforming union" or the "birth of the Son in the soul." By this they mean that the spark of spiritual stuff, that high special power or character of human nature, by which you first desired, then tended to, then achieved contact with Reality, is as it were fertilised by this profound communion with its origin; becomes strong and vigorous, invades and transmutes the whole personality, and makes of it, not a "dreamy mystic" but an active and impassioned servant of the Eternal Wisdom. So that when these full-grown, fully vital mystics try to tell us about the life they have achieved, it is always an intensely active life that they describe. They say, not that they "dwell in restful fruition," though the deep and joyous knowledge of this, perhaps too the perpetual longing for an utter self-loss in it, is always possessed by them--but that they "go up _and down_ the ladder of contemplation." They stretch up towards the Point, the unique Reality to which all the intricate and many-coloured lines of life flow, and in which they are merged; and rush out towards those various lives in a passion of active love and service. This double activity, this swinging between rest and work--this alone, they say, is truly the life of man; because this alone represents on human levels something of that inexhaustibly rich yet simple life, "ever active yet ever at rest," which they find in God. When he gets to this, then man has indeed actualised his union with Reality; because then he is a part of the perpetual creative act, the eternal generation of the Divine thought and love. Therefore contemplation, even at its highest, dearest, and most intimate, is not to be for you an end in itself. It shall only be truly yours when it impels you to action: when the double movement of Transcendent Love, drawing inwards to unity and fruition, and rushing out again to creative acts, is realised in you. You are to be a living, ardent tool with which the Supreme Artist works: one of the instruments of His self-manifestation, the perpetual process by which His Reality is brought into concrete expression. Now the expression of vision, of reality, of beauty, at an artist's hands--the creation of new life in all forms--has two factors: the living moulding creative spirit, and the material in which it works. Between these two there is inevitably a difference of tension. The material is at best inert, and merely patient of the informing idea; at worst, directly recalcitrant to it. Hence, according to the balance of these two factors, the amount of resistance offered by stuff to tool, a greater or less energy must be expended, greater or less perfection of result will be achieved. You, accepting the wide deep universe of the mystic, and the responsibilities that go with it, have by this act taken sides once for all with creative spirit: with the higher tension, the unrelaxed effort, the passion for a better, intenser, and more significant life. The adoration to which you are vowed is not an affair of red hassocks and authorised hymn books; but a burning and consuming fire. You will find, then, that the world, going its own gait, busily occupied with its own system of correspondences-- yielding to every gust of passion, intent on the satisfaction of greed, the struggle for comfort or for power--will oppose your new eagerness; perhaps with violence, but more probably with the exasperating calmness of a heavy animal which refuses to get up. If your new life is worth anything, it will flame to sharper power when it strikes against this dogged inertness of things: for you need resistances on which to act. "The road to a Yea lies through a Nay," and righteous warfare is the only way to a living and a lasting peace. Further, you will observe more and more clearly, that the stuff of your external world, the method and machinery of the common life, is not merely passively but actively inconsistent with your sharp interior vision of truth. The heavy animal is diseased as well as indolent. All man's perverse ways of seeing his universe, all the perverse and hideous acts which have sprung from them-- these have set up reactions, have produced deep disorders in the world of things. Man is free, and holds the keys of hell as well as the keys of heaven. Within the love-driven universe which you have learned to see as a whole, you will therefore find egotism, rebellion, meanness, brutality, squalor: the work of separated selves whose energies are set athwart the stream. But every aspect of life, however falsely imagined, can still be "saved," turned to the purposes of Reality: for "all-thing hath the being by the love of God." Its oppositions are no part of its realness; and therefore they can be overcome. Is there not here, then, abundance of practical work for you to do; work which is the direct outcome of your mystical experience? Are there not here, as the French proverb has it, plenty of cats for you to comb? And isn't it just here, in the new foothold it gives you, the new clear vision and certitude--in its noble, serious, and invulnerable faith-- that mysticism is "useful"; even for the most scientific of social reformers, the most belligerent of politicians, the least sentimental of philanthropists? To "bring Eternity into Time," the "invisible into concrete expression"; to "be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man"--these are the plainly expressed desires of all the great mystics. One and all, they demand earnest and deliberate action, the insertion of the purified and ardent will into the world of things. The mystics are artists; and the stuff in which they work is most often human life. They want to heal the disharmony between the actual and the real: and since, in the white-hot radiance of that faith, hope, and charity which burns in them, they discern such a reconciliation to be possible, they are able to work for it with a singleness of purpose and an invincible optimism denied to other men. This was the instinct which drove St. Francis of Assist to the practical experience of that poverty which he recognised as the highest wisdom; St. Catherine of Siena from contemplation to politics; Joan of Arc to the salvation of France; St. Teresa to the formation of an ideal religious family; Fox to the proclaiming of a world-religion in which all men should be guided by the Inner Light; Florence Nightingale to battle with officials, vermin, dirt, and disease in the soldiers' hospitals; Octavia Hill to make in London slums something a little nearer "the shadows of the angels' houses" than that which the practical landlord usually provides. All these have felt sure that a great part in the drama of creation has been given to the free spirit of man: that bit by bit, through and by him, the scattered worlds of love and thought and action shall be realised again as one. It is for those who have found the thread on which those worlds are strung, to bring this knowledge out of the hiddenness; to use it, as the old alchemists declared that they could use their tincture, to transmute all baser; metals into gold. So here is your vocation set out: a vocation so various in its opportunities, that you can hardly fail to find something to do. It is your business to actualise within the world of time and space-- perhaps by great endeavours in the field of heroic action, perhaps only by small ones in field and market, tram and tube, office and drawing-room, in the perpetual give-and-take of the common life--that more real life, that holy creative energy, which this world manifests as a whole but indifferently. You shall work for mercy, order, beauty, significance: shall mend where you find things broken, make where you find the need. "Adoro te devote, latens Deitas," said St. Thomas in his great mystical hymn: and the practical side of that adoration consists in the bringing of the Real Presence from its hiddenness, and exhibiting it before the eyes of other men. Hitherto you have not been very active in this matter: yet it is the purpose for which you exist, and your contemplative consciousness, if you educate it, will soon make this fact clear to you. The teeming life of nature has yielded up to your loving attention many sacramental images of Reality: seen in the light of charity, it is far more sacred and significant than you supposed. What about _your_ life? Is that a theophany too? "Each oak doth cry I AM," says Vaughan. Do you proclaim by your existence the grandeur, the beauty, the intensity, the living wonder of that Eternal Reality within which, at this moment, you stand? Do your hours of contemplation and of action harmonise? If they did harmonise--if everybody's did--then, by these individual adjustments the complete group-consciousness of humanity would be changed, brought back into conformity with the Transcendent; and the spiritual world would be actualised within the temporal order at last. Then, that world of false imagination, senseless conflicts, and sham values, into which our children are now born, would be annihilated. The whole race, not merely a few of its noblest, most clearsighted spirits, would be "in union with God"; and men, transfused by His light and heat, direct and willing agents of His Pure Activity, would achieve that completeness of life which the mystics dare to call "deification." This is the substance of that redemption of the world, which all religions proclaim or demand: the consummation which is crudely imagined in the Apocalyptic dreams of the prophets and seers. It is the true incarnation of the Divine Wisdom: and you must learn to see with Paul the pains and disorders of creation-- your own pains, efforts, and difficulties too--as incidents in the travail of that royal birth. Patriots have sometimes been asked to "think imperially." Mystics are asked to think celestially; and this, not when considering the things usually called spiritual, but when dealing with the concrete accidents, the evil and sadness, the cruelty, failure, and degeneration of life. So, what is being offered to you is not merely a choice amongst new states of consciousness, new emotional experiences--though these are indeed involved in it--but, above all else, a larger and intenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interests of the Real. This life shall not be abstract and dreamy, made up, as some imagine, of negations. It shall be violently practical and affirmative; giving scope for a limitless activity of will, heart, and mind working within the rhythms of the Divine Idea. It shall cost much, making perpetual demands on your loyalty, trust, and self-sacrifice: proving now the need and the worth of that training in renunciation which was forced on you at the beginning of your interior life. It shall be both deep and wide, embracing in its span all those aspects of Reality which the gradual extension of your contemplative powers has disclosed to you: making "the inner and outer worlds to be indivisibly One." And because the emphasis is now for ever shifted from the accidents to the substance of life, it will matter little where and how this career is actualised--whether in convent or factory, study or battlefield, multitude or solitude, sickness or strength. These fluctuations of circumstance will no longer dominate you; since "it is Love that payeth for all." Yet by all this it is not meant that the opening up of the universe, the vivid consciousness of a living Reality and your relation with it, which came to you in contemplation, will necessarily be a constant or a governable feature of your experience. Even under the most favourable circumstances, you shall and must move easily and frequently between that spiritual fruition and active work in the world of men. Often enough it will slip from you utterly; often your most diligent effort will fail to recapture it, and only its fragrance will remain. The more intense those contacts have been, the more terrible will be your hunger and desolation when they are thus withdrawn: for increase of susceptibility means more pain as well as more pleasure, as every artist knows. But you will find in all that happens to you, all that opposes and grieves you--even in those inevitable hours of darkness when the doors of true perception seem to close, and the cruel tangles of the world are all that you can discern--an inward sense of security which will never cease. All the waves that buffet you about, shaking sometimes the strongest faith and hope, are yet parts and aspects of one Ocean. Did they wreck you utterly, that Ocean would receive you; and there you would find, overwhelming and transfusing you, the unfathomable Substance of all life and joy. Whether you realise it in its personal or impersonal manifestation, the universe is now friendly to you; and as he is a suspicious and unworthy lover who asks every day for renewed demonstrations of love, so you do not demand from it perpetual reassurances. It is enough, that once it showed you its heart. A link of love now binds you to it for evermore: in spite of derelictions, in spite of darkness and suffering, your will is harmonised with the Will that informs the Whole. We said, at the beginning of this discussion, that mysticism was the art of union with Reality: that it was, above all else, a Science of Love. Hence, the condition to which it looks forward and towards which the soul of the contemplative has been stretching out, is a condition of _being_, not of _seeing_. As the bodily senses have been produced under pressure of man's physical environment, and their true aim is not the enhancement of his pleasure or his knowledge, but a perfecting of his adjustment to those aspects of the natural world which concern him--so the use and meaning of the spiritual senses are strictly practical too. These, when developed by a suitable training, reveal to man a certain measure of Reality: not in order that he may gaze upon it, but in order that he may react to it, learn to live in, with, and for it; growing and stretching into more perfect harmony with the Eternal Order, until at last, like the blessed ones of Dante's vision, the clearness of his flame responds to the unspeakable radiance of the Enkindling Light. 
29449	----	THE GOLDEN FOUNTAIN or, The Soul's Love for God Being some Thoughts and Confessions of One of His Lovers By Lilian Staveley London John M. Watkins 21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C.2 1919 How many of us inwardly feel a secret longing to find God; and this usually accompanied by the perception that we are confronted by an impenetrable barrier--we cannot find Him--we can neither go through this barrier nor climb over it! We have faith. We are able to admit that He exists, for we cannot help but perceive a Will dominating the laws of the Universe; but something deep within us that we cannot put a name to, something subtle, secret, and strange, cries aloud, "But I need more than this, it is not enough; I need to personally find and know Him. Why does He not permit me to do so?" We might easily answer ourselves by remembering that if, in everyday life, we greatly desire to see a friend, our best way of doing so is by going in the direction in which he is to be found: we should consider this as obvious. Then let us apply this, which we say is so obvious, to God. We waste too much time looking for Him in impossible directions and by impossible means. He is not to be found by merely studying lengthy arguments, brilliant explanations of theological statements, or controversies upon the meanings of obscure dogmas. He is not even to be found through organising charity concerts and social reforms however useful. We shall find Him through a self stripped bare of all other interests and pretensions--stripped bare of everything but a humble and passionately seeking _heart._ He says to the soul, "Long for Me, and I will show Myself. Desire Me with a great desire, and I will be found." * * * Scattered all through history are innumerable persons, both great and insignificant, who looked for the Pearl of Great Price: and not too many would seem to have found it. Some sought by study, by intelligence; some by strict and pious attention to outward ceremonial service; some by a "religious" life; some even by penance and fasting. Those who found sought with the heart. Those who sought with careful piety, or with intelligence, found perhaps faith and submission, but no joy. The Pearl is that which cannot be described in words. It is the _touch of God Himself upon the soul,_ the Joy of Love. * * * The entrance to the land of happiness and peace is through union of the will to Christ, by love. How can this sense of love be reached? By centring the wheel of the mind, with its daily spinning thoughts, upon the Man Jesus, and learning to inwardly see and hold on to the perfect simplicity and love of Jesus Christ. We can form the habit of taking Jesus as our heart and mind companion. We are all aware of the unceasing necessity of the mind to fill itself: we cannot have _no_ thoughts until we have advanced in the spiritual life to a long distance. We may well see, in this, one of the provisions made by God for His own habitation in the mind of man--a habitation too often hideously usurped by every kind of unworthy substitute. Petty social interests and occupations, personal animosities, ambitions, worries, a revolving endless chaos of futilities, known and praised by too many of us as "a busy life"!--the mind being given opportunity only at long intervals, and usually at stated and set times, to dwell upon the thought of God, and the marvellous future of the human spirit. We are like travellers who, about to start out upon a great journey, pack their portmanteaus with everything that will be _perfectly useless to them!_ Now, it is possible to put out and obliterate this chaotic and useless state of mind, which would appear to be the "natural mind," and to open ourselves to receive the might and force and the joys and delights of Christ's Mind. These joys are the Heart of Christ speaking to the heart of His lover. They are incomparable: beyond all imagination until we know them; and we receive them and perceive them and enjoy them as we have largeness and capacity to contain them. For there is no end. He has ever more to give if we will be but large enough to receive. We are too absorbed in the puerile interests and occupations of daily life. We make of these endless occupations a virtue. They are no virtue, but a deadly hindrance, for they keep us too busy to look for the one thing needful--the Kingdom of God. What is this world? It is a schoolhouse for lovers, and we are lovers in the making. Is baptism of itself sufficient to get us into this Kingdom? No. Is the leading of an orderly social life sufficient to find it? No. Is the hope, even the earnest expectation, that we shall, by some means or other (we do not know by what!), be brought to it, sufficient to find it? No; not without the _personal laying hold_ can we ever achieve it. Shall we find it in much outward study? No; and our aim is, not to be the student but the possessor; and the key to this possession is not in books, but, for us, in Jesus. He it is who must be invited and admitted into the heart with great tenderness--with all those virtues for which He stands--and made the centre point of thought. Out of constant thought grows tenderness; out of tenderness, affection; out of affection, love. Love once firmly fixed in the heart for Jesus, we get a perception (by contrast) of our own faults--very painful, and known as repentance. This should be succeeded at once by change of mind, _i.e._ we try to push out the old way of thinking and acting and take on a new way. We try, in fact, strenuously to please the Beloved, to be in harmony with Him; and now we have established a personal relationship between ourselves and Christ. With the perception of our own failings comes the necessary humility and the drastic elimination of all prides. We remember, too, that although Jesus is so near to us, and our own Beloved, He is also the mighty Son of God. He is also the mystical Christ, who, when we are ready, leads us to the Father: which is to say, that we are suddenly stricken with the consciousness of and the love for God; and here we enter that most wonderful of all earthly experiences--the Soul's great Garden of Happiness. To be a student of theories, dogmas, laws, and writings of men is to be involved in endless controversy; and we may study books till we are sick, and embrace nothing but vapour for all our pains. To be a pupil and possessor we must first establish the personal relationship between ourselves and Jesus. To do this we must realise more fully than we now do that He _still lives._ The mind is inclined to dwell on Him mostly as _having lived._ When we have taught ourselves to realise that Jesus is as intensely alive to everything that we do as He was when He visibly walked with men--that Jesus is as easily aware of our inmost thoughts and endeavours now as He was of the secret thoughts of His disciples,--then we shall have brought Him much closer into our own life. As the possessor of life is not the student of schools, but is the pupil of Christ, let us prepare ourselves to be pupils; and this again we do solely by the help of the Man-Jesus, who is in Christ, and Christ in Jesus. For the Christ-God is at first too strong a meat for us: we cannot with fullness understand that He is God, but He Himself will teach us this when we are ready to know it. To know this truth in its fullness is already to possess eternal life. As no man is able to give us eternal life, so no man is able to give us the knowledge that Christ is God, as He willed to reveal Himself to man. If we have doubts which hurt, let us drop them out, changing the thought quickly to the sweetness, simplicity, and gentleness of the Man-Jesus. If we have questionings, let us cease to question, and say with the man of old, "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief." We do well to avoid these questionings, pryings, and curiosities, for when we indulge in such things we are like that common servant who does not disdain to peep through the keyhole of his master's chamber! Let us put such spiritual vulgarities upon one side, and, opening our heart to lovely Love, take Him as our only guide. Love draws us very rapidly to His own abiding-place, for we are made of love, and because of love, and for love, and to Love we must return, for He awaits us with longing. * * * We often think, Where am I at fault? I am unable to _see_ myself as a sinner, though publicly I confess myself to be one. For I keep the commandments; I am friendly to my neighbours; I am just to my fellow-men; I can think of no particular harm that I do. Why, then, am I a sinner? And our very modesty and reverence may forbid us to compare ourselves with God. Yet here lies our mistake; for if we would enter the Garden of Happiness and Peace, which is the Kingdom of God, this is the commencement of our advance--that we should compare ourselves in all things with God, in whose likeness we are made, and, making such full observation as we are able of the terrible gulfs between ourselves and Him, should with tears and humility and constant endeavour be at great pains and stress to make good to Him our deficiencies. "Be ye perfect as I am perfect." "Be ye holy as I am holy." If this were not attainable, He would not have set so high a goal. In this, then, we are sinners--that we are not pure and lovely as God Himself! This is a prodigious, an almost unthinkable height; yet He wills us to attempt it, and all the powers of Heaven are with us as we climb. * * * Fear curiosity. Fear it more than sin. Curiosity is the root, and sin the flower. This is one of the reasons why we should never seek God merely with the intelligence: to do so is to seek Him, in part at least, with curiosity. God will not be peeped upon by a curious humanity. The indulgence in curiosity would of itself explain the whole downfall, so called, of man. The Soul is the Prodigal. Curiosity _to know_ led her away from the high heavens. Love is her only way of return. Curiosity is the mother of all infidelity, whether of the spirit or of the body. * * * Though on reading the Gospels carefully we may be unable to come to any other conclusion than that Jesus Christ neither prayed for nor died for all mankind, but only for the elect, yet we see equally clearly that all mankind is _invited to be the elect._ We are, then, not individually sure of heaven because Jesus died upon a cross for men; but sure of heaven for ourselves, only if we individually will to live and think and act in such a manner that _we become of the elect._ "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out," says the Voice of the Beloved. * * * In our early stages, how we shrink from the mere word, or idea, of perfection; and later, what we would give to be able to achieve it! Yet though we shrink so from the thought of it, we know instinctively that we must try to approach it; if we would stay near Him, we must be wholly pleasing to Him. We think of saints--we know nothing of saints, but think of them as most unusual persons midway between men and angels, and know ourselves not fashioned for any such position: and how change ourselves, how alter our character, as grown men and women? It is Christ who can show us the way. The Water of Life is the Mind of Christ, and the true object of life is to learn how to receive this Mind of Christ: for by it and with it we enter the Kingdom of God. And how shall we receive the Mind of Christ? Here is our difficulty. Firstly, we may do it through sympathy with, and a drawing near to, the Man-Jesus, accompanied by such drastic changes of mind as we are able to accomplish _to show our goodwill._ We may learn to become more unselfish, more patient, more sympathetic to others, and to curb the tongue, so that words which are untrue or unkind shall not slip off it. We can learn to govern the animal that is in us, instead of being governed by it. No one could have a better guide in how to improve the condition of his mind than Aaron Crane's book, _Right and Wrong Thinking._ And next, having become well knitted to the Man-Jesus, the Christ will draw us forward step by step through all the next inward stages, we giving to Him our attention; and He will bring us finally to that marvellous condition of God-consciousness by which He is able to perpetually refresh and renew us. There is one great first rule to hold to, which is _to think lovingly of Jesus_: in this way we eventually and automatically _come into a state of love._ In which state He will teach us to put out our own little light, that we may learn to live by the lovely light of God. And we have entered the Kingdom! For myself, I experienced three conversions: the first two of terrible suffering, and the third of great and marvellous joy, in which it is no exaggeration to say that for a few moments I seemed to receive God and all the freedom of the Heavens into my soul. I am not able to say exactly how long this experience lasted, for I was dead to time and place, but I should judge it to have been from fifteen to twenty minutes. The first conversion came upon me one afternoon in my room, as I came in from walking. I had been thinking of Jesus while I walked, as I was often in the habit of doing. Without any intention or premeditation on my part, I was now suddenly overwhelmed by a most horrible, unbearable, inexplicable pain of remorse for my vileness: for I seemed suddenly to be aware of Him standing there in His marvellous purity and looking at me--not with any reproach, but with the sweetness of a wonderful Invitation upon His face. And immediately I saw myself utterly unworthy to come near Him: and I writhed in the agony of this fearful perception of my unworthiness till I could bear no more. I was sick and ill with remorse and regret, I was utterly broken up by it. I did not know then that this awful pain is what is known as repentance, and wondered secretly what could have come to me. After this I found myself far more constantly thinking of Jesus--exchanging, as it were, sweet confidences with Him, telling Him what I thought, and endeavouring in every possible way to follow His manner of thought. I am ashamed to say I was very remiss and lazy in prayers; upon my knees I prayed very little indeed. But I was very faithful and warm and tender to Him in my heart, and this had an effect upon my mind and actions, and continued for two years. I would be assailed by many questionings during this time. For instance, how could my sweet Jesus, whom I was always so near to, be the mighty Christ and God? But I dropped these out as they came, feeling myself altogether too small to understand these things, and very much frightened by such greatnesses. When I was alone with Jesus, all was so simple and so lovely; so I put away all other thoughts and held closely to Jesus. This having continued almost exactly the two years, upon Easter morning, at the close of the service, the horrible anguish came on me again as I knelt in the church. I was not able to move or to show my face for more than an hour; and to this day I am not able to dwell upon the memory of that awful pain, for I think I should go mad if I had to enter again into so great a torture of the spirit. I endured to the utmost limit of my capacity for suffering--for this I will say of myself, I did not draw back, but went on to the bitter end. And the suffering was caused by the sight of that most terrible of all sights: the vision of myself as over against the vision of Jesus Christ, and I died a death for every fault. Whoever has felt the true wailing of the soul, such an one knows the heights of all spiritual pain. The heart and mind, or creature, suffers in depths; but the soul in heights, and this at one and the same time, so that the pain of repentance is everywhere. And the depth of the suffering of the creature is coequal with the height of the suffering of the soul, and the joint suffering of both would seem to be of coequal promise and merit for their after joy and glory; so that it would seem that the more horrible our pain, the quicker is our deliverance and the greater our later joys. After this, Jesus, without my knowing how it came about, passed out from the Perfect Man into the Christ of God. I walked and talked with Him no longer just as sweet Jesus, but as the Marvellous and Mighty Risen Lord! And now I became far more changed. The world and all earthly loves began to fade; they no longer satisfied or filled me in the least. How could I contemplate His exquisite perfections, the ineffable beauties of His mind and heart, and, turning from these to the sight of the world and of the men and women that I knew, not feel the difference? Where among my friends could I find perfect love? Amongst husbands and wives? No. Amongst mothers and children? No. For everywhere I saw discord, secret selfishness, separate and divided desires, and many deceits. I found no love anywhere like His for us. I was always an epicure in the matter of love, and knew the best when I found it. I continued with my social and home life exactly as before: the change was an inward change. Almost immediately after this the war came, and, with it, torments of anxiety over my earthly loves. The fearful anxieties I was in drove me to prayer. I began to pray more regularly; but though I prayed, I remained as miserable as before. A painful illness came, and lasted four months. I had no home because of the war, and nowhere to be ill in peace: and I drank and ate wretchedness as my daily bread and wine, and wondered why I ever was born. I cannot recall I was ever rebellious. No, I never was. I walked in a maze of trouble, and endured like a poor dumb thing, _and did not throw out my heart to God enough_ in prayer. If I had done this I think I should have been through my pains in half the time. Two years went by, and, being in greater anxiety than ever because of a great battle that was going on and my love at the front of it, I went up on the hill where I often went, and standing there I contended with God, crying out, "It is too much--the pain of this war is too great and too long; I cannot bear it. I am at an end of everything. Help me! Help me!" And in my anguish I seemed at last to be melted and running like water before Him, and I came before Him as it were immediately before a mighty and living Presence, though I saw nothing. But though I was so near Him and appealed to Him with the whole of my strength, there was no answer, no reply, but the great silence of heaven. At last, my agony over, I walked for a little, very quiet and very sad, and all at once a marvellous thing happened to me. I will not here describe how it was done to me, but He filled me with love for Himself, an amazing, all-absorbing, and tremendous love--from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I was filled with love. And this was His answer--and all my sorrows fled away in a great joy. This third conversion produced a fundamental alteration of my whole outlook and grasp on life. It brought me into direct contact with God, and was the commencement of a total change of heart and mind and consciousness; the centre of my consciousness, without any effort of my own, suddenly moving bodily from a concentration upon the visible or earthly to a loving and absorbed concentration upon, and a fixed attention to, the Invisible God--a most amazing, undreamed-of change, which remained permanent, though fluctuating through innumerable degrees of intensity before coming to a state of equilibrium. And now Christ went away from me, so that I adored Him in God. After this for some weeks I went through extraordinary spiritual experiences, the like of which had never previously so much as entered into my heart to imagine; again I will say nothing here of these. I came to all these experiences with great innocence and ignorance, never having read any religious or psychological book, and I think now that it is perhaps easier to have it so. Knowing that nothing is done without a purpose, I would question myself what I could possibly be intended to learn out of these things; and though I have never yet found a reason for any one given experience, yet I see this: the whole (which lasted for some weeks and was gone through at night and always in a state of semi-wakefulness, though not in a normal wakefulness, for the body would be stiff and set like a board)--the whole was the most convincing proof that He could have given me (without destroying my flesh) of the reality of the life unseen. For how otherwise could we be made to know of the reality of spiritual things if we were never _taken into_ them? And having been taken into them, and they being a thousand times more poignant than any earthly experience, how could we forget them? Whenever doubts upon anything presented themselves, I had nothing more to do than to Remember! Nothing He could have devised to do for me could have been of greater or more direct assistance to me. These experiences were to my creature what the centre-board is to the racing yacht. With these memories I could keep an even keel, and without them I must have capsized many a time. By these spiritual experiences He gives us an immense courage, and personal knowledge of a mysterious and hitherto unknown life of joys so great and so intense that all sufferings endured by us here appear to us in their true light as being a melting and cleansing agency infinitely worth while, that we may gain in permanence such exquisite felicity. Our means of reaching a personal experience, whilst still in the body, of such a life of joys is to harmonise the spirit of our human creature to the degree of purity required by the soul to enable her in unfettered freedom to perform her divine functions. We confuse in our minds the two separate essences--that of the soul and that of the human spirit (heart, intelligence, and will), which are widely different; the soul acting for us as the wings of the creature. And above and superior to the soul, and yet within it, is the divine and incorruptible Spirit or Sparkle of God, which in its turn acts as the wings of the soul. So we have the worm (or creature-spirit), the soul; and the Celestial Spark, or Divine Intelligence of the soul, which is the organ of God, and with which we are able to come in _sensible contact_ with the divine world and God Himself. What are our enemies? Selfishness, impatience, covetousness, pride, ill-temper, bodily indulgences, and, above all, indifference to God of the will of the creature. After this third, and last, conversion upon the hill, which so altered my whole life, I was for a period of some months in such a state of exaltation and enhancement of all my faculties that I did not know myself at all. I was, without any intention or endeavour on my own part, suddenly become like a veritable House of Arts! The most beautiful music flowed through my mind, in which I noticed certain peculiarities--there was no sadness in it, and it swayed me so that I seemed to go into a state of white-heat with emotion over it. It was extraordinarily much smoother than any earth-music I ever heard, and extremely consecutive, like a fluid. Now with earth-music I find that even Wagner is not able to achieve any consecutive perfection: he reaches to a height--only to fall back and disappoint. But this other music, which is not heard with the senses but is invariably felt by the soul, remains at extreme and fluid perfection, and casts such spells over the listener that he is beside himself with enjoyment. Colour and form, imagery of all kinds, would pass through me till I felt like an artist, and cried out with regret, "Oh, if I had only studied this or that art and knew the grounding of it, what heights of proficiency I could reach now!" An object of quite ordinary charm seemed, because of that something which now filled me, to expand into prodigious beauty! The very pavements and houses, mean and hideous as they are, overflowed with some inexplicable glamour. The world was turned into a veritable paradise! When I thought of it all I was filled with amazement, and still am, for how can we explain such changes in manner of living and seeing? At this time my only trouble or difficulty was to conceal my condition from others. But this wonderful state of things gradually passed away, and I went into a most difficult condition. At one time of the day I would be in an ecstasy of delight, and an hour later in some altogether unreasonable depth of wretchedness. I went to and fro from one extreme to the other, and my time was, I think, mostly spent in trying to regain some kind of balance. My love for God was as great as ever, but it had become a love all made of tears. Indeed, my whole being seemed made of tears. I thought often of these words, the peace of God; most certainly I had not found it. On the contrary, my life had become an indescribable turmoil. I found no help from my fellow-beings; I seemed to have lost the power of talking pleasantly with them, and my point of view had become different from theirs. Men could no longer please me, and I could not please God! I was entirely alone spiritually, and I said to myself it would be better if I could be alone physically as well; and I ached and longed and dreamed of solitude till it was like a sickness. But the only solitude I could have was in my own room. Now, believing myself to be a sensible and practical person, I would say to myself that my condition, being so unreasonable, must be got out of, and I must make every effort to do it. I prayed for two things--that I might love God with a cheerful countenance and not with tears, and that He would teach me quickly what to pray for; and He gave me the impulse to pray for more and greater love. Next, I banished my own feelings as much as I could (since love must not think of itself), paying as little attention to them as possible by perpetually dropping them out as they came and returning to the thought of Jesus, concerning myself at all times of the day to loving inward conversation with Him; and in this manner I fastened myself closer than ever to Him, continually praying for greater love to give Him and passionately offering Him all that I already had, whilst with all my will and strength I tried to climb out of my miserable state. Soon I succeeded--I was out of it in a matter of weeks. * * * How humanity is extolled by its own kind! How men are admired, even glorified! I am amazed, for where is the glory of any man? But rather, how wonderful and glorious is God! that He should cause to spring from one handful of dust such possibilities! Wonderful God! And blessed man, that he should have so wonderful a God! * * * Some men say that man has invented for himself the thought of God, because of the great need he feels within himself for such a Being. Yet look where we will in Nature, do we find a warrant for such a thought? Are babes inspired with the desire for milk, and is that milk withheld from the nature of all mothers? No; to the babe is given the desire because the mother has wherewith to satisfy. So with grown men: for to us is given a deep and secret desire for the milk of God's love, and to Himself He has reserved the joy of leading us to it and bestowing it upon us. * * * Sometimes for a short while the soul will suffer from a sickness (I speak now for persons already very well advanced); she is parched and without sweetness. Her love has no joy in it. This is not a condition to be accepted or acquiesced in, but must be overcome at once by a remedy of prayer: prayer addressed to the Father, _in the name of Jesus Christ,_ a prayer of praise and adoration--"I praise and bless and love and thank Thee, I praise and bless and love and worship Thee, I praise and bless and love and glorify Thee"--till the heart is fired and we return to the intimacy of love. Or the Lord's Prayer, very slow, and with an intention both outgoing and _intaking._ So far I have never known these remedies to fail, and joy floods the soul and sends her swinging up, up, on to the topmost heights again. It is magnificent. How is it that we can pass so, up from the visible into the Invisible, and become so oned with it, and feel it so powerfully, that the Invisible becomes a thousand times more real to us than the visible! It is like a different manner of living altogether. And when anyone so living finds himself even for a short time unfastened from this way of living and back again to what is known to the average as normal life, this normal life seems no better to him than some horrible chaotic and uneven turmoil, and his brain ready to be turned if he had to remain in it for long. When so unfastened, the whole savour of life is completely gone, and a smallness of mind and outlook is fallen back into from which the soul recoils in horror and struggles quickly to free herself. Is this the remnant of the unruly creature rising up and grappling with the soul again? Is this some deliberate trial of us by the Master? or some natural spiritual sickness? Whilst in this condition we must disappoint the Beloved. On the other hand, we find ourselves kept to the knowledge of our own impotence and nothingness and dependence, and the spirit is strengthened by the efforts made quickly to recover the lost beautiful estate. Also we become more able to feel true patience and compassion for such others as do not know the way of escape. So we gain, maybe, more than we lose. * * * We may wonder how it is that the Mighty Maker of the Universe should choose to condescend to the mere individual piece of clay. It is incomprehensible. It is so incomprehensible that there is but one way of looking at it. This is no favouritism to the individual, but the evidence of a Mind with a vast plan pursuing a way and using a likely individual. These individuals or willing souls He takes and, setting them apart, fashions them to His own ends and liking. Of one He will make a worker, and of another He fashions to Himself a lover. It would seem to be His will to use the human implement to help the human. As water, for usefulness to the many, must be collected and put through channels, so it would seem must the beneficence of God be collected into human vessels and channels that it may be distributed for the use of the many and the more feeble. * * * The more any man will consider humanity, the more he will see that the education of the heart and will is of more importance than the education of the brain. For in the perfectly trained and educated heart and will we find the evidence of highest wisdom. * * * Why mortify the body with harsh austerities? When we over-mortify the body with fastings, pains, and penances we are _remembering the flesh._ Let us aim at the forgetting and not the despising of the flesh. A sick body can be a great hindrance to the soul. By keeping the body in a state of perfect wholesomeness we can more easily pass away from the recollection of it. Chastise the mind rather than the body. Christ taught, not the contempt or wilful neglect of the body, but the humble submission of the body to all _circumstances,_ the obedience of the will to God, and the glorious and immeasurable possibilities of the human spirit. * * * We know that the love of the heart can be beautiful and full of zeal and fervour; but the love of the soul by comparison to it is like a furnace, and the capacities of the heart are not worthy to be named in the same breath. Yet, deplorable as is the heart of man, it is evidently desired by God, and must be given to Him before He will waken the soul. To my belief, we are quite unable to awaken our own soul, though we are able to _will_ to love God with the heart, and through this we pass up to the border of the Veil of Separation, where He will _sting the soul into life_ and we have Perception. After which the soul will often be swept or plucked up into immeasurable glories and delights which are neither imagined nor contrived, nor even desired by her at first--for how can we desire that which we have never heard of and cannot even imagine? And these delights are unimaginable before the soul is caught up into them, and to my experience they constantly differ. The soul knows herself to be in the hands and the power of another, outside herself. She does not enter these joys of her own power or of her own will, but by permission and intention and will of a force outside herself though perceived and known inside herself. No lovers of arguments or guessing games can move the soul to listen when she has once been so handled. For to know is more than to guess. * * * How can a Contact with God be in any way described? It is not seeing, but meeting and fusion with awareness. The soul retaining her own individuality and consciousness to an intense degree, but imbued with and fused into a life of incredible intensity, which passes through the soul vitalities and emotions of a life so new, so vivid, so amazing, that she knows not whether she has been embraced by love or by fire, by joy or by anguish: for so fearful is her joy that she is almost unable to endure the might of it. And how can the heat or fire of God be described? It is very far from being like the cruelty of fire, and yet it is so tremendous that the mind knows of little else to compare it to. But it is like a vibration of great speed and heat, like a fluid and magnetic heat. This heat is of many degrees and of several kinds. The heat of Christ is mixed with indescribable sweetness: giving marvellous pleasure and refreshment and happiness, and wonderfully adapted to the delicacy of the human creature. The heat of the Godhead is very different, and sometimes we may even feel it to be cruel and remorseless in its very terrible and swift intensity. But the soul, like all great lovers, never flinches or hangs back, but passionately lends herself. If He chose to kill her with this joy she would gladly have it so. By these incomprehensible wonders He seems to say to the creature: "Come thou here, that I may teach thee what is Joy; come thou here, that I may teach thee what is _Life._ For none are permitted to teach of these things save I Myself." * * * There is another manner. The Spirit comes upon the soul in waves of terrible power. Now in a rapture God descends upon the soul, catching her suddenly up in a marvellous embrace: magnetising her, ravishing her. He is come, and He is gone. In an ecstasy the soul goes out prepared to meet Him, seeking Him by praise and prayer, pouring up her love towards Him; and He, condescending to her, fills her with unspeakable delights, and at rare times He will catch her from an ecstasy into a greater rapture. At least, so it is with me: the ecstasy is prepared for, but in the quicker rapture (or catching up) it is He that seeks the soul. These two conditions, though given very intermittently, become a completely natural experience. I should say that the soul lived by this way: it is her food and her life, which she receives with all the simplicity and naturalness of the hungry man turning to his bodily food. But these waves of power were something altogether new and very hard to endure. As each wave passed I would come up out of it, as it were, gasping. It was as if something too great for the soul to contain was being forced through her. It was as if one should try to force at fearful pressure fluid through a body too solid to be percolated by it. I understood nothing of what could be intended by such happenings, neither could I give accommodation to this intensity. I tried to make myself a wholly willing receptacle and instrument, but after the third day of this I could not bear any more. I was greatly distressed. I could not understand what was required of me. I gave myself totally to Him, and it was not enough. And at last I cried to Him, saying: "I understand nothing: forgive me, my God, for my great foolishness, but Thy power is too much for me. Do what Thou wilt with me; I am altogether Thine. Drown me with Thy strength, break me in pieces--I am willing; only do it quickly, my Lord, and have done with it, for I am so small. But I love Thee with all that I have or am; yet I am overwhelmed: I am still too little to be taught in this way, it is too much for my strength. Yet do as Thou wilt; I love Thee, I love Thee." And He heard me, and He ceased: and He returned to the ways that I understood and dearly loved, and for weeks I lived in Paradise. But my body was dreadfully shaken, and I suffered with my heart and breathing. Shortly after I began to know that another change had come into me. God had become intensely my Father, and Christ the lover was gone up again into the Godhead--as happened after my third conversion upon the hill. So great, so tremendous was this sense of the _Fatherhood_ of God become that I had only to think the word Father to seem to be instantly transported into His very bosom. Oh, the mighty sweetness of it! But it is not an ecstasy. The creature and soul are dead to world-life, as in a rapture or ecstasy; but the soul is not the bride, she is the child, and, full of eager and adoring intimacy, she flies into His ever-open arms, and never, never does she miss the way. Oh, the sweetness of it, the great, great glory of it, and the folly of words! If only all the world of men and women could have this joy! How to help even one soul towards it is what fills my heart and mind. How convince them, how induce them to take the first steps? It is the first steps we need to take. He does not drive, He calls. "Come to Me," He calls. It is this failure to have the will to go to Him which is the root of all human woe. Would we but take the first few steps towards Him, He will carry us all the rest of the way. These first few steps we take holding to the hand of Jesus. For the so-called Christian there is no other way (but he is no Christian until he has taken it). For the Buddhist, doubtless, Gautama is permitted to do the same. But for those who are baptized in Jesus Christ's name, He is their only Way. * * * God, once found, is so poignantly ever-present to the soul that we must sing and whisper to Him all the day. O marvellous and exquisite God! I am so enraptured by Thy nearness, I am so filled with love and joy, that there is no one, nothing, in heaven or earth to me save Thine Own Self, and I could die for love of Thee! Indeed I am in deep necessity to find Thee at each moment of the day, for so great is Thy glamour that without Thee my days are like bitter waters and a mouthful of gravel to a hungry man. How long wilt Thou leave me here--set down upon the earth in this martyrdom of languishing for love of Thee? And suddenly, when the pain can be endured no more, He embraces the soul. Then where do sorrow and waiting fly? and what is pain? There never were such things! * * * We do well never to recall past ecstasies. In this way the soul comes to each encounter with a lovely freshness and purity, and neither makes comparisons nor curious comments, but gives herself wholly to love. But by these contacts the soul gains a secret and personal knowledge of God: without sight and without reasoning she actually feels to partake of God, so that she passes by these means far up beyond belief, into experiences of knowledge which in their poignant intensity are at once an ineffable violence and a marvellous white peace. * * * I find the lark the most wonderful of all birds. I cannot listen to his rhapsodies without being inspired (no matter what I may be in the midst of doing or saying) to throw up my own love to God. In the soaring insistence of his song and passion I find the only thing in Nature which so suggests the high-soaring and rapturous flights of the soul. But I am glad that we surpass the lark in sustaining a far more lengthy and wonderful flight; and that we sing, not downwards to an earthly love, but upwards to a heavenly. To my mind, this is man's only justification for considering himself above the beasts--that we can love, and communicate with, God. For where otherwise is his superiority? He builds fine buildings which crumble and decay. He digs holes in the earth to take out treasures which he has not made; and if he makes himself the very highest tower of wealth or fame, he must come down from it and be buried in the earth like any other carcase. * * * It is better not to contend, either with others or against our own body. If we contend against anything we impress it the more firmly upon our consciousness. So if we would overcome the lusts of the body, let us do it not by harming or by contending against the body, which but emphasises its powers and importance, but let us rather proceed to ignore and make little of the body by forgetting it and passing out of it into higher things; and eventually we shall learn to live, not in the lower state, but in the joy of the soul. Why have a contempt for the body? I once did, and found that I was committing a great sin against the Maker of it. How dare we say "my body is vile," when He fashioned it! It is blasphemous, when we consider that it is His Temple. To my mind the body is a beautiful and wonderful thing, and is greatly sinned against by our evil hearts and minds and tongues. The body would do no harm if we, with our free-will, did not think out the wickedness first in our own hearts. For first we commit theft and adultery with the mind, and then we cause the body to carry out these things. We know that the body is under the law, and its appetites are under the law, but the heart and mind and tongue are perpetual breakers of this law. It is lawful for the body to take its meat and drink, but not to be surfeited and drunken. It is lawful for the body to have its desires and its loves, but not to be promiscuous and unfaithful. But we know that a better way is to turn all appetites and greeds to this, that we be greedy and ravenous for Christ. Only so shall we use the appetites of mind and heart and body for their true end, and that not by despising but by conversion. With great insistence I have been taught not to despise anything whatever in Creation of _things made_ in His most beautiful and wonderful world, though often I may cry with tears, "Lord God! raise me to a world holier and nearer to Thyself, for I am heartbroken here." Yet I am taught only to despise such things as lying, deceitfulness, hypocrisy, and uncleanness--in fact, stenches of the heart and mind,--and not to think too much about these, but, passing on, drop out the recollection of them in thoughts of finer things. His inward instruction has been this, quietly to lay upon one side all that which is not pleasing to God; and one by one, and piece by piece, to fold up and put away all that He does not love. Above all, He has taught me to have no self-esteem and no prides; and to such a degree do I have to learn this, that, without the smallest exaggeration, I am hardly ever able to think myself the equal of a dog. But the love of a dog for his master is a very fine thing. * * * I think we mistake our own power and capacity in even seeking to imitate the Christ; let us begin rather by taking into our heart and our mind the Christ as the Man-Jesus. For His love and power only can show us the way to imitate the Christ which is in Him. * * * Is the temporary loss of grace our fault, or is it a deliberate withdrawal and testing upon His part? Both. Every condition that we are in which is not pure and perfect of its kind, such as pure peace, pure joy, pure harmony, is because of failure on our part to _hold_ to Him. Whenever, and for so long, as we keep ourselves in the single and simple condition of mind and heart necessary for the perception and reception of Him, for just so long shall we receive and perceive him; but this condition again we cannot maintain without grace. All loss of joy, of serenity, of contact, is failure, then, on our part or withdrawal upon His. Yet we learn a bitter but useful lesson by these losses of ability for connection. To return ignominiously to our dust is a most bitter humiliation and trial--indeed, a desolation. Now, if we did not so return we might suppose ourselves able, of our own power, not only to achieve momentary connection with the Divine, but to remain at will in this sublime condition, by which I mean in a state bordering upon ecstasy. The withdrawal of grace therefore would seem to be a necessary part of the education and of the constant humbling of the soul. To find ourselves, of our own unaided capacity, by the mere force of our own will, able to constantly go up to so high a level would inevitably foster pride; indeed, to attain such a capacity would seem to place us on a level with the angels! By these withdrawals of grace, which came at first very tenderly, but gradually with greater and greater severity, I have learnt this: that in spite of all that has been done for me, of all that I have experienced, in spite of all the heights to which at times I have been raised, I remain nothing better than the frailest and unworthiest thing! The sight of an ugly grey cloud, momentarily and gloriously illumined by the sun, is a sufficient illustration of the temporary transformation of our own selves touched by the light and the glory of God. For the carrying out of His plan, it would seem to be His good pleasure that we are just what we are--not angels, but little human things, full of simplicity and trust and love. "Like dear children," as St Paul says; and yet, oh! wonder of wonders! _far more than this._ For whilst we patiently wait, from time to time He stoops and embraces the soul in an infinite bliss, in which we are no more children, but are caught up into High Love. At first when we begin this new kind of living He holds us firmly, as it were, to a condition suitable for contact with Him. If He did not do so, having had no previous practice, we should never remain in it for two moments together. Then little by little He teaches us to live with less frequent joy, and this is the cause of much difficulty and trouble. It is hard to endure being without this blessed state and these marvellous favours, and more and more I found He withdrew them whilst often my worldly and commonplace heart and mind still held me back--_even from peace._ If we could but rid ourselves quickly of all selfish desires and greeds! Not until I had learnt to do this was I given back my joys, and then sparingly. How I would turn towards that secret door--the door of the kingdom of love,--and calling to Him, hear no reply! Where is He gone?--why this desertion?--I would cry. How can He cause such pain, how can I bear such dreadful deprivations, and what is love but a sharp sword? Lord, let me hear Thy voice, for I am in despair; I cannot bear these pains, I fear for everything, my joy is lost. My bread is spread with bitterness; where is the honey that I love so well? Lord, call to me even from far away, and I shall hear and be consoled. Lord, I am sick and ill--how canst Thou leave me so? Hast Thou no pity for my pain?--is this Thy love? _My_ pain! Lord, I remember! Thou hast been kissed by pain more frequently than I. Oh, let me wipe the memory of Thy pain away with my warm love, and let me sing to Thee and be Thy lark, and do Thou go and wander where Thou wilt and I will love Thee just the same! And softly the Voice of the Beloved, saying: "I am here, I never left thee; but thou wast busy crying of thy pains and did not hear Me when I answered thee." Lord, so I was! I was so filled with self, and, asking for _Thy gifts, I did forget to give!_ and so lost love. * * * It is hard to conquer in small things, petty irritations, worries, cares of this world, likes and dislikes--all of these being subtle temptations, and all selfish. For instance, very often I find the human voice the most horrible thing that I know! I will be in a beautiful state of mind, and people around me will drag me from it with their maddening inanities of conversation. This one will speak of the weather, and that one of food; another of scandal, another of amusements. They will talk of their love for a dog, for a horse, for golf, for men or women; but never do I hear at any time, or anywhere, anyone speak of their love for God. I must listen to all their loves, but if I should venture to speak of mine they would look at me amazed; indeed, I never should dare to do it. And this is perhaps the greatest weakness that I have to fight against now, and one that spoils the harmony of the mind more than any other--that I cannot always control myself from secret though unspoken irritation, impatience, and criticisms; and to criticise is to judge, and in this there is wrong, and the smallest breeze of wrong is enough to blow to--even to close--the door into that other lovely world. And not only this, but every such failure is a disappointment to the Beloved. Many times I say to Him, "What canst Thou do with us all, Beloved--such a mass of selfish, foolish, blundering, sinful creatures, all hanging and pulling on to Thee at the same moment?" And I will be filled with a passionate desire to so progress that I may stand a little alone and not be a perpetual drag upon Him, and, feeling strong, perhaps I will say: "I will give up my share of Thee to someone else, and not draw upon Thee for a little while, my Beloved Lord." But oh, in less than an hour, if He should take me at my word! I could cry and moan like a small child, in my horrible emptiness and longing for Him. And where now is my strength?--I have not an ounce of it without Him! By this I learn in my own person how He is life itself to us, in all ways. He is the air, the bread, and the blood of the soul, and no one can live without at every moment drawing upon Him, though they do it insensibly. What a weight to carry, what a burden, this whole hungry clamouring mass of disobedient men and women! Oh, my Beloved, how frequently I weep for all Thy bitter disappointment--never ending! But this we may be sure of--that all the marvels of His grace are not poured out on some poor scrappit for no other reason than to give him pleasure. There is a vast purpose behind it all, and by keenest attention we must pick up this purpose, understand it, _and do it._ This is the true work of man, to love God with all the heart and mind and soul and strength, and not those material works with which we all so easily satisfy ourselves and our consciences, and our _bodily_ needs. He has marvellous ways (and very difficult to the beginner) of conveying His wishes. To my finding, the inward life of us is like a perpetual interchange of conversation between the heart and its many desires and the mind (which for myself I put into three parts--the intelligence, the will, the reason). Now, all these parts of my heart and of my mind formerly occupied themselves entirely with worldly things, passing from one thing to another in most disorderly fashion; but now they occupy themselves (save for bodily necessities) _solely_ with Him. There is a perpetual smooth and beautiful conversation between them _to_ Him and _of_ Him; and suddenly He will seem to enter into this conversation, suggesting thoughts which are not mine. Often He will stab the soul, but not with words, also the heart; and I have known such communications lie for weeks before they could be taken up by the mind, turned into words, and finally as _words_ be digested by the reason. And another way to the soul only--rare, untransferable to words, and therefore not transmittable to others or to the reason. This way causes the creature a great amazement, and is like a flooding or moving of whiteness, or an inwardly-felt phosphorescence; it is a vitalising ministration greatly enjoyed by the soul. This is not any ecstasy, and is exceedingly swift; the soul must be at _high attention_ to receive this, yet neither anticipates nor asks for it, but is in the act of giving great and joyful adoration. * * * I do not remember when I first became fully conscious that the centre or seat of my emotions was changed, and that I now responded to all the experiences of life only with the higher parts of me. This change I found inexplicable and remarkable, for it was fundamental, and yet neither intended nor thought of by me. With this alteration in the physical correspondences to life came a corresponding alteration in the spiritual of me. Formerly I supposed that the soul dwelt in, or was even a part of, the mind. Now, though the mind must be filled wholly with God, and all other things whatsoever put out of it if we would contemplate Him or respond to Him, yet neither the brain nor the intelligence of the creature can come into any contact with Him; and this I soon learnt. Correspondence with the Divine is accomplished for the creature through the heart and by the uppermost part of the breast, this latter place (above the heart and below the mind) is the dwelling-place of the celestial spark of the soul, which lies, as it were, between two fires--that of the heart and that of the mind, responding directly to neither of these, but to God only. Before I was touched upon the hill I was not aware of the locality of any part of my soul, neither was there anything which could convince me that I even possessed a soul. I did no more than believe and suppose that I did possess one. But the soul, once revived, becomes the most powerful and vivid part of our being; we are not able any longer to mistake its possession or position in the body. She is indeed the wonderful and lovely mistress of us, with which alone we can unlock the mysteries of God's love. * * * How poor and cold a thing is mere belief! No longer do I _believe_ in Jesus Christ: I do _possess Him._ So complete is the change that He brings about in us that I now only count my life and my time from the first day of this new God-consciousness that I received upon the hill, for that was the first day of my real life; just as formerly I would count my time from the first day of my physical birth, and from that on to my falling in love and to my marriage, which once seemed to me to be the most important dates. Whilst these changes were taking place in me I would often be filled with uneasiness and some alarm; asking myself what all this could mean, and if it could be the way of martyrs or saints, for I had no courage or liking to be one or the other and was very frightened of suffering. And I think my cunning heart would have liked to take all the sweets and leave the bitter. How well He knew this, and how exquisitely He handled me, never forcing, only looking at me, _inviting_ me with those marvellous perfections of His! How could I possibly resist Him? All the while, all my waking hours, I felt that strange, new, incomprehensible, steady, insistent _drawing_ and urgency of the Spirit in me. Little by little I went--and still go--_towards_ perfection, whilst my cowardly heart endured many fears, but these are now past. It was not any desire for my own salvation; to this I have never given so much as two thoughts. It was the _irresistible attraction_ of our marvellous and beautiful God. He lured, He drew me with His loveliness, His holy perfections, His unutterable purity. _I longed to please Him._ The whole earth was filled with the glamour of Him, and I filled with horror to see how utterly unlike--apart from the glorious Beloved--I was. How frightful my blemishes, which must stink in His nostrils! Think of it! To stink in the nostrils of the Beloved! What lover could endure to do such a thing? No effort could be too great or painful to beautify oneself for Him. In this there is no virtue; it is the driving necessity of love, a necessity known by every lover worthy of the name on earth. To please and obey this ineffable and exquisite Being!--the privilege intoxicated me more and more. All these changes in my heart and mind continually filled me with surprise, for I was never pious, though inwardly and secretly I had so ardently sought Him. I was attentive, humble, and reverent, nothing more. But though I had perhaps little or no piety, and never read a single religious book, I had had a deep thirst for the perfect and the holy and the pure, as I seemed unable to find them here on the earth. In the quiet solemnity of church, or under the blue skies, I could detach myself from my surroundings and reach up and out with wistful dimness towards the ineffable holiness and purity of God--God who, for me at least, remained persistently so unattainable. And yet one blessed day I was to find Him suddenly, all in one glorious hour, no longer unattainable but immanently, marvellously near, and willing to remain for me so strangely permanently near that I must sing silently to Him from my heart all the day long--sing to Him silently, because even the faintest whisper would feel too gross and loud between my soul and Him. And in hours when I fall from this wonderful estate I think I come very near hell, so awful is my loss. Our greatest need is to relearn the will of God. For we are so separated from Him that we now look upon His Will as on a cross, as an incomprehensible sacrifice, as but self-abnegation, pain, and gloom. We repudiate it in terror. If we have the will to relearn His Will, we stand still and think of it, we walk to seek it, we try to accept it, trembling we bow down to it with obedience and many tears; and behold! it changes to an Invitation, a sigh of beauty, a breath of spring, the song of birds, the faces of flowers, the ever-ascending spiral of the mating of all loves, the sunshine of the Universe; and at last, intoxicated with happiness, we say: "My God, my Love, I sip and drink Thy Will as an ambrosial Wine!" * * * To the lover of God all affections go up and become enclosed, as it were, into one affection, which is Himself; so that we have no love for anyone or anything _apart_ from Him. In this is included, in a most deep and mysterious fashion, marriage-love in all its aspects. In every way it can become a sacrament: there is nothing in it which is not holy, in no way does the marriage bond of the body separate the spirit from acceptableness to God. But I was some time before I could arrive at this, and could see marriage as the physical prototype in this physical world of the spiritual union with Himself in the spiritual world. And this was arrived at, not by prudish questionings and criticisms, but by remembering that this relationship between men and women is His thought, His plan, not ours. We are responsible for our part in it only in so far as to keep the bond of it pure and clean and sweet, and submit ourselves in all things _as completely and orderly as possible to His plans, whatever they may be._ In this attitude of unquestioning, unresisting submission, the Holy Spirit finds a swift and easy channel through us. It is our opposition to the passage of the Holy Will which causes all the distress and uneasiness of life. He has no wish to impose distress and suffering upon us. His Will towards us is pure joy, pure love, pure peace, pure sweetness. This bond of earthly marriage is of the flesh and can be kept by the body, and yet the heart, mind, and soul remain in lovely perfect chastity; and I found that this exquisite freedom--after prolonged endeavours on the part of the soul and the creature--was at length given them as a gift by act of grace, and remained in permanence without variation. * * * We know that these things are deep mysteries and largely hidden; but this I know: as the heart feels love in itself for God, in that same instant comes God into the soul of the lover. Now, where God is we know that there is neither evil, nor sadness, nor unhappiness, nor any recollection of such things; therefore, to be a great and constant lover to Him is to be automatically lifted from all unhappinesses. This is our wisest and our best desire, to be a splendid lover to our Most Glorious God. The more I see of and talk with other people, the more I see how greatly changed I am. I am _freed._ They are bound. I find them bound by fears, by anxieties, by worries, by apprehensions of evil things, by sadness, by fears of death for their loved ones or for themselves. Now, we are freed of all these things _if we keep to the Way,_ which is the Road of Love. This change we do not bring about for ourselves, and do not perhaps even realise that it can be effected. For myself, I seemed to be lifted into it, or into a _capacity_ for it, on that day and in that moment in which I first loved God. This is not to say that since that moment I have not had to struggle, suffer, and endure, to keep myself in, and progress in this condition; but my sufferings, struggles, and endurances, being for love and in love and because of love, were and are in themselves beautiful, and leave in the recollection nothing inharmonious. They are the difficult prelude to a glorious melody. Another thing--we become by this love for Him so large that we seem to embrace within our own self the Universe! In some mysterious manner we become in sympathy with all things in the bond of His making. Are these things worth nothing whatever, that the majority of people should be content to spend their lives looking for five-pound notes and even shillings--and this not only the poor, but the rich more so? I am far more at a loss to understand my fellow-men than I am to understand God. We have need of the shillings, but of other and more lovely things besides, which cost no money and may be had by the poorest. It is rapidly becoming the only sorrow of my life that people do not all come to share this Life in which I live. How that parable knocks at the heart, "Go out into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in!" To know all this _fullness_ of life and not to be able to bring even my nearest and dearest into it: what a terrible mystery is this!--it is an agony. Now, in this agony I share the Agony of Jesus. This is a part of the Cross, and only the Father can make it straight. I see Heaven held out, and _refused;_ love held out, and _refused;_ perfection shown, and killed upon a cross. What is the crucifix but that most awful of all things--the Grief of God made Visible? Perfect Love submitting itself to the vile freewill of man and dying of wounds! My God! my God! and did _I_ ever have a hand in such a thing? I did. * * * What is it that seems more than any other thing whatever to throw us at last into the arms of God? Suffering. And this not because it is His will (for how much rather would He have us turn to Him in our joy and prosperity), but rather that it is _our_ will, that in our earthly joys and prosperities we turn away from Him, and only seek His consolations when we see the failure of our health or happiness. And having by His mercy and forgiveness found Him, we too often and too easily think to glorify ourselves and name each other saints! Did Jesus call us saints? These glorifications mankind would appear to bestow upon itself. He spoke of His flock, and of those who through Him should have life eternal, and of those who, because of the road they take, have their joys in this world only. * * * When I was being taught to pray for national things and for other persons, and found these prayers answered, I was inclined to be afraid; thinking, What am I that I should dare to petition the Most High? But He showed it me so, which, as in everything, is for all of us: "It is but a cloud which reflects the glories of the promise of My rainbow; so can the dust, such as thyself, reflect yet other fashions of My will and glory. There is no presumption in the cloud that it should glow with My power; neither is there presumption in thy dust that it should be My vehicle. Both the cloud and thy dust are Mine." * * * As we progress in this new way of living we find an increasing difficulty in maintaining petition; for on commencing to petition we will almost invariably be instantly lifted up to such a state of adoration that the whole soul is nothing but a burning song, a thing of living worship. At first I was inclined to blame myself, but now I know that it is acceptable for us to pass from petitioning (no matter who or what for) to high adoration, even though it is a great personal indulgence (and the petitioning is a _hard task)--_an indulgence so extreme that I cannot call to my mind anything in any experience or time of my life, excepting actual raptures, which could, or can, in any way compare or be named in the same breath with this most marvellous joy; for out of this joy of adoration flows the Song of the Soul. And all these previous years of my life I have lived with the greater part of me dead, and most persons the same! The more I think of it, the more amazed I am at our folly--working and fretting, and striving and looking for every kind of thing except the one thing, beautiful, needful, and living, which is the finding of the personal connection between ourselves and God and the Waters of Life. Looking to my own experiences, I see clearly how I never could have found without the most powerful and incessant assistance. We are, then, never alone. But first we must have _the will to seek these waters._ This is the secret of the whole matter. He can turn the vilest into a pure lover--if the vilest be willing to have the miracle performed on him! This is the grace of God, and what does it cost Him to pour out this mighty power through us? For everything has its price. My Lord! my Lord! we are not worthy of it all. This I notice, that when He removes this grace, very shortly the mind goes back to a false, uneven, inharmonious state; so we become like an instrument all out of tune, and are caused indescribable sufferings, like a musician whose ears and nerves are tortured by false notes, whilst his unmusical neighbours feel no pain! The musician pays a price for the privilege of his great gift; so the lover of Christ. Again, there is a price to pay for the immeasurable _joy_ of prayer, for prayers are not always sweet nor life-giving. The prayers to Christ are always a refreshment, but prayers to the Father may suddenly be turned without any previous thought or private intention into a most awful grief for the abominations of the whole world of us, a terrible wordless burnt-sacrifice of the soul, of unspeakable anguish. And high petitioning is a fearful and profound strain upon the soul and the whole creature. * * * We say that we have need of the purification and conversion of the soul; but rather it is first the conversion of the heart, mind, and will that we have need of. For this would feel to be the drama of our life--the human heart, intelligence, and will are the ego of the creature. Our soul is the visitor within this creature, containing within herself a pure, holy, and incorruptible sparkle of the Divine, and lies choked and atrophied in her human house until revived and awakened by her holy lover; and this awakening is not given to her till the heart and mind of her human house (or the will and spirit of the creature) is in a state of regeneration, or condition to go forward towards God. Which is to say, the creature has been touched by repentance and a desire for the pure and the holy. For if the soul should be awakened to an unrepentant creature, this Will and imperishable worm of the creature (which is of greater coarseness and lustiness than the delicate and fragile soul) will overcome the soul; and this is not the goal, neither is the death of the creature the goal, but the lifting up of the creature into the Divine--this is the goal. After being awakened, then, in her human house, the soul finds herself locked in with two most treacherous and soiled companions--the human heart and mind; and so great is her loathing and her distress, that for shame's sake these two are constrained to improve themselves. But their progress is slow, and now comes a long and painful time of alternation between two states. At one time the soul will conquer the creature, imposing upon it a sovereign beauty of holiness; and at another the creature will conquer the soul, imposing upon her its hideous designs and desires, and causing her many sicknesses. Hence we have the warring which we feel within ourselves, for the soul now desires her home and the creature its appetites. Until this awakening of the soul takes place, we mistake in thinking that we either live with our soul, or know our soul, or feel with our soul. She does but stir within us from time to time, awaking strange echoes that we do not comprehend; and we live with the mind and the heart and the body only--which is to say, we live as the creature; and this is why on the complete awakening of the soul we feel in the creature an immense and altogether indescribable enhancement of life and of all our faculties, so that in great amazement we say, "I have never _lived_ until this day." When first the will of the creature is wholly submitted to the lovely guidance of the divine part of the soul, then first we know the ineffable joys of the world of free spirit. For to live with the mind and the body is to be in a state of existence in nature. But to live with the soul is to live above nature, in the immeasurable freedom and intensity of the spirit. And this is the tremendous task of the soul--that she help to redeem the heart and mind from their vileness of the creature and so lift the human upwards with herself to the Divine from whence she came. This, then, is the transmutation or evolution by divine means of the human into the divine; and for this we need to seek repentance or change of heart and mind, which is the will of the creature turning itself towards the beauties of the spirit, that Christ may awaken in us the glories of that sleeping soul which is His bride. When the soul is fully revived we can know it by this, that we are not able any longer to content ourselves with anything nor anyone save God. Neither are we able to love any save God, for all human desires and loves mysteriously ascend and are merged into the Divine. So, though we love our friend, we love him in God, and in every man perceive but another lover for the Beloved. * * * To love God might commence to be expressed as being a great quiet, an intense activity, a prodigious joy, and the poignant knowledge of _the immensity of an amazing new life shared._ The contemplation of God might be expressed as the folding up or complete forgetfulness of all earthly and bodily things, desires, and attractions, and the raising of the heart and mind and the centring of them in great and joyful intensity upon God, by means of love. Of this contemplation of God I find two principal forms: the passive and the active. In the first we are in a state of steady, quiet, and loving perception and reception, and at some farness; in this we are able to remain for hours, entering this state when waking at dawn and remaining in it till rising. In active contemplation we are in rapturous and passionate adoration with great nearness, and are not able to remain in it long because of bodily weakness. The soul feels to be never tired by the longest flight, but must return because of the exhaustion of the forlorn and wretched creature, which creature is complete in itself, having its body, of which, being able to touch it, we say, "It is my body," and its heart and mind with intelligence, of which we are wont to think, "This is myself"; yet it is but a part, for the intelligence of our creature is by no means the intelligence of the divine soul, but a far lesser light: for with the intelligence of the divine soul we reach out to God and attain Him, but with the intelligence of the creature we reach towards Him but do not attain, for with it we are unable to penetrate the veil. Therefore, who would know the joys of contemplation must come to them by love, for love is the only means by which the creature can attain. The soul attains God as her birthright, but the creature by adoption and redemption, and this through love. By love the creature dies and is reborn into the spirit. * * * The word "poverty," as used to express a necessary condition of our coming to God, is a most misleading term. For how can any condition be rightly named poverty which brings us into the riches of God? Rather let us use the words "singleness of heart," or "simplicity": which is to say, we _put out_ all other interests save those pleasing to God (to commence with), and afterwards we reach the condition in which we _have no_ interests but in God Himself--the heart and mind and will of the creature becoming wholly God's, and God filling them. How can we say, then, that it is poverty to be filled with God! Rather is it rightly expressed as being a heart fixed in singleness upon God, through drastic simplification of interests: the which is no poverty, but the wealth of all the Universe. * * * Some of us seem open to suggestion, others to the steadier effects of personal influence. I never came under the personal influence of another except once, when I came under the influence of the being I loved most--my brother. At ten he saved my life from drowning, and at eighteen his influence and total lack of faith in God, coupled with the searchings and probings of my own intelligence, took me away from God, in whom I had previously had a comfortable faith. At seventeen I began to lap up the hardest scientific books as a cat laps milk. I said to myself, "I must find truth, I must find out what everything really is"; but I could not reconcile science with Church teaching. I was not able to adjust the truths of science--which were demonstrable to both senses and intelligence--with the unprovable dogmas set forth by the Church as necessary to salvation. I slowly and surely lost what faith I had, and hung a withered heart upon the pitiless and nameless bosom of the Cosmos. Inward life became for me a horrible emptiness without hope. Surrounded with gaieties and the innumerable social successes of youth, I found that neither science nor society could satisfy my soul, or that something living within me which knew a terrible necessity for God. For two long and dreadful years I fought secretly and desperately to regain this lost belief, and when at last I succeeded there remained a monstrous and impenetrable wall between myself and God. But by comparison with the horrors of past loneliness it was heaven to me to feel Him there, even behind that wall. (Now that I have found Him by love, I am able to return to science as to a most exquisite unrolling of the majesty of His truths and powers and laws, and am brought nearer and nearer to Him the more I learn of science.) Outside the wall I remained for more than twenty years, seeking and searching for an opening in that mighty barrier. And after more than twenty years I found the Door--and it was Jesus Christ. * * * Lately I have seen the word "contemplation" used as expressing the heights of attainment in God-consciousness of men, and I find it inadequate. From the age of seventeen I fell into the habit of contemplation, not of God, but of Nature: which is to say, I would first place myself, sitting, in such a position that my body would not fall and I might completely forget it, and then would look about me and drink in the beauty of the scene, my eyes coming finally to rest upon the spot most beautiful to me. There they remained fixed. All thoughts were now folded up so that my mind, flowing singly in one direction, concentrated itself upon the beauty on which I gazed. This soon vanished, and I saw nothing whatever, but, bearing away into a place of complete silence and emptiness, I there assimilated and enjoyed inwardly the soaring essence of the beauty which I had previously drawn into my mind through my eyes, being now no longer conscious of seeing outwardly, but living entirely from the inward. This I did almost every day, but to do it I was obliged to seek solitude, and absolute solitude is a hard thing to find; but I sought it, no matter where, even in a churchyard! I saw no graves. I saw the sky, or a marvellous cloud pink with the kisses of the sun, and away I went. I judge this now to have been contemplation, though I never thought of it by so fine-sounding a name; it was only my delightful pastime, yet there was a strange inexpressible sadness in it. Nature and beauty were not enough. The more beauty I saw, the more I longed for something to which I could not put a name. At times the ache of this pain became terrible, almost agonising, but I could not forgo my pastime. Now, at last, I know what this pain was: my soul looked for God, but my creature did not know it. For just in this same way we contemplate God, savouring Him without seeing Him, and being filled to the brim with marvellous delights with no sadness. But this condition of contemplation is very far from being the mountain-top; it is but a high plateau from which we make the final ascent. The summit is an indescribable contact, and this summit is not one summit but many summits. Which is to say, we have contact of several separate forms--that of giving, that of receiving, and that of immersion or absorption, which _at its highest_ is altogether unendurable as fire. Of this last I am able only to say this: that not only is it inexpressible by any words, but that that which is a state of extreme beatitude to the soul is death to the creature by excess of joy. Therefore both heart and mind fear to recall any details of the memory of this highest attainment. I knew it but once. To know it again would be the death of my body. For more than two hours (as well as I am able to judge) before coming to this highest experience, my soul travelled through what felt to be an ocean, for she rose and fell upon billows in a state of infinite bliss. Of other forms of contact we have a swift, unexpected, even unsought-for attainment, which is entirely of His volition; that sudden condescension to the soul, in which in unspeakable rapture she is caught up to her holy lover. These are the topmost heights which the creature dare recall, though to the soul they remain in memory as life itself. The variations of these forms of contact are infinite, for God would seem to will to be both eternal changelessness and variation in infinitude. Because of this, and the marvellous depths and heights and breadths of life revealed to her, the soul is able to conceive of an eternity of bliss, for monotony ceases to be joy. In Nature we see that no two trees in a forest are alike, and two fruits gathered from one bough have not the same flavour. But to my feeling all degrees of attainment are only to be distinguished as varying degrees of union, the joy of which is of a form and a degree of intensity and purity which can enter neither the heart nor the mind to imagine, but must be experienced to be understood, and when experienced remains in part incomprehensible. It is not to be obtained by force of the will, neither can it be obtained without the will. It is, then, a mystery of two wills in unison, in which our will is temporarily fused into and consumed by the will of God and is in transports of felicity over its own annihilation! This is outside reason and therefore incomprehensible to the creature, but comprehensible to the soul, and becomes the aim and object of our life to attain in permanence, and is the uttermost limit of all conceivable rapture. When I first knew union and contact upon the hill I had the impression of a very great light outside of me. I never again had an outward impression of it. But when any sense of inward _light_ is felt I consider it to be a high ecstasy and hard for the body. It is the sweet and gentle touchings of Christ which are the great and unspeakable comfort of both soul and body. Inward heat I never felt till many months after my third conversion and more than four years from my first conversion. This extraordinary sensation, which to my mind is like a magnetic seething with heat and ravishment of joy, I felt inwardly only after I had learnt to know a sudden, secret, joyous delight of love in the soul, which is easiest described as sweetness of love, is from the Christ, and _very frequently_ given by Him. And some six months after the heat, fire, electric seething, or however best it may be named, I first knew the song of the soul. Now, although it is better not to dwell upon the memory of past spiritual joys, lest we become greedy, and equally wise not to dwell upon the memory of anguishes, lest we fall into self-pity, which of all emotions is the most sickly and useless (and our wisest is to live only from hour to hour with all the sweetness that we can, leaving to Him the choosing of our daily bread, whether it be high joy or pain), still I confess that I have thought over and compared these joys sufficiently to know very well which I love the best. Heat of love is very wonderful, and sweetness is very lovely, and raptures and ecstasies are outside words; but most beautiful of all is the song of the soul, and this is when--in highest adoration--passing beyond heat, and further than sweetness, the soul goes up alone upon the highest summit of love, and there like a bird pours out the rapturous and golden passion of her love. And His Spirit, biding very near, never touches her; for if He touch, it is at once an ecstasy, and because of the stress of this she would have neither words nor song with which to rejoice Him. Oh, the pure happiness of the soul in this wonderful song! Truly I think it is greater than in the rapture or the ecstasy, because in these the soul receives, but in the song, mounting right up to Him, she gives. And now at last we know the fuller meaning of Christ's words where He says: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Beloved, Thou takest the creature and liftest it up; Thou takest the creature and liftest it high, so that nevermore can it offend Thee, and the soul is free to sing of her love. Then is it Thy will that the creature should love Thee? Or is it Thy will that the soul should adore? Beloved, I know not whether with my heart and mind I most adore Thee, or whether with my soul I love Thee more. And where is that secret trysting-place of love? I do not know; for whilst I go there and whilst I return I am blind, and whilst I am there I am blinded by Love Himself. O wondrous trysting-place I which is indeed the only trysting-place of all the world worthy to be named. For every other love on earth is but a poor, pale counterfeit of love--a wan Ophelia, wandering with a garland of sad perished flowers to crown the dust. * * * As the loving creature progresses he will find himself ceasing to live in things, or thoughts of things or of persons, but his whole mind and heart will be concentrated upon the thought of God alone. Now Jesus, now the High Christ, now the Father, but never away from one of the aspects or personalities of God, though his conditions of nearness will vary. For at times he will be in a condition of great nearness, at times in a condition of some farness, or, more properly speaking, of obscurity. He will be in a condition of waiting (this exceedingly frequent, the most frequent of all); a condition of amazing happiness; a condition of pain, of desolation at being still upon the earth instead of with God. He will be in a condition of giving love to God, or a condition of receiving love, of remembrance and attention. He will be in a condition of immeasurable glamour, an extraordinary illumination of every faculty, not by any act of his own, but poured through him until he is filled with the elixir of some new form of life, and feels himself before these experiences never to have lived--he but existed as a part of Nature. But now, although he is become more united to Nature than ever before, he also is mysteriously drawn apart from her, without being in any way presumptuous, he feels to be above her, not by any merits but by intention of Another. He is become lifted up into the spirit and essence of Nature, and the heavy and more obvious parts of her bind him no more. He is in a condition of freedom, he is frequently in a condition of great splendour, and is wrapped perpetually round about with that most glorious mantle--God-consciousness. These are man's right and proper conditions. These are the lovely will of God for us. And too many of us have the will to go contrary to Him. Oh, the tragedy of it! If the whole world of men and women could be gathered and lifted into this garden of love! Persuaded to rise from lesser loves into the bosom of His mighty Love! For the truly loving soul here on earth there are no longer heavens, nor conditions of heavens, nor grades, nor crowns, nor angels, nor archangels, nor saints, nor holy spirits; but, going out and up and on, we reach at last THE ONE, and for marvellous unspeakably glorious moments KNOW HIM. This is life: to be in Him and He in us, _and know it._ * * * These beautiful flights of the soul cannot be taken through idleness, though they are taken in what would outwardly appear to be a great stillness. This stillness is but the necessary abstraction from physical activity, even from physical consciousness; but inwardly the spirit is in a great activity, a very ferment of secret work. This, to the writer, is frequently produced by the beautiful in Nature, the spirit involuntarily passing at sight of beauty into a passionate admiration for the Maker of it. This high, pure emotion, which is also an _intense activity_ of the spirit, would seem so to etherealise the creature that instantly the delicate soul is able to escape her loosened bonds and flies towards her home, filled with ineffable, incomparable delight, praising, singing, and joying in her Lord and God until the body can endure no more, and swiftly she must return to bondage in it. But the most wonderful flights of the soul are made during a high adoring contemplation of God. We are in high contemplation when the heart, mind, and soul, having dropped consciousness of all earthly matters, have been brought to a full concentration upon God--God totally invisible, totally unimaged, _and yet focussed to a centre-point by the great power of love._ The soul, whilst she is able to maintain this most difficult height of contemplation, may be visited by an intensely vivid perception, inward vision, and knowledge of God's attributes or perfections, very brief; and this _as a gift,_ for she is not able to will such a felicity to herself, but being given such she is instantly consumed with adoration, and _enters ecstasy._ Having achieved these degrees of progress, the heart and mind will say: "Now I may surely repose, for I have attained!" And so we may repose, but not in idleness, which is to say, not without abundance of prayer. For only by prayer is our condition maintained and renewed; but without prayer, by which I mean an incessant inward communion, quickly our condition changes and wears away. No matter to what degree of love we have attained, we need to pray for more; without persistent but short prayer for faith and love we might fall back into strange woeful periods of cold obscurity. To the accomplished lover great and wonderful is prayer; the more completely the mind and heart are lifted up in it, the slower the wording. The greater the prayer, the shorter in words, though the longer the saying of it, for each syllable will needs be held up upon the soul before God, slowly and, as it were, in a casket of fire, and with marvellous joy. And there are prayers without words, and others without even thoughts, in which the soul in a great stillness passes up like an incense to the Most High. This is very pure, great love; wonderful, high bliss. * * * In the earlier stages of progress, when the heart and mind suffer from frequent inconstancy, loss of warmth, even total losses of love, set the heart and mind to recall to themselves by reading or thinking some favourite aspect of their Lord Jesus Christ. It may be His gentleness, or His marvellous forgiveness, as to Peter when "He turned and looked at him" after the denial; for so He turns and looks upon ourselves. Or it may be His sweetness that most draws us. But let us fasten the heart and mind upon whichever it may be, and in the warmth of admiration _love will return to us._ * * * The mode of entrance into active contemplation I would try to convey in this way. The body must be placed either sitting or kneeling, and supported, or flat on the back as though dead. Now the mind must commence to fold itself, closing forwards as an open rose might close her petals to a bud again, for every thought and image must be laid away and nothing left but a great forward-moving love intention. Out glides the mind all smooth and swift, and plunges deep, then takes an upward curve and up and on till willingly it faints, the creature dies, and consciousness is taken over by the soul, which, quickly coming to the trysting-place, _spreads herself_ and there awaits the revelations of her God. To my feeling this final complete passing over of consciousness from the mind to the soul is by act and will of God only, and cannot be performed by will of the creature, and is the fundamental difference between the contemplation of Nature and the contemplation of God. The creature worships, but the soul alone knows contact. And yet the mode of contemplation is a far simpler thing than all these words--it is the very essence of simplicity itself; and in this sublime adventure we are really conscious of no mode nor plan nor flight, nought but the mighty need of spirit to Spirit and love to Love. * * * The picking out and choosing of certain persons, and the naming of them "elect" and "chosen" souls, when I first read of it, filled me with such a sinking that I tried, when coming upon the words, not to admit the meaning of them into myself; for that some should be chosen and some not I felt to be favouritism, and could not understand or see the justice of it. I never ask questions. He left me in this condition for eighteen months. Then He led me to an explanation sufficient for me. The way He showed it me was not by comparisons with great things--angels and saints and holy persons; but by that humble creature, man's friend, the dog, He showed me the elect creature. It was this way. One evening as I passed through the city I had one of those sudden strong impulses (by which He guides us) to go to a certain and particular cinematograph exhibition. I was very tired, and tried to put away the thought, but it pressed in the way that I know, and I knew it better to go. I sat for an hour seeing things that had no interest for me, and wondering why I should have had to come, when at last a film was shown of war-dogs in training--dogs trained especially to assist men and to carry their messages. These dogs were especially selected, not for their charm of outward appearance, but for their inward capacities; _not for an especial love of the dog_ (or favouritism), but for that which they were willing to learn how to do. The qualifications for (s)election were willingness, obedience, fidelity, endurance. Once chosen they were set apart. Then commenced the training, and we were shown how man put his will through the dog: he was able to do this _only because of the willingness of the dog._ The purport of the training was to carry a message for his master wherever his master willed. He must go instantly and at full speed; he must leap any obstacle; he must turn away from his own kind if they should entice him to linger on the way; he must subdue all his natural desires and instincts entirely to his master's desires; he must be indifferent to danger. And to secure this he was fired over by numbers of men, difficulties were set for him, and he was distracted from his straight course by a number of tests. Yet we saw the brave and faithful creatures running on their way at their fullest speed until, exhausted and breathless but filled with joy of _love and willingness,_ they reached the journey's end, to be caressed and cared for beyond other dogs until the next occasion should arise. Then we were shown the dog in his fully-trained condition. His master could now always rely upon him. A dog always ready, always faithful and self-forgetful, was then set apart into a still smaller and more (s)elect group and surrounded with most especial care and love. Never would it want for anything. In this there was justice. Forsaking all their natural ways, these dogs had submitted themselves wholly, in loving willingness, to their master's will, and he in return would lavish all his best on them. It was but just. Oh, how my heart leaped over it! At last I understood--for as the dog, so the human creature. We become chosen souls, not for our own sakes (which had always seemed to me such favouritism), but for our willingness to learn our Master's Will. And what is His will and what is His work? Of many, many kinds, and this is shown to the soul in her training. But the hardest to learn is not that of the worker, but of the messenger and lover. As the messenger, to take His messages, in whatever direction, instantly and correctly, and to take back the answer from man to Himself--which is to say, to hold before Him the needs of man on the fire of the soul, known to most persons under the name of prayer. And as the lover, to sing to Him with never-failing joyful love and thanks. But the learning and work of the soul is not so simple as that of the dog, who carries the message in writing upon his collar. The soul can have no written paper to assist her, and long and painful is her training; and exquisitely sweet it is when, having swiftly and accurately taken the message, she waits before Him for the rapture of those caresses that she knows so well. How I was spurred! For I said, "Shall dogs outdo us in love and devotion?" Only in a condition of total submission, self-forgetfulness, self-abnegation, can the soul either receive or deliver her message. In this way she is justified of the joys of her election. The dog, faithful in all ways to his master, receives in return all praise and all meats, whatever he desires. The faithful soul also receives all praise and all meats, both spiritual and carnal, for nothing of earthly needs will lack her _if she asks_; and without asking, her needs are mysteriously and completely given her. Her spiritual meats are, in this world, peace, joy, ecstasy, rapture; and of the world to come it is written that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love Him. It might be supposed that only persons filled with public charities and social improvements, ardent and painstaking church workers, might most surely and easily learn to be messengers. But all these persons pursue and follow their own line of thought, the promptings of their own minds and hearts. They are admirable workers, but not messengers. For the hound of God must have in his heart no plan of his own. It is hard for the heart to say, "I have no wishes of my own; I have no interests, no plans, no ambitions, no schemes, no desires, no loves, no will. Thy will is my will. Thy desire is my desire. Thy love is my all. I am empty of all things, that I may be a channel for the stream of Thy will." With what patience, what tenderness, what inexpressible endearments He helps the soul, training her by love!--which is not to say that she is trained without much suffering of the creature. So we are trained by two opposite ways--by suffering and by joys; and the whole under an attitude of passionate and devoted attention on our part. The sufferings of the soul baffle all description with their strange intensities. Our encouragements are great and extraordinary sweetnesses, urgings, and joyful uplifting of the spirit. So that when we would stop, we are pressed forward; when we are exhausted, we are filled with the wine of sweetness; when we are in tears, we are embraced into the Holy Spirit. * * * Sin and ill are the false notes struck by man across the harmony of God's will, and to strike upon or even remember such notes is instant banishment from the music of His presence. Where all is joy, there joy is all_;_ and he who has not reached this joy does not know God--he is still a follower, and not a possessor, and he should refuse in his heart to remain satisfied with his condition, but climb on. Why stay behind? Climb on, climb on! How often I have been mystified and disturbed by the attitude of many religious and pious people, that to follow Christ is a way of gloom, of sadness, of heaviness! How often have I gathered from sermons that we are to give up all bright and enticing things if we would follow Him, and the preacher _goes no further!_ Has the Lord, then, no enticements, no sweetnesses, no brightness to offer us, that we should be asked to forsake all pleasantnesses, all brightness, all attractions if we follow Him? This to me always seemed terrible, and my heart would sink. Indeed, to my poor mind and heart it seemed nothing more hopeful than a going from bad to worse! All the pictures I have seen, either of the Crucifixion or the Way of the Cross (and especially those of more recent times and painting), portray His Blessed Face all worn with gloom; and I know now that this is far from the truth. For perfect love knows agony, but no gloom. He went through all His agony, lifted high above gloom, in a great ecstasy of love for us. To speak of _sacrifice_ in connection with following Him is, to my mind, the work of a very foolish person and one in danger of being blasphemous. For how dare we say that it is a sacrifice when, by the putting away of foolish desires, we find God! And to find God, through the following of Jesus Christ, is to _gain so much_ (even in this world, and without waiting for the next) that those who gain it never cease to be amazed at the vastness of it. We find this to be an absolute truth, that if we have not Him we have, and are, nothing, in comparison with that which we are and that which we have when we have Him. In my earlier stages I was greatly set back and disturbed by this gloom and sacrifice (which is no sacrifice) of myself so put forward by pulpit teaching. It was a great hindrance to me and blinded me to the truth. I was only a normal, ordinary creature, and they thrust a great burden into my arms. Little by little, as I was able to learn directly from His own heart, I came to know Him as He is; and I could not reconcile this knowledge of Himself which He gave me, especially of His high willingness and serenity, with pulpit teachings of heavy gloom. The Church too frequently spoke to me of following Him in terms which conveyed a burden: "Pick up thy cross, pick up thy cross!" they cried; and He spoke to me in terms which conveyed a great joy: "Come to Me, come to Me, for I love thee!" I thought I was very cowardly and sinned by this inability to like the gloomy burden, and one day I came upon this out of Jeremiah: "As for the prophet, or the priest, or the people, that shall say, The burden of the Lord, I will punish that man and his house . . . because ye say, The burden of the Lord, I will utterly forget you and forsake you, and cast you out of My presence." These words of Jesus, "Take up thy cross and follow Me": whoever will do it will be shown by Jesus that the cross of following Him is no burden, but a deliverance, a finding of life, the way of escape, a great joy, and a garland of love. The world thinks of joyousness as being laughter, cackling, and much silly noise; and to such I do not speak. But the Christ's joyousness is of a high, still, marvellous, and ineffable completeness--beyond all words; and _wholly satisfying_ to heart and soul and body and mind. It is written, "They shall love silver, and not be satisfied with it"--for why? Only those are _satisfied_ who know the gold of Christ. All of which is not to say that by following Him we shall escape from happenings and inconveniences and sorrows and illnesses common to life; but that when these come we are raised out of our distress into His ineffable peace. When the heart is sad, use this sadness in a comprehension of the deeper pain of Jesus, who was in the self-same exile as we ourselves. The more the soul is truly awakened and touched, the more she feels herself to be in exile; and this is her cross. But the remedy for her sadness is that she should courageously pass out of her woes of exile and go up to meet her lover with smiles. Now, He cannot resist this smiling courage and love of the soul, and very quickly He must send her His sweetness, and her sadness is gone. * * * When I say that if we will take a few steps alone towards Christ--which is to say, if we will make some strenuous efforts to cleanse ourselves and change our minds and ways--He will take us all the rest of the way, I speak from experience. For amongst many things this happened to me: at a certain stage, after my third conversion on the hill, He caused my former thoughts, desires, and follies to go away from me! It was as though He had sent a veil between me and such thoughts of my heart and mind as might not be pleasing to Him, so that they disappeared from my knowledge and my actions! By this marvellous act He removed my difficulties, and put me into a state of innocence which resembled the innocence I remember to have had up to the age of four or five years. But I find this new innocence far more wonderful than that of childhood, which is but the innocence of ignorance. But this new innocence--which is a gift of God--is innocence with knowledge. I am not able to express the gratitude and amazement and wonder that have never ceased to fill me about this. Such things can only be spoken of by the soul to her lover, and then not in words but in a silence of tears. What did I ever do that He should show me such kindness? I did nothing except this: I desired with all the force of my heart and soul and mind and body to love Him. I said, "Oh, if I could be the warmest, tenderest lover that ever thou didst have! Teach me to be Thy burning lover." This was my perpetual prayer. And my idea of Heaven was and is this, that without so much as knowing, or being known or perceived by _any save Himself,_ without even a name, yet retaining my full consciousness of individuality, I should be with Him for always. What is this love for God, and how define it? For myself, I never knew it until I was filled with it upon the hill. Many judge it to be _a following_ of Christ and His wishes, but this is only a part of it and the way we begin it, and often we begin from duty, fear of future punishment, desire for salvation or spiritual pre-eminence, and obedience; and in none of these is there the joy of love. By such standards I might count myself to have loved Him for twenty years; but know I did not. For ten years past I felt myself to have so great a need of Him, I sought Him so, that for me Heaven contained no re-met former earthly loves, much as I loved them here. I knew that He would be my all. Nevertheless, He was not yet my Love, but my Need. Love is a fire, for we feel the great heat of it. Love is a light, for we perceive the white glare of it. Of things known, to what can we compare it? Most perhaps to electricity, for here we have both light and heat, and the lightning flash strikes that which already contains the most of itself (or electricity). And the lightning of God's love strikes him whose heart contains the most love for Himself. And He strikes when He will, and afterwards visits when He will; and I do not count myself (for all my earthly loves) to have so much as known the outer edge of the meaning of the word love, till He struck me with His own upon that hill. Truly, fair and holy love is our warranty, our only pass for entering into Heaven. Brave and wilful, rapturous and insistent, love passes with bold yet humble ecstasy into the very presence of her Lord and God; and alone, out of all creation, is never denied the Right of Way. * * * I have seen it quoted, "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn within, turn without, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross." But I see it so: "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn within, turn without, everywhere thou shalt find His Love." Love to help on the way. Too much we might suppose, to hear pious people talk, that because of Christ's way we must be miserable and our life an endless Cross! And so life may be a cross, but He carries it for us. Do sinful men never suffer? Do the sinful escape disease? and live for ever without biting the dust in death or disappointment? Why, disease and suffering are the very twin-children of sin. I am amazed that people can take such a view of the Cross as to think it an unhappy, miserable way. For so marvellous is the beauty of such love that there is no other so desirable a thing upon earth. "Come, walk the way with Me," says the Beloved; "I am all serenity, all peace, all might, all power, all love. Come, walk with Me, and forget thy tiny cares in the peace of My bosom." * * * We do not love God because we do not yet know Him. And we do not know Him because we seek only to know and have our own desires: and having learnt to know these, we would have our unknown God accommodate Himself to us and them. But let us first seek to know God's desires by heart, and then accommodate our own to His: so shall we learn to be pleasing to Christ, that He may lead us, whilst here, into His Garden. For to the creature that ardently pursues God there comes at last a time when He reveals Himself to the searching soul, saying: "I Am Here. Come!" Then in secrecy we arise,--and go to Him out of the House of Vanity into the music of the great Beyond. There is small credit or virtue to the soul when, in a state of high grace or nearness, she burns with love for her God: for she is under the spell of the enticement of His Presence--how can she help but burn! It is as though two earthly lovers, in full sight and nearness, are filled each for each with great love, and are content. But this is a credit to the soul and the creature (as to the earthly lovers), that in separation and farness they should seek no other, but continue to dwell with great intentness upon the absent love. This is fidelity. At times it is as if her Lord said to the soul: "I have other to do than to stay by thee; and also thou hast had more than enough to thy share of My honey"; and, so saying, He departs. And this is fidelity of the soul and the creature, and a great virtue, that, without change of face, without complaint or petitioning, they should with all sweetness continue to pour up to Him their unabated love. If any can do this, he is a perfect lover and has no more to learn. When the love of the soul, as it were, exceeds itself, it passes up and beyond even the song of love; and being unable to express itself by words or by song, or by deep sighings, or by any of those subtle, silent, spiritual means known only between herself and God, when all means fail because of the too great stress of her adoration, then the soul passes into a great pain, which is the anguish of love and a hard thing to bear. This excess is to the fullness of the Godhead. And now the soul must turn to prayer for help, but not to the Godhead: for the more she turns to the Godhead the greater becomes her anguish. But coming down to His humanity, she must beseech sweet Jesus for His aid, and so regain her equilibrium. * * * Many of us are, perhaps unwittingly, impudent to God. In this way we are impudent: We question (even though it be in secret, hidden in the heart and not spoken) the justice of God, the ways of God, the plans of God, the love of God: by which means we argue with God and judge Him. And another manner of impudence we have is this, that we dare to attribute or to blame Him for the results of man's own filth, saying: "This and this is the will of God, for we see that it exists, and His will is omnipotent." Oh, beware of this impudence, drop it out of the heart and mind, and flee from it as from the plague! "How then can these things be, if He is omnipotent?" we say. Because of this, that in the trust of His great love He gave us the royal and Godly gift of free-will, and our souls have proved themselves unworthy to have it; and now the creature is brought before the Beautiful, and the Holy, and the Pure, but turning away, like the sow, prefers the mire and the festering sores proceeding from such wallowings. If there were no choice, there were no virtue, and no progress home. But let no man venture in his heart to attribute to that Holy and Marvellous Being whom we speak of as God, not knowing as yet His Name, any will towards festers and corruptions, for what does He say Himself? "Their sins rise up before Me and stink in My nostrils!" We surely forget that this world is not yet God's Kingdom, and that His will is not done here, and will not be until the Judgment Day. This world is but a tiny testing-chamber in His mighty workshop; and great and wonderful is the care He has for the workers in it. O man! whence come thy wretchednesses? Look round and think. Do they not all proceed from self and fellow-men, alive or dead? Then why blame God? "Why am I here?" we cry, "to suffer all these pains, and my consent not asked? A poor, sad puppet dancing to a tune I know not the rhythm of. Where is my recompense? And where my wages? I will take all I can of what is offered here, and give no thanks! It is but my scant due for all my wretchednesses!" O foolish man! so timid of all future possibilities of bliss that he must grasp and burn himself with such delights as he finds here! And equally mistaken and small-minded man who thinks that all our Mighty God will have to offer us hereafter are crowns, damp clouds and mists, and endless hymns! Such little hearts are far away indeed from knowing the _magnitudes of Life._ O wretched man! why this distrust? Hast thou created even thine own palate and digestion? Hast thou invented any of those fond delights that so enslave thee now? Hast thou thyself devised the means wherewith to satisfy the longing of thy _creature_ for the sweets of life? They were provided thee; all that thou hast created is misuse! Thou art but a perverted thing!--a crooked tool of self, a fly drowning in the honey that it sought too greedily to own! O wretched, wretched man! so cloyed with sweets of earth thou canst not raise thy head to see the sunrise out beyond the world, and know true sweets! How many are the tears wept over thee by the great heart of God! * * * Since coming into this new way of living, the more I come into contact with music the more I sense a mysterious connection between melody--the soul--and her _origin._ Alone out of all the sciences and arts, music has no foundation upon anything on earth. There is no music in nature until the soul, come to a perfect harmony within herself, brings out the hidden harmony in all creation, and, turning it to melody within herself, returns it to her Lord in song, whether by outward instrument or inward love. The soul, indeed, would seem to have come out of a life of infinite melody and to have dropped into an existence of mere contrary and vexing time-beat. Who can by any means account for the variety of passions excited within him by the mere difference of the spacing, time, or rhythm of music? In my new condition of living I notice that the soul throws out with most disdainful impatience music that was formerly beautiful to my mind and heart (or my creature); and certain types of flowing cadences (very rarely to be found), sustained in high, flowing, delicate, and soaring continuity will produce in her conditions akin to a madness of joy. For one brief instant _she remembers! but cannot utter what!_ Of visions I know nothing, but received all my experiences into my soul as amazingly real inward perceptions. That these perceptions are of unprecedented intensity, and more realistic than those which are merely visual, can be understood by bodily comparisons; for to _feel_ or to be one with fire is more than to _see_ it. To try to compare spiritual life with physical experiences would seem to be useless; for, to my feeling, while we live in the spirit we live at a great speed,--indeed, an incalculably great speed--and as a whole and not in parts. For with physical living we live at one moment by the eyes, at another with the mind, at another through the heart, at another with the body. But the spirit feels to have no parts, for all parts are of so perfect a concordance that in this marvellous harmony all is one and one is all. And this with _incredible intensity,_ so that we live not as now--dully--but at white heat of sensibility. _Prayer_ Prayer is the golden wedding-ring between ourselves and God. For myself, I divide it into two halves--the one petitioning, the other offering. Of petitioning I would say that this is the _work_ of the soul; and of offering, that it is the pleasure of the soul. Of petitioning, that I come to it under His command; and of offering, that I come to it of my own high, passionate desire. I make upon my knees, three times a day, three short and formal prayers of humble worship, as befits the creature worshipping its Ineffable and Mighty God: and for the rest of my time I sing to Him from my heart and soul, as befits the joyful lover, adoring and conversing with the Ineffable and Exquisite Beloved. * * * This is the circle of His way with us. First is prayer; then love; and after love, humility. With humility comes grace; and after grace, temptation; and in temptation we must quickly enter prayer again. * * * O wonderful and ineffable God! who, while remaining hidden from His lovers in this life, yet so ravishes their hearts and minds and souls that they are unable to find truly sweet even the greatest of life's former joys--for nothing can now ever satisfy them but the secret and marvellous administrations of His love and grace! On one day feeling to be forsaken, the most desolate and lonely of all creatures in the Universe; and on another exalted to almost unbearable pinnacles of bliss, equal to the angels in felicity, and blest beyond all power of words to say--such and so are the lovers of God. * * * The soul has six wings: love, obedience, humility, simplicity, perseverance, and courage. With these she can attain God. We know very well that no man will find God either enclosed, held fast, or demonstrated within a circle of dogmatic words; but every man can find, in his own soul, an exquisite and incomparable instrument of communication with God. To establish the working of this communication is the whole object and meaning of life in this world--this world of material, finite, and physical things, in which the human body is at once a means and a debt. The key to progress is a continual dressing of the will and mind and heart towards God, best brought about by continually filling the heart and mind with beautiful, grateful, and loving thoughts of Him. At all stages of progress the thoughts persistently fly away to other things in the near and visible world, and we have need quietly and perpetually to pick them up and re-centre them on Him. With the mind turned in this way, steadily towards God, we are in that state known to science as polarisation: we are in that condition in which common iron becomes a magnet. It is so that God transforms us into a diminutive part-likeness of Himself. When at last the soul reaches union with Him, she is for a while so caressed, so held in a perpetual contact and nearness, that we may think ourselves already permanently entered into Paradise! But this is not the plan; and, our education being exceedingly incomplete, we return to our schooling. We commence to experience profound and even terrible longings to leave the world and all creatures, for we cannot bear either the sight or the sound of them, and seek all day long to be alone with the Beloved God. To conquer this last selfishness and weakness of the soul, we must go again--as in the beginning--to Jesus. He teaches us to go to and fro _willingly,_ gladly, from the highest to the lowest. To pick up our daily life and duties, our obligations to a physical world, in all humility, sweet reasonableness, and submission. He teaches us to willingly accept incessant interruptions, and with smiling face and perfect inward smoothness to descend from a high contemplation of God (and only those who know high contemplation can judge of the immensity of what I say) to listen and _attend to_ some most trivial want of a fellow-creature! Reader, it is the hardest thing of all. No sooner have we learnt the hard and difficult way of ascent than we must willingly come down it, even remain altogether in the valley below, and that with a smiling face and, if possible, no thought of impatience! This is the true sacrifice of the soul. Now, the sacrifices of the creature are the giving up of the near and visible joys and prides of the world to follow Christ, and are not real but seeming sacrifices, for, if done heartily and with courage, an exchange between these joys and the joys of the invisible is rapidly effected, and there remains no sacrifice, but "the hidden treasure" is ours! But the sacrifice of the soul is real and long; for having at last re-found God, she must resign her full joy of Him till the death of the body--and this willingly, thankfully, without complaint, not asking favours but pouring up her gratitude. In joy or in pain, in happiness or in tribulation--gratitude! gratitude!--and this not by her own strength but by strength of the Holy Ghost. * * * Because of this new way of living, the mind acquires a great increase of capacity and strength and clearness: being able to deal quickly and correctly with all matters brought before it with an ease previously altogether unknown to its owner. It is no exaggeration to say that the sagacity, scope, and grasp of the mind feels to be more than doubled from that which it previously was, and this not because of any study, but by an involuntary alteration. So that, though the mind and attention are now given almost exclusively to the things of God, yet when the things of the world have to be dealt with, this is accomplished with extraordinary efficiency and quickness, though very distasteful to the mind. * * * As the soul returns to her source nothing is more strongly emphasised to her than the strength and intensity of individuality; she is shown that the essence of all joy is Individuality in Union. In the marvellous condition of Contact, though we cease to be the creature or the soul adoring the Creator (but by an incomprehensible condescension we are accepted as one with Himself in love), yet we retain our own consciousness, which is our individuality. In the highest rapture I ever was in, my soul passed into a fearful extremity of experience: she was burned with so terrible an excess of bliss, that she was in great fear and anguish because of this excess. Indeed, she was so overcome by this too great realisation of the strength of God that she was in terror of both God and joy. It was three days before she recovered any peace, and more than a year before I dared recall one instant of it to mind. I am not able to think that even in Heaven the soul could endure such heights for more than a period. These heights are incomparably, unutterably beyond vision and union. They are the uttermost extremity of that which can be endured by the soul, at least until she has re-risen to great altitudes of holiness in ages to come. By contact with God we acquire certain wonderful and terrible realisations of truth and knowledge. For one thing, we learn the nature and mode of spirit-life, as over against body- or sense-life. We learn, at first with great fear, something of the awful intensities of pain, as of joy, which can be endured by the spirit when free of the body: for when we are in the spirit we do not _see_ fire, but we feel to _become it_ and yet live! And so equally of pain or joy--we do not feel these things delicately, as with, and in, the body, but we pass into the essence of these things themselves, in all their terrible and marvellous intensity, which is comparatively without limit. Woe to those who must gather the garland of pain--which is remorse-after death! It is easier to suffer a whole lifetime in the body than one day in the spirit. O soul! come to thy contrition here in this world, where pain has short limit! Repent and return! * * * Of the marvellous favours shown to the soul the heart cries out: "O mighty God! of the magnitude of Thy condescensions I am afraid even to think; they are too great for me, and I dare to recall them, but only with all the simplicity of a little child!" * * * Those who feel desire and need within themselves to reach the heights of inward life will do it best, not through diversity of interests in fellow-creatures, but by unification of all interests in God. God once found, and possessed, we return to the interests of creatures in moderation and with judgment. * * * What is pain? It is a mystery of separation, and we are gangrenous with sin and pain because of separation from the source of life. Truth now comes to us in such small segments that we no longer see the pattern of it; but this we are able to perceive: that the mystery of Separation is equal in degree with the mystery of Union, and that the child of separation is Pain. How did the soul ever become so separated from God? To my feeling, in curiosity of loves we may find the answer, and know the "fall" to be not that of the animal man but of the soul, which, once living in perpetual beatitude--knowing nothing of pain because of the unity with God, not understanding or being even grateful for her bliss because of its invariable presence, and given free-will,--in curiosity went out in search of newer and yet newer loves. And this is the retribution of the soul for her unfaithful wanderings--that as separation grows greater she commences to know pain, and, becoming anxious therefrom to return to the source of her remembered joys, she finds herself unable to accomplish this because of the weight and grossness of the nature of the loves to which she has hired herself, and from which _she is totally unable to free herself,_ and yet which she must by some means overcome that she may rise again to sanctity and return to God. Now comes the marvellous, the pitiful, the universal Christ to her aid--the Mighty Lover; and we may see in the whole scheme of Creation, as we know it here, from jelly-fish to man, a plan by which the soul may bring her wanderings to a term in time conditions instead of timeless sons. When all this earth is evolved for her great need, at last by the mercy of God she is interned in the body of finite man, and must clothe herself in the heart and mind of the human and take upon herself the nature of this creature man, made and fashioned to be a suitable instrument and habitation for her. To counterbalance the grossness and ineptitude of the creature's material body with its appetites, man is imbued with the knowledge of right, and with a secret longing for a _happiness which is not that of the beast._ The soul must raise the brute in him, with all its appetites, to purity,--a mighty task, accomplished with much pain, yet in infinitely shorter duration of pain than if left in disembodied spirit-life; and, indeed, we may come to look upon pain in this world as one of our best privileges because of its powers of purification within a time-limit, and to know that by the mercy of the God of Love we may take our hell of cleansing in this world rather than in those worlds of disembodied spirits where progress is of infinite slowness--revolving and revolving upon itself, as a sand-spiral in a blast-furnace, without hope of death. Oh, how convey any warning of this terrible knowledge, which is not communicable by words! He said, "Though one return from the dead, ye would not believe." But, O soul! repent and return while still in the body! Lay hold on the Christ! In the life of this world, then, does our God of love and mercy give us rapid means (by conquest of the animal grossness and corruptible body, raising man to the ideal man, according to God's intention) to reunite ourselves with Him. And the soul of all animal creation is also thereby gradually raised with us into a universal adoration of the One Almighty God. This is no fallen but a rising world, in which all Creation is slowly and gloriously rising step by step. So may our soul repay her debt to God for her past infidelities. "Thy Maker is thine husband," says the voice of the prophet. And the creature, with its suffering heart and mind and body, has also its incomparable reward of bliss: for because of its love and obedience it is raised into the spiritual body, AND TOGETHER WITH THE SOUL BECOMES THE CHILD OF THE RESURRECTION. ------ [Transcriber's Notes: The name of the author, Lilian Staveley, is not mentioned on the title page of this text, but I have added it here. I have made one spelling change: "enough to blow-to" to "enough to blow to".] 
29450	----	THE PRODIGAL RETURNS By Lilian Staveley The Author of "The Golden Fountain" and "The Romance of the Soul" London John M. Watkins 21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2 1921 CONTENTS Part I. 7 Part II. 63 Part III. 81 Part IV. 102 Part V. 151 PART I Sunshine and a garden path . . . flowers . . . the face and neck and bosom of the nurse upon whose heart I lay, and her voice telling me that she must leave me, that we must part, and immediately after anguish--blotting out the sunshine, the flowers, the face, the voice. This is my first recollection of Life--the pain of love. I was two years old. Nothing more for two years--and then the picture of a pond and my baby brother floating on it, whilst with agonised hands I seized his small white coat and held him fast. And then a meadow full of long, deep grass and summer flowers, and I--industriously picking buttercups into a tiny petticoat to take to cook, "to make the butter with," I said. And then a table spread for tea. Our nurses, my two brothers, and myself. Angry words and screaming baby voices, a knife thrown by my little brother. Rage and hate. And then a wedding, and I a bridesmaid, aged five years--the church, the altar, and great awe, and afterwards a long white table, white flowers, and a white Bride. Grown men on either side of me--smilingly delightful, tempting me with sweets and cakes and wine, and a new strange interest rising in me like a little flood of exultation--the joy of the world, and the first faint breath of the mystery of sex. Then came winters of travel. Sunshine and mimosa, olive trees against an azure sky. Climbing winding, stony paths between green terraces, tulips and anemones and vines; white sunny walls and lizards; green frogs and deep wells fringed around with maidenhair. Mountains and a sea of lapis blue, and early in the mornings from this lapis lake a great red sun would rise upon a sky of molten gold. In the rooms so near me were my darling brothers, from whom I often had to part. Beauty and Joy, and Love and Pain--these made up life. At ten I twice narrowly escaped death. From Paris we were to take the second or later half of the train to Marseilles. Late the night before my father suddenly said, "I have changed my mind; I feel we must go by the first train." This was with some difficulty arranged. On reaching an immense bridge across a deep ravine I suddenly became acutely aware that the bridge was about to give way. In a terrible state of alarm I called out this fearful fact to my family. I burst into tears. I suffered agonies. My mother scolded me, and when we safely reached the other side of the bridge I was severely taken to task for my behaviour. The bridge broke with the next train over it--the train in which we should have been. Some four hundred people perished. It was the most terrible railway disaster that had ever occurred in France. A few weeks later, death came nearer still. Having escaped from our tutor, with a party of other children we ran to two great reservoirs to fish for frogs. Laughing and talking and full of childish joy, we fished there for an hour, when all at once I was impelled, under an extraordinary sense of pressure, to call out, "If anyone falls into the water, no one must jump in to save them, but must immediately run to those long sticks" (I had never noticed them until I spoke) "and draw one out and hold it to whoever has fallen in." I spoke automatically, and felt as much surprised as my companions that I should speak of such a thing. Within five minutes I had fallen in myself. My brother remembered my words, but before he could reach me with the stick I was under the water for the third and last time. It was all that they could do to drag my weight up to the ledge, for the water was a yard below it. Had my brother jumped in, as he said he most surely would have done had I not forewarned him, we must both have been drowned, for they would have had neither the strength nor the time to pull us both out alive. I was not at all frightened or upset till I heard someone say that I was dead; then I wept--it was so sad to be dead! The pressure put upon me to speak as I did had been so great that I have never forgotten the strange impression of it to this day. On both these occasions I consider that I was under immediate Divine protection. I believed earnestly in God with the complete and peaceful faith of childhood. I thought of Him, and was afraid: but more afraid of a great Angel who stood with pen and book in hand and wrote down all my sins. This terrible Angel was a great reality to me. I prayed diligently for those I loved. Sometimes I forgot a name: then I would have to get out of bed and add it to my prayer. As I grew older, if the weather were cold I did not pray upon the floor but from my bed, because it was more comfortable. I was not always sure if this were quite right, but I could not concentrate my mind on God if my body was cold, because then I could not forget my body. I saw God very plainly when I shut my eyes! He was a White Figure in white robes on a white throne, amongst the clouds. He heard my prayers as easily as I saw His robes. He was by no means very far away, though sometimes He was further than at others. He took the trouble to make everything very beautiful: and He could not bear sinful children. The Angel with the Book read out to Him my faults in the evenings. When I was twelve years old my grandmother died, and for three months I was in real grief. All day I mourned for her, and at night I looked out at the stars, and the terrible mystery of death and space and loneliness struck at my childish heart. After thirteen I could no longer be taken abroad to hotels, for my parents considered that I received too much attention, too many presents, too many chocolates from men. I was educated by a governess, and was often very lonely. My brothers would come back from school; then I overflowed with happiness and sang all day long in my heart with joy. The last night of the holidays was a time of anguish. Upstairs the clothes were packed. Downstairs I helped them pack the "play-boxes," square deal boxes at sight of which tears sprang to my eyes and a dreadful pain gripped my heart. Oh, the pain of love at parting! there never was a pain so terrible as suffering love. The last meal: the last hour: the last look. There are natures which feel this anguish more than others. We are not all alike. I had been passionately fond of dolls. Now I was too old for such companions, and when my brothers went away I was completely alone with my governess and my lessons. I fell into the habit of dreaming. In these dreams I evolved a companion who was at the same time myself--and yet not an ordinary little girl like myself, but a marvellous creature of unlimited possibilities and virtues. She even had wings and flew with such ease from the tops of the highest buildings, and floated so delightfully over my favourite fields and brooks that I found it hard to believe that I myself did not actually fly. What glorious things we did together, what courage we had, nothing daunted us! I cared very little to read books of adventure, for our own adventures were more wonderful than anything I ever read. Not only had I wings, but when I was my other self I was extremely good, and the Angel with the Book was then never able to make a single adverse record of me. And then how easy it was to be good: how delightful, no difficulties whatever! As we both grew older the actual wings were folded up and put away. The virtues remained, but we led an intensely interesting life, and a certain high standard of life was evolved which was afterwards useful to me. When, later on, I grew up and my parents allowed me to have as many friends as I wanted, and when I became exceedingly gay, I still retained the habit of this double existence; it remained with me even after my marriage and kept me out of mischief. If I found myself temporarily dull or in some place I did not care for, clothed in the body of my double, like the wind, I went where I listed. I would go to balls and parties, or with equal ease visit the mountains and watch the sunset or the incomparable beauties of dawn, making delicate excursions into the strange, the wonderful, and the sublime. I gathered crystal flowers in invisible worlds, and the scent of those flowers was Romance. All this vivid imagination sometimes made my mind over-active: I could not sleep. "Count sheep jumping over a hurdle," I was advised. But it did not answer. I found the most effective way was to think seriously of my worst sins--my mind immediately slowed down, became a discreet blank--I slept! I grew tall and healthy. At sixteen I received my first offer of marriage and with it my first vision of the love and passion of men. I recoiled from it with great shyness and aversion. Yet I became deeply interested in men, and remained so for very many years. From that time on I never was without a lover till my marriage. II At seventeen my "lessons" came to an end. I had not learnt much, but I could speak four languages with great fluency. I learnt perhaps more from listening to the conversation of my father and his friends. He had always been a man of leisure and was acquainted with many of the interesting and celebrated people of the day, both in England and on the Continent. I was devoted to him, and whenever he guided my character he did so with the greatest judgment. He taught me above all things the need of self-control, and never to make a remark of a fellow-creature unless I had something pleasant or kind to say. There was no subject upon which he was unread; and when my brothers, who were both exceedingly clever, returned from college and the University, wonderful and brilliant were the discussions that went on. Both my parents were of Huguenot descent, belonging to the old French noblesse. I think the Latin blood had sharpened their brains, and certainly gave an extra zest to life. My father was a great believer in heredity, and the following personal experience may show him somewhat justified in his belief. In quite early childhood I commenced to feel a preference for the _left_ side of my body: I washed, dried, and dressed the left side first; I preserved it carefully from all harm; I kept it warm. I was, comparatively speaking, totally indifferent to my right side. As I grew older I observed that the place of honour was upon the right-hand side: I understood that God had made the world and ruled it with His right hand! I was wrong, then, in preferring my left hand. I determined to change over. It was very difficult to do: so deep was the instinct that it took me some years to eradicate the love for my left side and transfer it to my right, and when I had at last accomplished it I was still liable to go back to my first preference. No one ever detected my peculiarity. I was already eighteen or nineteen years old when one day I entered my father's room, ready dressed to go out. I had on both my gloves. Suddenly I remembered that I had put on my left glove first. Immediately I took off both my gloves--then I replaced the right one, and then the left. My father was watching me and asked me for an explanation. I gave it him, and he looked very grave, almost alarmed. After a moment of silence he said, "I want you to give that habit up--I want you to break yourself of it immediately. I had it myself as a youth: it took me years to conquer. No one should permit himself to be the slave of _any_ habit." I asked him which side he had loved. "The _left_ side," he said. At five-and-twenty he had conquered the habit, and I was not born till he was almost sixty-one! yet I had inherited it. We never referred to it again, and in two years I, also, had conquered it. We spent the winter of the year in which I was seventeen in Italy, to which country a near relative was Ambassador, and there I went to my first ball. That night--and how often afterwards!--I knew the surging exultation, the intoxication of the joy of life. How often in social life, in brilliant scenes of light and laughter, music and love, I seemed to ride on the crest of a wave, in the marvellous glamour of youth! This love of the world and of social life was a very strong feeling for many years: at the same time and running, as it were, in double harness with it was a necessity for solitude. My mind imperatively demanded this, and indeed my heart too. It was during this year that I first commenced a new form of mental pleasure through looking at the beautiful in Nature. Not only solitude, but total silence was necessary for this pastime, and, if possible, beauty and a distant view: failing a view I could accomplish it by means of the beauties of the sky. This form of mental pleasure was the exact opposite of my previous dreamings, for all imagination absolutely ceased, all forms, all pictures, all activities disappeared--the very scene at which I looked had to vanish before I could know the pleasure of this occupation in which, in some mysterious manner, I inhaled the very essence of the Beautiful. At first I was only able to remain in this condition for a few moments at a time, but that satisfied me--or, rather, did not satisfy me, for through it all ran a strange unaccountable anguish--a pain of longing--which, like a high, fine, tremulous nerve, ran through the joy. What induced me to pursue this habit, I never asked myself. That it was a form of the spirit's struggle towards the Eternal--of the soul's great quest of God--never occurred to me. I was worshipping the Beautiful without giving sufficient thought to Him from Whom all beauty proceeds. Half a lifetime was to go by before I realised to what this habit was leading me--that it was the first step towards the acquirement of that most exquisite of all blessings--the gift of the Contemplation of God. Ah, if anyone knows in his heart the call of the Beautiful, let him use it towards this glorious end! Love, and the Beautiful--these are the twin golden paths that lead us all to God. III Certainly we were not a religious family. One attendance at church upon Sunday--if it did not rain!--and occasionally the Communion, this was the extent of any outward religious feeling. But my father's daily life and acts were full of Christianity. A man of a naturally somewhat violent temper, he had so brought himself under control that towards everyone, high and low, he had become all that was sweet and patient, sympathetic and gentle. About this time a devouring curiosity for knowledge commenced to possess me. What was the truth--what was the truth about every single thing I saw? Astronomy, Biology, Geology--in these things I discovered a new and marvellous interest: here at last I found my natural bent. History had small attraction for me: it spoke of the doings of people mostly vain or cruel, and untruthful. I wanted truth--irrefutable facts! No scientific work seemed too difficult for me; but I never, then or later, read anything upon the subject of religion, philosophy, or psychology. I had a healthy, wholesome young intelligence with a voracious appetite: it would carry me a long way, I thought. It did--it landed me in Atheism. To a woman Atheism is intolerable pain: her very nature, loving, tender, sensitive, clinging, demands belief in God. The high moral standard demanded of her is impossible of fulfilment for mere reasons of race-welfare. The personal reason, the Personal God--these are essential to high virtue. Young as I was, I realised this. Outwardly I was frivolous; inwardly I was no butterfly, the deep things of my nature were by no means unknown to me. I not only became profoundly unrestful at heart but I was fearful for myself, and of where strong forces of which I felt the pull might lead me. I had great power over the emotions of men: moreover, interests and instincts within me corresponded to this dangerous capacity. I felt that the world held many strange fires: some holy and beautiful; some far otherwise. Without God I knew myself incapable of overcoming the evil of the world, or even of my own petty nature and entanglements. I despaired, for I perceived that God does not reveal Himself because of an imperious demand of the human mind, and I had yet to learn that those mysteries which are under lock and key to the intelligence are open to the heart and soul. But indeed there was no God to reveal Himself. All was a fantastic make-believe! a pitiful childish invention and illusion! My intelligence said, "Resign yourself to what is, after all, the truth: console yourself with the world and material achievements." The heart said, "Resignation is impossible, for there is no consolation to the heart without God." I listened to my heart rather than my intelligence, and for two terrible years I fought for faith. I was always reserved, and never admitted anyone into the deep things of my life--but when I was twenty my father perceived that I was going through some inward crisis. He knew the books that I read, and probably guessed what had happened to me. At any rate he called me into his room one day and asked me, out of love and obedience to himself, to give up reading all science. This was an overwhelming blow to me: yet I loved him dearly, and had never disobeyed him in my life. Again I let my heart speak; and I sacrificed my mind and my books. I threw myself now more than ever into social amusements, and in my solitary hours sought consolation in my "dream-life." I was afraid to turn to the love of Nature--to my beautiful pastime,--for the pain in it was unbearable. Towards the end of two years my struggles for faith commenced to find a reward. Little by little a faint hope crept into my mind--fragile, often imperceptible. A questioning remark made by my younger brother helped me: "If human life is entirely material and a part of Nature only, then what becomes of human thoughts and aspirations?" Science had proved to me that nothing is lost--but has a destiny--in that it evolves into another form or condition of activity. Evolution! with its many seeming contradictions to Religion--might it not be merely a strong light, too strong as yet for my weak mind, blinding me into temporary darkness? What raised Man above the beasts but his thoughts and aspirations; and if even a grain of dust were imperishable, were these thoughts and aspirations of Man alone to end in nothing--to be lost! It was but a reasonable inference to say No. These invisible thoughts and aspirations have also a future--a destiny in a, to us, still invisible world--in the Life of the Spirit. To this my mind was able to agree. It was a step. In the realm of Ideal Thought I might find again my Faith. I had indeed been foolish to suppose that a system which provided for the continuation of a grain of sand should overlook the Spirit of Man. This was presupposing the existence of a spirit in Man; but who could be found to truly and reasonably hold that the mysterious high and soaring thoughts of Man were one and the same thing as mere animalism? they were too obviously of another nature to the merely bovine, to the solids of the flesh: for one thing, they were free of the law of gravity which so entirely overrules the rest of Nature--they must therefore come to their destiny in another world, another condition of consciousness. IV That winter we again spent in Italy, in continuous gaiety amongst a brilliant cosmopolitan world of men and women who for the most part lived in palaces, surrounded with art and luxury. Here in Rome on every side was to be found the Cult of the Beautiful. Wonderful temples, gems of classical sculpture, masterpieces of colour in oil and fresco--the genius and the aspirations of men rendered permanent for us by Art; but the Temples, those silent emblems of man's worship of an Unknown God, with their surroundings of lovely nature, affected me far the most deeply: indeed, I do not pretend that sculptures and pictures affected me at all. I was interested, I greatly admired--they were a part of education, but that was all. But in the vicinity of those Temples what strange echoes awoke in me, what mysterious sadness and longing, what a mystery of pain! Something within me sighed and moaned for God. If I could but find Him--if I could even truly Believe and be at peace! But already I had commenced to Believe. During the late winter we went to one of the great ceremonies at the Vatican: we had seats in the Sistine Chapel. It was an especial occasion, and the number of persons present was beyond all seating accommodation. To make way for someone of importance I was asked to give up my seat and go outside into the body of the great Cathedral; here I was hurriedly pushed into the second row of a huge concourse of waiting and standing people. Already in the distance the Pope was approaching. Lifted high in his chair on the shoulders of his bearers, he came slowly along in his white robes, his hand raised in a general blessing upon all this multitude. As he came nearer I saw the delicate ivory face--the great dark eyes shining with a fire I had never seen before. For the first time in my life I saw holiness. I was moved to the depths of my being. Something in my gaze arrested his attention; he had his chair stopped immediately above me, and, leaning over me, he blessed me individually--a very great concession during a large public ceremony. I ought to have gone down on my knees--but I had no knees! I no longer had a body! There was no longer anything anywhere in the world but Holiness--and my enraptured soul. Holiness, then, was far beyond the Beautiful. I had not known this till I saw it before me. Life hurried me on: glowing hours and months succeeded each other. In the autumn I fell in love. I came to the consciousness of this, not gradually, but all in one instant. I had no chance of drawing back, for it was already fully completed before I realised it. I came to the realisation of it through a dream (sleep-dreams were always exceedingly rare with me): on this occasion I dreamed a friend showed me the picture of a girl to whom she said this lover (he had been my lover for a year) was engaged. I awoke, sobbing with anguish. I could not disguise from myself the fact that I must be in love. When the time came to speak of it to my parents, my mother would not hear of the marriage--there was no money: I must make another choice. Two brilliant opportunities offered themselves--money--position; but I could not bring myself to think of either. Love was everything: a prolonged secret engagement followed. I went into Society just as before. At this time an aptitude for "fortune-telling" showed itself: it amused my friends--I told fortunes both by palmistry, which I studied quite seriously, and by cards. With both I went largely by inspiration. I found this "inspiration" varied with the individual. There were many persons to whom I could give the most extraordinarily accurate details of past, present, and future; others moderately so; others were a total blank, in which case I either had to remain silent or "try to make up." I got such a reputation for this--I was so sought after for it by even total strangers--that in a couple of years I pushed it all far away from me as an intolerable nuisance. V The Faith that had been growing up in me was of a very different form from that which I had had before: wider, purer, infinitely more powerful, and, though I did not like to remember the pain of them, I felt that those struggling years of doubt and negation had been worth while--without those struggles I felt I never could have had so powerful a faith as I now had. God was at an indefinite and infinite distance, but His Existence was a thing of complete certainty for me. Of the mode and means of Connection with Him I had no smallest knowledge or even conception. I addressed Him with words from the brain and the lips. An insuperable wall perpetually separated me from Him. Now my father became ill with heart trouble. Doctors, nurses, all the dreaded paraphernalia of sickness pervaded the house. During two terrible years he lingered on. Heart-broken at the sight of his sufferings, I hardly left his bedside. Finally death released him. But my health, which had always been good, was now completely broken down; I became a semi-invalid, always suffering, too delicate to marry. Under pressure of this continued wretchedness I sank into a nerveless condition of mere dumb endurance--a passive acceptance of the miseries of life "as willed by God," I assured myself. I entered a stagnant state of _mere_ resignation, whereas accompanying the resignation there should have been a forward-piercing endeavour to reach out and attain a higher spiritual level through Jesus Christ: a persistent effort to light my lamp at the Spiritual Flame to which each must _bring his own lamp,_ for it is not lit for him by the mere outward ceremony of Baptism--that ceremony is but the Invitation to come to the Light: for each one individually, _in full consciousness of desire,_ that lighting must be obtained from the Saviour. I had not obtained this light. I did not comprehend that it was necessary. I understood nothing; I was a spiritual savage. Vague, miserable thoughts, gloomy self-introspections, merely fatigue the vitality without assisting the soul. What is required is a persistent endeavour to establish an inwardly felt relationship first to the Man Jesus. His Personality, His Characteristics are to be drawn into the secret places of the heart by means of the natural sympathy which plays between two hearts that both know love and suffering, and hope and dejection. Sympathy established--love will soon follow. Later, an iron energy to overcome will be required. The supreme necessity of the soul before being filled with love is to maintain the will of the whole spiritual being in conformity with the Will of God. In the achievement of this she is under incessant assistance: in fact everything in the spiritual life is a gift--as in the physical: for who can produce his own sight or his own growth? In the physical these are automatic--in the spiritual they are accomplished only, as it were, "by request," and this request a deep all-pervading desire. We cannot of our own will climb the spiritual heights, neither can we climb them without using our will. It is Will flowing towards Will which carries us by the power of Jesus Christ to the Goal. VI With recovered health, I married, and knew great happiness; but as a bride of four months I had to part from my husband, who went to the South African War. Always, always this terrible pain of love that must part. Always it was love that seemed to me the most beautiful thing in life, and always it was love that hurt me most. He was away for fifteen months. I made no spiritual advance whatever. Mystified by so much pain, I now began to regard God if not as the actual Author of all pain, at any rate as the Permitter of all pain. More and more I fell back in alarm at the discovery of the depths of my own capacities for suffering. A tremendous fear of God now commenced to grow up in me, which so increased that after a few years I listened with astonishment when I heard people say they were afraid of _any_ person, even a burglar! I could no longer understand feeling fear for anyone or anything save God. All my actions were now governed solely by this sense of weighty, immediate fear of Him. This continued for some ten years. When my husband at last returned from the War we took up again our happy married life, and we lived together without a cross word, in a wonderful world of our own, as lovers do. It was remarkable that we were so happy, for we had no interests in common. My husband loved all sports and all games, whereas interest in those things was frankly incomprehensible to me. In the winter, when he was out in the hunting-field, I spent much time by myself; but I was never dull, for I could walk out amongst Nature and indulge in my pastime, if the weather were fine: and if not, I could observe and admire everything that grew and lived close at hand in the hedgerows and fields, and I would work for hours with my needle, for then I could think; I worked hard in the garden. A dreadful question now often presented itself to me: Had I really a soul at all, or was I merely a passing shadow, here momentarily for God's amusement? If I had an eternal soul, where did it live--in my head with my brain as a higher part of my mind? Men had souls, I was sure of that; and they asserted the possession of them very positively--but women? I understood Mahomed grudgingly granted them a half-soul, and that only conditionally. Scriptures spoke harshly of women; Paul was bitter against them; all the sins and troubles of the world were laid upon their delicate and beautiful shoulders. In Revelation I found no mention whatever of Woman in the life of the Resurrection. All this hurt me. What profound injustice--to suffer so much and to receive no recognition whatever whilst men walked off with all the joys after leading very questionable lives! Why continue to struggle to please God when His interest in me would so soon be over? I went through very real and great spiritual sufferings, and temptations to throw myself again solely into world-interests, to console myself with the here and now, for I had the means: it was all to my hand. I swayed to and fro: at one time I felt very hard towards God, terribly hurt by this love-betrayal. But when I looked at the beauties of Nature and the glories of that endless sky, ah, my heart melted with tenderness and admiration for the marvellous Maker of it all. Truly, He was worthy of any sacrifice upon my part. If my poor, tiny, suffering life afforded Him amusement, I was willing to have it so. After all--for what wretched, ugly, and miserable men women frequently sacrificed themselves without getting any other reward for it than neglect and indifference. How much better to sacrifice oneself to the All-Perfect, All-Beautiful God! I finally resigned myself entirely and completely to this point of view, and, having done so, I thus addressed, in all reverence and earnestness, the Deity:-- "Almighty God, if it is Thy Will to blot out Woman from Paradise I most humbly assure Thee of this--Man will miss her sorely; and Thou Thyself, Almighty God, when Thou dost visit Paradise, wilt miss her also!" After this I seldom said any private prayers, for I was not of the Acceptable Sex. But I paid a public respect to God in the church, where I worshipped Him with profound reverence and great sadness. But I thought of Him in my heart constantly, with all those tender, loving, longing thoughts which are the heart's bouquet held out to God. Happiness for me, then, must be found entirely in this world, and I found it in my love for my husband. Happiness was that which the whole world was looking for; but I could not fail to notice more and more the ridiculous picture presented by Society in its pretences of being the means of finding this happiness. None of its ardent devotees were "happy" people; they were excited, egotistical, intensely vain and selfish, often bitter and disappointed, filled with a demon of competition, jealous, and full of empty, insincere smiles. I perceived the chagrins from which they secretly suffered--the tears behind the laughter. I was not in the least deceived or impressed by any of them, but wondered how they managed to hang together and deceive each other. More and more I looked for purely mental pleasures. Mind was everything. I now began to despise my body--I almost hated it as an incubus! Social successes or failures grew to be a matter of complete indifference to me, and social life resolved itself into being solely the means of bringing mind into contact with mind. The question of fashionable environment ceased to exist for me, but the question of how and where to meet with thinking minds was what concerned me: it was not an easy one to solve in the usual conditions of country life, with its sports and its human-animal interests. Finally, total mental solitude closed around me. In spite of my doubt as to the existence of a woman-soul, I still felt the same piercing desire and need for God--the acquisition of knowledge in no way lessened this pain. What, after all, is knowledge by itself? The light of the highest human intelligence seems hardly greater than the wan lamp of a diminutive glow-worm, surrounded by the vastness of the night. In sorrow, in trouble, in pain, could knowledge or the mind do so much more for me than the despised body? No, something more than the intelligence was needed to give life any sense of adequacy: even human love was insufficient. God Himself was needed, and the ever-recurring necessity would force itself upon me of the need for a personal direct connection with God. I continued to find it utterly impossible to achieve this. Mere faith by no means fulfilled my requirements. God, then, remained inaccessible--the mind fell back from every attempt to reach Him. He was unknowable, yet not unthinkable--that is to say, He was not unthinkable as Being, but only in particularisation and in realisation. I could know Him to Be; but in that alone where was any consolation?--I found it totally inadequate. It was some form of personal Contact that was needed; but if my mind failed to reach this, with what else should I reach it? Ah, I was infinitely too small for this terrible mystery; but, small as I was, how I could suffer! Why this suffering? Why would He not show Himself? Harsh, rebellious, criticising thoughts frequently invaded me: the whole scheme of Nature and of life at times appeared cruel, unreasonably so. All the old ever-to-be-repeated cycle of bitter human thoughts had to be gone all through again in my own individual atom. Here and there the bitterness might vary: as, for instance, the collapse and corruption of the body with its hideous finale never caused me distress. I had become too indifferent to the body; but I found that most persons clung to it with extraordinary tenacity, indeed appeared to regard it as their most valuable possession! What I did resent, and was deeply mystified by, was the capacity for suffering and pain which had no balance in any corresponding joy. It was idle to say that the joy of festivities, even of human love, equalled the anguish of grief over others, or the sufferings of physical ill-health. They did not counterbalance it; sorrow was more weighty than joy, and far more durable. Later I became convinced that there did exist a full equivalent of joy, as against pain, and that I merely had no knowledge of how to find it. Years succeeded each other in this way, bringing greater loosening of earth-ties, more abstraction, certainly no improvement of character. My husband's duties as a soldier took us to many parts of the world. During a visit to Africa I was struck by lightning, and for ten days my sufferings were almost unendurable; every nerve seemed electrocuted. It was long before I quite recovered. Whilst this illness lasted, though it caused him no inconvenience and he led his life exactly as usual, I yet noticed a change in my husband's love. I was deeply pained, almost horrified, by this revelation of the natural imperfection of human love: profoundly saddened, I asked myself was it nothing but lust which had inspired and dictated all the poems of the world? I thought more and more of Jesus' love; I began to know that nothing less than His perfect love could satisfy me. In this illness I was tremendously alone. VII I commenced to meditate upon the life and the character and the love of Jesus Christ. I was now about thirty-six. Gradually He became for me a secret Mind-Companion. I began to rely upon this companionship--though it appeared intensely one-sided, for at first it seemed always to be I who gave! Nevertheless I found a growing calm arising from this apparently so one-sided friendship. A subtle assistance and comfort came to me, it was impossible to say how, yet it came from this companionship as it came from nothing else. That Jesus Christ was God I knew to be the faith of the Church, but that He actually was so I felt no conviction of whatever: indeed, it was incomprehensible to me. I thought of Him as a Perfect Man, with divine powers. He was my Jesus. I denied nothing, for I was far too small and ignorant to venture to do so: I kept a perfectly open mind and loved Him for Himself, as the Man Jesus. This went on for some years. In all my spiritual advancement I was incredibly slow! What had delayed me in progress was lack of using the right Procedure and the right Prayer. I sought for God with persistence and great longing; but I sought Him as the Father, and the Godhead is inaccessible to the creature. On becoming truly desirous of finding God it is necessary that with great persistence we pray the Father in the name of Jesus Christ that He will give us to Jesus Christ and nil the heart and mind with love for Christ. Only through Jesus Christ can we find the Godhead, and we cannot be satisfied with less than the Godhead. With the creature we cannot come into contact with the Godhead--but with the soul only. The soul is awakened, revived, reglorified by Grace of Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit effects the repentance and conversion of the heart and mind, for without this conversion towards a spiritual life the soul remains in bondage to the unconverted creature. VIII One day I returned from a walk, and hardly had I entered my room when I commenced thinking with great nearness and intimacy of Jesus; and suddenly, with the most intense vividness, He presented Himself before my consciousness so that I inwardly perceived Him, and at once I was overcome by a great agony of remorse for my unworthiness: it was as though my heart and mind broke in pieces and melted in the stress of this fearful pain, which continued--increased--became unendurable, and lasted altogether an hour. Too ignorant to know that this was the pain of Repentance, I did not understand what had happened to me; but now indeed at least I knew beyond a doubt that I had a soul! My wonderful Lord had come to pay me a visit, and I was not fit to receive Him--hence my agony. I would try with all my strength to improve myself for Him. I was at first at a standstill to know even where to commence in this improvement, for words fail to describe what I now saw in myself! Up till now I had publicly confessed myself a sinner, and privately calmly thought of myself as a sinner, but without being disturbed by it or perceiving how I was one! I kept the commandments in the usual degree and way, and was conscientious in my dealings with others. Now all at once--by this Presentment of Himself before my soul--which had lasted for no more than one moment of time--I suddenly, and with terrible clearness, saw the whole insufferable offensiveness of myself. For some time, even for some weeks, I remained like a person half-stunned with astonishment. Then I determined to try to become less selfish, less irritable and impatient, to show far more consideration for everyone else, to be rigidly truthful: in fact, try to commence an alteration. For one thing--about telling lies--I had always been quite truthful in large things, but often told some social lies for my own convenience, and sometimes told them for no reason at all! This spontaneous Evil filled me with more astonishment than shame; whence did this Evil come? I could never account for this strange Intruder which seemed to have a separate life and will of its own, and which, with no conscious invitation upon my part, would suddenly visit me! and _in all manner of shapes and ways!_ But whatever my difficulties, I had always this immense incentive--to please my Jesus, tender and wonderful, my Perfect Friend. Two years went by, and on Easter morning, at the close of the service as I knelt in prayer in the church, He suddenly presented Himself again before my soul, and again I saw myself, and again I went down and down into those terrible abysses of spiritual pain; and I suffered more than I suffered the first time: indeed, I have never had the courage to quite fully recall the full depths of this anguish to mind. After this my soul knew Jesus as Christ the Son of God, and my heart and mind accepted this without any further wonder or question, and entirely without knowing how this knowledge had been given, for it came as a gift. A great repose now commenced to fill me, and the world and all its interests and ways seemed softly and gently blown out of my heart by the wings of a great new love, my love for the Risen Christ. Though outwardly my friends might see no change, yet inwardly I was secretly changing month by month. Even the great love I had for my husband began to fade: this caused me distress; I thought I was growing heartless, and yet it was rather that my heart had grown so large that no man could fill it! I felt within me an immense, incomprehensible capacity for love, and the whole world with all its contents seemed totally, even absurdly, inadequate to satisfy this great capacity. I suffered over it without understanding it. IX I had a garden full of old-fashioned flowers, surrounded by high walls with thatch. As I grew in my heart more and more away from the world, I worked more in the garden, and whilst I worked I thought mostly about God--God so far away and hidden, and yet so near my heart. There were many different song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never grew tired. If I stayed quite still, he came so close he almost touched me; but if I moved towards him, he flew away in a great fright. It seemed to me I was like that robin, and I wanted to come close, close to the feet of God. But He would not let me find Him. He would not make me any sign. He would not let me feel I knew Him. Did He in His wisdom know that if He showed Himself too openly I should go mad with fear or joy? I could not tell. But every day as the robin sang to me in the garden I sang to God a little gentle song out of my heart--a song to the hidden God Who called me, and when I answered Him would not be found, and, still remaining hidden, called and called till I was dumb with the pain and wonder of this mystery. Then suddenly came the Great War. My husband was amongst the first to have to go. All my love for him which I had thought to be fading now rose up again to its full strength: it was no mere weakly sentiment, but a powerful type of human love which had been able to carry me through fifteen years of married life without one hour of quarrelling; its roots were deep into my heart and mind: the very strength and perfection of it but made of it a greater instrument for torture. Why should this most beautiful of all human emotions carry with it so heavy a penalty, for which no remedy appeared to exist? It had not then been made clear to me that all human loves must first be offered up and ascend into the love of God: then only are they freed from this Pain-Tax. God must first be All in All to us before we can enter amongst the number who are all in all to Him--constantly consoled by Him. This condition of being all in all is demanded as a right by all men and women in mutual love, yet we deny this right to God: we are not even willing to attempt it! this failure to be willing is the grave error we make. Our attitude to God is not one of love, but of an expectancy of favours. An identical sacrifice is demanded of us in marriage--father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends: all these loves must become subservient to the new love, and with what willingness and smiles this sacrifice is usually made! Not so with our sacrifices to God--we make them with bitter tears, hard hearts, long faces. Is He never hurt by this perpetual grudgingness of love? But I had not yet learnt any of this, and I could not accept, I could not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank, appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not so foolish as to attribute all this horror that was closing in upon the world to the direct Will of God: I could perceive that, on the contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could not--would not--God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into the pit? I tried to obtain relief by casting this burden on to Christ, and was not able to accomplish it. I tried to draw the succour of God down into my heart, and I tried to throw myself out and up to Him--I could do neither: the vast barrier remained; Faith could not take me through it. A horrible kind of second sight now possessed me, so that, although I never heard one word from my husband, I became aware of much that was happening to him--knew him pressed perpetually backwards, fighting for his life, knew him at times lying exhausted out in the open fields at night. At last I began to fear for my reason; I became afraid of the torture of the nights and sat up reading, forcing my mind to concentrate itself upon the book--the near-to-hand help of the book was more effective than the spiritual help in which something altogether vital was still missing. Relief only came when after a month a letter reached me from my husband, saying that the terrible retreat was over and he safe. Months and years dragged by. Sometimes the pain of it all was eased; sometimes it increased. As grass mown down and withered in the fields gives out the pleasant scent of hay, so in her laceration and her anguish did the soul, I wondered, give off some Pain-Song pleasing to Almighty God. At first I recoiled with terror from this thought; finally love overcame the terror--I was willing to have it so, if it pleased Him. My soul reached down into great and fearful depths. I envied the soldiers dying upon the battlefields; life was become far more terrible to me than death. Looking back upon my struggles, I see with profound astonishment how unaware I was of my impudence to God in attributing to Him qualities of cruelty and callousness, such as are to be found only amongst the lowest men! Yet good was permitted to come out of this evil; for where I attributed to God a callousness and even an enjoyment of my sufferings, I learnt self-sacrifice, the effacement of all personal gain, and total submission for love's sake to His Will, cruel though I might imagine it to be. With what tears does the heart afterwards address itself in awed repentance to its Beloved and Gentle God! A painful illness came and lasted for months. Having no home, I was obliged to endure the misery of it as best I could among strangers. At this time I touched perhaps the very lowest depths. How often I longed that I might never wake in the morning! I loathed my life. During this illness I came exceedingly near to Christ, so much so that I am not able to describe the vividness of it. What I learnt out of this time of suffering I do not know--save complete submission. I became like wax--wax which was asked to take only one impression, and that pain. I was too dumb; I should have remembered those words, that "men ought not to faint, but to pray." Bewildered, and mystified by my own unhappiness and that of so many others all around me, I sank in my submission too much into a state of lethargic resignation, whereas an onward-driving resolution to win through, a powerful determination to seek and obtain the immediate protection and assistance of God, a standing before God, and a claiming of His help--these things are required of the soul: in fact that importunity is necessary of which Jesus spoke (Luke xi. 7-9): "And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not . . . I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet _because of his importunity_ he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Such times of distress are storms, fearful battles of the soul in which she must not faint but rise up and walk towards God and clamour for help; and she will receive it. In His own good time He will give her all that she asks and more even than she dreamed of. She must claim from God a continual restrengthening, and search with glowing aspiration for a more joyous love. X It was summer-time: a great battle was raging in France. A friend wrote me that my husband was up in the very foremost part of it. I heard no word from my husband; weeks passed, and still the same ominous silence. At last the day came when the shadow of these two fearful years rose up and overwhelmed me altogether. I went up on to the wild lonely hill where I so often walked, and there I contended with God for His help. For the first time in my life there was nothing between God and myself--this had _continually_ happened with Jesus Christ, but not with God the Father, Who remained totally inaccessible to me. Now, like a man standing in a very dark place and seeing nothing but knowing himself immediately near to another--so I knew myself in very great nearness to God. I had no need for eyes to see outwardly, because of the immense magnetism of this inward Awareness. At one moment my heart and mind ran like water before Him--praying Him, beseeching Him for His help; at another my soul stood straight up before Him, contending and claiming because she could bear no more: and it felt as though the Spirit of God stood over against my spirit, and my spirit wrestled with God's Spirit for more than an hour. But He gave me no answer, no sign, no help. He gave me nothing but that awful silence which seems to hang for ever between God and Man. And I became exhausted, and turned away in despair from God, and from supplication, and from striving, and from contending, and, very quiet and profoundly sad, I stood looking out across the hills to the distant view--how gentle and lovely this peace of the evening sky, whilst on earth all the nations of the world were fighting together in blood and fury and pain! I had stood there for perhaps ten minutes, mutely and sadly wondering at the meaning of it all, and was commencing to walk away when suddenly I was surrounded by a great whiteness which blotted out from me all my surroundings. It was like a great light or white cloud which hid all my surroundings from me, though I stood there with my eyes wide open: and the cloud pricked, so that I said to myself, "It is an electric cloud," and it pricked me from my head down to my elbows, but no further. I felt no fear whatever, but a very great wonder, and stood there all quite simple and placid, feeling very quiet. Then there began to be poured into me an indescribably great vitality, so that I said to myself, "I am being filled with some marvellous Elixir." And it filled me from the feet up, gently and slowly, so that I could notice every advance of it. As it rose higher in me, so I grew to feel freed: that is to say, I had within me the astounding sensation of having the capacity to pass where or how I would--which is to say I felt freed of the law of gravity. I was like a free spirit--I felt and knew within myself this glorious freedom! I tasted for some moments a new form of living! Words are unable to convey the splendour of it, the boundless joy, the liberty, the glory of it. And the incomprehensible Power rose and rose in me until it reached the very crown of my head, and immediately it had quite filled me a marvellous thing happened--the Wall, the dreadful Barrier between God and me, came down entirely, and immediately I loved Him. I was so filled with love that I had to cry aloud my love, so great was the force and the wonder and the delight and the might of it. And now, slowly, the vivid whiteness melted away so that I saw everything around me once more just as before; but for a little while I continued to stand there very still and thoughtful, because I was filled with wonder and great peace. Then I turned to walk home, but I walked as a New Creature in a New World--my heart felt like the heart of an angel, glowing white-hot with the love for God, and all my sorrows fled away in a vast joy! This was His answer, this was His help. After years and years of wrestling and struggling, in one moment of time He had let me find Him, He had poured His Paradise into my soul! Never was such inconceivable joy--never was such gladness! My griefs and pains and woes were wiped away--totally effaced as though they had never existed! Oh, the magnificence of such splendid joy! The whole of space could scarcely now be large enough to hold me! I needed all of it--I welcomed its immensity as once I was oppressed by it. God and my Soul, and Love, and Light, and Space! PART II At last my little suffering life is sheltered in the known, the felt, protection of the Ineffable and Invisible Being. The Being Who, without revealing Himself to me by sight or sound, yet communicates Himself to me in some divine manner at once all-sufficing and inexpressible. I ask no questions: I am in no haste of anxious learning. My heart and my mind and my soul stand still and drink in the glory of this happiness. All day, often half the night, I worship Him. I love Him with this new love, so different from anything known before. The greatest earthly love, by comparison to it, has become feeble, impure, almost grotesque in its inefficiency--a tinsel counterfeit of this glistening mystery which must still be spoken of as love because I know no other name. I find it difficult, almost impossible, to speak to my fellow-creatures, because I have only two words, two thoughts in my entire being: my God, and my love for Him. I am like a thing that is magnetised, held: I am not able, day or night, to detach my mind from God. I wake with His name upon my lips, with His glory in my soul. In all this there is no virtue on my part; there is no effort; the capacity for this boundless devotion is a free gift. Coming immediately after my anguished prayer on the hill, it appears to me to have come solely on account of that one prayer--the previous prayers, struggles, endeavours of five-and-twenty years are entirely forgotten. I comprehend nothing of the mystery, neither as yet do I feel any desire to comprehend it; but in a world where only love, beauty, happiness, and repose exist, I walk and talk and live alone with God. Yet the war was continuing as usual, my husband was in the same danger, I became ill with influenza, my friends continued to die of wounds, my relations to be killed one by one; but in all this there was no pain: the sting, the anguish, had gone out of every single thing in life. My consciousness feels to be composed of two extremes: I am a child of a few years of age, to whom sin, suffering, pain, evil, and temptation are not known, and yet, though knowing so little, I know the unutterably great--I know God. This cannot be expressed--merely, it can be said that two extremes have met. This new consciousness, this new worship, this new love is for the Godhead. Christ is gone up into the Godhead, and I worship Him in, and as One with, the Godhead. For three months this continues uninterruptedly. Then Jesus Christ presents Himself to my consciousness. Jesus, Who led me to this happiness, now calls and calls to my soul. Immediately I commence to respond to Him. He is drawing me away; He is teaching me something--at first I do not know what, but soon I know that He is leading me out of this Eden, this paradise of my childhood: I know it, because I begin to feel pain again, and to recognise evil. O my Jesus, my Jesus, must I really follow Thee out of Paradise back into pain? Yes, in less than two weeks I am fully back in the world again--but not the same world, _because I know how to escape from it._ The Door that I knocked at, and that all in one moment was opened to me, is _never closed._ I can go in and out. God never closes to me the right of way; never severs those secret wires of Divine Communication. But my soul is not nursed, as it were, in His Hands day and night--she must learn to grow up. Woeful education, deadly days of learning, stony paths that hurt, that hurt all the more because of the felicity that only so recently was mine. For three months I am walking further and further out of Eden and back into the horrors of the world--following Jesus. One night I compose myself as usual for sleep, but I do not sleep, neither can I say that I am quite awake. It is neither sleep, nor is my wakefulness the usual wakefulness. I do not dream, I cannot move. My consciousness is alight with a new fiery energy of life; it feels to extend to an infinite distance beyond my body, and yet remains connected with my body. I live in a manner totally new and totally incomprehensible, a life in which none of my senses are used and which is yet a thousand, and more than a thousand, times as vivid. It is living at white heat--without forms, without sound, without sight, without anything which I have ever been aware of in this world, and at a terrible speed. What is the meaning of all this? I do not know: my body is quite helpless and is distressed, but I am not afraid. God is teaching me something in His own way. For six weeks every night I enter this condition, and the duration and power or intensity of it increase by degrees. It feels that my soul is projected or travels for incalculable distances beyond my body--(long afterwards I understand through experience that this is not the mode of it, but that the soul _remaining in the body_ is by some de-insulation exposed to the knowledge of spirit-life as and when free of the flesh)--and I learn to comprehend and to know a new manner of living, as a swimmer learns a new mode of progression by means of his swimming, which is not his natural way. By the end of three weeks I can remain nightly for many hours in this condition, which is always accompanied by an intense and vivid consciousness of God. As this consciousness of God becomes more and more vivid so my body suffers more and more. By day I can only eat the smallest morsels of food, which almost choke me, but I drink a great quantity of water. I am perfectly healthy, though I have hardly any sleep and very little, indeed almost no, food--the suffering is only at night with the breathing and the heart when in this strange condition. But I have no anxiety whatever; I am glad that He shall do as He pleases with me. Nothing but love can give us this supreme confidence. During the whole of these experiences I live in a state of very considerable abstraction. But this now suddenly increases, increases to such an extent that I hardly know whether to call it abstraction or the extremity of poverty. I now become divested of all interests outside and inside, divested of the greater part of my intelligence, divested of my will. I am of no value whatever, less than the dust on the road. In this awful nothingness I am still I. My consciousness continues and is not confounded with or lost in any other consciousness, but is reduced to stark nakedness and worth nothing: and this worthless nothing is hung up and, as it were, suspended nowhere in particular as far from earth as from heaven, totally unknown and unwanted by both God and Man. I am naked patience--waiting. I have a few thoughts, but very few: I think one thought where in normal times I should think ten thousand. I feel and know that I am nothing, and I feel that this has been done to me; just as before, all that I had was also done to me and was a gift. So I acknowledge that I once had and was perhaps something and that now I possess and certainly am nothing--I acknowledge it, I accept it, without hesitation, without protest. One of my few thoughts is that I shall remain for the rest of my natural life in this pitiful state where, however, I shall hope to be preserved from further sinning simply because I have not a sufficiency of will, intelligence, or thought with which to sin! I am too completely nothing to be able to sin. I have another thought, which is that as I no longer have any intelligence with which to deal with the ordinary difficulties of life, such as street life and traffic, I shall shortly be run over and killed; and so I put a card with my address on it into my little handbag, for the convenience of those who shall be obliged to deal with my body afterwards. I have just sufficient capacity left me to automatically, mechanically, go through with the necessities of life. I have not become idiotic. I live in a tremendous and profound solitude, such a solitude as would frighten many people greatly. But my beautiful pastime had accustomed me to solitude and also to something of this nothingness--a brief nothingness was a necessary part of the beautiful pastime: so I have no fears now of any kind; but I wonder. Perhaps I am just four things--wonder, patience, resignation, and nothing. Yet through this dreadful solitude penetrates the inspiration of some unseen guide. As regards this particular time I am convinced that this guide is an outside presence. I depend in all my goings and comings upon the guidance of this guide who proves incredibly accurate in every detail, in details of even the smallest necessities. If this guide is a part of myself, it is that of me with which I have not previously come in contact; and it is not the Reason, but far beyond the Reason, for it _divines._ It is then either a spiritual guide, companion, or guardian angel, or it is a power possessed by the soul herself--a foretasting cognisance, a mysterious intuition of which we as yet comprehend little or nothing, and which we have not yet learnt to command: it presents itself; it absents itself; but it condescends to every need; it is always helpful, always beneficent; it sees that which it sees before the event; it hears that which it hears before the words are spoken. It guides by what would seem to be two very different modes: the greater things come by a mode altogether indescribable; but for the small things of every day I will take simple examples here and there. I am abroad. Someone in the family at home is taken dangerously ill. I am urgently needed; but the trains are overcrowded, I am unable to get my seat transferred to an earlier date, I cannot let them know at home when I shall return: all is uncertain, all is chaos. I am painfully anxious, I am ashamed to say I am greatly worried: I turn as always to my Lord, asking Him to forgive these selfish fears and to help me. A little while later a scene presents itself to me--I see my own room, I hear the voice of a page-boy standing in the door and saying, "You are wanted on the telephone"; then I am at the telephone, and a voice is saying to me, "_Your train accommodation is transferred to Friday the 19th._" That is all, because I am rung off. Five days pass. I am in my room, and the page is really standing at the door, and he says, "You are wanted on the telephone." I go to the telephone, and a voice says, "_Your train accommodation is transferred to Friday the 19th._" That is all, because I am rung off. Again, there is a young lay-reader, closely in contact with Christ; he has a wife and young child. The weather is bitterly cold. A picture suddenly comes before me of this family, and there is a voice saying, "_He was gathering together the last little pieces of fuel when your present came._" Immediately I understand that I am required to send coal to these people, and to do it at once without delay. The following day the wife comes with tears to thank me, and she tells me, "We were in despair; my husband's heart is so weak he cannot bear the cold, he becomes seriously ill. _He was gathering together the last little pieces of fuel when your present came._" Or, again, I very badly need a pair of walking shoes, but for weeks I have been so absorbed in contemplation that the pain of bringing myself from this holy joy to do shopping is too great, and I delay and delay; I cannot bring myself to it; but shoes are a necessity of earthly life. Having exceedingly narrow feet, I am obliged always to get my shoes from a certain maker, and now, during the war, he makes so few shoes. To-day a picture of the shop comes before me, and the words "Go to-day, go to-day," urge themselves upon my consciousness. Then a picture comes of the assistant; I show her my foot, and she says, "_There is only one pair left; how fortunate you came to-day!_" So I understand I must go to my shopping and, greatly against my will, I go that afternoon. The assistant comes forward, and I show her my foot, and she says, "_There is only one pair left; how fortunate you came to-day!_" Always in this mode of the guiding are the little picture and the _exact_ words: all of it of the easiest to describe; but of the other and the greater guiding I do not know how to tell. It is sheer pure knowledge, received not in parts, pictures, or words, but as a whole and in a mode so exquisitely mysterious as to be at once too intricate for description, and yet simplicity itself! Sure, perfect, and serene mode of knowledge! Royal knowledge which knows no toil, no sweat of work, no common drudgery, art thou of the soul herself, or art thou altogether from outside the soul? This I know, that though the first mode would seem to be very small and to deal with littleness, and the last mode seems to be entirely apart from it because of the greatnesses with which it deals that they are linked and that the power is one power soaring to the highest, condescending to the smallest. So now, in the time of this strange abstraction and poverty, when the cinematograph of my mind is closed down, and with it the delicate mechanism which takes up, uses, and connects all that we take in by the senses, and which makes the world so real and so comprehensible, is become unhitched and disconnected, so that nothing in the world seems any longer real or possesses either value or meaning, and I stand before it all defenceless, seemingly unable to deal with it, utterly indifferent to it; then and now Reason may very well say to me, "You are in very great danger"; but I am not in any danger, because I am guided whenever necessary by some condescending sagacity far more sagacious than my poor Reason, infinitely more penetrative and effectual than any sense of eye or ear. I remain fully convinced that at this time, at any rate, it was an outside sagacity which guided me--truly a guardian angel. This period of intense abstraction, this strange valley of humiliation, poverty, solitude, seemed a necessary prelude to the great, the supreme, experience of my life. As I came slowly out of this poverty and solitude, the joyousness of my spiritual experience increased: the nights were no longer at all a time of sleep or repose, but of rapturous living. The sixth week came, and I commenced to fear the nights and this tremendous living, because the happiness and the light and the poignancy and the rapture of it were becoming more than I could bear. I began to wonder secretly if God intended to draw my soul so near to Him that I should die of the splendour of this living, My raptures were not only caused by the sense of the immediate Presence of God--this is a distinctive rapture running through and above all raptures, but there are lesser ecstasies caused by the meeting of the soul with Thoughts or Ideas, with melodies which bear the soul in almost unendurable delight upon a thousand summits of perfection; and with an all-pervading rapturous Beauty in a great light. There is this peculiarity about the manner of these thoughts and melodies and beauties--they are not spoken, heard, or seen, but _lived._ I could not pass these things to my reason and translate the Ideas into words or the melodies into sounds, or the beauty into objects, for spirit-living is not translatable to earth-living, and I found in it no words, no sounds, no objects, and I comprehended and I lived with that in me which is above Reason and of which I had, previously to these experiences, had no cognisance. There came a night when I passed beyond Ideas, beyond melody, beyond beauty, into vast lost spaces, depths of untellable bliss, into a Light. And the Light is an ecstasy of delight, and the Light is an ocean of bliss, and the Light is Life and Love, and the Light is the too deep contact with God, and the Light is unbearable Joy; and in unendurable bliss my soul beseeches God that He will cover her from this most terrible rapture, this felicity which exceeds all measure. And she is not covered from it. And she beseeches Him again; and she is not covered; and being in the last extremity from this most terrible joy, she beseeches Him again: and immediately is covered from it. * * * My soul, my whole being, is terrified of God, and of joy. I dare not think of Him, I dare not pray; but, like some pitiful and wounded child, I creep to the feet of Jesus. When on the following evening once more the day closes and I compose myself for the night, I wonder tremblingly to what He will again expose me; but for the first time in six weeks I fall into a natural sleep and know no more until the morning. Then I understand that the lesson is over. Mighty and Terrible God, it was enough! In the light of these measureless joys what is any earthly joy? What is the very greatest experience of earthly happiness but so much waste paper? What are the joys of those vices for which men sell their souls, but soap-bubbles! The whole meaning of life, together with all the graduated and accepted values of it, becomes for ever changed in the light of the knowledge of Celestial Happiness. PART III I Wonderful, beautiful weeks went by, filled with divine, indescribable peace. The Presence of God was with me day and night, and the world was not the world as I had once known it--a place where men and women fought and sinned and toiled and anguished and wondered horribly the meaning of this mystery of pain and joy, of life and death. The world was become Paradise, and in my heart I cried to all my fellow-souls, "Why fret and toil, why sweat and anguish for the things of earth when our own God has in His hand such peace and bliss and happiness to give to Every man? O come and receive it, Every man his share." And the glamour of life in Unity with God became past all comprehension and all words. Is life, then, a poem? is it a melody? I cannot say; but it is one long essence of delight--a harmony of flowing out and back again to God. O blessed life! O blessed Man! O blessed God! II One morning in my room I began thinking and reasoning about a wonderful change that I knew had crept all through me. If God should now come at any moment of the day or night and turn over every secret page of heart and mind, He would not find one thought or glimmer of any sort or kind of lust, whether of the eye, of the heart, of the mind, or of the body; and all in one moment I realised the miracle that Christ had worked in me, and the words came over my mind, "Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." And I stood there, gazing before me, speechless, and the tears of a joy that was an agony of gratitude poured and poured down my face like a rain. I did not sob, I could not speak, and very quietly I took my heart and my mind and my soul and laid them for ever at the feet of Christ. III One evening as I knelt to say my prayers, which were never long, because since the Visitation on the hill my natural habit--whether walking, sitting, working, travelling, or on my bed--had come to be a continual sending up from my heart and mind the tenderest and most adoring, the most worshipping and thanking little stream of thoughts to God (very much as a flower, if we could but see it, sends its scent to the sun). And because this mode of prayer is so smooth and joyous, so easy, so unutterably sweet, in that during it the Presence of God laves us about as the sun laves the flower--so because of this it was only for short and set times that I worshipped Him as the creature in prayers upon its knees; but those few moments of prayer would always be intense, the heart and the mind with great power bent wholly and singly upon God. So now, this evening as I knelt and dwelt in great singleness on God, He drew me so powerfully, He encompassed me so with His glamour, that this singleness and concentration of thought continued much longer than usual on account of the greatness of the love that I felt for Him, and the concentration became an intensity of penetration because of this magnetism, He turned on to me, and my mind became faint, and died, and I could no longer think of or on God, _for I was one with Him._ And I was still I; though I was become Ineffable Joy. When it was over I rose from my knees, and I said to myself, for five wonderful moments I have been in contact with God in an unutterable bliss and repose: and He gave me the bliss tenderly and not as on that Night of Terror; but when I looked at my watch I saw that it had been for between two and three hours. Then I wondered that I was not stiff, that I was not cold, for the night was chilly and I had nothing about me but a little velvet dressing-wrapper; and my neck was not stiff, though my head had been thrown back, as is a necessity in Communion with God; and I thought to myself, it is as if my body also had shared in the blessing. And this most blessed happening happened to me every day for a short while, usually only for a few moments. In this way God Himself caused and enabled me to contemplate and _know_ Him; and I saw that it was in some ways at one with my beautiful pastime, but with this tremendous difference in it--that whereas my mind had formerly concentrated itself upon the Beautiful, and remaining Mind had soared away above all forms into its nebulous essence in a strange seductive anguish, it now was drawn and magnetised beyond the Beautiful directly to the Maker of it: and the soaring was like a death or swooning of the mind, and immediately I was living with that which is above the mind: in this living there was no note of pain, but a marvellous joy. Slowly I learnt to differentiate degrees of Contemplation, but to my own finding there are two principal forms--Passive and Active (or High) Contemplation. In meditation is little or no activity, but a sweet quiet thinking and talking with Jesus Christ. In Passive Contemplation is the beginning of real activity; mind and soul without effort (though in a secret state of great love-activity) raise themselves, focussing themselves upon the all-unseen Godhead: now is no longer any possible picture in the mind, of anyone nor anything, not even of the gracious figure or of the ways of Christ: here, because of love, must begin the sheer straight drive of will and heart, mind and soul, to the Godhead, and here we may be said first to commence to breathe the air of heaven. There is no prayer, no beseeching, and no asking--there are no words and no thoughts save those that intrude and flash unwanted over the mind, but a great undivided attention and waiting upon God: God near, yet never touching. This state is no ecstasy, but smooth, silent, high living in which we learn heavenly manners. This is Passive or Quiet Contemplation. High Contemplation ends in Contact with God, in ecstasy and rapture. In it the activity of the soul (though entirely without effort on her part) is immensely increased. It is not to be sought for, and we cannot reach it for ourselves; but it is to be enjoyed when God calls, when He assists the soul, when He energises her. And then our cry is no more, Oh, that I had wings! but, Oh, that I might fold my wings and stay! IV Having come so far as this on the Soul's Great Adventure all alone as far as human guidance and companionship was concerned, and having for more than a year known the wonders of the joy of Union with God--which I did not know or understand to call Union, but called it to myself Finding God and coming into Contact with Him, because this is how it _feels,_ and the unscholarly creature understands and knows it in that way--well, having come so far, I had a great longing to share this knowledge, this exquisite balm, with my fellows, and I desired immensely to speak about it, to know how they fell about it, if they had yet come to it, or how far on the way they were to it, because I was all filled with the beauty of it, as lovers are filled with the beauty of their love. But I was frightened to speak to them, something held me back: also they felt to me to be so exceedingly full of the merest trifles--clothes and tea-parties and fashionable friends; and each time I tried to speak, in some mysterious way I found myself stopped. So I thought that I would speak to a friend that I had in the Church. Several times I had heard him preach very beautiful sermons, and I felt I very greatly needed the guidance of _someone who knew._ I wanted, I longed for, a human intermediary. I knew that I was in the hands of the God Whom for so many years I had so passionately sought; but He was so immeasurably great, and I so pitifully small, and I needed a human being--someone to whom I might speak about God. Yet something warned me not to commence as though speaking of myself, but of another person. I said only a few words, of the joy of this person in finding and loving God, and immediately my friend spoke very severely of persons who imagined they had found, and loved, God. God was not to be found by our puny, shifting and uncertain love: He was to be found by duty, by obedience to Church rules, by pious attendance _At Church._ He explained to me various dogmas which helped me no more than the moaning of the wind; he explained the absolute necessity (for salvation) of certain beliefs and written sentences, and ceremonials in the Church. Love was not the way. Love was emotion, emotion was deceptive: the mind, and severe firm attention to the dictates of The Church was what was required; in fact, he unfolded before me the Ecclesiastical Mind. I shrank back from it, dismayed, frightened. Were all the deep needs and requirements of the soul to be satisfied in the singing of hymns and Te Deum, in the close and reverent attention to the Ceremonies before the altar, and of the actions of Priests! Did, or could, any reasoning creature truly think to Find God by merely repeating, however reverently, the same prayers and ceremonies Sunday after Sunday! Could the great mountain up which my soul had sweated, and which each soul must climb--could it be climbed by kneeling in a pew in church? No; a total change of _character_ was needed, and Christ Himself was necessary for this change--Jesus Christ gliding into the heart and mind and soul, and _biding_ there because of that heart's, that mind's, invitation to, and love for, Him. Secretly--in one's own chamber, every hour of the day, in the streets, in the fields--in this way it might be accomplished. With Christ biding in the heart all the Church service would _become_ a thing of beauty as between the Soul and God; but without this Jesus Christ dwelling in the heart, the connection was not yet made between the Soul--the service--and the Godhead. Perhaps amongst Romans I should find the understanding that I looked for. I had a friend, a Dominican: I approached him, and I could see that for (as he thought) my own good he longed to convert me to the Roman Church: it did not seem that he wanted, or by any means knew how, to bring me into contact with God, but his thought was to bring me to _The Church._ "Does anyone," I asked him, "love God with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength?" "No," said he, "that is hardly possible--what is required is--"; and here he gave me once more the contents of the Ecclesiastical Mind: more authoritatively, more positively; but he spoke as I now commenced to realise all Churchmen would speak--that is to say, as persons having learnt by study, by careful rule and rote, by paper-knowledge, that which can only be learnt in the spirit direct from God. How immense is the difference to the Soul between this knowledge that comes of the spirit and the knowledge that comes of study--the knowledge which too easily becomes mechanical religion! I thought of the beautiful and gracious simplicity of the knowledge that Christ gives to the soul: I saw the nature of the sore disease that afflicts the soul of Christ's Church, I saw also a terrible pain for Christ in all this of which I had previously been unaware. I was thrown back and into myself by it all, and into a great loneliness as far as my fellow-beings were concerned. Yet I continued to need to share Christ with humanity, piercingly, pressingly. I would go to a library and find a book--but, on the other hand, I did not know the name of a single religious book or writer. So I wrote my need to a friend, and she sent me the life of one, Angela of Foligno. This book was a great delight to me, because, though written in tiresome mediaeval language, it yet expressed and shared exactly what I also knew and loved, and folded in strange wrappings of the fashion of the thought of long ago lay the same exquisite jewel that I also knew--the pearl for which men gladly sell all that they have in order to keep it--the knowledge of the Secret of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Union of the Soul with God. A few months went by, and I wrote asking for another book, and this time came Richard Rolle to my acquaintance--a little dried-up hermit, a holy man too, though I noticed how very discourteous he was to women; severe, critical, and suspicious, merely because they were women. How often I noticed this peculiarity, both in the monks of to-day with their averted eyes, as if the shadow of a woman falling on them were pollution, and long ago, Paul, and Peter also, and Moses, and many others, showed surprising weakness of intolerance and harsh judgment against Woman! Where was Wisdom in all this? Surely it was Folly flaunting and laughing and dressing herself cunningly to deceive, for did none of these men, from Adam downwards--did they never come to know themselves well enough to see that their danger lay not in the Woman, but in _their own inclination to sin!_ Oh, the righteousness of the greatest saint was, and is, but as dust and ashes before the righteousness of Jesus! and I came to wonder if there ever was or could be a saint, save one--Jesus. But this Richard Rolle, this person so discourteous to some fellow-beings, could all the same be very tender and loving towards God: he, too, held in his heart the Pearl without Price. He, too, knew that marvellous incense of the heart to God--that song of the soul, and called it by the same name as I; but how could it be called by any other name? for every soul that knows it, it must ever be the same. Oh, how intimately I knew those two people of centuries ago, and how intimately they knew me! A strange trio we made--he, the little wizened English hermit; she, the Italian woman in her nun's habit; and I in my modern Bond Street clothes: outwardly we were indeed incongruous, we had no links, but inwardly we were bound together by bonds of the purest gold. Of whether my friend sent me another book or not I cannot be sure; but my interest was becoming altogether removed from the past, because Christ was pressing me more and more to the present and the living. V God says to the aspiring soul: Come, taste of paradise and taste of heaven, and then return thou to the earth and wait, but not in idleness, and suffer many things till thou become perfect. So I found that in the earlier stages, in order to show me the heights to which I might by perseverance attain, He turned His Power and Glamour on to me, and I became a creature transfixed and held by love. I had one desire--God; I had one thought--God; I had one consciousness--God. There was no effort needed on my part: it was Pure Grace and the result of _past_ efforts. Having climbed and endured and endeavoured up to a certain degree, it was necessary for further advance that there should be more knowledge, and a more complete ineffaceable assurance. He therefore exposed the soul to as much as she could enjoy of heavenly pleasures and consciousness, without death to the flesh. In these experiences the soul found and knew God to be the fulfilment of all desires and all needs. The soul stood steadied before God in an unutterable Happiness which she perceived had no limit but God's Will, and her own capacity to endure the rapture of Him. What is it that would seem to determine this immeasurable privilege of Access to Him? It would seem to be a healthy willing will towards Him under all circumstances (to begin with). In due time He converts this mere will into a sweet love, the natural love of the heart and mind--by Gift of the Father we love Jesus Christ. This is salvation. But beyond salvation it would feel to be this way--after a further great endeavour and endurance on our part, a further great striving towards Him, He will awaken and prick to new life the soul and fill us with Holy Love. This is the second baptism, the baptism of the Spirit of Love. This is the entry to the Kingdom, and immediately we taste of the Godhead. What this is, what this ravishment of happiness is, cannot be known or guessed till we ourself have experienced it. In all this we progress by the communicated Power of Christ. How is this Power to be recognised, how is it communicated? Can we stand still and receive it like the dew, without work? At first, no--but later it would almost seem to be yes; or else it is that the exact attitude of heart and mind necessary for the reception of Grace becomes so habitual, so natural, that eventually we come to live in a state in which the communication of this Power becomes nearly continuous--though at any time by negligence or by a wrong attitude of Spirit _we fall away from it and lose it completely,_ and in all times of temptation or of testing we are cut off from _sensible_ contact with it. We learn then that Grace awaits every creature that attunes himself to the Will of Christ: it awaits good and bad, saint and sinner, it transforms the sinner into the saint, and but for its deliberate withdrawals we might suppose its action to be automatic, we might suppose it a fixed power like the sun, shining upon worthy and unworthy alike in degree. But Grace is far more subtle and mysterious than this. Grace is the most sublime, the most exquisite secret of all the mysteries which exist between the Soul and her Maker. * * * I find that He works upon my soul by two opposite ways: He draws her up to contact and sublime content; He sets her down to solitude and hides Himself: He is there, and will not speak. And she suffers horribly: and why not? Where is the injustice of this pain? Countless ages ago--who can count them?--the soul, born in a palace, has deliberately willed and chosen to become the Wanderer, the Street Walker; therefore fold up self-pity and lay it aside, because it does not live in the same house with Truth. Cast off self-consciousness and pride, because they are ridiculous, and a man can only be great or noble in just so far as he has abandoned them. * * * What is it that often makes it so much harder for the soul to refind God when she is enclosed in the male body? Perhaps the greater strength of the natural lusts of the male: perhaps the pride of "Being"--as lord of creation; or the pride of Intelligence which says, I rely easily upon myself, I need no religion of hymn tunes, I leave hymn tunes to women, for the ardour and capacity of my manhood rush to far different aims. But can any sane man think that the Essential Being who has created the universe, with all its infinite wonders, and this earth with its beauty and its wonderful flesh, and so much more that is not flesh but the still more wonderful spirit--can any sane man really think that this Essential Being is stuck fast at hymn tunes (which are Man's own invention!) and knows not how to satisfy the needs and longings of that which He has Himself created! Ardent and greatly mistaken Sinner, know and remember that to Find God is to Live Tremendously. * * * O belovèd Man with thy strangely vain and small pursuits and pleasures--thy pipe, thy wine, thy women, thy "busy" city life, thine immense sagacity which once in twenty times outwits a fool or knave--thy vaunted living is a bubble in a hand-basin! Find God and Live! PART IV I It would seem that lazily, reposefully, comfortably, easily, we can make no entry into the kingdom of heaven, but must enter by contest, by great endeavour. The occasions of these contests will be according to the everyday circumstances of each individual; the stress or distress of everyday life; for this is Christ's Process--to take the everyday woes and happenings of life in the flesh and use them for spiritual ends. What does the Saviour Himself tell us of the means of entry into the Kingdom? He uses two parables--that of the loaves of bread, and that of the Widow, and both speak of persistent importunity. If we would find God, we must besiege Him. Of entry to Christ's Process first it is necessary that we try in everything to please Him: subjecting our plans, desires, thoughts, intentions, to His secret approval, asking ourselves, Will this please Him best, or that? Then the soul commences to truly know, and to respond to, Christ. But she is not satisfied: she requires more. Woes may assail the whole creature: Christ offers no alleviation. He leads her straight into the woes: will she follow, will she hold back? The point to remember here is this, that whether we follow Christ or no we shall have woes: if we forsake Him, we are not rid of woes; if we follow Him, we are not rid of woes--not yet, but later we become eased, and even rid, by means of Consolations, for God is able by His Consolations to entirely overbalance the woe and make it happy peace, though the cause of the woe remains. Remember this in the days of visitation, and follow Christ, no matter where He leads. Christ leads _through_ the woe, because it is the shortest way. The unguided soul wanders _beside_ the woe, hating and fearing it, unable to rid herself of it, gaining nothing by it, suffering in vain, and no Companion comes to ease the burden with His company. The progress of our spiritual advance would feel to be that because we become more and more aware of the failure of earthly consolations and amusements, and more and more aware of the suffering, the sin, and the evil that there is about us, so more and more our desires go out towards the good, and more and more we turn to Christ. Then Christ may deliberately make Himself non-sufficient for the soul, and if He so does she must reach out after the Godhead; then by means of more woes the soul and the creature clamour more and more after the Godhead and will not be satisfied with less than the Godhead, and, continuing to clamour, are brought by Christ to the new birth, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Immediately the soul and creature become rid of Woe; and, living a life altogether apart from the world, in a marvellous crystal joy they taste of the Godhead and of Eternal Pleasures. This for a short time only: we have entered the Kingdom, but are still the smallest of spiritual children: tenderly, wonderfully God cares for us, but we must grow, we must learn heavenly manners. So Jesus Christ calls us again, and where does He lead us? Straight back into the world, the daily life from which we thought we had escaped! Here truly is a Woe, a Woe worse than any Woe we ever had before. Now we enter the Course of spiritual temptations, woes, and endurances, and in the midst of the pots and pans of daily life Christ teaches us heavenly manners. II Since Contemplation is so necessary for Union with God and for the soul's _enjoyment_ of God--is it a capacity common to all persons? Yes, though, like all other capacities, in varying degrees; but few will give themselves up to the difficulties of developing the capacity; and it is easy to know why, for our "natural" state is that we work for that which brings the easiest, most immediate, and most substantially visible reward. Those who could most easily develop their powers of contemplation are those to whom Beauty speaks, or those who are delicately sensitive to some ideal, nameless, elusive, that draws and then retreats, but in retreating still draws. The poet, the artist, the dreamer _that harnesses his mind_--all can contemplate. The Thinker, _thinking straight through,_ the proficient business man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the scientist, the inventor--all these men are contemplatives who do not drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though first they must give up ("sacrifice") all that is unsavoury in thought and in living: yet such is the vast, the boundless Attraction of God that having once (if only for a few moments) retouched this lost Attraction of His, we afterwards are possessed with no other desire so powerful as the desire to retouch Him again, and "sacrifice" becomes no sacrifice. Truly, having once known God, we find life without Him to be meaningless and as unbeautiful as a broken stem without its flower: pitiful, naked, and helpless as the body of a butterfly without the wings. III At this time I read Bergson's _Creative Evolution_--a masterpiece of thinking by a man who, like most others, is seeking for God. But I am unable to read the book through because of the pain it causes. The pain is partly the same pain which I knew (and which I re-enter again in sympathy with the writer) when I tried in my youth to climb to God by the intelligence and will of my mind; but there is also a new pain, wide as an ocean, the pain of Compassion--for it is so long this way to God that Bergson pursues, so long, so long; and the particular way of this book is to me not like climbing, but descending: it resembles the frenzied action of a man searching for lilies downwards, digging with painful persistence in the dark earth amongst roots. How much more joyous to find the lily where she blooms, above in the light! There is another way of the Intelligence: a way of climbing to icy heights, bare, unwarmed by any ray of love, but less painful than this descent amongst dark roots. Cold, hard Intelligence, once to slip upon thy frozen way is to be broken on thy pitiless bosom! O God, in thy tender pity incline our hearts to seek Thee by the way of Love! For the road of Love comes easily to knowledge, but the road of knowledge comes not easily to Love. And we know that love is above learning and wisdom. Did not Solomon choose wisdom? and we think him so wise to have made this choice, but he had been far wiser to have chosen holy love. For wisdom lost herself and him in the arms of unworthy love: so we see the highest degree of the Wisdom of Man held in bondage to, and undone by, even the lowest degree of love. * * * Dig deeply, and what do we find is at bottom our great, our persistent need? What is it that instinctively we look for and desire? Happiness, and the Ever-new. In and out of every day persistently, desperately, endlessly we seek. And because we seek amongst the near-to-hand, the visible, the small, we seek in vain: we discover there is nothing in this world which can wholly and permanently satisfy either of these desires. God Himself is Happiness. God Himself is the Ever-new. In Divine Love there is no monotony: the soul finds that each encounter with God is ever new, the Ever-new tremulous with the beauty of rapture: new and wonderful as the first dawn. IV Not only is God a Mystery of Holiness, of Truth, of Love and Beauty: He is also Generosity, a mystery of Eternal Giving, and His giving is and must for ever be, the supreme necessity of the Universe: for without He gave how should we receive life, truth, beauty, love, or Himself? And it cannot be too deeply impressed upon the soul that would come to His Presence that because of His law of like to like she must conform to this law in order to come to His Presence. By thinking it over we shall see that it is more difficult for us to be perfect holiness, perfect truth, perfect love, perfect beauty, than it is for us to be perfectly generous: it is easier for us to give God all that we have, to empty heart, mind and soul, and worldly goods at His feet, than it is to reach to any other perfection; for generosity appears to be more universal, more within our capacities, more "natural" to us than any other virtue--do we not see it continually used, exercised, spent, thrown away on the merest trifles? Let us take, for instance, the tennis player: to win the game he must give every ounce of himself to it--mind, eye, heart, and body,--sweating there in the glare of the sun to win the game. Would he give himself so, would he sweat so, in order to find God, or to please God? Oh no! Yet in the hour of death and afterwards, will he be helped by this victory of flying balls? If by chance we could lift a corner of the veil, we might catch a glimpse of the face of Folly, mockingly, cunningly peering at us, as all too easily she persuades us to give of our royal coins of generosity to wantons, to phantom enterprises, to balls filled with air, to dust and vanity. Generosity is our easiest means of coming to God, because it is also the way of love: if the tennis player did not love the game, he would not give himself so to it. But we cry, "I have nothing whatever to give to God; it is to God I turn in order that He may give everything to me." Quite so: there is too much of that. We have obedience to give: obedience is a great gift to God, or, more truthfully speaking, in His magnanimity He accepts it as such; we have also love to give, and again we may cry, "But my love is puny, shifting; it is nothing at all, a mere trifle." That is true of "natural" love, of the love that we commence of our own human nature to love Him with; but it is not true of the love which we receive of the Holy Ghost when He baptizes us. When we offer this Peculiar Love, offer it as only it can be offered--for love's sake,--immediately we are in the Presence of God, secretly, marvellously united to Him; we are in the Consolations of God, and we have no need to ask for anything whatever; indeed, we find ourselves unable to ask, because we are filled to the brim, overflowing, inexpressibly satisfied, utterly blessed. But supposing that we do not _give_ to God, but, earnestly seeking Him, we merely ask some favour, and sit and wait for Him to give? Then probably we shall not be sensible of receiving anything from Him whatever; we shall feel at an immense distance from Him; then we shall become uneasy, depressed, fancy ourselves neglected, imagine we have lost Him--and so we have till we gloriously recover Him by means of giving. And if at times in the stress of this giving, when He makes no response, we feel it is too much, we can give no more, we are too discouraged to continue, let us remember the strain and stress and endeavour that we and all our friends give to trifles, and quietly use our common sense to judge whether in the winning of a game of ball, or in the pleasing and finding of God, we shall be the more blessed. For God is to be found: He waits. * * * The truth about our endeavours is that we have one pre-eminent, pressing need above all other needs, which is to Find God. When we have accomplished this we discover without any further teaching that we no longer care to pass our time with air-balls, because they appear so paltry, so inadequate. We are grown up and are no longer puerile in our desires: at the same time we are not without desires, but, on the contrary, we glow with a new, more ardent, and larger set of desires. V What I know of the soul's actual Finding and Contact with God I keep very closely to myself. Here and there to a few, a very few souls, I may speak: to all others I am forbidden to speak. I am stopped; and I understand perfectly why this is: it is that I should do more harm than good. Anyone looking at me would say (and all the more so because I am dressed in the fashion of the day, and not in some peculiar way, or in a nun's habit, for such trifling things affect many minds), "That person is demented to think that she knows what it is to have Contact with God," and it would seem a scandal to them. But the explanation of the mystery is not so simple as this. I am not demented. I never was so sane, so capable in my life as now. I never was so perfectly poised as now. But if you say to me, "Explain what it is that you know, in order that I too may know," then I can say to you nothing more than, "Come and know for yourself, for God awaits you." To illustrate a mere fraction of the difficulty of passing such a knowledge from one self to another self, let us take such a case as that of a man born blind. He sits beneath a tree, on the grass. You put a blade of grass in his fingers, and also a leaf from the tree, and you say to him, "This is grass, and this is the leaf of the tree which shelters you, and both are green." "And what," he asks, "is green?" And to save your life you cannot make him know what it is, or make him know the tree, or know the grass, though he touches them both with his hands. How, then, shall God, Who can be neither seen, nor heard, nor touched, how shall He be made known from one to another? He must be experienced to be known. And if you should say to me, "What does it feel like to have found God?" then I should say, "It feels that the roof is lifted off the world, and wherever we may be or stand it is a straight line from us to God and nothing between, nothing between, day or night." VI To come to the contemplation of God it is not necessary to go through any lengthy toil, some process of throwing out this or that, painfully, slowly, denying the existence of everything in order to arrive at God. The way is not denying, but concentrating; and in the act of concentration, because of love, all other things whatsoever in creation fall away into nothing and are no more, because God in all His graciousness reveals Himself, and then He alone exists for the enraptured soul. VII Supposing that we have found Jesus Christ, supposing that we know Him so well and have come to love Him so much that our love for Him is become stronger than any other love, very much stronger than any other love, and still, in spite of hopes and endeavours, we know that we have not found the Godhead, we have not found Union with the First and Third Person of the Holy Trinity--the heavens have not, as it were, been opened to us to let our souls slip through to God. Are we to be discouraged because of this? Are we to think ourselves less favoured, less loved? A thousand times no. We are, perhaps, in neither heart, mind, or soul quite sufficiently prepared for the great ordeals that must be gone through _after Union with God,_ To find God is Victory. But Victory has dangers. We have perhaps not yet sufficiently developed just those exact qualities which it is essential we must have in order to _maintain_ the connection with God in the face of all obstacles when once He is found. When God reveals Himself to a soul she is in great danger, and she knows it, because to fail Him now, to turn away now, to be unfaithful now--this is a terrible disaster to the soul. God in His mercy exposes no soul to such dangers until she is as ready as may be, but He bides and He works in her till she is ready. So it may very well be that it is not in this life that we come to Union, but later; and the fact that we have not come to Union is a sign to increase our nearness to Christ by as much as we can: the very smallest advance that we make in this life is of the utmost value to us later. VIII The soul that is seeking Union with God must not, upon any pretext whatever, engage itself in spiritualism. Spiritualism may have its great uses for the heart and mind which are without, or are struggling for, belief--the heart and mind of Thomas seeking to touch, to have a proof; but remember the words of the Saviour to Thomas: "Blessed are they," He says, "who have not seen, and yet have believed." And we do not need to wait for death to receive this blessing, but we receive it here. The soul that would find God must go to Him by means of His Holy Spirit, and no other spirit but the Spirit of God can take us to Him; and to try to hold communications with the spirits of men _is not the way._ The soul that has come to Union with God is perfectly aware of the existence of spirits--is intensely aware,--but refuses to pay any attention if she wise. Some of these spirits are very subtle, very knowing; some are full of flattery, and very persistent; others present themselves as still in human form, and seek to terrify with their terrible faces, some diabolical, some appearing to be in a great agony and undergoing changes more astonishing and horrible than can be even imagined before experienced--and melting only to be re-formed into that which is yet more fearful. Have nothing whatever to do with spirits. Do not resist them when they come, but drop them behind by fixing heart, mind, and soul on Christ. The Spirit of Christ easily overcomes every spirit, every evil, every fear, and in order to ourselves overcome all such things, we need to unite with the Spirit of Jesus Christ by concentrating upon Him with love, and ignoring obstructions. Those who have lent themselves to spiritualism, hoping to find comfort, a lost friend, or even God Himself, when they give it up (as they must do) they may find themselves greatly plagued by the fires with which they have been playing; but these can soon be overcome by diligently uniting the heart and mind to Jesus Christ. IX After coming to full Union with God, the mind becomes permanently attached to Him, _and this without effort;_ but in order that it shall be without effort, the will must be kept in a state of loving attention to Him, and this again can only be done without effort if the heart is so full of love that it desires nothing else than God; and this is dependent again upon the grace which the soul receives from Him because of her love and response--so now we see, living and working in our own being, the reason and meaning of His commandment to love Him with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength. It is doing this _after He has Himself given us the power to do it_ which makes us able to live in the closest, most delicious and precious nearness to God during all our waking hours. But it takes time, and it takes much pain to learn how to live this, as it were, double life--this inward life of companionship, of wonderful and blessed inward intercourse with God, and the outward intercourse of the senses with the world, our everyday duties, and our fellow-beings. In our early stages we have profound innumerable difficulties in understanding either our own capacities or God's wishes: we are terrified of losing Him, and yet are often bewildered, and pained also, by some of the higher degrees in which He communicates Himself. We do not understand how to leave God and return to earthly duties. Supposing that we are altogether wrapped up in the company of God, and some fellow-being suddenly recalls us to the world (the human voice can recall the soul as nothing else can), the pain is so great as to be nothing less than anguish; and if done often would seriously affect the health of the body. But in a few years we learn to accomplish it without any shock. One pain, however, remains, and it grows. I find myself unable to carry on a conversation with anyone unless it is about God, or about some work which is for God and has to do with His pleasure (and this is rare, because people are so glued to worldly affairs), for more than an hour, and even less, without the most horrible, the most deathly, exhaustion, which is not only spiritual but bodily--the face and lips losing all colour, the eyes their vitality: so dreadful is the distress of the whole being that one is obliged, upon any kind of pretext, to withdraw from all companions, and, if it is only for five minutes, be alone with God and, where no eye but His can see, unite completely with Him once more, and immediately the whole being becomes revivified. There is nothing else in life so wonderful, so rapturous as this swift reunion of the soul with God; and the joy is not only the joy of the soul, because the heart and mind have their fill of it too, for they too have ached and thirsted and hungered and longed, and now are satisfied. If this measureless happiness could only be imagined by us before we experience it, how many of us would be spurred to greater efforts instead of falling back amongst the dust and cobwebs of Vanity!--but it cannot be imagined, and the only way to come to it is by faith and obedience; and it is easy to see why this arrangement is necessary, for if we could imagine it thoroughly, then we should probably try to get to God only on account of greed, and should find ourselves drifting away instead of towards Him; it cannot be done by greed, greed being one of those things which beguiled the soul away from Him to begin with; and He does not send the soul His favours till she is free of, and has risen above, the dangers of greed and seeks Him for Himself and not for His favours. As soon as it is safe for her He will give the soul continual favours, because Perfect Love is ever desirous to give, and is only restrained on our account to withhold favours. The soul which knows how to make all necessary preparations to receive Him becomes a source of joy to God, for now He can give and give and no harm be done to that soul; but He does not acquaint the soul too suddenly with all the joy that she is to Him, because she would not (at least certainly my soul would not) be able to bear the knowledge of the privilege that she enjoys, without some danger to herself,--and so, all unaware of the singularity of the privilege that she enjoys without any analysis of her happiness, she concerns herself with sweetly obeying Him, with singing to Him, and with giving Him all that she has all the day long, and so hovers before Him as delightful simplicity and love. This Union with God varies so much in degree that it makes an effect of endless variety. Yet it is all one same joy, it is the joy of angels reduced to such degree as makes it bearable to flesh: the soul knows that it is the joy of angels that she is receiving the first time that she has it given to her: immediately on receipt of this joy she comprehends the _mode_ of heavenly living; she knows it is but the outer edge that she touches, but what means so much to her is that she has _recaptured the knowledge of this mode of living:_ henceforth it is a question of progress, she bends all her attention to progress so that she may get nearer and nearer to God, so that she may do everything to please this suddenly refound, unspeakably beloved God. She desires to get nearer and nearer to God in spite of the pain that she often experiences. Perhaps the first pains we experience are when we are in contemplation of God and are caught by God into High Contemplation. He will at times expose the soul to so much of the Divine Power that she cannot sever herself from the too great fulness of Union with God, though the body is crying to her to do it and the sufferings of the body are all felt by the soul, which is pulled two ways: all this is very painful and makes us almost in a _fear_ of God again. Why should Perfect Love inflict this pain on us? It may be to remind us that He is not only Love, but Power, Might, Majesty, and Dominion also. Yet could this ever be forgotten? It seems incredible. But it does not do to trust to one's soul, or to count on what she will do or not do: we know that the soul has forgotten almost everything about God, so much so that we are now thankful to arrive even so far as being quite certain that He exists! What infinite kindness that He should consent and condescend to Himself be her Teacher! But He does so condescend, and the more the soul relearns of God, the more she also learns that He is never weary of working for us all: this keeps the soul in a state of intense gratitude. * * * When the soul arrives at Union with God, does she remain always in Union? Yes, but not at the degree of Union which is Contact. What is the difference? It can perhaps be most easily explained (though extremely imperfectly) by referring to the union of married life. In this union, though we live in one house, we are not always both in that house at the same time; but this does not dissolve our union, and we both know our way to return there, and the right to meet is always ours. When we are both in the house, although not in the same room, there is a much nearer feeling about it, and we are apt to give a momentary call one to the other, just to have the pleasure of response: yet, though we are aware the other one is in the house and that there is no part of the house where we are forbidden to meet--it is not enough; love requires more: it will be necessary for one to go and seek the actual presence of the other (the soul does this by a quiet prayer with perhaps a few words, but more probably no words). The one finds the other one; but the other one is occupied, so the one waits patiently (this is passive contemplation), and suddenly the occupied one is so constrained by love for the waiting one that he must turn to her, open wide his arms, and embrace her--they meet, they touch, they are content. In spiritual life this is contact or ecstasy or rapture. Here comes in the immensity of the difference between joys physical and joys spiritual--physical joys being limited to five senses: spiritual joys being above senses and open to limitless variations; but in order that these may be known in their fulness, we must eventually (after leaving the flesh) rise to immense heights of perfection: the joys enjoyed by the Archangel would _destroy_ a lesser angel: the degree of joy that invigorates the saint, that sends him into rhapsodies of happiness, would _destroy_ the sinner--(becoming insupportable agony to the sinner). This celestial joy is, fundamentally, a question of the enduring of some un-nameable energy. How can energy be a means of this immeasurable Divine joy? After years of experience I find I cannot go back upon the knowledge that I acquired on the very first occasion of experience--that energy _is a fundamental principle of the mystery._ But how, it may very well be asked, do sins interfere with the reception of this activity? Sins are all imperfections, thickenings of the soul from self-will: pure soul is necessary for the _happy_ reception of this celestial activity, and because impurities are automatically dissipated by this activity, and the dissipation or dispersion of them _is the most awful agony conceivable_ when too suddenly done, what is bliss to the saint is the extremity of torture to the sinner. Now we come very fearfully and dreadfully to understand something more of the meanings, the happenings, of the Judgment Day. Christ will inflict no direct wilful punishment on any soul; but when He presents Himself before all souls and they behold His Face, immediately they will receive the terrible might of the activity of celestial joy. The regenerated will endure and rejoice; the unrepentant sinner will agonise, and he must flee from before the Face of Christ, because the agony that he feels is the dispersal of his imperfect soul; and where shall the sinner flee, where shall he go to find happiness? for saint and sinner alike desire happiness, and there is in Spirit-life only one happiness--the Bliss of God. So then let us be careful to prepare ourselves to be able to receive and endure this happiness, even if it can at first be only in a small degree, so that we shall not be condemned _by our own pain_ to leave the Presence of God altogether and consequently lose Celestial Pleasures; let us at least prepare ourselves to remain near enough to know something of this tremendous living. It was this Divine Activity which on the night of the Too Great Happiness so anguished my imperfect soul. But that night, and that anguish, taught my soul what she could never have learnt by any other means, and what it was I learnt I find myself unable to pass on to anyone; but that night was for my soul the turning-point of her destiny, that night altered my soul for evermore; that night I knew God as deeply as He can be known whilst the soul is in flesh. * * * God uses also a peculiar drawing power. All souls feeling desire towards God are to a greater or lesser degree conscious of this, and, as we know, frequently remain conscious of it as a desire and nothing further to the end of life in flesh. By means of it He draws a soul towards Himself until, because of it, the whole being is willing to make efforts at self-improvement, and this is the essential: it is this cleaning up of the character, this purification, which alone can bring us to the point where we can receive God's communications of Himself (in other words, ecstasies and periods of reunion with Celestial-living). Ecstasies inspire and awaken the soul: they convince the mind absolutely of the existence of another form of living _and of God Himself._ After ecstasy the efforts of the entire being are bent on trying to perfect itself, and extraordinary Graces may be freely and almost continually given to us in order to make improvement more rapid for us. The feeling for God which before ecstasy was a deep (and often very painful) longing for God now increases to a burning, never-ceasing desire for Him: only three thoughts can be said to truly occupy a person from this stage onwards--how to please God, how to get nearer to Him, how to show practical gratitude. He may increase the flow of His Power to a soul till she is in great distress, longing to leap out of the body owing to the immensity of God's attraction. This attraction at times has a very real and sensible effect upon the body: it feels to counteract gravity, it makes the body feel so light it is about to leave the ground; it affects walking, and unaccountably changes it to staggering. To receive this attraction can be an ecstatic condition, but is by no means ecstasy. So long as we have power to move the body by will we are not in true ecstasy. In ecstasy the body feels to be disconnected in some unaccountable manner from the will; it lies inert, though it knows itself and knows that it stills lives--which fundamentally differentiates it from sleep, because in sleep we do not know our body, we do not know if we are alive or dead, we know nothing. In ecstasy is no such blankness: merely the body is perforce inert, it would be entirely forgotten but for its periods of distress. Neither can ecstasy be confused with dreaming, by even the most simple person. In dreaming, objects and events of a familiar type still surround us; the total inconsequence with which they present themselves alone makes dream-living unlike actual living, for it remains fundamentally of the same type--physical and full of persons, forms, objects, and word-thoughts. We can procure sleep by willing it, but we cannot will to procure ecstasy: we find it totally independent of will. The Attraction of God can be a penetrating pain, because the soul, terribly drawn to God, exceedingly near Him, yet remains unsatisfied even in this close proximity. Why? Because she is being subjected to one Force only--she longs, she remains near, and receives nothing. God is not bestowing His Activity upon her, which is the way that she "knows" Him--she is not living the celestial life. It is the combination of the two Forces working together simultaneously on and in the soul which differentiates ecstasy and rapture from all other degrees of God-Consciousness. When these two Powers work together, we experience celestial living, full Union, the bliss of Contact. It cannot possibly be said that in ecstasy we see God: it is a question of "knowing" Him through the higher part of the soul, in lesser or in deeper degrees. X If the Divine Lover gives such joys to the soul, how does the soul give joy to the Divine Lover? Is she beautiful? She becomes so. Also the soul is a poet of the first water, though she uses no words; and the soul is a weaver of melodies, though she makes no sound; but above all, and before all, the soul is a great lover. Now we know in this earthly life that a lover desires above everything else the love of her whom he loves. Only when she whom he loves returns his love, can he truly enjoy her. So also the Divine Lover. O incomparable Love! Love gives all when it gives itself, love receives all when it receives Love. By love, then, the soul is the Delight of God. XI The soul feels to be formless; though we become aware of a _spreading_ which causes her to feel of the form of a cup or a disc when she receives God, and in contemplation she feels to extend--flame-like until she meets God. She can wait for God--spread, but cannot maintain this form for long without God rejoices her by His touch. How can so formless a thing, still waiting for its Spiritual Body, be beautiful? She is beautiful because of the colours she is able to assume: she can glow with such colour as no flower on earth can even faintly imitate. Celestial colours are beyond all imagination. As the soul grows in purity and is able to endure an increase of the Divine Radiations and Penetration, so she changes her colours; by her colours she delights the eye of her Maker, He touches her, she becomes yet more beautiful. * * * Very early in the morning God walks in His Garden of Souls, and in the evening also, and in the noonday, and in the night. The soul that knows Him knows His approach, and, preparing and adorning herself for Him--waits. XII Does God come and go? The soul feels Him there, and not there. Is she mistaken in this, and God always to be possessed, but she not dressed to receive Him? If this is so, then how grievously frequent is our failure! It is more encouraging to our own state to suppose that God lends Himself and withdraws; that He will be possessed; and He will not be. But this involves caprice. Can Perfect Love have caprice? We find that grace can be received without intermission for weeks, even months, together. Without coming and departing (although in lesser and greater intensity) the Presence of God, Love and Comfort, envelop the soul. So then we learn by our own experience that God is willing to be present amongst us continually in His Second and Third Persons. Yet, although He is present in His Two Persons, the soul is not filled: she is unspeakably blest and happy, but not wholly satisfied till He is present to her in His First Person also. She knows immediately when He so comes, and then the Three become One, and when They become One to her, in that moment the soul enters Bliss. It is true that if He so came to her very frequently, the soul could not endure Him; but certainly she could endure Him more frequently than she receives Him. It is not because she is worthy that she possesses Him: the soul never, under any circumstances, feels worthy: it is love alone which enables her to possess Him, and this love that she knows how to shed to Him is His own gift to her. So the soul cries to Him, O mystery of love, was ever such sweet graciousness as lives in thee: such exquisite felicity of giving and receiving, in which the giver and receiver in mysterious rapture of generosity are oned! And this mystery of love is not in paucity of ways, but in marvellous variety of ways and of degrees--the ways of friendship, the brother and the sister, the mother and the child, the youth and the maiden, and Thyself and we. Love makes the soul ponder on His tastes, His will, His nature. Does He prefer even in heaven to possess Himself to Himself in His First Person? or are there parts of heaven where He is ever willing to be possessed in His fulness: where He is eternally beheld in His Three Persons by such as can endure Him? The soul believes it, and this is the goal she strives for both now and hereafter. Yet there is That of Him which is for ever Alone, which will never be known or shared by the greatest of the Angels. The soul comprehends that He will have it so because of that Solitary which sits within herself, she who is made after His likeness. XIII For many years before coming to Union with God, I found that it had become impossible to say more than a little prayer of some five or six words, and these were said very slowly: at times I was astonished at my inability, and ashamed that these pitiful shreds were all that I could offer, and always the same thing too; I tried to vary it--I could not. When I tried to say some fine sentence, when I tried even to ask for something, I could not; it all disappeared in a feeling of such sweet love for God, and I merely said again the same old words of every day. I loved. I could do nothing more than say so, and then stay there on my knees for a little while, very near Him, fascinated, adoring. But God is not vexed with a soul when she cannot say much. Is an earthly father vexed when his child, standing there before him, forgets the words upon its lips, forgets to ask, because it loves him so? Far from it. This prayer is the commencement, the foretaste, of Contemplation. A distinguishing mark between this prayer and Contemplation is that in even the lowest degree of Contemplation God (if one may so express the inexpressible) is Localised. Hitherto His Presence has been near--but we cannot say how near, or where, and _we cannot be sure of finding it._ After Union we are certain of finding God's Presence everywhere, and at any time. He may at times be far away, or pay no attention to us; but we know whereabouts He is, and we can go and wait outside that place where He has hidden Himself and which is no place (but a figure of speech): He merely disappears from our consciousness, but not so entirely but that we can partly find Him. All this cannot be explained, but after Union God is as present to the soul in Contemplation (and far more so because of the great poignancy of it) as is a fellow-creature whom we actually see and touch, much more so because between ourself and a fellow-creature, however dear, is always a barrier: try as we may there is always a dividing line between two persons. We are two: we remain two. But when we meet God there is nothing between us and God, nothing whatever divides us, and yet we are not lost in God--that is to say, we do not disappear as a living individual consciousness, but our consciousness is increased to a prodigious degree, and we are One with God. XIV This Oneness, in a tiny degree, can be experienced by two persons who are in close spiritual sympathy when both are simultaneously and powerfully animated by very loving thoughts of Christ, or are working together, and _giving_ on account of Christ: then a fluid interchange of sympathies and interests takes place in which the barriers of individuality go down. This same fluid interchange in a still lesser degree takes place in ordinary friendship between two friends of similar tastes; but this interchange must always be with the mental and the higher part of us, it can never take place because of the merely physical, for in the physical, dependent as it is upon senses, barriers always exist: we see this in the union of lovers--their union is merely a transitory _self_-gratification, although it may include another self in that it is mutual; but more frequently it is not even mutual, and what is a pleasure to one is at the moment distasteful to the other, though the one can easily conceal from the other that it is so, proving how complete the duality of consciousness and of feeling remains between two individuals who depend upon contiguity of _substance_ (or the sense of touch) for their union, and not upon spiritual _similarity_: in spiritual similarity alone is _identity_ of feeling and personality and perfect union to be found, and in this identity _deceit is impossible._ XV The more we investigate the question of satisfactions the more we find that these, in order to be permanent, must take place upon a very high level, upon a plane above materialism. However much we may with our sense of taste enjoy a dinner to-day, it will be no joy whatever even a week hence. The natural everyday facts should (and are intended to) prove to us the futility of giving so much time and thought to the pleasures of the flesh: these pleasures lead nowhere, they end abruptly, they are very limited, being confined to five senses, and consequently, owing to a necessity of continual repetition, satiety supervenes, and there remains nothing else to turn to. Yet when this happens we are really very fortunate, because it may be a cause of our searching amongst our higher faculties for our gratifications. XVI The soul finds it bitterly hard to rid herself of selfishness and self-will: she gets rid of one form, only to find herself falling to another. When first my soul reknew the Joy of God I said to myself, "I will hide it in my own bosom, I will keep it all to myself. I am become independent of all creatures, I want none of them, I cannot bear the sight or the sound of them, how joyfully I leave them all behind!--I want only my God--I want--But what is all this?--I want, I will, I, I, I, I!" Later the days come when God hides Himself from me: I can go and wait at His threshold (because when she knows the way He never denies the soul the threshold, though He denies her Himself). I may pour out all the sweetness of my love, but he makes no response; I may sing to Him all day: He will not hear; I may give Him all that I am or have, and He will not communicate Himself to me. Then I remember all the years of my striving, I remember the stress, the sweat of all that climb to His footstool--the sweat that at times was like drops of blood wrung out of the soul, out of the heart, out of the mind; and yet all forgotten in the instant of the rapture of Finding. Did He then beckon and draw and delight the soul only to madden with the anguish of more hiding and more striving: was He to be found only that He might again be lost? My soul sickened with fear, and I said, Love is a calamity; who can release me from the anguish of it? O God, since I may no more possess Thee, grant that I may shortly pass into the dust and for ever be no more, so that I may escape this pain of knowing Thy Perfections and my own necessity for Thee; and I mourned for Him till my health went. Weeks passed, and three words came constantly to me: "Visit my sick." But I did not listen: I was sick myself with a deadly wound. Almost every day the same three words came; but I turned away resentfully from them, saying to myself, "What have the sick to do with me? I am weary of sick people: I have been so much with them. Must I accept the sick in place of the ecstasy of God? I mourn for the loss of God. I can cheer no sick." The words came again, with excessive gentleness, and the gentleness was like the gentleness of Christ, and it pierced. So that day I go to the village and visit the sick again, and I look at them tenderly and lovingly, and tenderly and lovingly they look at me, and some say, "It is as if God came into the house with you"; and tears come to my eyes, and I say, "It may be so, because He sent me," and they gaze at me lovingly, and lovingly I gaze at them; and it seems to me that I can no longer tell where "they" cease and where "I" begin, and the sweetness, the peculiar sweetness, of Christ pierces me through from my head to my feet--that sweetness that I have not known for weeks. And so I comprehend that Holy Love is not alone just Thee and me, but it is also Thee and me and the others, and Thee and the others and me. * * * I wanted my own way. The way I wanted was to be free in order to worship and bless God in a beautiful place, in some place that _I_ should choose. I wanted to worship Him, and to sing Him the Song of the Soul from some quiet hill among the olive trees by the Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible, joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that _I_ should choose: I wanted it so that it became spiritual greed--spiritual self-indulgence. Duty, heavy-winged duty, prevented my taking the journey; duty to an always-contrary relation, now unwell. It was only a little thing--just a journey prevented, but it crossed my self-will; and in an impatient, detestable way that I have, I wanted to push all duty, even all human relationships, anywhere upon one side, or over the edge of the world, so they might all fall together out of my sight and I be free! Because I thought these thoughts, I came to the Place of Tribulation. And the Messenger came, and he said, "Escape, and the way is consenting." But I said, "No, I will not have that way, I will escape by some other way." So I tried every other way, but found it guarded by something which seemed to be armed with a hammer; but I persisted: then for days and nights my soul stood up to the hammers and received terrible blows, and still I persisted--I would find a way to escape that should please my will. But I could not eat, I could not sleep, the flesh visibly lessened on my bones, and at last I loathed myself and my own will and my own soul, and I cried to God, "Shall I never be through with this terrible struggle with self-will?" and groaned aloud in my despair. Then the words that were sent long ago to a saint, and that he was inspired to write down to help us all, now came and did their work for me through him: "My grace is sufficient for thee." And so I found it, and more than sufficient--when I consented. Who is it, what is it, that so punishes the soul? Is it God? No. Patiently, lovingly He waits. Our pain is the difficulty of consenting to perfection: every virtue has a hammer, every perfection a long two-edged sword; and the punishment we feel is the breaking and wounding of self-will under the hammers of the virtues and the sword-thrusts of the vision of perfection. Put aside these wretched, these sometimes awful and terrible, battles and punishments, shrink from them when they come, and we may put aside salvation. Accept them--stand up to the hammer and take the blows and learn: consent to the sword that pierces up to the hilt, and what do we come to?--The Blisses of God. PART V I After coming to Union with God, our prayers become entirely changed, not only in the manner of presenting them, but changed also in what is presented. Petitioning is a hard thing. I had found it easy to pray for others whether I loved them or not, with the lips and with some of the heart; but I found that I could not do it in the new way, with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, so that everything else fled away into nothing and was no more, except that for which I petitioned God. A perfect concentration for the welfare of a stranger or of some cause was a very hard thing; yet I was made aware that I must learn to do it. For two or three years I suffered pain and exhaustion over this petitioning; I would be so fatigued by it, found it so great a strain, that I said to myself, "I shall lose my health over this petitioning, for as I do it, it is as though I gave my life-energy for the cause or person for whom I pray." But my Good Angel whispered me not to give in, but continue to be willing, continue to be generous, no matter the cost. I am not generous, but I went on with it, and secretly had the greatest dread of it; my whole nature shrank from the effort, from the strange loss of vitality this petitioning brought. Then at last, after more than two years, because of remaining willing, because of trying to remain generous about this, to me, most grievously hard prayer, one happy day God lifted away all the strain and difficulty, all the pain and fatigue, and turned it into the sweetest of prayers: into a new song, a new honey, new music, a new delight, in which the soul has, as it were, but to sip at the nectar of His Love and Beneficence, to bring it to a fellow-soul. I found that God causes the soul to pray this joyous, this exquisite, prayer for total strangers, passers-by in the street, fellow-travellers by road and rail, here and there, this one and that, she knows which one it is: how surprised these persons would be if they knew that a total stranger, who never saw them before and never will see them again, was joyously, lovingly, holding them up before God for His help and His blessing! and they receive His blessing. God does not prompt such prayers for nothing. Is this favoritism? No; they are secretly seeking Him. II When the soul is united to God a great change comes over the mind, which now thinks continually, lovingly, of God. God not merely hoped for, looked for, as in the past, but God found and known, God close and near; interruptions come and go, but the mind, like a pendulum, swings back to God, nothing stops it; the soul streams to Him: she discovers Him everywhere: she knows her way to Him, and she has not far to go. Her own door is also His door. There are many degrees of intensity about this condition, which can increase to such an extent as to entirely interfere with our everyday duties. When it is increased to this degree it would appear (certainly at times) to be on purpose to teach the soul a self-abnegation which she could not otherwise learn, because, together with an intense, almost terrible, attraction and desire to be alone with God, will come the pressure of a duty which it is obvious God would wish us to attend to: this is a severe and a very continual lesson to the soul--the lesson of learning patiently to continue some sordid work in this world, after finding the joys of the spiritual life. What are amongst the most noticeable changes in the mind? first, we notice it has become very simple in its requirements, and very restful; it no longer darts here and there gathering in this and that of fancied treasures, as a bird darts at flies; it has dropped outside objects, in order to hover around thoughts of God, which at the same time are not particularised, but, as it were, quietly, contentedly, float in a general and peaceful fragrance of beauty. Ordinarily the mind would find it difficult to hover in this way with such a singleness of intent, but in certain other cases we see the same contentment--in the mother beside her babe: though she may not talk to it, or touch it, she is happy; she knows it near; she is secretly giving to it. We see it in the babe also: it gazes at its mother and is quiet; if the mother removes herself, the child may cry; no one has hurt it--merely, it has ceased to be happy because the object of its desire has gone too far from it, has disappeared. We see it also in two lovers; they sit near together, and the more they love the fewer words they require to speak: they are happy: they require very few words, very few thoughts. Separate them, and they spend their time uneasily in sending messages, in thinking numberless yearning thoughts which become painful, and, if continued for long, can affect the health. Put them together again, and they barely say two words: their joy at meeting occupies the whole of their attention. It is the same when we love God. The heart, and the mind, and the soul are blissfully content, they are in a love-state, they bask in His Presence; but that we should be aware of His Presence--this is His gift, this is the vast difference between our former and our present state. When we have become experienced in this Presence of God, the Reason tries very earnestly to comprehend the manner of it. Christ says that when love is established between God and a man, "My Father and I will come to him and make our abode with him." How can such a tremendous thing as this be carried out without, as it were, burning the man up with the greatness of it? Does God, then, when experienced feel to be a Fire? Yes, and no, for we feel that we shall be consumed, and yet it is not burning but a blissful energy of the most inexpressible and unbearable intensity, which has the feeling of disintegrating or _dispersing flesh._ The experience is blissful to heart and mind only so long as it is given within certain limits: beyond this it is bliss-agony, beyond this it would soon be death to the body; and the soul feels that in her imperfect state it can soon easily be the dispersion of herself also: this is a very terrible feeling: this does not bear remembering or thinking about. How, then, can it be possible that God can take up His abode with us and we still live? In all contacts with God we notice one fact pre-eminently--they do not take place with the mind, but with that which was previously unknown to us, and which communicates the joy and the realities of meeting God to the mind. What is this? It does not live in the heart: it lives, or feels to live, in the upper cavity of the chest, above the heart, and below the throat-base. It can endure God. It is spirit, it feels to be a higher part of the soul: we might call it the Intelligence and Will of the soul, because it acts for the soul as the mind acts for the body, it is above the soul as the mind is above (more important than) and rules an arm or leg. The more we experience God, the more we are forced to comprehend that we have in us an especial organ in this spirit with which we can communicate with God and by which we can receive Him without the mind or body being destroyed. For when God takes up His abode with a man He will communicate Himself to this loving Spirit-Will or Intelligence in ecstasies. And through His Son He will communicate Himself in another manner, to the heart and mind, so graciously, with such a tender care, that without the stress of ecstasy we are kept in a delicate and most blessed Awareness of God. In these ways we can know, even in flesh, the beginnings of the true love-state, the beginnings of the angelic state, which is this same love-state brought _to completion by Beholding God._ III Although this blessed condition of Awareness of God is a gift, and at first the mind and soul are maintained in it without effort on their part, it being accomplished for them solely by the power of the Grace of God, yet later--and somewhat to their dismay after receiving such favours--they discover that it must be worked for in order to be maintained. The heart must give, the mind must give, the soul must give: when they neither work nor give they may find themselves receiving nothing: God ceases to be present to them. Generosity on our part is required. It works out in experience to be always the same thing that is needed for our perfect health and happiness--reciprocity. Without we maintain this reciprocity we shall experience _extraordinary disappointment._ IV The soul is now blind: we know this by experience; but do we know that she ever had sight? If she did not, but was created imperfect, and was so created in order that only by work and merit she should arrive at completion and perfection and Behold God (instead of merely, as now in this world, being able only to apprehend Him by the retrospect of His effect upon her), then she was always below angels. If through work and obedience she becomes so raised that she merits sight and the actual Beholding of God, then she becomes equal to angels because of this Beholding; and so Christ tells us that she does as the Child of the Resurrection. It is the inability of the soul to comprehend, after experiencing the bliss of Union with God, how she came to embark upon this wandering and separation, which so presses the Reason for an explanation of the fall of the soul. It may be that not all souls are fallen, but that some are merely in process of progressing to sight. These are Righteous Souls. But there are more souls also created sightless, who are fallen by curiosity, by infidelity or plain self-will and forgetfulness--these it is who need the Redeemer: "I come not to call the Righteous, but sinners to repentance." From this it would seem that there are souls who, though they are in this world, are yet fundamentally righteous: not fallen, but working to receive sight. It is inconceivable to the soul that, had she ever Beheld God, she could have left Him, but not inconceivable to her that, having never Beheld Him, she may have been unfaithful on her road to Sight. She understands this awful possibility after coming to Union with Him from this earth, because then she learns the immense difficulties of maintaining this sightless Union. She knows the terrible solitude and testing it entails, and the innumerable temptations when low-spirited and lonely to turn to interests and consolations apart from God; for God will frequently, in the later stages of progress, withhold every consolation and comfort from the soul, leaving her solitary. Will she stay? Will she go? V We hope for much from "education"; but what education is it that will be of enduring value to us? Is it the education which teaches us the grammars of foreign languages, scientific facts, the dates when wars were won, when kings ascended their thrones, princes died, artists painted their masterpieces, that will bring us to our finest opportunities of success? To the soul there is little greater or less chance of success offered by the degree of "polish" in the education we have the money to procure: the peasant who cannot read or write may achieve the purpose of life before the savant: we know it without caring to acknowledge it to ourselves: the education that we really require is the education of daily conduct, the education of character, the education by which we say to Self-will, to Pride, and to Lusts, "Lie down!"--and they do it! * * * When a soul knows herself, has repented and become redeemed, she knows all other souls, good or bad: there are no longer any secrets for her, no one can hide himself from her: she sees all these open and living books, reads them, and avoids judging and bitterness in spite of the selfishness, stupidity, and frailty revealed on every page: she finds the same faults in herself; selfishness, stupidity, and weakness are engraven upon herself; the redeemed and enlightened soul with tears perpetually corrects these faults: the unenlightened soul does not--this is the difference between them. VI For some time after coming to Union with God we remain convinced that all now being so well with the soul all will be well with the body also, and the health does improve and become more stable; but the day comes when we learn that God is not concerned with saving flesh, and that the body must share the usual fate--we shall continue to suffer through it. But we also discover that there can be a marvellous amelioration to this suffering. By raising the consciousness to its highest--that is to say, by living with the highest part of the soul _and waiting upon God_--we can experience such very great Grace that the poignancy, the distress, of pain disappears. For instance, the following is from my experience. Trouble has come, trouble of several kinds: the death of one very dear; severe illness to another; for my brother a serious operation; for myself a slight one, but a very painful one--in fine, a variety of trials all coming together as they have a way of doing. I feel terribly nervous and fearful of the pain of my own operation and my brother's also: he is the brother who once saved my life, he is the being who more than anyone on earth I have most loved since early childhood. So I hang on to God. I hang to Him, not by beseeching Him to relieve or release me from any of these inevitable happenings, but by the way I have so slowly been learning, in which a creature, by means and because of love, passes out of itself and is able to hand over to God everything which it is or has or thinks or does, and in exchange receives His Peace. So I hand over my brother and my dead and my anxieties for self into His hands, and I go to my operation with the same serenity that I should go to meet a friend. I notice that I am more calm, less nervous, than anyone else. The anaesthetic fails before the operation is completed: consciousness returns and becomes aware of atrocious pain and blood-soaked busy instruments. Yet by Grace of God the mind and soul are able immediately to raise and maintain themselves in high consciousness of God, and the operation can be finished without a cry or movement of the body: no automatic shrinking takes place. And this Grace is continued for days afterwards, so that in recalling the torturing incidents, and though the pain of wounds continues severe enough to interfere with sleep, yet my mind remains quite calm, like a quiet lake over which, without ruffling its waters, hangs a mist--a tranquil shroud of pain that has no sting, no fear, no fret. VII After coming to Union with God I _never lacked anything,_ and this during the most difficult times of the war, and under every and all circumstances. Being careful to try and observe how this was worked, I saw it was very naturally and simply done by everyone being given an impulse to help me, always without any request to them on my part: the porter, besieged by twenty persons, would be blind to all and, coming straight to me, would offer his service; the taxi-driver, hailed by a waiting mob, had eyes and ears for no one but myself, yet I had made him no sign except by looking at him. The same with the coal merchant and his coal, the same with all tradesmen, the same with servants. I never lacked anything for one hour: _but I continually asked Christ to help me._ Since coming to Union with God, I have had innumerable trials, some of them tortures, but have been brought safely out of every one. I afterwards found that each trial was exactly what was needed for the alteration of some objectionable characteristic in myself. No trial that came was unnecessary. When its work was accomplished, the trial disappeared. * * * Can it be said that Union with God in this world entails upon us increased sufferings here? Yes. But these sufferings are not owing to abnormal occurrences: nothing will happen which is not the common lot of humanity; merely we are caused to feel that which we do experience, very acutely; and after Union with God all earthly consolations must be abandoned: until we abandon these we do not know how we have depended on them, how they have protected us from depression, loneliness, boredom, and discontent. Abandon all these earthly consolations and interests, and at the same time _be abandoned by God_ (sensible Grace is withdrawn), and immediately our sufferings become very severe, though our outward circumstances may appear, and may actually remain, of the very best. If our house is a fine one, we must live in it completely detached from its attractions: the same with regard to our friends, our amusements, our wealth, and all our possessions. It is obvious that in learning to do this we shall often suffer. The soul has painfully to learn that without God's Grace there is no virtue, no righteousness, and no sanctity: she learns by going forward upon Grace--perhaps to some great height: then Grace is withdrawn, the soul falls back, and feels to fall lower than she ever was before, and usually she falls over a trifle. Amazed, unspeakably surprised and humiliated, and ashamed, the soul learns to know herself--to know herself with God, to know herself without God. When she is with God, there seems no height to which she cannot rise: this gives great courage: more and more she abandons everything distasteful to God in order to unite herself more securely to Him. We have no sufferings that are not useful to us. Looking back on my life, I see how many troubles I suffered: how often my health suffered (malaria and sun fevers, and lightning and its consequences): how I was and still am kept in a somewhat fragile state of health, though quite free of all actual disease. I see in this frailness, especially during the earlier years of my life, an immense protection: given full and vigorous health, combined with my selfish and passionate temperament, and I know very well I should have fallen in any and all kinds of dangers at all times. I was not to be trusted with robust health, and even after all the mercies and blessings God has showered upon me I do not trust myself. I still remain the sinner, fundamentally and potentially at every step the sinner. But Love and Grace surround the sinner. Love and Grace save the sinner from himself: Love and Grace can beautify and make the sinner shine. My physical sufferings are not to be compared with the sufferings I see others endure, and endure cheerfully: this is a great shame and humiliation to me, because I have not learnt to suffer cheerfully: I am too easily undone by suffering and by the sight of suffering in any living thing; but although one may be a coward--that is to say, one may inwardly shrink from every kind of suffering,--one can be, and it is necessary to be, quite submissive; and to refrain from the slightest rebellion or selfishness--this is what God takes note of. What a difference there is between the selfish and the unselfish sufferer: how the one makes everyone around him miserable, wears them out body and soul; and how the other calls out all that is best in others and strengthens all that is best in himself! It is not so important whether we are secretly cowards or heroes; what matters is how we deal with sufferings when they come, what reaction we permit or encourage on their account in heart and mind and soul. There is nothing but suffering that can cleanse us, nothing but pain and misfortune which can so thoroughly convince us of our own nothingness, and break self-pride: joy will not do it; joy can do nothing more than refresh us after our sufferings, and in almost all lives we see how joy is made to alternate with sorrow: it encourages, it stimulates to further endeavours (this is the reason that God, at a certain stage of progress, gives extraordinary blisses, ecstasies, and so on), but it does not disperse our blemishes: the dispersal of spiritual blemishes is, as we know, the main reason of life in the flesh; it must be done, and the sooner the better: then we can finish, once and for all, with flesh existence. Righteous and very virtuous people may be able to dispense with Divine joys and consolations: it is doubtful if many sinners can--they require the confidence, the certainty, the enthusiasm which is naturally kindled by such experiences. So then we find that the vicissitudes of life, the endless daily trials, do not go because we find God. But His Grace comes, and when His Grace is with us wet or shine is all one, love and beauty gently sparkle everywhere; and then the heart cries out to him, Every day is like a jewel, every day I see the whole world decked and garlanded with all the beauty of Thy mind: each tree, each flower, each bee or bird tremulous with the life and wonder of Thy creative ingenuity! Each day is a new jewel set upon the necklace of my thoughts of Thee. VIII One of the trials that we have to endure as beginners is a joyless, flat, ungracious condition; a kind of paralysis of the soul, a dreary torpor. When we would approach God--pray to Him--He is nowhere to be found: He has disappeared, and everything to do with finding Him is become hard work, such hard work that it suddenly seems to us quite unprofitable: we suddenly remember a number of outside things which we would far sooner do: we try to pray, but the prayer goes nowhere-in-particular; it has no enthusiasm, no force behind it: has prayer then suddenly re-become a duty? This is terrible; what shall we do--shall we ask God to help us? When we do, we do it in so halfhearted a manner that our prayer feels to merely float around our own head like some miserable mist. We feel certain that this joyless, withered state will endure to the end of life on earth (the conviction that our unhappy condition is permanent is characteristic of all severe trials, because if we supposed the condition or difficulty only momentary it would not produce a sufficient trial, and consequent effort to overcome it on our part). This trial (though it may not always be a trial, but an actual blemish of the soul, a serious lack of unselfish love which must at once be strenuously corrected) is given for several reasons--we have become, perhaps, too greedy of _enjoyment_ of prayer: or we have come to take this joyousness of prayer for granted: or we have come to think we are uncommonly clever at knowing how to love and to pray; that we know so well how to do it that we can do it of our own power and capacity without God's assistance. Or the trial may be sent not for any of these reasons, but solely in order to increase the strength and perseverance of our love to God, and of our Generosity. This is one trial, and another is that God allows us to become convinced that He has nothing more to give us, He withdraws His graciousness from our apprehension; He leaves us as a tiny, unwanted, meaningless speck, alone in a vast universe. It would be idle to say that the soul does not suffer from this change; but these sufferings are just what she requires in order to develop courage, humility, endurance, love, and generosity. These two trials--the one when love is all dried up on our part, and the other when we think love must be all dried up on God's part--are the finest possible training and exercise for the soul, but they are only such if the soul _tries ardently to overcome them:_ it is in the effort to overcome that virtue is learnt, progress made. There is one most splendid remedy. Is it asking of God? No, it is giving to God. We give Him thanks and we bless Him, and we tell Him that we love Him, and we do it with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and this becomes possible even though a moment ago we were so far from Him, so tepid, seemingly so estranged: it becomes possible because we remember all the wonderful things that God has done for us and given us, and made for us, and suffered for us; and in remembering these it is impossible but that love and gratitude, like a torch of enthusiasm, will presently flare up in us. If God never gives us another thing, we will adore Him for His kindness in the past, we will adore Him for Himself, for what He is. Desolation and tepidity vanish. Joy returns, the trial is over; but it will come again perhaps a few hours hence, or to-morrow, or every day for weeks: the remedy is ever to be reapplied, and the remedy when thoroughly applied never fails in immediate efficacy; but it has to be constantly repeated: never let the heart and mind forget this. IX The heart, mind, soul, and will work together and lead together the reasonable earthly existence; but there is another part of the soul, a higher part, which has its own intelligence, which leads no earthly existence, has no direct recognition of _material being;_ thinks no earth-thoughts, judges by no man-made standards, sins no earth-sins. Has this part of the soul, then, never sinned? _It feels_ that it has sinned, though it cannot say how or when, but it _feels_ that this sin was direct as between itself and God, and is the cause of its separation from God; and it feels this sin to have been _an infidelity._ It is with this part of the soul that we sin the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be sinned by mere natural man: (here we touch the mystery of the two orders of sinning which, to the initiated, are seen both to be covered by the same commandments). This higher part of the soul mourns and longs for God with a terrible longing, and can be consoled, satisfied, by God only; He communicates Himself to this part of the soul. Sins of heart and mind do not injure it, but retard it: it cannot be corrupted by material living, because it does not connect itself directly with earth-living, it "responds" to God alone; but earthly sins delay it, paralyse its powers, postpone indefinitely its return to God. Is it this part of the soul which we ordinarily speak of as the Will? It cannot be, since it is with our Will that we consent to earth-sins. Have we, then, two Wills? It is reasonable and it conforms with experience to say that we have two Wills--a Spirit-Will conducting Spirit-living, and a Reasoning or Mind Will, conducting the affairs of earth-living: the lower part of the soul is the meeting-place and the intermediary between these two (often opposing) Wills, it is the ground upon which they work and have their fruitions. The Spirit-Will is the Will by which we finally become united to God. Before regeneration we are unaware in any keen degree of its existence; but it may exist for us in a vague and confused manner as an incomprehensible, undefined yearning: we cannot satisfy this yearning, because we do not know what it requires for its satisfaction. It is above conscience: conscience has its seat in the lower soul, there it deals with the affairs of earthly life. This Spirit-Will is so far above conscience (which can be used, cultivated, improved, or destroyed, according to our own desire) that it is not given into the keeping or cognisance of the "natural" man, but remains unknown, inoperative until reawakened and impregnated with renewed vigour by direct Act of God in the regenerated man. This awakening, this reinvigoration, would seem to be synonymous with the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. If it is awakened only by Act of God, in what way can we be held responsible about it? Our responsibility, our part, our opportunity is to so order the lower or earth-will that God shall see us to be prepared for the awakening of the Spirit-Will. This Spirit-Will, once awakened, is never again shut out from direct communication with God. Even when Grace is withdrawn, this Will-Spirit can come before God and, no barrier between, know Him _there_; although He may deny it all consolation and leave it languishing, it yet retains the consolation of its one supreme necessity--that of knowing _it has not lost Him._ It waits. X Like knows like: it does not "know" its opposite, but is drawn towards its opposite before and without "knowing" it: here we have the cause of the condescension of the Good towards the imperfect, and of the aspiration of the imperfect to the perfect long before it can "know" the perfect. Without this attraction of like to opposite the imperfect could not become the perfect (we desire, are drawn to God, long before we are able to know Him). The imperfect is able to become the perfect by continually aspiring to it: it gradually becomes "like." There are no barriers in spirit-living, therefore there is nothing to prevent the soul becoming perfect, save its own will-failure. The barrier existing between material- or physical-living and spirit-living can only be overcome in and by a man's own soul: in the soul these two forms of living can meet and become known by the one individual, who can live alternately in the two modes, but it is necessary that the will and preference shall be continually given and bent towards spiritual-living, physical-living being accepted patiently and as a cross. Then flesh ceases to be a barrier to spiritual-living. This is the work of Christ and of the Holy Ghost. Because the soul has recaptured the knowledge of this rapturous living we are not to suppose that it is possible to continually enjoy it here or introduce its glories into social and worldly living: it is between the soul and God only; but earth-life can and should by this knowledge be entirely readjusted. XI Are we correct in saying or supposing that this world with all that we see in it (because perishable) is not real, and that the Invisible is the only Real? We are using the wrong word: all that we see here is real after its own manner: it is intentional, it is designed, it is magnificent, it is the evidence in fixed form of the Supreme Intelligence; how can we venture to call it unreal, nothing, negligible? It is a question not of Reality or Unreality, but of greater and of lesser Activity. In this world we see the Divine Energy slowed down to its least degree: we see it so much slowed down that the Divine Ideas can become crystallised into a form and for their decreed period remain fixed. It is exactly this which the soul requires in order to recover her lost bearings. She needs the Beautiful, the Good, and the Bad made sensible to her in _fixed objects,_ and Time in which to consider them and make her choice between them. When Spirit-living is experienced, we become aware that in spirit-life Activity is of such an order as to preclude the mode of it being in fixed forms and objects: so there is no fixed visible Beauty, no fixed visible Good or Bad, no fixed _results,_ and the soul "sees" and "knows" only _that which she herself is like to._ If she is bad, she cannot become better by the privilege of looking at that which is good. If she thinks or desires wrong, she remains wrong: she must think Right in order to produce or "know" Right. She loses God because she can no longer think godly, and nothing is fixed by which she can trace Him: it is like to like, and this instantaneously without pause (or time). Here in this world Like may behold its Opposite: Bad may behold Good and, because of being able to behold it, may go over and join its will to Good: it is able to do this, because the evidence of Good remains fixed whether the beholder or thinker is good or bad. What is our quest in this world? It is to refind the lost knowledge of Celestial-living. Our Goal is God Himself. Our salvation does not depend upon our finding Celestial-living, but our finding this living depends upon whether we have found the way of Salvation. This Celestial-living is here, at our door, but we cannot retouch it without Act of God. What is essential to obtaining this Act of God? Is it necessary to belong to this or that Denomination, to perform this or that ceremony, to stand up, kneel down, or prostrate ourselves a hundred and one times, visit shrines, handle relics, endlessly repeat fixed words and sentences? No, these will not do it. Christianity _in its full meaning,_ a repentant and clean heart and mind--these will do it. It is a direct affair between the soul and God. It is Thee and me. This is immense condescension on the part of God. Love alone makes such a condescension possible. As in free spirit we think a thought and become it, have a desire flash to it and are it, it is easy to see how in thinking thoughts that are not godly, desiring that which is ungodly and imperfect, we pass far from God by "becoming" imperfection; and, having "become," find no satisfaction, satisfaction resting with God only. Having ceased to think godly, the soul loses God, becomes insensitive, and falls into darkness, thinks of her own wretchedness and, thinking of it, is held fast to it. Being miserable, she thinks to Self; thinking of Self, she is bound to the solitude of Self--blank solitude without fixed objects to amuse, without fixed Beauty to lead higher, to restore, to calm. Is all this tantamount to saying that when separated from God Spirit-life is less desirable than earth-life? It is: for then we are "dead" to celestial-living, and in Spirit-life all other living is miserable living. Hence we see the dire necessity of the soul for a Saviour: the necessity of fixed forms, of time, of flesh (which is a fixed stay-point for the soul), of the Incarnation of the Saviour _in flesh_ in order that He may guide the soul amongst these fixed forms, Himself showing her which to choose and which to cast aside: we see the necessity of time in order that, though we have an ungodly thought, we have _time_ to repent and choose a better before, in a horrible rapidity, we are inevitably _become that which we had thought._ In this world, this stay-point for the soul, the most lost is enabled to enjoy and perceive Beauty and Goodness. How much more easy, then, to return to godly thoughts, to the Good, to God Himself! But though her Saviour is in this world so near to the soul, she does not always seek Him. He belongs to the Invisible. Intoxicated at finding herself amused amongst fixed objects which she enjoys lazily through fixed mediums of the five senses, she devotes herself to these objects, surrounds herself with them, forgets everything else. "It is harder for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." But she must abandon object-worship: this is not to say she is to deny the existence of objects, calling them unreal; she must despise no created object, for each is there to form for her an object-lesson. She has two choices: she can see the objects, remain satisfied with them, and seek no further. Or, she can see the objects, admire them, but seek beyond them for their Instigator and Creator. Now she is on the track of God. All is well. But all this is not that Adam may recover his perfection, for when, and for how long, was Adam "Perfect"? We behold him sinning at the very first opportunity. In the Fall of Adam we see merely the continuation in the stay-point of time and of flesh, of the history of the fallen soul--sinning the same old sin, Self-will. The way of return to God is the same way by which we came out from Him--reversed. We came away by means of greeds and curiosities imagined by Self-will. The return is by casting away these greeds, casting away all prides, all selfishness; and what self-loving soul is there that could or would, left alone to herself, conceive of following such a way of cruel necessities, of such hard endurance without an Example before her? For the way is a hard way, a toiling way, at times an awful way, and as we pursue it the burden grows heavier, the pain sharper: then it grows lighter as the soul becomes renewed; and the pain is no longer the pain of loneliness, of sin and sorrow, but becomes the pain of Love, waiting in certainty for an ultimate Reunion: it becomes pain which is being forgotten in the returning happiness of God. But first must come the abandonment of Self-will, bit by bit, to the death. So we see upon the Cross Christ stripped of everything, and at the last stripped even of Union with the Father: consenting to bear the pains of even Spiritual Death: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" If there could be any greater depth of pain, He would have shared that also with the wandering soul. So we are indeed one with Him in everything: and He with us. In Spirit-life we meet the Ideas of God uncrystallised into any form. They penetrate the soul--she flashes to them, she becomes them, she reaches unimaginable heights of bliss by "becoming." This form of joy is incomprehensible until experienced: it is stupendous living, if it may be so expressed it is happiness at lightning velocity; but it is a lightning happiness which must flash to God. When it ceases to do this in a full manner, it ceases to be full happiness. When it becomes further perverted, diverted, and, finally, inverted, it ceases to be any happiness whatever. It is independent of surroundings: what it depends on is a perfect reciprocity with its own Source. That the laws which govern this Divine living will not be altered to suit wandering souls is not to be wondered at; but a new system may be called into being, and we may be able to perceive it in this world, evolved from first to last with its substance, forms, creatures, flesh, and time, in order to assist such wanderers. God _spends Himself_ for every wandering soul. XII Directly this world ceases to afford us pleasure, we wonder why we were born. The soul longs for happiness; feels certain she was created for it. So she is. Looking at the masses of drab, ugly, and unsuccessful lives around us, we may well ask what purpose and what progress is there in the lives of all these hopeless-looking people. But there is not one life that does not have brought before it, and into it, the opportunity of, and the invitation to, self-sacrifice, and in a greater or lesser degree this is accepted and responded to by all. There is far more soul-progress made by these grey-looking lives than would appear on the surface: they accept self-sacrifice--they accept Duty--all is well. Very much progress may not be made during the one earth-period of life, but some is made: we drifted away slowly from God; our return is slow. XIII Love is not the mere pleasant sentiment of the heart we are apt to consider it: it is _the animating principle of the soul,_ it is the reason and cause of her existence: it is a God-Force. When a soul does not love God she has ceased to respond to this Force; she is no longer a "sensitive" or _living_ soul: when she becomes insensitive, she has become what flesh is when it is "callous." This insensitiveness is the one great predominating disease of the soul: it is the cause of the darkness in which the soul finds herself in this world: it is this which causes our unawareness of God and of Celestial-living. How can we commence to remedy this disastrous state? We can act nobly, we can be generous, doing what we do as though it were for love, although it is merely Duty which animates us. This will be more or less joyless, because love alone can make acts joyful; but though it may be joyless it will advance the soul immensely: it will advance her to the highest degrees required by God in order that He shall Retouch her. When He Retouches her she becomes reanimated, she once again commences to live for and because of love: she becomes "sensitive" to God. This Retouching may occur only after the soul is free of the body--but the body is the house in which our examination must be passed, in which we must prepare and qualify for this Retouching. Hence the importance of continuing to make every effort _in this life._ The soul which takes Christ into herself, loves Him, obeys Him, tries to copy Him, qualifies fully for this Retouching. XIV In early youth life may be, and often is, a joyous adventure: little by little we grow aghast at the amount of suffering which life really stands for--our own sufferings and those of others, of which, owing to our own pains, we gradually take more and more note. Why all this suffering? It appals, it frightens, it makes upon many hearts and minds a sinister impression: how is this suffering of innocents to be reconciled with the Benign Will of a God Who is Perfect Love? Let us cease thinking that indiscriminate suffering to creatures is the Will of God. What is it, then? It is the inevitable--the long drawn-out sequence to the soul's departure from God--the Source of Happiness. To inhabit flesh is no paradise, but it is a means of regaining heaven. There is no misfortune, suffering, sorrow, disappointment, or pain, which is not consequent upon this departure of the soul from God. Are there here any truly "innocent" persons? To be here at all points to a fault of the soul, to infidelity to God--the "Original sin" in which we are born. The beginning of Salvation is to think. Nothing causes us to think so much as sorrow, suffering, and pain; and they melt the heart also, and they humble pride. The man who has never suffered, and never loved, is more to be pitied than the paralytic: his chance of Life is remote. How can we reasonably expect that the road back to our long-since forsaken God is to be smooth, pleasant, velvet-covered. What divides us from God? Is it happiness, beauty, and light? No--self-indulgence, rocks of evil, ugly greeds, places of sin and selfishness. Can we climb back through all this, most of it in darkness, without tears, without pain, without every kind of anguish? Over this part of the road is no peace; but continue, and, little by little, peace comes. * * * We say that we must find Christ; but where, and how, shall we find this Mighty Lord, Who comes out from the Father to meet the Prodigal? Must we study in ecclesiastical colleges, travel to distant lands, visit holy places, kneel on celebrated sacred ground, kiss stones, attend ceremonies, look at bones? No! Stand still! Just where we are is the place where we can meet Him. Just where we stand to-day can be as sacred, as blessed, as the Holy Land. Some little wood sprinkled with flowers, our own quiet room, an unknown, nameless hillside--these can be as holy as Mount Carmel, because He meets us there. * * * In all these experiences of the soul which has refound God, what is it that truly rejoices her? Is it the learning and knowledge that the pursuit of Truth may bring her to? She values Truth and knowledge because they lift her towards Him Whom she seeks and loves. Does the soul rejoice in ecstasies because they are ecstasies? No: what she values is the recaptured knowledge and certainty of heavenly living--in however small or brief a degree she is able to attain it in flesh: and because in the experience of ecstasy _she knows Him to Whom she belongs._ All other affairs become nothing whatever. Life on earth is now entirely a means of relearning how to please Him Whom she has found. Her concern is that she may quickly so prepare herself that she may behold Him for ever. It may well be asked of a soul which claims to have found God, How does she know that she has encountered Him? We have a Critical Faculty. It is above Reason, because it sifts and judges the findings of Reason, throwing out or retaining what Reason has deduced. This is a Higher-Soul faculty: it concerns itself solely with knowing Perfection. Reason is not occupied with knowing Perfection, but in analysing and digesting all alike that is brought to it. It is to the Critical Faculty that art, poetry, and music appeal, and make their thought-suggestions. We do not enjoy music because of the noise, but because of the thoughts suggested by it--we float upon these emotion-thoughts (we may float low, we may float high, and do not know to where; but it is somewhere where we cannot get without the music), so we say we love the music; but it is the emotion-thoughts we love. The sound and the thoughts suggested by it appeal to the Critical Faculty of the Soul, and, if it is perfect enough to be accepted by this faculty, we may pass, for the time being, into soul-living, but only very delicately, tentatively, and nothing to be compared to the soul-living, produced by the Touch of God. When God communicates Himself to the soul, she lives in a manner never previously conceived of, reaching an experience of living in which every perfection is present to her as Being there in such unlimited abundance that the soul is overwhelmed by it and must fall back to less, because of insupportable excess of Perfections. This perfection of living is given, and is withdrawn, outside of her own will. Which is the more sane and reasonable--for the soul to think, I have invented and originated a new and _perfectly satisfying_ form of living; or for the soul to conclude that she has been admitted to the re-encounter of perfect- or Celestial-living? In this living are happenings which cannot be communicated, or even indicated to others, because they reach beyond words, beyond all or any other experience, beyond any possible previous imagination or expression of mind, beyond all particularisation; it is these occasions of experience which the Critical Faculty regards as being encounters with the Supreme Spirit, because they are complete; nothing is wanting; they afford life at its perfection point--a stupendous Felicity, and that _Repose_ in bliss for which all souls secretly long. It is the meeting of the Wisher with the Wished, of Desire with the Desired: and yet, being that which it is--unthinkable Fulfilment--it is above all, or any, Wishes, and beyond Desire; it can be known, but not named. By these experiences the knowledge of the soul becomes enlightened two ways: she knows what bliss is; she knows the full calamity of life away from God--in flesh, in this world: not that flesh is not a wonderful Idea, not that the world is not greatly to be admired for its beauties, but the reawakened spirit desires spirit-living, cannot be pleased with earth-living, cannot be satisfied with less than God Himself. So, then, the logical consequence is that this world becomes a place we desire to take leave of as soon as may be. Life here becomes a punishment: not that Perfect Love desires to punish, but that the soul now knows that any form of life in which she is restricted from continual access to Him is a disaster, a profound grief. XV If the soul looks to God to comfort her, asks for His help, and gets it--and since communication with God is dependent upon some degree of like to like,--it follows that the soul must maintain a readiness to "give" to fellow-souls: to fail in this is to fail in any sort of resemblance to God. Hence we see how carefully Christ enjoined upon us to "Give to them that ask": and in no niggardly way either, but wholeheartedly, for "God loveth the cheerful giver." If we say that we apprehend God by that which is not Mind, what reason have we for saying that it is not Reason which receives Him? Because for this living which God's touch causes us to share with Himself we find that Space, Infinity, and Eternity are required and Reason stands, and remains, uncomprehending and dumbfounded before all three. It is Spirit, the flash-point of the soul, which receives and transmits and which lives this living. As we have an heredity of flesh so we have also an heredity of Spirit which of its own nature comprehends the ways of God and the mode of God's living. In High Contemplation we find that if Reason attempts activity, nothing is consummated: she must submerge herself and wait: soon Reason discovers the wherefore of this--her activity is not the activity of That Other. Only by that which is like in activity can That Other be received: this "like" is not herself: finally she comes to know this "like" as a higher part of the soul--Spirit. When Spirit has received and given it to the soul, then it is afterwards the part of Reason to attack from every side that which has been received, to digest it, absorb it, and share it, in fact though not in act. According to the health and strength of Reason so we shall successfully deal with and use that with which the Spirit presents us. By comparison with the magnificent Spirit-Activity or Spirit-Intelligence the Reason is limited and frail as a new-born babe: this is no humiliation to Reason, since she should not be expected to accomplish that which is not her part. Why do not all men apprehend God? It is very questionable if all men desire to do so, because in the recesses of each man's soul lies the consciousness that there will be some great price to pay. But beyond this there arises the question, Is it desirable, price or no price, that all souls should come while still in flesh to immediate knowledge of, and contact with, God; and after long and close thinking the experienced soul will answer No, and Yes. No, in so far as the apprehension of the Godhead is concerned; Yes, and most vitally Yes, for Christians, in so far as Communion and Contact with Christ is concerned. Why this distinction? Because the apprehension of the Godhead is beyond the requirements of salvation and redemption, and the world and flesh were created for those purposes. Though there is no limit to the heights to which the soul may aspire, and all souls are invited eventually to behold the Face of God, if so be they shall be able to prepare themselves to endure Him, there are to a soul still in flesh the most terrible dangers in knowing the Fullness of God even so far as His Fullness may be Known to Flesh: never perhaps in all her history is the soul in such danger as she is after coming (in flesh) to the apprehension of the Godhead: and this danger may extend in an acute degree over a period of many years and can never be said to cease altogether. The Soul Knows and feels, when in its acute stage, this horrible danger without comprehending its exact cause and nature, but it has about it the feeling that a man might have standing balanced on a narrow pinnacle. Unapproachable, untouchable only so long as he remains upon the summit, the eyes of a thousand enemies watch for his smallest descent: they watch day and night. What alone can enable the Soul to maintain such a position? Hourly, often momently, Communion with Jesus Christ. What makes such perseverance likely or even possible on the soul's part? Only love can make it so. If we say Communion with Christ is for the Christian vital to a full redemption, and therefore the Apprehension of Him is essential, to what degree should we experience this Apprehension of Him? The degree at which, perceiving in Him and His ways our Ideal, we become willing to modify and change _our manner of thinking and doing_ in order to meet the requirements of this Ideal. Having gone so far, the soul is likely to become enamoured of Him Personally: then all is indeed well for her. So then we find that we can apprehend God by an ever-ascending scale of degrees. We can apprehend Him with the Reason and the heart at all hours of the day. We can seek and approach Him with the holy white passion of the Mind. Yet this is not the Apprehension of Him which alone can be termed Contact, and which alone satisfies the soul or gives us the full feeling that we Know God. We cannot "Know" God as fully as He can be known by flesh without we enter ecstasy; but it is not ecstasy which produces the meeting with God, but the meeting with God which produces the ecstasy. Though we are able to enjoy a continual apprehension of Him with heart and Reason, no man could endure an unremitting ecstasy. Can ecstasy be prepared for? Yes, if we have courage to aspire to it, it can be prepared for by a contemplation of Him in which, to commence with, the Will, Mind, and heart, in great activity of love, send forth all their powers towards God: then for love's sake being glad and willing to become nothing, and becoming, as it were, dead to themselves and all interests and desires usual to them, by Act of God their normal living is then taken over into a greater living. Then He comes. And when He comes the Reason does not receive Him, but that certain small part, little more than a point in the soul receives Him. Apart from the joy of it, what is the true value of ecstasy to him to whom it is granted? It raises him above Faith into Certitude. The peace and strength given by Certitude are such that Joy is neither here nor there, the soul can wait for it, because, no matter what may afterwards happen to such a one, he remembers, and remains once and for all aware, that God Is, _and that He can be Known_: he learns also a new knowledge, but cares nothing for this because it is knowledge or because it is power, but because it brings him nearer to his God. Having once learnt the knowledge that comes by ecstasy alone, truth to tell, the soul would be content to receive no further ecstasy in flesh; but, intoxicated with love and worship, she best enjoys herself doing all the giving, for when He comes and gives He bursts down all her doors and, under the awful stress of Him, the soul hardly knows how to endure either Himself or herself. Life in this world is a life for spiritual weaklings. Our eternal Self is an Intelligence, a Desire, and a Will, and the life we live with it is no idle, torpid, confined living such as we have here, but is a living _in Liberty,_ without limit, restriction, fatigue, or satiety; in it word thoughts and thinking are superseded; by comparison to it even the highest thought-achievements of men, their noblest aspirations, appear like the sand-castles of children. Ravished at such further revelations of the Genius of God, the soul at last knows satisfaction. It requires perfection in order to be permanently operative, because only in perfection is Freedom found, and because for the living of it nothing can remain but such Essentials of the soul as _cannot be dispersed._ It is a measureless Generosity and an ecstasy of Receiving and Giving. To say that purity and perfection are required for this living is no mere arbitrary dictum, but a scientific fact: the impure, imperfect soul finds herself unable in perfect liberty and freedom _to expand to interaction_ with the Divine Activity. When the process of Return is sufficiently completed and, being still in flesh, we enter for a brief time this living, Reason, Pain and Evil, Yesterday and To-morrow disappear. Reason is gathered up into, and superseded by, the spiritual and wordless Intelligence: Pain and Evil, their part and work accomplished, are dispersed and banished into the mists of darkness. So the soul may learn even from this world something of the mystery of the Depths of God. She may enter into the happiness of Union with the Three in One: the One Whom in a state of glory yet to come she may Behold. But beyond This of Him which He will allow her to Behold, beyond This of Him in which she may repose in bliss, and beyond this Repose which He wills her to know of Him, He shows her that yet more of Him Is which He will share--heights of Felicity beyond all measure, holding the soul till she must pray Him to release her, or she will perish--reeling depths of rapture in a mystery of light; bliss beyond bliss for that lover who shall venture--all Eternity unfolding in fulfilment. And yet remains That of Him which wills no reciprocity, but shares Himself with Himself. So peace Is. And so, even in not giving, He yet does give that which is most precious, for without He Himself in His forever hidden depths were Peace, His creatures could neither know nor have peace. Looking into herself, what does the soul perceive? Apart from sins and virtues she perceives two things--caprice and free-will. Neither are of her own creation, but are essentials of her being. It may be that in caprice and free-will she may find an answer to those two questions which stir her to her depths: What is she that God should so love her? and how comes she to be away from Him? Clothed in the body of either man or woman, the soul is predominantly feminine--the Feminine Principle beloved of, and returning to, the Eternal Masculine of God. Caprice is feminine; Caprice and Mystery are two enchanting sisters, and in Woman we see them as being irresistible to Man. Angels, though they are a glory of God's heaven, cannot alone satisfy all the needs of their Creator: they have neither sex nor caprice, nor the mystery which joins hands with it. So He creates the soul, and He gives her an heredity of Himself in the flash-point of the soul, and He gives her sex and caprice and free-will to deny herself to Him if she choose; and in her caprice she goes out and away from Him, and when she would return she cannot, because in infidelity she has dropped from perfection. Disillusioned by her unfaithful wanderings and horribly pained, the soul longs for Him, and He longs for her. He Himself must make her the way of return, which is the way of redemption, and at a terrible cost to Himself He shows her His Righteousness and the mode of her Return in the Face and the Ways of Jesus Christ; and in the Crucifixion He shows her the measure of His love, and in the Cross the necessary abandonment of all self-will--total surrender. And all this suffering to Himself He bears in order to make good the wilful sinning and the misery of the wayward soul. So He brings home the soul, not by force but by love--that love by which He is at once the Life of everything and everything is the life of Him. Absence from God is Pain, and everlastingly will be Pain in varying degrees. Are there souls who have never left Him? Undoubtedly, but they know nothing of this world. Are we perhaps distressed at this multiplicity of worlds and souls? We need not be, for they are a necessity both of God and of ourselves; for God to Be Himself He must give Himself, and who can receive Him? Not even the greatest of all the Angels can alone bear to endure Him? Only into a vast multiplicity of individuals can God pour and expend Himself to the fullness of His desire, the One to the many. Each individually receives from Him, and each individually and collectively--the many to the One--returns Him those burning favours which are in Celestial-living. Is it all joy to find God? How can it be? Can faults and sins be eradicated without pain? Life here for the lover of God is one long eradication of offences. How can even the daily requirements of flesh be fulfilled without pain? How without profound humiliation and patience can we descend from Contemplation to duties in the household? How without pain consider with that same mind which has so recently been rapt in God--the various merits of breads, pastries, and portions of dead animals, in order that flesh shall eat and live! What a fall is this!--a fall that must be taken daily and patiently. Is it all joy to love God? How can it be? For Love carries in itself a terrible wound of longing which can never be healed till we come before Him in possession Face to Face. And many times a day in an unpremeditated natural anguish Love remembers the sufferings of that meek and holy Saviour; how can it be a joy to the soul that passionately loves Him to stand before a tortured Lord, tortured for her? There never was a pain as hard and sharp as this. There are no tears like the tears we shed to Christ. XVI We say of God that He is Love and Light, Wisdom and Truth. He is also a Gracious Consenting. So we see the Divine Light Consenting to darkness that it may return to Light, and Divine Love Consenting to infidelity that it may return to Perfect Love. But this Gracious Consenting is not because of or since Adam, but Adam "is" because of this Consenting. In the flesh of Adam the fallen soul is brought to a stay-point. Any that have experienced spirit-living even for one hour know that in immortal living is no stay-point but infinity of movement, in which movement the wandering soul becomes lost and finally insensitive. By means of the flesh the soul is brought to that stay-point where she more easily receives and understands the impregnation of Consenting Light, which is the Divine Begetting; and she receives the drawing power of Consenting Love: she is directly operated upon by the Divine Pity Who Himself came to show her the Way of Return: first, by the negation or sacrifice of flesh lusts; secondly, by the sacrifice of spiritual lusts (by which the soul originally fell); until finally, by death to all lusts and infidelities she is reunited to the blisses of Immortal Life. This is the kindly purpose of our life in this world. Christ being Eternal Light and Love and Life, we also are eternal _who contain Christ._ So, then, we consent to abandon all lusts of the flesh whilst also consenting to endure any consequences of these lusts in ourselves and others, not in unwillingness to endure, which is resistance, but in submission. From consenting to abandon the delights of the flesh we advance to consenting to the withdrawal of all spiritual delights from us: enduring instead spiritual difficulties, standing firm in the strength of Christ whilst the assaults of self-will and infidelity batter the soul. We consent to abandon self-absorption in the delights of God, and, returning to the world, endeavour to perform all acts of life in the world in a manner consonant with perfection; but this is impossible: this effort is insupportable without Grace. We cannot do it alone. We learn to know it and to know that we are never alone. Even if we fall into the deepest sin, we are not abandoned by the Divine Graciousness: by consenting to abandon this wickedness we are immediately reunited with the Divine Consenting, and so onwards and upwards in an ever-ascending improvement to perfection: and by consenting the soul daily sinks into the balm of Christ and loses her burden. We see the Perfection of this divine consenting and abandonment of Self-Will in the final picture of the Cross. We see unmurmuring consent to the death of flesh, consent to the attacks of evil, consent to injustice, consent to infidelity (and straightway they all forsook Him and fled), and, finally, consent to the death of Divine Union: this not without groanings, as being the one supreme and only insupportable Agony. XVII How is it that Perfect Love can consent to the wandering of the soul with its consequent sorrow and sin? Divine Light, being also Perfect Freedom, consents to the wandering of the soul; but Divine Love, being also Reciprocity, may not consent to such wandering as shall for ever preclude Reciprocity. The wandering soul must be, will be, Redeemed. * * * If Divine Light, being also Perfect Freedom, consents to the wandering of the soul, but Divine Love, being also Reciprocity, may not consent to a perpetual wandering, how set limits in a life in which perfect freedom must continue? A limit can be fixed by Evil, Evil the outermost circle from God, the shore on which, continually breaking and being broken, the soul turns herself in longing to a long-forgotten Lord. Evil is the hedge about the vineyard of the Parable. The soul is free to touch it, free to pass through it if she will, but touching it she knows Pain. Pain causes the soul to pause and consider: now is her opportunity; now she is likely to turn about and seek the Good. Then the purpose of Evil is fulfilled; then Evil becomes the handmaid of Good; then we can feel and say with sincerity, Evil has smitten me friendly, for it has caused me to turn about and seek Good. Good, once found, is found to be stronger than Evil. In a few years Good has so drawn us that Evil has become negligible; it lies forgotten on a now distant misty shore. The soul is Homeward bound. XVIII "If the wicked turn from his sins that he hath committed and keep my statutes . . . all his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him."--Ezekiel xviii. 21, 22. XIX Who is so blessed as the Redeemed Sinner? Who can taste the sweetness of God as can the repentant sinner? Who can know His graciousness, His infinity of tenderness and courtesy, as can the sinner? Who knows the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of God's forgiving love as does the sinner? Who can share with God hereafter such close experiences as will the sinner? Can Angels share the memories of His human days with Christ? And who but the sorely tempted sinner can be bonded to Him by the mutual knowledge of those bitter, burning, desert days? Not the Righteous, nor even Angels can know quite the full beauty of all the bonds that bind the sinner to his Saviour. O marvellous love of God! O blessed soul, O blessed Adam, blessed even in thy sins! He desired lovers and had none: Created Angels, and, desiring to prove them as lovers, He made Him a Lure. A third of them turned to the Lure and fell to It. They serve the Lure and take their bread from It, and the offspring of the serving is Evil. Desiring more lovers, He fashioned souls; yet, when He proved them, they also fell to the Lure. Being lesser than Angels, they served not the Lure, but the offspring of it--Evil--and became subject to Evil. They were made for Love, and in Evil found no Love, and it was an anguish and it tormented them. And He put them in flesh, that He might limit their suffering and show them His Light again; covered them about with Limits like a merciful Cloak; hedged them in with Evil as a boundary, so they should have no will to fall away further from Him than Evil because of the pain of it. But in flesh they continued to serve Evil, and the offspring of the serving was Sin: and they were miserable in their service, because of the pain of it; yet no soul could break the bondage of service, because no soul could be found that, being subject, did not serve, and in serving lose freedom by its own offspring. Then He sent His Spirit to walk with them in flesh, and being proven as a Lover, was not found wanting, and being subject to Evil did not serve, and remaining Sinless had no offspring to destroy His freedom, and He broke the bondage and showed them a light. He sent, because He repented Him of the Proving and of the Evil that came of it, and His fallen lovers repented and repent of their fall. His travail and their travail--the travail of severed Love towards Reunion--is the anguish of the Ages: but the anguish will have an end, because Love is Omnipotence. ------ [Transcriber's notes: The name of the author, Lilian Staveley, is not mentioned on the title page of this text, but I have added it here. I have also made the following editorial changes: "I am of no value value whatever" to "I am of no value whatever" "called it it by the same name as I" to "called it by the same name as I" "God shall see us to to be prepared" to "God shall see us to be prepared" "the full beauty of all the the bonds" to "the full beauty of all the bonds"] "(though entirely without effort on her part) is immensely increased)" to "(though entirely without effort on her part) is immensely increased"] 
29451	----	THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUL By Lilian Staveley The Author of "The Golden Fountain" London John M. Watkins 21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2 1920 What am I? In my flesh I am but equal to the beasts of the field. In my heart and mind I am corrupt Humanity. In my soul I know not what I am or may be, and therein lies my hope. O wonderful and mysterious soul, more fragile than gossamer and yet so strong that she may stand in the Presence of God and not perish! "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a _dove."--Psalm lxviii. 13._ By what means shall the ordinary man and woman, living the usual everyday life, whether of work or of leisure, find God? And this without withdrawing themselves into a life apart--a "religious" life, and without outward and conspicuous piety always running to public worship (though often very cross and impatient at home); without leaving undone any of the duties necessary to the welfare of those dependent on them; without making themselves in any way peculiar;--how shall these same people go up into the secret places of God, how shall they find the marvellous peace of God, how satisfy those vague persistent longings for a happiness more complete than any they have so far known, yet a happiness which is whispered of between the heart and the soul as something which is to be possessed if we but knew how to get it? How shall ordinary mortals whilst still in the flesh re-enter Eden even for an hour? for Eden is not dead and gone, but we are dead to Eden--Eden, the secret garden of enchantment where the soul and the mind and the heart live in the presence of God and hear once more "the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. iii.). It is possible for these things to come to us or we to them, and in quite a few years if we set our hearts on them. First we must desire; and after the desire, steady and persistent, God will give. And we say, "But I have desired and I do desire, and God does not give. Why is this?" There are two reasons for it. For one--are these marvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulant demand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour when the world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, when our plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are the occasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call a better world, and of the consolations of God. But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon the flood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much time will he or she give to Almighty God?--not two moments during the day. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable riches upon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does a man acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for two moments of endeavour? "Ah," some of us may cry, "but it is more than two moments that I give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him." If that is really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the consciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door, and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we have not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether we take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, or whether we take it to our amusements, we shall not find Jesus in any one place more than another if He is not already in our hearts to begin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I have never seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him very persistently; by comparing the world and its friendships and its loves and its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know of the lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it is impossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person that we know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think about Him, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him, and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly in our heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ and afterwards that divine garden of the soul in which God seems to slip His hand under our restless anxious heart and lift it high into a place of safety and repose. When for some time we have learnt to go in and out of this garden, with God's tender help we make ourself a dear place--a nest under God's wing, and yet mysteriously even nearer than this, it is so near to God. To this place we learn to fly to and fro in a second of time: so that, sitting weary and harassed in the counting-house, in an instant a man can be away in his soul's nest; and so very great is the refreshment of it and the strength of it that he comes back to his work a new man, and so silently and quickly done that no one else in the room would ever know he had been there: it is a secret between his Lord and himself. But the person who learns to do this does not remain the same raw uncivilised creature that once he or she was: but slowly must become quite changed; all tastes must alter, (all capacities will increase in an extraordinary manner), and all thoughts of heart and mind must become acceptable and pleasant to God. The man who has not yet begun to seek God--that is to say, has not even commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but lives absorbed entirely in the things of the flesh--is a spiritual savage. To watch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual man the same thing as when a European watches an African in his native haunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods, amusements, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with his own ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud European does not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what the savage is--quite dark; that to God's eyes his own ways and tastes are as frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a man above a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat, the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn his bookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to live spiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Until it is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneer covering the raw instincts of the natural man--instincts satisfied more carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but always the same. There is little variety in the lusts of the flesh; they are all after one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, and are very limited. It is not the clay of our bodies fashioned by God which makes some common and some not. It is the independent and un-Godlike thoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common, and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, the harmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is the work in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts and making for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force in motion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living God. For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire _willingness)_ to make us not only acceptable to God, but delightful to Him, so much so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem not to be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visits us and dwells with us after His own marvellous fashion and catches us up to Himself. To begin with, we must have a set purpose and _will_ towards God. In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort, which God will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing to maintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus step by step the spirit rises--first the effort, then the gift. First the will to do--and then the grace to do it with. Without the willing will God gives no grace: without God's grace no will of Man can reach attainment. God's will and Man's will, God's love and Man's love--these working and joining harmoniously together raise Man up into Eternal Life. * * * God is desirous of communicating Himself to us in a Personal manner. In the Scriptures we have the foundation, the basis, the cause and reason of our Faith laid out before us; but He wills that we go beyond this basis, this reasoning of Faith into experience of Himself. For this end, then, He fills us with the aching desire to find and know Him, to be filled with Him, to be comforted and consoled by Him, to discover His joys. He fills us with these desires in order that He may gratify us. By being willing to receive and understand as only through the medium of the _written_ word we limit God in His communications with us. For by the Holy Ghost He will communicate not by written word but by personal touching of love brought about for us by the taking and enclosing of Jesus Christ within the heart not only as the Written Word, the Promise and Hope of Scripture, but as the Living God. For this end inward meditation and pondering are a necessity. * * * How is it that we so often find great virtue, remarkable charity and patience amongst persons who are yet not conscious of any direct contact with God? They have never known the pains of repentance, neither have they known the sublime joys of God. Are these the ninety-and-nine just persons needing no repentance? Instinctively, and almost unconsciously, they hold to, and draw upon, the Universal Christ--or Spirit of Righteousness; but they have not laid hold of nor taken into themselves that Spirit of the Personal Christ, whom Christians receive and know through Jesus. He is the Door into the unspeakable joys of God. What are these joys of God? They are varying degrees of the manifestation and experience of _reciprocal_ Divine Love. What is the true aim of spiritual endeavour--an attempt at personal and individual salvation? Yes, to commence with, but beyond that, and more fully, it is the attempt to comply with the exquisite Will of God; and the general and universal improving and raising of the consciousness of the whole world. Yet this universal improvement must take place in each individual spirit in an individual manner. There are those who would deny to individuality its rights, claiming that the highest spirituality is the total cessation of all individuality; yet this would not appear to be God's view of the matter, for in the most supreme contacts of the soul with Himself He does not wipe out the consciousness of the soul's individual joy, but, on the contrary, to an untenable extent He _increases_ it. And Jesus teaches us that life here is both the means and the process of the gradual conformation of the will of Man to the will of God, and our true "work" is the individual learning of this process. But this cultivation of our individuality must not be subverted to the purpose of the mere gain of personal advantage, but because of the heartfelt wish to conform to the glorious will of God. The failure of the human will to run in conjunction with the Divine will is the cause, as we know, of all sin. In the friction of these opposing wills, forces baneful to Man are generated. From its very earliest commencement in childhood our system of education is based upon wrong ideas. With little or no regard to God's plans Man lays out his own puny laws and ambitions and teaches them to his young. We are not taught that what we are here for is above all and before all to arrive at a sense of personal connection with God, to identify ourselves with the spiritual while still in the flesh. On the contrary, we are taught to grow shy, even ashamed, of the spiritual! and to regard the world as a place principally or even solely in which to enjoy ourselves or make a "successful career." Children are taught to look eagerly and mainly for holidays and "parties"; grown men and women the same upon a larger and more foolish scale, and always under the terribly mistaken belief that in spiritual things no great happiness is to be found, but only in materialism: yet very often we find the greatest unhappiness amongst the wealthiest people. Happiness! happiness! We see the great pursuit of it on every side, and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but he fails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, a Finding-place for God. Whoever will obey the law of finding God from this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he, and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitive mysterious unseen Something which--not knowing what it is, yet feeling that it exists--we have named Happiness. But how commence this formidable, this seemingly impossible task of finding God in a world in which He is totally invisible? To the "natural" or animal Man God is as totally hidden and inaccessible as He is to the beasts of the field; yet encased within his bosom lies the soul which can be the means of drawing Man and God together in a glorious union. "I have known all this from my childhood," we cry, "and the knowledge of it has not helped me one step upon my way." Then try again, and reverse your method, for hitherto you have been beseeching gifts from God, asking for gifts from Jesus, and have _forgotten to give._ Give your love to Jesus, give _Him_ a home, instead of asking Him to give you one. Give your heart to God, _set it upon Him._ What is keeping you back? You are afraid of what it will entail; you are afraid of what God will demand of you; those words "Forsake all, and follow Me" fill you with something like terror. I cannot leave my business, my children, my home, my luxuries, my games, my dresses, my friends! Neither need you but, knowing this initial agony of mind, Christ said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (the name of an exceedingly narrow gate into Jerusalem) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. What does it mean to "set the heart" upon something? We say, "I have set my heart on going to see my son," "I have set my heart on doing so-and-so," but this does not mean that in order to accomplish it we must wander homeless and lonely until the day of achievement. No; but we set our heart and mind upon eventually accomplishing this wish, we shape all our plans towards it, we give it the first place. This is what God asks us to do; to give Him the first place. We need not go to Him in rags: David and Solomon were immensely wealthy, Job was a rich man; but we must eventually think more of Him than we do of our dress, more of Him than we do of our business, more of Him than we do of lover, friend, or child. Many well-minded people are under the impression that such love for an Invisible Being is a total impossibility. Yet the great commandment stands written all across the face of the heavens--"Thou shalt love Me with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength." Are we then to suppose that God asks the impossible of His own creatures, that He mocks us? No; for when we desire He sends the capacity, and day by day sends us the power to reach this love through Jesus Christ. There is included in the words "Give us this day our daily bread," the bread of the soul, which is Love. Divine Love commences in us in a very small way, as a very feeble flicker, for we are very feeble and small creatures. But God takes the will for the deed, and the day comes when suddenly we are filled with true love, as a gift. This is indeed the second baptism, the baptism of fire, the baptism of the Holy Ghost; then at last the great wall which has hitherto divided our consciousness from God goes down in its entirety, never again to rise up and divide us. This is the mighty work of Jesus Christ. Though this is not our work, still we have had the earnest will, the longing desire; we have made continually, perseveringly, our tiny, often futile, efforts to please and place Him first, and though perhaps almost all were failures, He has counted every one to us for righteousness. We may at all times be asking ourselves, "But how shall I know the will of God, how shall I please Him, how shall I know what Christ would wish me to do or to think?" There is one test more sure than any other, which is to ask oneself, "Would Jesus have done just this?" and the answer will come from the inward of us instantaneously. But before we can use this test we must have made a careful study of Scripture and also have begun the habit of inward personal intimacy with Jesus Himself. So immense is the bounty of God to the creature that truly and persistently wills and endeavours to please Him, so great are the rewards of that creature for its tiny work that it is as though a child should scratch bare ground with its little spade and reap a harvest of sweet flowers as magic gifts. In this way it is that we find actually fulfilled in ourselves the lovely words of the prophet, "the desert shall blossom like the rose." The great initial difficulty that surely most of us feel is how to come into personal contact with this Jesus Christ, and to know which are the first steps that we should take to bring about this contact. They are just those same steps that we use to come to a nearer understanding of and greater intimacy with any persons we are desirous of making friends with. We commence by thinking about them, by arranging to spend time in their companionship; and the more we think about them and the more time we spend with them if they are very attractive people, the more we feel in sympathy with them. Form, then, the habit of making for brief instants a mental picture of the Saviour. Note the exquisite tenderness of His hands, so instantly ready to save and heal; note the calm strength and the great love in His countenance, walk beside Him down the street, join His daily life, learn to become familiar with Him as Jesus--what would He do, how would He look, what would His thoughts be? To feel sympathetically towards a person is to take one of the most important steps towards friendship. How many of us stop in the rush of our daily amusements, interests, and work to sympathise with Christ? Most probably, if we think of Christ at all, it is to feel that He ought to sympathise with us! Now Christ not only sympathises with but ardently loves us, and our failure to receive the comfort and help of this love is due to our failure in returning to Him these same feelings of sympathy and love and friendship. We are not reciprocal, but perpetually ask and never give. It is only by returning love to Christ that we are able to receive the benefits of His love for us. His mighty power and help flows around but not through us until we place ourselves in individual and direct contact with Him, until we make that mysterious inward and spiritual connection with Him which can be achieved only through a personal love for Him. Again and again we may cry out, "But how love the invisible?" Christ is invisible, but for all that, he is not unknown. We all of us know Him. But we do not give ourselves time or opportunity to know Him sufficiently well. What hours, months, years, we devote to making and knowing our friends; yet a few moments a day are more than enough for most of us to spend in becoming more intimate with the only Friend whom it is worth our while to make. "But life is so busy I have no time," you say. What of those hours spent in the train, those moments spent waiting for an appointment, that half-hour taken for a rest, but which is not a rest because of the rushing inharmonious turmoil of your thoughts? No one is so restful to think of as Jesus. Every single quality that we most admire, trust, and love is to be found in Jesus Christ. The only reason of our failure to love Him more ardently than any human being we know is that we do not think enough about Him. How much offended we should be if anyone dared to say to us, "You are not a Christian." We all consider ourselves Christians as a matter of course; but why this certainty, what reason can we give? Many would say, "I keep the Commandments, and I am baptised in Christ's name." But Christianity is not an act done by hands, it is a life, and the Jews keep the Commandments even more strictly than we and are not Christians. The mere fact of believing that Christ once lived and was crucified is not enough. The Jews and also the Mahommedans believe that He lived and was crucified. What is then necessary? That we believe that He is indeed the Son of God, the Messiah, the Saviour; for if He was no more than a holy man, by what means has He power to save us more than Moses has power to save us? The true inward knowledge that Christ is God comes not by nature to any man, but by gift of God--which gift must be earnestly sought, striven, prayed for, and desired: this faith is the very coming to God by which we are saved. If we are not yet in this faith that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, then we are neither Jew, Mahommedan, nor Christian, but wanderers without a fold, and without a Shepherd; longing, and not yet comforted. How do we come by this joy of the personal loving of God, this Romance of the Soul brought to sensible fruition whilst still in the flesh? Is it a gift? Yes. Is it a gift because of some merit of goodness on our part beyond the goodness of other persons who are without it, though striving? No. Is it because of some work for God that we do in this world, charitable or social? No. Is it, then, nothing but an arbitrary favouritism on His part? No. Is it a sagacity or cleverness, a height of learning, a result of close study? No. It is simply and solely a certain and particular obedient attitude of heart and mind towards God of the nature of a longing--giving, a grateful outgoing thinking towards Him, continually maintained, and a heart invitation to, and a receiving of Jesus Christ into ourselves. Our part is to maintain this obedient tender-waiting, giving and receiving attitude under all the circumstances of daily life, and Christ with the Holy Ghost will then work the miracle in us. But so difficult is this attitude to maintain that we are totally unable to do it without another gift upon His part--Grace. The whole process from first to last is gift upon gift, and that because first of our belief and desire, and then of our continually remembering that to receive these gifts we have a part to play which God will not dispense with. For an illustration let us turn to the artist and his sitter. The sitter does not produce the work of art, but must maintain his attitude: if he refuses to do this, the work of the artist is marred and even altogether foiled. So with Christ and His Divine Art in bringing us to our Father--by not endeavouring to maintain our right attitude we foil His work. God would seem to give us that which we seek and ask for, and no more. Great ecclesiastics, theologians, philosophers who sought and desired Him with the intelligence, seeking for knowledge, for pre-eminence of spiritual wisdom, were not given as an addition to their learning this exquisite fire and balm of love. Those who desired of Christ the healing of the body received that, and we are not told they received anything further. So also with the woman at the well: "If thou hadst asked," Christ said to her, "I would have given thee of the water of Life." Without we ask for and receive this gift of Love we hang to God by Faith only. What is true religion, what is that religion by which we shall feel _wholly satisfied?_ It is to have Christ recognised, known, adored, and living in the soul. This is the New Life within us, this is the New Birth. The first proofs of the power of this New Life in us is the victory over all the lower passions, victory over the animal "that once was ourself"! A victory so complete that not only do we cease to desire those former things or be troubled by them but we no longer "respond" to that which is base, even though we be brought into visual contact with such things as would formerly have inevitably excited at least a passing response in us. Can any man free himself in such a manner from his own nature? Common sense forbids us imagine it. It is then a Living Power within us, slowly transforming us to higher levels, from the fleshly to the spiritual, and shaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tender consideration of this Power for our weakness that while we are learning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higher pleasures of the soul--we are not left comfortless. So in our earlier stages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later are altogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired by the soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which all now ask and desire one favour only--to be on earth in continual fellowship with Christ Jesus and ever able to enter into the love of God. To be without this glorious power of entering Responsive Love of God, to be cut off from this, is the great and only fear of the soul. This fear it is which holds the soul and the creature towards God both day and night lest by the least forgetfulness or wrongful attitude they should lose Him or displease Him. All these changes no man can bring about for himself--they are accomplished for him by the Holy Spirit; but this he can and _must_ do for himself, invite Sweet Jesus into his heart and enthrone Him there as Ruler. This once accomplished, that mysterious monitor within us commonly known as "Conscience" grows until it attains an excessive sensitiveness which penetrates the minutest acts of life and the deepest recesses of heart and mind. It becomes inexorable, it demands instant and complete obedience. Because of it relations with other persons undergo a drastic change. Complete, instant, entire forgiveness for every offence is demanded, and at last even a momentary annoyance must be effaced; no matter how great the cause of annoyance, it must be effaced in the same instant as that in which it crosses the mind, for a single adverse thought eventually proves as injurious to the Spirit as a grain of sand is to the eyes. The petty human aims, the smallness of all our former standards, the instinct for "retaliation" must all be overcome, laid upon one side--a slow task of much humiliation to the creature, revealing to it its own smallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness of self-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absolute self-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor--the Soul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of the power of God does the regenerated creature think of those alterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, are eventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilised because not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becoming gifts--that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itself has been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be said that to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail--and this in the very meanest way! We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, a wanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of means except the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Women devote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, and dogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games, and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in all their being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dust of disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungry pleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and the most their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one. But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does not bring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of the flesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God. This world is the very place in which we can most easily and quickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere act of dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusion of the Enemy--it is living here which can fit us and carry us to heaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven is a state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousness we become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as the flesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short of those required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longing of the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilst we are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewildering vortex of a life of terrible intensity and great solitude. We are aware of nothing but Self, are tormented by Self with its forever unsatisfied longings, and by the _impossibility of achieving any other Self._ In this intensity of self-tormenting loneliness the soul feels to gyrate, and all that she knows of that which is outside of this Self is the sound of the rushing of invisible things, for she is blind. Without the light of this world and without the light of Christ. The joys of space are not open to her, only the dark and lonely horrors of it: she is in an incalculably greater state of isolation from God than here in this world! The remedy for all this lies here; let no one think he can afford to wait to find this remedy until after he leaves this world, for then his chance is gone, and who is able to foretell when it will return? What can be more beautiful, more happy, than to find this remedy, to find the only Being who loves us as much as we love ourselves! the gentle, tender, gracious, all-sufficing Christ; that all-mighty ever-giving Christ who yearns over and longs for us--what madness is it that prevents us seeking Him? All of us would seem to have two personalities: we are the repentant and the unrepentant Magdalene and daily change from one to the other. But true repentance cannot come before love: if we think we repent before we love, then it is no more than a repentance of the mind, which says to itself, "I must stand well with God because of my future well-being." Where love comes first we get the repentance of the heart, which works this way in us--we love Jesus a little, we love Him more and more, and because of this love increasing to real warmth we suddenly perceive the frightful offences we have committed against this sweet love, and instantly the heart melts and breaks and we are shaken to our depths that we have ever grieved our Holy Lover. This is true repentance--no anxious fears for our own future, but love grieving and agonised for its offences. Such repentance as this pierces to the deepest recesses of the heart and mind, and leaves upon them a deep indelible mark, changing all the aims of our life, and is the beginning of all joys in Christ Jesus. Let us aim therefore not first at repentance, but first at love. A little love to Jesus given many times a day as we walk or wait or work, if only at first said by the lips with desire for more warmth, after a while we shall find ourselves giving it from the heart; then the Divine Seed has begun to grow because we have watered it. If the natural man were asked, "What is life? what is it to live?" he would reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure or pain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that I do all these things." Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck of consciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinking man tells him that this is so. But how uncover a further consciousness? This is the secret of the soul. To pass from one form of consciousness to another--this is to increase life fifty, a hundred, a thousand times according to the degrees of consciousness we can attain. These degrees would seem to be irrevocably limited because of the mechanical actions of heart and breathing, which automatic actions become suspended or seriously interfered with in very high states of consciousness. When first these very great expansions of consciousness take place, the creature is under strong conviction that the soul has left the body--that it has gone upon some mysterious journey--this because of several reasons. The first is because of a certain persistent sound of rushing; the second is because of the sense of living at tremendous speed, in a manner previously altogether unknown and totally undreamed of, in which the senses of the body have no concern whatever and are completely closed down; thirdly, on returning from this "journey" we are not immediately able to exact obedience from the body, which remains inert and stiffly cold and suffers distress with too slow breathing. But reason demands, "How is it possible that the soul should leave the body and the body not die? and also we perceive this, that, though the consciousness is projected to an infinite distance, or includes that infinite distance within itself, it yet remains aware of the existence of the body, though very dimly." The method employed, then, for administering these experiences to the soul and the creature is not by means of drawing the soul out of the body, but by a withdrawal of the condition of insulation from Divine Life or great magnetic emanation, in which insulation all creatures have their normal existence, living in a condition which may be termed a state of total Unawareness. By Will of God this condition of insulation is removed, the soul enters Connection and becomes instantly and vividly aware of Spiritual Life and of that which Is, at an infinite distance from herself, so that the soul is at one and the same time in paradise or heaven, and upon the earth: space is eaten up. Without seeing or hearing, the soul partakes in a tremendous and unspeakable manner of the joys of God, which, all unfelt by us as "natural" man, pass unceasingly throughout the universe. These experiences give an immense and unshakable knowledge to the soul and the creature of the immense reality of the Unseen Life, and are doubtless sent us to effect this knowledge. Why, then, is not every man given this knowledge? Because the creature must qualify before being allowed to receive it, and too many hold back from the tests. By these experiences we learn some little portion of the mystery which lies between the pettiness of that which we now are and the great glories that we shall come to; and in this awful heavenly mystery in which are fires that have no flame, and melody which has no sound, the soul is drawn to Everlasting Love. But we cannot endure the bliss of it, and the soul prays to be covered on account of the creature. But because of the limitations of the flesh we are not to despise it but regard it not as an aim or end (as that if we satisfy its lusts that shall be our paradise), but regard it as a means. Christ willed the flesh and the world to be a rapid means of our return to God. Subdue the flesh without despising it, in humility and thankfulness. Suffer its trials and penalties not in dejection, rebellion, or hopelessness, but as a means to an end. "For everyone shall be salted with fire," says Scripture; and can anything whatever be well forged or made without it be first melted and cleaned? So, then, for each his Gethsemane. As for Christ, so for Judas, who, not being able to endure, went out and hanged himself. Let our care, then, be to choose that Gethsemane which shall open to us the gates of heaven and not hell. In our raw state we fear the Will of God, thinking it a path of thorns; but as Christ moulds and teaches us we grow to know the Will of God as a great Balm: to long to conform to it, joyfully to join it, to sink into it as into an immense security where we are safe from all ills; and at last, no matter what temporary trials we endure, so great does our love and confidence grow by _Grace_ of God upholding our tiny efforts that, like Job, we cry to Him with absolute sincerity and confidence, "Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee"; having learnt it is not His Will to slay but to restore and purify and make glad. Incessant work is the lot of the awakened and returning soul, and justly so, for because of what folly and ingratitude did she ever leave God? A multiplicity of choices lie before her, and her great concern is which amongst all these possible decisions will prove the shortest path to God. These choices and decisions must be brought down to the meanest details of everyday life. At first on awakening the soul would like nothing better than to forsake and cast away material things altogether, and is inclined to despise the body. But Jesus teaches her that this is not pleasing: it is His Will that she should continually lend assistance to the creature in its weaknesses and uncertainties, not disdaining it but helping it. It is the soul which maintains contact with the Divine Guide, and then in turn should guide the creature. As the Divine Guide condescends to the soul, never despising her, so must the soul condescend to the creature: acknowledging and understanding that nothing is too small or humble for the soul to attend to and lead the creature to do in a beautiful and gentle manner. By these means the permeation of the natural world by the Divine is carried out, and no act or fact of life can be considered too insignificant for the soul to attend to for the development of this aim. The more we become familiar with spiritual life the more we observe the regularity of certain laws in it, and the more we find analogies between these new and unmapped laws and the laws and forces already known to us in the visible world. Rightly expounded by some scientific mind, these could bring the world of human thought and aspirations straight into the arms of God. Science is the friend and not the enemy of religion. Science will light up and illuminate the dark gaps. This world is a house fully wired for lighting: the wiring is perfect, the bulbs alone are incomplete; they give no light: it is the task of the soul to perfect these human bulbs. The life of conscious connection with God is true living as far as we may know it in the flesh, an enormous increase over the petty normal life of the world or, more rightly, the petty and _lacking_ life of the world. For in this life of God-consciousness is an immense sanity and poise, a balance between soul and body and heart and mind never achieved in the "normal" or "natural" life. Therefore the God-conscious life is not to be named an abnormal but the complete, full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creature have found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts is brought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnified intelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this world would automatically become Paradise. In this true life living and feeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can be imagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some idea of this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, still there are some types of persons to whom a little something of the commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature, of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable Something--an expansion, a going out towards, a longing--yearning, subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth, beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a Nameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this is the commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne has become to the soul that which It really is--God--and _He sends His responses to her,_ then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life as we may know it in the flesh. But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receive His responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance of their ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this mode of living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner, because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousness of God, and this in a lively and acute degree. One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merely half-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours of Him, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longings towards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounder unbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy is a deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His part to keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to this end. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperity that causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some or all of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are most tender--there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else or anything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard to bear," we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use, and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing and trying to save us, and we will not be saved. If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason of our life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees, humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened and purified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations. We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferent wrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. First we must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus the Christ: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once found and known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakable condescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul is filled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her Holy Lover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns to Him He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filial love, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness of the finding and knowing of God! Let the man who would know happiness here study the works of God, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that he sees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It is very real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it, and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made--God's things, not trivial man-made things--let him observe how all are made with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violet perfect as the oak." Let him learn the manner of the ways of light and the colours of all that he sees,[*] and then stop to consider how, having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicate eyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider all these things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heart and the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise but like sunshine upon water. [*] _Scientific Ideas of To-day,_ by C. Gibson. What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of an invisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having done this, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing of beauty He has fashioned here: and this praising and blessing of God becomes nothing less than a continual ecstasy for both soul and creature, and, indeed, because of this and by means of this burning appreciation of God's works, both soul and creature find their sweetest consolations as they wait to be taken to a holier world. When they both bless God with the fire of their love for every tender thing that He has made, then their days become to them one long delight. This blessing of God and His works is not just a blessing with lips, but feels this way. The words being said by the heart, a burning spark of enthusiasm is immediately kindled there, which spark sets light to a spark in the soul; and this invisible fire joining another Invisible Fire, instantly in immense exaltation we enter the joys of God. But because of our flesh we cannot stay but only enter and come back. We are made to love and adore God, but the mode of entry into this is not by beseeching God to come down and love us, but by constant endeavour to enter up into _His_ estate, to offer _Him_ love: this enthusiasm for God brings about a mysterious accomplishment of all needs, desires, joys. We are made to love and adore God, and because of this without Him we are an Emptiness, a Great Want. Such is the lovely and perfect reciprocity of love that as this Great Want we are the pleasure and the joy of the All-Giving God. And He is the All-Giving that He may rejoice and fill our extremity of Want. So we are each to each that which each most desires. This is Divine Love. Do not let us imagine that by making very much of earthly loves we shall by that obtain the heavenly: on the contrary, love of creatures, and too much turning to and thinking of and depending upon creatures, is a sure manner of hindering us _till_ we have learnt to unite with Divine Love. This love for creatures is often for the heart and soul what treacle is to the wings of a fly! Do not be content with creatures, but seek beyond the creaturely for the heavenly. This is not to say that we are not to love our fellow-creatures, attend to them, wait upon them, bear with them, and work for them; but whilst doing all these we are not to make them the object of our life: we are not to think that by merely running about amongst creatures frenzied with plans for their social improvement and comfort the nearer we are necessarily getting to God, or even truly pleasing Him. All these multiplicities of frenzied interests are best centred upon the finding and knowing and loving of Jesus Christ within our own hearts. When this finding, knowing, loving and believing has been accomplished, then we shall have accomplished the only work God asks us to accomplish, and all other works will automatically, peacefully, and smoothly come to their proper fruition in us through Him. Neither imagine we shall do this finding of Jesus in, or because of, another person. We shall not find Him in another person or anywhere till we have first found Him in ourselves: and this by inward pondering, delicate tender thinkings, loving comparisons, sweet enthusiasms, persistent endeavours to imitate His gentle ways and manners as being some proof of our desire to love and find Him. The need which is the most pressing of all our needs is to find that Light which will light us when we have to go out from the light of this world into the awful solitudes of that which we often so lightly and confidently speak of as "the other world." Without Christ we go out into a fearful loneliness: with Christ we walk the rainbow paths of Paradise. * * * Having tasted the blissful wonders of God, nothing less than God Himself can satisfy, comfort, or fill either the soul, heart, or mind; and yet we are still in a too small and imperfect condition to endure the power and strength of God's bliss for more than brief spells, so that after coming to these high things our portion here is to learn to be a useful willing servant, carrying with as cheerful a face as we are able the burden of life in the flesh, and endure this waiting to be with Christ free of the flesh. What are these blisses of God? They are contact with an immeasurable Ardour, they are our ardour meeting the Fountain of all Ardours: and God is communicated to us by a magnetism which in its higher degrees becomes luminous and unbearable. Are these divine joys and comforts of God towards us because we are more loved by God, because our salvation is more sure than that of those who are without these comforts? Most emphatically no. It is because we obey a particular and subtle law of giving to God, and do not (as is more natural to us) content ourselves with merely believing, expecting, and hoping to receive _from_ God. Let us pray more frequently than we do: "My Lord, increase my faith, increase my love, and increase my understanding of how to use this faith and this love when they have been begotten in me." * * * On every side we hear complaints against the Church. It is suggested that we are falling away from God because of some lack in the Church. But this fault of the Church is exactly the same fault which is to be found in the members of the congregation which compose it--a tepid love for a dimly known Lord. When the priest and every member of the congregation in his own heart worships the beloved Christ, then the Church will be found to have gained just that which is now lacking, and which we attribute to some priestly failure and not our own also. Of Church ceremonials it is hard to speak, for the lover of God can have no eyes for them: he is all heart, but sees it this way--that set rules, regulations, and ceremonials in prayers and worship are most right and proper for the creature publicly worshipping its Creator. That the assembling together in church is the outward and visible acknowledgment of the creature's worship of God and also a looking for the fulfilling of the promise "where two or three are gathered together in My name." The redeemed creature worships very ardently with all its little heart and mind and all its tiny strength, learning in its own self the words of David: "I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord." But the soul cannot worship in set words, neither can she have need or use for the ceremonials invented by and for the creature, but worships God in another manner altogether, as she is taught by the Holy Spirit, and in the greatness of her worship mounts to God, and closes with God. For holy love cannot long be divided. Often when the creature is alone, and eating, its Lord will visit it, causing the soul and the mind and the heart of it to cry out: "But of what use to me is this meat and drink which is before me? I have no need of it, I can do nothing other than sip of the holy beauty of my Lord." And immediately we are so pressed the earthly cup must be set down, and in very great ecstasy we sup in spirit with the Lord. The unnameable Elixir of God is the Wine, and Love is the Bread. When holy love grows great in us we wonder that we ever thought that human love was love at all, for no matter how great it may once have seemed it now seems so small it is no greater than the humming of a bee around a flower in summer time. But holy love--who can commence to describe it? It rides upon great wings, it burns like a devouring fire, it makes nothing of Space and comes before Him like the lightnings, saying, "Here am I," and, gathering all things, all loves into itself, pours them out at the feet of God. By baptism we are named and called for election by the Church. Through personal and individual repentance and connection by faith and love with Christ we _enter_ election by baptism of the Holy Spirit. By the mere following of rituals, doctrines, dogmas, ceremonies, we are in great danger of introducing the mind of the Pharisee with his reliance as means of salvation upon the washing of hands and cups, and except we exceed this righteousness we do not enter the Kingdom. Or the mind of the lawyer, which type of mind seeks obstinately, forcefully, to mould the secrets of the soul's communion with God and fix them upon cold documents where they quickly cease to have life. * * * Above the fretful and contentious human reason is the intelligence of the soul, and this soul has in itself a higher part for we become acutely aware of it--that part of it with which we come in contact with God, with which we respond to God, receive His manifestations, are laid bare to His blisses. Separated from worldly things by an impalpable veil, it rests above all such things in serene calm, and, strangest of all, has no comprehension whatever of sin: when we enter this part of the soul and live with it sin and evil become not only non-existent but unthinkable, unimaginable: we are totally removed from any such order of existence. It communicates its knowledge to the lower part of the soul, the soul to the Reason, the Reason to the rest of the creature. We say we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and in saying this we think of the body, but far more wonderful is the making of the spiritual of us. O man, climb out of the gross materialism of thy fleshly self, for thou canst do it! As out of the heavy earth come the delicate flowers of spring, so out of the heavy body, because of _that divine_ which is within it, come the marvellous flowers of the soul. To think that we can come to God and know Him by means of our intelligence or reason is as unwise as to suppose we can eat our dinner with our feet; it is as necessary to use our teeth to eat our food as it is to use our heart to find God, and it is nothing but the natural vanity of the human mind which blinds us to this fact. The human reason is too small to stand the greatness of God, and could it ever reach to Him would be withered in the awfulness of His magnetic light. Even the soul in her contacts with God whilst still in the flesh is of necessity totally blind, and yet, blind as she is, is pierced by this terrible intensity of light and energy. How then shall the reason stand naked before God without madness or frenzy? To reason out upon paper where God is, why He is, what He is, and how precisely He is to be discovered, will take us no further up into the mysteries of the actual knowing of the wonders of His love than the ink and paper we employ might do. To know this love in our own heart is the necessity, for the soul and the heart live hand in hand as it were and together can find and know God. God once found by the heart, we can dwell upon Him with our reason, and feed our reason with the knowledge we have acquired of Him through the heart and soul. The Holy Ghost aids us in this deep search, quickens us, gives us impulses. At first in our natural state we are able only in a very dim way to perceive these impulses, but we can become so sensitive to God that He pierces us, brings us to the ground with a breath, and we bend and yield before His lightest wish as a reed bends and quivers to the wind. When the heart and soul are greatly set upon God and we have become true lovers of God, there comes a danger of falling into so deep a pining for God that the health both of the mind and of the body is weakened by it. We should aim at cheerful and willing waiting: anything else is a falling short; if we examine into it, we shall see that pining savours of unwillingness and discontent--there is in it something of the spirit of the servant who designs to give notice of leaving. The lover of God is the most blest of all creatures and should show himself serenely glad, waiting with patience, knowing as he does from his own experiences that who has God for a Lover has no need of any other. _Of how to receive from God, and of the Blessed Sacrament_ Nothing is of a deeper mystery or difficulty or disappointment to the soul and the heart well advanced in the experience and in the love of God than to find that in the ceremony of the Blessed Sacrament it is possible for them to be less sensible of receiving from God than at any time. How and why can this be? is it the Ceremonial causing the mind to be too much alert to guide the body now to rise, now to kneel, now to move in some direction? Is it this distraction which prevents perception--for in all communion with God the mind is closed down, the heart and soul only being in operation? On the other hand, it is easily possible to be in closest communion with God in all the noises and distractions of a great railway station amongst a crowd of shifting persons. No, it is some imperfection in the attitude adopted by the heart and mind in approaching this Sacrament. In what way have we perhaps been approaching it? In an attitude of awe accompanied by a humble expectancy or hope of receiving. We hope and believe we shall receive God's grace. Now, the experienced soul and heart know so well what it is and how it feels to receive God's grace that they are all the more disappointed at not receiving it upon this holy occasion. What were our Lord's words? He said, "Do this in remembrance of Me," or more correctly translated, "Do or offer this as a memorial of Me before God." This implies an act of giving upon our part, whereas we have come to regard this ceremony as an act of receiving. Now though the attitude of humble expectancy to receive is of itself a worthy one it does not fulfil the exact command, which is to commemorate, offer, and hold up before God the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of our Saviour, as a living memorial of Him before God. It should be accompanied by an offering of great love and thanks upon our part without regard to anything we may receive. But because first we give we then receive. About nothing are we in such a state of ignorance as about the laws which govern the give and take between God and Man. On the one hand is God the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other is Man the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them an impasse. Failure to fulfil God's laws is the cause of this impasse. There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. We cannot know God without in some small degree first being like God, and to be like God we must not only be pure in heart but also conform to the God-like condition of giving. First we obey this law that the second may come into effect--that of like to opposite, or positive to negative, the All-Giving immediately meeting and filling the all-needing. We have nothing to give to God but our love, thanks, and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and the more we give the more God-like do we become, and the more God-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches and blisses of God. Therefore the more we give to God the more we receive. On going to partake of the Blessed Sacrament we do well to banish from the heart and mind all thought of what it may please God to still further give us and to make an offering _to_ God. The only way we can make an offering to God is upon the wings of love, and upon this love we hold up before Him the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of our Redeemer, repeating and repeating in our heart, "I eat and drink This as a memorial before Thee of the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ." When we so do with _great_ love in our heart we find that we are able sensibly to receive great grace. _Of Prayer_ Of the many kinds and degrees of prayer first perhaps we learn the prayer of the lips, then that of the mind, then the prayer of the heart, and finally the prayer of the soul--prayer of a totally different mode and order, prayer of a strange incalculably great magnetic power, prayer which enables us to count on help from God as upon an absolute and immediate certainty. We find this about perfect prayer that it is not done as from a creature beseeching a Creator at an immense distance, but is done as a love-flash which, eating up all distance, is immediately before and with the Creator and is accompanied by vivid certainty at the heart; this latter is active faith; we have too much perhaps of that kind of faith which may be named waiting or passive faith. This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to us God's help. We may or may not receive this in the form anticipated by the creature, but later perceive that we have received it in exactly that form which would most lastingly benefit us. After a while we cease almost altogether from petitioning anything for ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselves to God by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself. _Of Contemplation_ To enter the contemplation of God is not absence of will, nor laziness of will, but great energy of will because of, and for, love: in which love-condition the energy of the soul will be laid bare to the energy of God, the two energies for the time being becoming closely united or oned, in which state the soul-will or energy is wholly lifted into the glorious God-Energy, and a state of unspeakable bliss and an _immensity_ of _living_ is immediately entered and shared by the soul. Bliss, ecstasy, rapture, all are energy, and according as the soul is exposed to lesser or greater degrees of this energy, so she enters lesser or greater degrees of raptures. It is misleading in these states of ecstasy to say that the soul has vision, if by vision is to be understood anything that has to do with concrete forms or any kind of sight; for the soul is totally blind. But she makes no account of this blindness and has her fill of all bliss and of the knowledge of another manner of living without any need whatever of sight. Has the wind eyes or feet? yet it possesses the earth and is not prevented. So the soul, without eyes and without hands, possesses God. Contact with God is then of the nature of the Infusion of Energy. The infusions of this energy may take the form of causing us to have an acute intense perception and consciousness (but not such form of perception as would permit us to say "I saw," but a magnetic inward cognisance, a fire of knowledge which scintillates about the soul and pierces her) of His perfections; of His tenderness, His sweetness, His holiness, His beauty. When either of these last two are made known to her, the soul passes into what can only be named as an agony of bliss, insupportable even to the soul for more than a very brief time, and because of the fearful stress of it the soul draws away and prays to be covered from the unbearable happiness of it, this being granted her whether automatically (that is to say, because of spiritual law) or whether by direct and merciful will of God--who is able to tell? Such experiences are not for the timid, but require steady courage and perfect loving trust in God. Contemplation even in its highest forms is not to be confused with spiritual "experiences," which are totally apart from anything else that we may know in life--they are entirely outside of our volition, they are not to be prayed for, they are not to be even secretly desired, but to be accepted how and when and if God so chooses. In contemplation the will is used, and we are not able to come to it without the will is penetratingly used towards the joining and meeting with the will and love of God. In the purely spiritual "experience" from first to last there is no will but an absence of will, a total submission and yielding to God, without questioning, without fear, without curiosity, and the only will used is to keep ourselves in willingness to submit to whatever He shall choose to expose us to. God does not open to us such experiences in order to gratify curiosity--but expecting that we shall learn and profit by them. First we find them an immense and unforgettable assurance of another form of living, of great intensity, at white heat, natural to a part of us with which we have hitherto been unfamiliar (the soul) but inimical to the body, which suffers grievously whilst the soul glows with marvellous vitality and joy. This assurance of another manner of living, though we see nothing with the eyes, is the opening of another world to us. The invisible becomes real, faith becomes transformed in knowledge. If the hundred wisest men of the world should all prove upon paper that the spiritual life as a separate and other life from the physical life does not exist, it would cause nothing but a smile of compassion to the creature that had experience. God teaches us by these means to become balanced, poised, and a complete human being, combining in one personality or consciousness the Spiritual and the Material. But we are not given and shown these mysteries without paying a price: we must learn to live in extraordinary lowliness and loneliness of spirit. The interests, enjoyments, pastimes of ordinary life dry up and wither away. It becomes in vain that we seek to satisfy ourselves in any occupation, in anything, in any persons, for God wills to have the whole of us. When He wills to be sensibly with us, all Space itself feels scarcely able to contain our riches and our happiness. When He wills to disconnect us from this nearness, there is nothing in all the universe so poor, so destitute, so sad, so lonely as ourself. And there is no earthly thing can beguile or console us, because, having tasted of God, it is impossible to be satisfied or consoled save inwardly by God Himself. But He opens up Nature to us in a marvellous way, unbelievable until experienced. He offers us Nature as a sop to stay our tears. By means of Nature He even in absence caresses the soul and the creature, speaks to them fondly, encourages and draws them after Him, sending acute and wonderful perceptions to them, so that, quite consoled, they cry aloud to Him with happiness. And often when the creature is alone and secure from being observed by anyone He will open His glamour to the soul and she passes into union with paradise and even more--high heaven itself. These are angels' delights which He lavishes upon the prodigal. Another heavy price to be paid is found by the soul and heart and mind in the return from the blissful and perfect calm which surrounds even the lowest degree of the contemplation of God to the turmoil of the world. For to have been lifted into this new condition of living, this glamour, this crystal joy, to know such heights, such immensities, and to descend from God's blisses to live the everyday life of this world and accept its pettiness is a great pain, in which pain we are of necessity not understood by fellow-creatures; therefore the more and the more we become pressed into that great loneliness which is the inevitable portion of the true lover, and experience the pain of those prolonged spiritual conflicts in which the soul learns to bend and submit to the petty sordidness of life in a world which has forgotten God. It is the lack of courage and endurance to perpetually weather these dreadful storms which causes us to turn to seclusion--the cloister. To refrain from doing this and to remain in the world though not of it is the sacrifice of the loving soul--she has but the one to make--to leave the delights of God, and for the sake of being a useful servant to Jesus to pick up the daily life in the world; which sacrifice is in direct contrariety to the sacrifice of the creature, which counts its sacrifices as a giving up of the things of the world. So by opposites they may come to one similarity--perfection. How to conduct itself in all these difficult ways so foreign to its own earthly nature is a hard problem for the creature, belonging so intimately to this world which it can touch and see: and yet which it is asked by God bravely to climb out of into the unknown and the unseen. Bewildered by the enormous demands of the soul which can never rest in any happiness without she is contemplating God, adoring Him, conversing with Him, blessing and worshipping Him, the poor creature is often bewildered to know how to conduct the ordinary affairs and duties of life under such pressures. Of its emotions, of the tears that it sheds, of the falls that it takes, a library of books might be written. In the splendour, the grandeur, the great magnitudes and expanses of spirit life as made known to it by the soul, the creature feels like some poor beggar child, ill-mannered, ill-clothed, which by strange fortune finds itself invited to the house of a mighty king, and, dumb with humility and admiration, is at a loss to understand the condescension of this mighty lord. In this sense of very great unworthiness lies a profound pain, an agony. To cure this pain we must turn the heart to give love, to think love, and immediately we think of this great condescension as being for love's sake--as love seeking for love--we are consoled. Then all is well, all is joyful, all is divine. The more simple, childlike, and unpretentious we can be, the more easily we shall win our way through. Pretentiousness or arrogance in Man can never be anything but ridiculous, and a sense of humour should alone be sufficient to save us from such error. For the same reason it is impossible to regard human ceremonies with any respect or seriousness, for they are not childlike but childish. How often the heart and mind cry out to Him, "O mighty God, I am mean and foolish--mean in that which I have created by my vain imaginings, my pride, my covetousness; but in that which Thou hast made me I am wonderful and lovely--a thing that can fly to and fro day or night to Thy hand!" The difficulties of the creature should not be raised on some self-glorifying pinnacle merely because the fickle variable heart at lasts learns the exercise of Fidelity. Do we not see a very ordinary dog practising this same fidelity as he waits, so eager that he trembles, outside his master's door, having put on one side every desire save his desire to his master whom, not seeing, he continues to await; and this out of the generosity of his heart! And we? Only by great difficulty, long endeavour, bitter schooling, and having at last accomplished it we name each other saints or saintly. Let us think soberly about these things; are we then so much less than a dog that we also cannot accomplish this fidelity--so that though hands and feet go about daily duties the heart and mind are fixed on the Master? Then the Master becomes the Beloved. _Of Blessing God_ At first when the creature is being taught to bless God it shrinks back in a fright, crying, "What am I that I should dare to bless Almighty God, I am afraid to do it; I am too unworthy; let me wait till I am more righteous, till I have done more works." Then the divine soul counsels it so: "Think no more about thyself, moaning and groaning over thine unworthiness and trusting to progress in works. Cease thinking of thyself, and rise up and think only of God. Thou wilt never be worthy, and all thy works are nothing and thy learning of no count whatever; and as to thy righteousness, is it not written that it is as filthy rags? All that God will give thee is not for any merits or works of thine, but for Love's sake. He desires both to give thee love and to receive thy love, therefore rise and worship Him, give Him all the love that thou hast; keep none back either for thyself, or anything or any creature, but give all that thou hast to Him with tears and songs and gladness." Timidly the creature obeys, and with all its powers and strength it blesses God, and instantanteously God blesses the creature, sending His sweetness and His glamour about it: and the more the soul and the creature bless God the more does He bless them, and they bless Him from the bed of sickness and pain as fully as they bless Him in health. They bless Him in the night-time and in the noonday, they bless Him as they walk, they bless Him as they work, and because of this little bit of blessing and love that the two of them offer to God He offers them all heaven in Himself. It is the duty of the soul to constantly lend counsel, courage, help, advice, and strength to the creature, and we are conscious of the voice of the soul, which without any sound yet makes itself inwardly heard, calling to the selfishness, the egoism of the creature, urging the higher part of it to come higher and the animal in it to become pure and to subdue itself, saying to it, "Lie down and be quiet, or thou wilt bring disaster to us both." "I cannot be quiet, for I could groan with my restless distress." "Cease to think of thyself with thy roarings and groanings. Lay hold of love which thinks nothing of itself but always of that which it may give to the Beloved." "I cannot do this; I am no angel nor even a saint, but a most ordinary creature, forsaken of God and miserable." "Thou art never forsaken, but thy door is closed: it opens from thy side, and thou art thyself standing across it and blocking the opening of it--I will show thee how to open it, cry and moan no more for favours and gifts, but do thou thyself do the giving. Since thou dost not know at all how to begin--do it with these set words: 'I love and praise Thee, I love and bless and thank Thee, I love and bless and worship Thee'; and see thou do it with all thy heart and mind and strength and with no thought of thyself and future benefits, but entirely that thou mayest give Him pleasure." Then the creature tries, but fails lamentably, for most of its heart and mind is on itself and a fraction only on God. "Now try again and again and again," cries the soul, "O thou miserable halfhearted shallow worldling!" And the creature tries again, and, doing better, gets a very slight warmth about the heart; and, doing it again, gets a little comfort, and so, gradually progressing in the way of true love which is all giving, at last one day the creature does it perfectly because it has altogether forgotten itself in the fire of its love and is completely set upon God. Then automatically the door opens, and immediately in through it there rushes the breath and the blisses of God. And the creature, weeping with excess of happiness, cries, "I never asked for such delights, I did not know such happiness was to be had; and if I did not ask, how is it that I have received?" Then the soul answers, "Because thou hast learnt to give to God, and that is the key which unlocks the garden of His joys. Thou hast just three things which He desires to have--thy love and thine obedience, and thy waiting fidelity. When thou dost conform to His desire with all thy tiny unadulterated strength, immediately heaven becomes open to thee and thou dost receive more than thou didst ever dream or think to ask for. This is His lovely Will towards thee. But first always do thy part, and until thou doest thy part I cannot begin mine, for thou couldst receive neither blessings nor blisses did I not receive them first from Him and hand them on to thee; so each are dependent the one on the other, and only together can we enter paradise. Think not I do not suffer as much as thyself and far more. I know thou dost suffer with thy body and with the losses of thine earthly loves, but I suffer far more with the loss of my Heavenly Love. At first I could not understand what had come to me, buried and choked in thy strange house of flesh. I despised thee, I hated thee, thy stupid ways, thy dreadful greeds, thine unspeakable obstinacy and unwillingness; thou didst give me horrible sicknesses with thine unsavoury wants, thine undignified requirements. I thought thee foolish and now know myself to be more foolish than thee, for thou hardly knowest the heavenly love whereas I knew and left Him, seeking other loves. The Fall was not thy fault, poor human thing, but mine. I am the Prodigal, and thou the means of my return, for if I can but raise thee to true adoration of our God, then I shall pay my debt of infidelity to Him and together as one glorious radiant spirit we shall enter heaven again. "Only listen and I can guide thee, for the Master speaks to me and tells me what to do. I am partly that which thou dost please to call thy conscience, and thou dost treat me shockingly, buffeting and wounding me when I try to whisper to thee: if thou art not careful, thou wilt so disable me that all our chance of happiness will be spoiled. Do thou listen very tenderly for my voice, for I am of gossamer and thou of strangely heavy clay." _Of Evil and Temptation and of Grace_ The heart and soul are subject to four principal glamours: the glamour of youth, the glamour of romance, the glamour of evil, and the glamour of God. When once the Spirit of Love, which is God, descends into our soul then a new light becomes created in us by which we see the glamour of evil in its true form and complexion. We see it as disease, misery, imprisonment, and death; and who finds it difficult to turn away from such? The natural man sees evil as an intense attraction, the spiritual man as a horror of ugliness. See then how the Spirit of Love is at once and easily our Salvation. Amongst all mysteries none seems greater to us than the mystery of Evil. God--Goodness--Love: these we understand. But evil--whence and why, since God is Love, Omnipotence, and Holiness? We cannot but observe that all things have their opposites: summer and winter, heat and cold, light and dark, silence and sound, pleasure and pain, life and death, action and repose, joy and sadness, illness and health; and how shall we know or have true pleasure in the one without we have also knowledge of the opposite? The man who has never known sickness has neither true gratitude, understanding, nor pleasure in his heart over his good health: he does not know that which he possesses. Neither can we know the great glory that is Holiness till we have known evil and can contrast the two. "But what a price to pay for knowledge; what fearful risk and danger to His creatures for God so to teach them!" we may cry, forgetting that with God all things are possible, "Who is able and strong to save." And does He dare set Himself no difficult thing that He may overcome it? The strong man's knowledge of his own courage forbids us think it. God wills to save us. We have but to join our will with His, and we are saved. How shall we mount to God other than by mounting upon that which offers a foundation of tangible resistance, overcoming and mounting upon evil. Evil then becomes our stairway--the servant of Good. By using the evil that we meet with day by day, we mount daily the nearer to God by that exact degree of evil which we have overcome by good--that is to say, by practice of forgiveness, compassion, patience, humility, endurance, held out over against the invitation of evil to do the exact opposite. A negligent, thieving, lying servant that we have to deal with calls forth forgiveness, and humility also, for are we a perfect servant to our Lord? The evil of a drunken husband may be used by the wife as a sure ladder to God, for because of this evil she may learn to practise all the virtues of the saints. Truly if we have the will to use it, Evil is friendly. If we misuse Evil--that is to say, if we do not use it by mounting on it but, intoxicated with its glamour, consent to it,--this is Sin, and immediately the stairway is not that of ascent but of descent and death. The Master says "Resist not evil." How are we to understand this but by assuming that if we try our strength against Evil, Evil is likely to overcome us? but on being confronted with Evil we should instantly hold on to and join with the forces of Good and so have strength quietly to continue side by side with Evil without being seduced by it. When Evil cannot seduce--that is to say, make us consent to it,--then for us it is conquered. When we give in or conform to this seduction we generate Sin. Let us say that we are in temptation, that Evil of some sort confronts and invites us; if we battle with this presentment, this picture, this insinuating invitation held out before us by Evil, the act of contending with the invitation will fix it all the more firmly in our minds. We need to substitute another picture, another invitation, another presentment, of that which pertains to the good and the beautiful. He who has learnt so to substitute and present before his own heart and mind Jesus and the pure and beautiful invitations of this Divine Jesus can solve the difficulty. This is not contending, this is substituting; this is transferring allegiance from the glamour of Evil which is present with us, to the glamour of God, which, because we are in temptation, is not present, but is yet hoped and waited for. To return again to the lying, dishonest, and negligent servant. If we argue, contend, and battle morally with this evil servant we do not alter him, but by this contention generate antagonism. Then what is our own position? Bad temper, a disturbed heart, an inharmonious angry mind; but if without contending we bear with and act gently with this evil, making careful comparisons with our own service to our own Lord, we learn patience, forgiveness, and humility also, for have we never lied, have we never been dishonest, have we never been negligent to this sweet Lord? Then immediately His patience, His forgiveness, His love are brought more intimately to our consciousness, and our heart nearer to His and His to ours. Is this loss or gain? Is Evil then an enemy? No, a handmaid. So is Satan made a servant to his Overlord, and his power crossed. Of all false things nothing is more false than the glamour of Evil, for when on being drawn into it we sin, instead of the hoped-for delight we soon find satiety; instead of exhilaration, fatigue; instead of contentment, disillusion; instead of satisfaction, dust; instead of romance, the greedy claws of the harpy; and the further we go in response to this glamour the more pitiable our outlook; for the sweets and possibilities of Evil are extraordinarily limited. Can any man devise a new sin? No, but ever pursues the same old round, the same pitiful circle. If we pursue the glamour of God, we find the exact opposite of all these things. Spiritual delights know no satiety because of infinite variety: they know no disease, no disillusionment, and who can set a boundary or limit to the beautiful, to love, and light, and God? It is characteristic of temptation that while we are exposed to it Christ is absent from perception; for to perceive Christ would instantly free us from all temptation (and often it is by temptation faithfully borne that we mount). When we are in a condition of contact with Christ which is His grace, we are raised above the stem of faith into the flowers of knowledge; but for the true strengthening of the will it is necessary that we live also on the harder and more difficult meat of faith. So we return again and again to that insulation from things heavenly in which we lived before we had been made Aware. When we emerge from these dark periods we find ourselves to have advanced. With regard to Grace we can neither truly receive nor benefit by it without our heart, mind, and soul are previously adjusted to Response to it. The regenerated creature is not exempt from further temptations, but contrariwise the poignancy of these temptations is greatly increased (though of a quite different order of temptation to that known to us in an unregenerated state); it is increased in proportion to the degrees of Grace vouchsafed to us. That is to say, temptation keeps level with our utmost capacity of resistance yet never is allowed to exceed the bounds, for when it would exceed them a way out is found by the return of Grace; and we are freed. The cause is the great root called Self, a hydra-headed growth of selfishness, both material and spiritual, sprouting in all directions. We would seem to be here for ever enclosed as in a glass bottle with this most horrid growth. Through the glass we see all life, but always and ever in company with this voracious Self. No sooner do we lop off one shoot of it than another grows--never was such strenuous gardening as is required to keep this growth in check, and every time we lop a shoot we learn another pain. This is the long road to perfection, for the Cross is "I" with a stroke through it. Who can describe the marvels, the variations, the mystery of Grace? It is a dew and an elixir, a balm and a fire, a destroyer of all fear and sorrow, a delight and an anguish, for we are martyred, pierced with long arrows by the longing of the love that it calls forth. It is a sweetness and a might, a glory and a power in which we are sensibly aware we could walk through a furnace unscathed if He bade us to do it. And by it we are lifted in a crystal vase and enclosed in the Presence of God. * * * As a man's desire is so is he. If our desire is entirely towards fleshly things and joys and comforts, we are sensualists. If our desire is all towards sport and horses, we are not above horses but rather below them, for the human animal is full of guile and the horse of obedience and generosity. Nevertheless he is no goal for the human to aim at. If we desire the beautiful, we become beautified and refined. If we desire God, we become godly. * * * It is characteristic of spiritual progress that each step is gained through suffering, through penetrating faithful endeavours, through grievous incomprehensible turmoils and discords of the spirit, worked frequently by means of the everyday commonplace happenings and responsibilities of our daily life; and finally as each new step is gained we are by Grace carried to it in a flood of divine happiness to crown our woes. Grace is God's magnetic power acting directly and immediately upon us and is altogether independent of place, time, services, sacraments, or ceremonies. We limit God's communication with us in this way--that He is communicable to us only in so far as we ourselves respond and are able, apt, and willing to receive Him. Is the condition of blessed nearness to God permanent? No, not as a condition but as a capacity only. We have need to perpetually renew this condition by a positive active enthusiasm toward God. We can in laziness no more retain and use this condition as a permanency than we can sleep one night and eat one meal and have these suffice for our lifetime. But slowly, with work and with pain, we learn perpetually to regain this condition by that form of prayer which is the spiritual breathing-in of the Spirit of Christ. All God's help, all God's comfortings are to be had by us by Grace. This Grace will constantly be withdrawn so that we may learn that we arrive at nothing by our own power but by gift of God, who is ever willing to give to us provided we whole-heartedly respond. This Response to God is surely amongst the most difficult of our achievements; unaided by Grace it is an impossibility, but we know that every man born into the world is invited by Christ to ask for and to receive this Grace. The effect of Response to God is a unity of our tiny force to the Might-Presence and company of God as much as we are able to bear it, producing in us while with us such wealth of living; and such happiness as passes all description. As we have capacity to respond to God so we shall know that of God which is not known by those as yet unlearned in response. For God, we know, is neither This nor That, but so infinitely more than any particularisation that we are able to know Him only and solely according to our own capacity to receive Him. To one He is a Personal Power that ravishes with might, whose awful magnetism draws the very heart and soul in longing anguish from the body. To another He is the dimly known silent Manipulator of the Universe, the secret Ruler to whose mighty Will creation bows--because needs must. To another He is yet even more remote, being the unresponsive, impersonal, incomprehensible, immovable Instigator of all law. What is it in our religion that we need for a full happiness? Not the God of our mere faith, nor the God of the theologian veiled behind great mysteries of book-learning. It is the Responsive God that we long for, and how shall we reach Him? There is one way only--through the taking of Jesus Christ firmly and faithfully into our own heart and life. It is not what we now are, or where we now stand that matters, but what He has the power to bring us to. How is God-consciousness to be achieved--shall we do it by study, by reading? No--for the study or reading of it will do no more than whet the appetite for spiritual things--this is its work,--but can do no more in giving us the actual possession of this joy than the study of a menu can satisfy hunger. Individual, personal and inward possession is in all things our necessity. If our friend has slept well it is no rest to us if we have slept ill. Up to a given point in all things each for himself. It is the law. Of where this law ends or is superseded by the law of all for all only the Holy Spirit can instruct us, and that inwardly and again each to himself. This state of God-consciousness is a gift, and our work is to qualify for this gift by persistent ardent desire towards God continued through every adversity, through every lack of sensible response on His part--a naked will and heart insisting upon God. This state of God-consciousness once received and in full vigour of life, there is without doubt about this condition a principle of active contagion, very noticeable, very remarkable. That "something" which would appear frequently to be needed by persons anxious to come to God and unable to discover the manner of achieving it, would seem to be supplied by this contagion, as though a human spark were often wanted to ignite the spark in another, which done, the Divine Fire springs up and rapidly grows without further human assistance. We see this contagion as used in its full perfection by Jesus, for with all His selected followers He had but to come in momentary contact with them, using a word or a look, and, instantly forsaking everything, they followed Him. Was this selection of His favouritism? No, they were prepared to receive this contagion, and not one of them but had been secretly seeking for God; and this perhaps for long years. To find this new life we need then not the reading of profound books of learning, not the wisdom of the scholar, but an inward persistence of the heart and will God-wards. This time of insistent waiting is to be endured with all the more courage in that we do not know at what blessed moment we may pierce the veil and the gift come in all its glorious immensity. Ten years, twenty, thirty--what are such in comparison with the blisses that shall afterwards be ours for all eternity? To look up by day or night into the vastness of the sky with its endless depths, and as we do it burn with the consciousness of God, this is to truly live. No distance is too great, no space too wide. All is our home. Without this burning consciousness of God, Space is a thing of fear and Eternity not to be thought of. Of the many experiences and conditions of the soul returning to God there is a condition all too easily entered--that of an enervating, pulseless, seductive inertia. In this condition of inert but marvellous contentment the soul would love to stay. This is spiritual sensuality, a spiritual back-water. The true life and energy of the soul are lulled to idleness: basking in happiness, the soul ceases to give and becomes merely receptive. This condition is entered from many levels: we can rise to it (for it is very high) from ordinary levels, branch sideways to it from high contemplation; drop to it from the greatest contacts with God. This condition seems strangely familiar to the soul. So much so that she questions herself. Was it from this I started on my wanderings from God? The true health of the soul when in the blisses of God is to be in a state of intense living or activity. She is then in perfect connection with the Divine Energy. She is then in a state of an immense and boundless radiantly joyful Life. To find God is to have the scope of all our senses increased, but it is easily to be understood that our power of suffering increases also, because we are, as it were, flayed and laid bare to everything alike. But it increases our joys to so great a degree that for the first time in life joy is greater than pain, happiness is greater than sorrow, knowledge is greater than fear, and Good suddenly becomes to us so much greater than Evil that Evil becomes negligible. This increase, this wonderful addition to our former condition, might be partly conveyed by comparison to a man who from birth has never been able to appreciate music: for him it has been meaningless, a noise without suggestion, without delight, without wings, and suddenly by no powers of his own the immense charms and pleasures and capacities of it are laid open to him! These increases of every sense and faculty God will give to His lovers, so that without effort and by what has now become to us our own nature we are continually able to _enter the Sublime._ _Of the Two Wills_ We have in us two wills. The Will to live, and the Will to love God and to find Him. The first will we see being used continually and without ceasing, not only by every man, woman, and child, but by every beast of the field and the whole of creation. The Will to live is the will by which all alike seek the best for themselves, here gaining for themselves all that they can of comfort and well-being out of the circumstances and opportunities of life. This is our natural Will. But it is not the will which gains for us Eternal Life, nor does it even gain for us peace and happiness during this life. It is this Will to live which in Christ's Process we are taught to break and bruise till it finally dies, and the Will to love, and gladly and joyously to please God is the only Will by which we live. Our great difficulty is that we try at one and the same time to hang to God with the soul and to the world with our heart. What is required is not that we go and live in rags in a desert place, but that in the exact circumstances of life in which we find ourselves we learn in _everything to place God first._ He requires of us a certain subtle and inward fidelity--a fidelity of the heart, the will, the mind. The natural state of heart and mind in which we all normally find ourselves is to have temporary vague longings for something which, though indefinable, we yet know to be better and more satisfying than anything we can find in the world. This is the soul, trying to overrule the frivolity of the heart and mind and to re-find God. Our difficulties are not made of great things, but of the infinitely small our own caprices. Though we can often do great things, acts of surprising heroism, we are held in chains--at once elastic and iron--of small capricious vanities, so that in one and the same hour we may have wonderful, far-reaching aspirations towards the Sublime, and God; and yet there comes a pretty frock, a pleasant companion, and behold God is forgotten! The mighty and marvellous Maker of the Universe, Lord of everything, is placed upon one side for a piece of chiffon, a flattering word from a passing lover. So be it. He uses no force. We are still in the Garden of Free-Will. And when the Garden closes down for us, what then? Will chiffon help us? Will the smiles of a long-since faithless lover be our strength? Now is the time to decide; but our decision is made in the world, and by means of the world and not apart from it, and in the exact circumstances in which we find ourselves. Another difficulty we have, and which forms an insuperable barrier to finding God, is the ever-recurring--we may almost say the continual--secret undercurrent of criticism and hardness towards God over what we imagine to be His Will. We need to seek God with that which is most like Him, with a will which most nearly resembles His own. To be in a state of hardness or criticism, not only for God but for any creature, in even the smallest degree is to be giving allegiance to, and unifying ourselves with, that Will which is opposite to, furthest away from, and opposed to God. He Himself is Ineffable Tenderness. Having once re-found God, the soul frequently cries to Him in an anguish of pained wonder, "How could I ever have left Thee? How could I ever have been faithless to Thine Unutterable Perfections?" This to the soul remains the mystery of mysteries. Was it because of some imperfection left in her of design by God in order that He might enjoy His power to bring her back to Him? If this were so, then every single soul must be redeemed--and not for love's sake, but for His Honour, His own Holy Name, His Perfection. If the soul left Him because of a deliberate choice, a preference for imperfection, a poisonous curiosity of foreign loves, then love alone is the cause and necessity of our redemption, and so it feels to be, for in experience we find that love is the beginning and the middle and the end of all His dealings with us. * * * What is our part and what is our righteousness in all this Process of the Saviour? This--that we obey, and that we renounce our own will, accepting and abiding by the Will of God: and this self-lending, self-surrender, this sacrifice of self-will is counted to us for sufficient righteousness to merit heavenly life. But from first to last we remain conscious that we have no righteousness of our own, that we are very small and full of weaknesses, and remain unable to think or say, "This is my righteousness, I am righteous," any more than a man standing bathed in, or receiving the sunlight can say or think, "I am the sun." Is all this, then, as much as to say that we can sit down and do nothing; but, leaving all to Christ, we merely believe, and because of this believing our redemption is accomplished? No, for we have an active part to play, a part that God never dispenses with--the active keeping of the will in an active state of practical obedience, submission, humble uncomplaining endurance through every kind of test. What will these perhaps too much dreaded tests be that He will put us through? He will make use of the difficulties, opportunities, temptations, and events of everyday life in the world (which difficulties we should have to pass through whether we become regenerated or not) down to the smallest act, the most secret thought, the most hidden intention and desire. But through it all it is the Great Physician Himself who cures, and we are no more able to perform these changes of regeneration in heart and mind than we are able to perform a critical operation on our own body. So He takes our vanities and, one by one, strews them among the winds, and we raise no protest; takes our prides and breaks them in pieces, and we submit; takes our self-gratifications and reduces them to dust, and we stand stripped but patient; takes the natural lusts of the creature and transfigures them to Holy Love. And in all this pain of transition, what is the Divine Anaesthetic that He gives us? His Grace. Having submitted to all that Christ esteems necessary for our regeneration, what does He set us to? Service. Glad, happy service to all who may need it. He has wonderful ways of making us acquainted with His especial friends, and it pleases Him to make us the means of answering the prayers of His poor for help, to their great wonder and joy and to the increase of their faith in Him. Also He uses us as a human spark, to ignite the fires of another man's heart: when He uses us in this way, it will seem to one like the opening of a window--to another a magnetism. One will see it as a light flashed on dark places, another receives it as the finding of a track where before was no track. But however many times we may be used in this way, the working remains a mystery to us. What is our reward whilst still in this world for our patient obediences and renunciations? This--that all becomes well with us the moment the process is brought to the stage where the aim of our life ceases to be the enjoyment of worldly life and becomes fixed upon the Invisible and upon God: and all this by and because of love, for it is love alone which can make us genuinely glad to give up our own will and which can keep us from sinning. We commence by qualifying through our human love, meagre and fluctuating as it is, for God's gift of holy love--of divine reciprocity, and with the presentation of this divine gift immediately we find ourselves in possession of _a new set of desires,_ which for the first time in our experience of living prove themselves completely satisfying in fruition. God does not leave us in an arid waste, because He would have us to be holy, and nowhere are there such ardent desires as in heaven; but He transposes and transfigures the carnal desires into the spiritual by means of this gift of divine reciprocity which is at once access to and union with Himself. Now, and only now do we find the sting pulled out of every adverse happening and every woe of life, and out of death also. And the whole process is to be gone through just where and how and as we find ourselves--in our own home or in the home of another, married or single, rich or poor,--with these three watchwords, Obedience, Patience and Simplicity. But it is not sufficient to have once achieved this union with God: to rest in happiness the soul must continually achieve it. It follows then that our need is not an isolated event but a _life,_ a life lived with God, and in experience we find that this alone can satisfy us. A life in which we receive hourly the breath of His tenderness and pity, His infinite solace to a pardoned soul. _Of the Interchange of Thought without Sound_ Many persons know what it is to have the experience with another person of a simultaneous exactitude of thought--speaking aloud the same words in the same instant. Others experience in themselves the power to exchange thought and to know the mind of another without the medium of sound, though not without the medium of word-forms, this last being a capacity possessed only by the soul in communion with the Divine. We name these experiences thought-waves, mind-reading, mental telepathy, and understand very little about them; but beyond this mind-telepathy there is a telepathy of the soul about which we understand nothing whatever. This is the divine telepathy, with words or _without word-forms,_ by which Christ instructs His followers. The telepathy of the mind is the indicator to the existence of a telepathy of the soul; for the mind indicates to us that which should be sought and known by the soul, and without we come to divine things first in a creaturely way (being creatures) we shall never come to them at all. The mind desires and indicates, the soul achieves. This telepathy with Christ is the means by which the soul learns in a direct manner the will and the teaching and the mind of Christ, and it is by this means she gains such wisdom as it is God's will she shall have. The soul seeks this telepathy during the second stage, vaguely, not knowing or understanding the mode of it, receiving it rarely and with great difficulty. In the third stage she obtains it in abundance, at times briefly, at others at great length. * * * That God has his dwelling-place at an incalculably great distance from ourselves is a true knowledge of the soul: but a further knowledge reveals to us that this calamity is mitigated, and for short periods even annulled, by provision of His within the soul to annihilate this distance, and be the means of bringing the soul into such immediate contact with Himself as she is able to endure. But the Joy-Energy of God being insupportable to the very nature of flesh, in His tender love and pity He provides us, through the Person of His Son, with degrees of union of such sweet gentleness that we may continually enjoy them through every hour of life; and through His Son He comes out to meet the prodigal "while yet afar off." This is strongly observable, that as the process of Christ proceeds and grows in us, though our joys in God are individual, yet they become also clothed in a garment of the universal, so that the soul, when she enters the fires of worship and of blessing and of conversing with God--without any forethought, but by a cause or need now become a part of herself,--enters these states and gives to Him no longer as I, but as We--which is to say, as All Souls. * * * Many of us look to death to work a miracle for us, thinking the mere cessation of physical living will give entry to paradise or even heaven, so long as we are baptised and call ourselves Christians. This is a great delusion. In character, personality, cleanliness, goodwill we are, after death, exactly as far advanced as we were before death, and no further. What then is needed, since death will not help us? The Seed of Divine love and life planted and consciously _growing_ in us whilst we are still in this world. And what is this Seed?--the Redeemer. * * * What is paradise, what is heaven? The progressive gradations of conditions of a perfect reciprocity of love, and the greater the perfection of this reciprocity the greater the altitudes attained of heaven. Thus we see in Scripture that the angels who stand nearest to God or highest in heaven are the cherubim--that is to say, they are those who have attained a greater reciprocity than all other angels. Now this Divine love is incomprehensible to us until we are initiated into its mystery as a gift, and cannot be understood nor guessed at by comparisons with any human loves however great, noble, or pure; but this burning fiery essence of joy, this radiant glory of delight, this holy and ineffable fulfilment of the uttermost needs, longings, and requirements of the soul must be personally experienced by us to be comprehended. What madness in us is it that can count as an added cross or burden any means by which we reach such perfection of bliss for ever? The Cross is for us the misery of our own blinding sins and selfishnesses. The burden is the weight of our own distance from God. "Take up thy cross (which is our daily life of ignorance and sin), take up thy cross, and follow Me," says the voice of the Saviour; and as we do it and follow Him the distance between God and ourselves diminishes, and finally the burden and the cross _disappear,_ and behold God! awaiting us with His consolations. It is the stopping half-way that causes would-be followers of Christ such distress. It is necessary that we follow Him all the way and not merely a part of it--that He may complete His process in us. When we are living altogether in a creaturely, natural, or unregenerated way, absorbed in the ambitions and interests of a worldly life, we are perhaps content. When we live regenerated and in the spirit, we are in great joy; but when we try to live between the two and would serve God and worldly interests at the same time we are in gloomy wretchedness, vacillation, depression. The Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," which signified that within us was the potentiality to have entrance to, and to know, the mystery of the Divine Secret, and to participate whilst still living here, in the early degrees or manifestations of Divine Love--that Power which glorifies the angels, and is Heaven. _Of the three Stages of God-Consciousness_ _(Which more properly expressed is the gift of immediate access of the soul of God)_ There are three principal stages on the way of progress--three separate degrees of God-Consciousness. The first is the Consciousness of the Presence of Jesus, the Perfect Man. We take Him into the heart, accept and know Him, love and obey Him. In the second stage we receive Jesus as the Christ and recognise Him as the Messiah (of which the mind was not sure in the first stage). We rejoice in Him, giving Him a more perfect obedience. In the third the soul is given the Consciousness of the Father, and, being filled with a very great love and joy, worships Him as the Known God. Now life immediately becomes totally changed, fear and sin are swept away, and love rules the Universe. It is now that God makes us know His glamour; that He casts over the soul His golden net of spiritual delights, and by them seems to challenge her, saying to the soul, "Now that I reveal Myself to thee, canst thou ever return to the joys of the world, canst thou find its pleasures sweet, canst thou be satisfied with any human love; canst thou by any means resist Me now that I show Myself?" And the soul answers Him, "Nay Lord, in truth I cannot." The remembrance of these powers and these spells of God make for the soul a sure foundation of repose and certainty in the days of the testing of fidelity that still lie before her: they also further reveal to her His consummate care of her exact requirements, for she cannot pass beyond a certain stage without a direct personal assurance is given her. First He demands of us that we have, and actively maintain, a clean will to turn and cleave to Him, without any assurance beyond written assurance (Scripture); and having given Him a thorough proof of fidelity, He then grants us the personal assurance. Having been given these rapturous concessions, what would perfection demand of us--a total withdrawal from the world--a hiding away in secret with our soul's treasure of delights? Maybe for some; but a higher perfection calls us back to service in the wretched turmoil of the world, to work and to stand in the House of Rimmon and never bow the knee, to carry with us everywhere the Divine Consciousness and preserve its light undimmed in every sordid petty circumstance of daily life, to endure with perfect patience the follies and the prides of the unenlightened. Whoever can achieve those things may find himself at last a saint. Very early in this third stage a miracle is performed in us: without knowing how it came about or what day it was done, we suddenly know that the heart and the mind _have become virgin_--and this without any variation. Every kind of lust, whether of eye, body, heart, or mind, has been removed from us, and never again has any power over us, for the will has become superior to lust, and there is a finish to all such contending: this moral healing is more impressive than any physical healing. Before this miracle is performed for us, we have suffered many things, as much as we can bear: subtle and astonishing temptations of mind and body and spirit "call to remembrance the former days in which after ye were illuminated ye endured a great fight of afflictions" (Heb. x. 32). This person that writes formerly supposed that no creature was admitted to the blessedness of being in any way with God in Spirit without they were already become a saint; but this is not so, and He accepts the sinner long before he is a saint (if ever we become one in this world, which is doubtful), provided the will is always held good towards God. This is the mighty Process of Christ which he desires to perform for all. Of the tears we shed over it the less mention the better; they are precious tears, necessary tears, cleansing tears, and if we will not lend ourselves to this Process of Christ we may have as many tears for our portion and no benefit from them in the way of advancement. Let us weep the tears that God Himself will wipe away. So then in the first stage the Soul tastes of the sweet companionship of Jesus. In the second, of the might and graciousness of Christ; in the third, of the fullness of God and His unspeakable delights. "Thou shalt give them to drink of Thy pleasures, as out of the river" (Psalm xxxvi.). In the third stage of God-Consciousness a great change takes place in our relationship to God. Besides the magnitude of the alterations of the inner life--the sweeping spiritual changes--the body also shares in a change, for, whilst we formerly prayed to God with a bowed head and a hidden face, we now become unable to pray or approach Him except with a raised head and an uncovered face. This change is not from any thought or intention of our own, but we are forced to it by a sweet necessity. In a company of persons praying, all those in the third stage could be immediately known by this necessity of the raised and bared face if we were not taught by the Holy Spirit never to reveal to others that we are in the third stage except in special instances. For this reason it is not possible to enter true communion with God in a public place of worship unless we can conceal ourselves from others. For the face undergoes a change in communion with God, and it is not pleasing to Him that this should be seen by any eye but His own. If anyone finds great difficulty (and the most of us do) in coming to the first stage--that of taking Jesus into the heart--he must pray every day in a few short words _from the heart_ that God will give him to Jesus, and in due time he will be heard. In the third stage of progress we have the home-coming of the soul as far as we are able to know it in the flesh: "We taste of the powers of God" (Hebrews). But the fullness of home-coming is reserved for that day in which the greatest of all the mysteries will be revealed to us--the mystery of the Relation of the Soul to God. In that great day we shall know God by His Own Name. * * * We do not find God by denying the existence of things not pleasing to Him. We do not find the Eternal Goodness by saying that Evil does not exist. We do not find true health of spirit because we deny all sickness, pain, and disease. Such a mode of Christianity may give a sense of comfort, lend a false security to the heart and mind at once weary of God-searching, and disenchanted with the world; but it is not the Christianity which regenerates. It is a narcotic, not a Redemption. It is the way of a mind unwilling to face truths because they pain. If there was anything made plain by Christ it is that the way of Redemption lies through heroism and not cowardice. Let those of us who too much fear a passing pain of sacrifice of will remember that the deepest of all pains, the last word in the tragedy of life, is to come to old age and descend to the grave without having found the Saviour. For our calamity is that we are lost souls. Our opportunity is that in this world we find the track of Christ which leads us home. * * * God does not create a new world on purpose for His lovers immediately to live in, yet though we remain our full time in this same world it is not the same world. We see a person in a severe illness and again in full health. It is the same person, and not the same person. We see a garden filled with flowers in the rain under grey clouds, and again the same garden filled with mellow sunlight under blue skies; it is the same garden, and not the same garden. These changes could never be described or conveyed to the man blind from birth; neither can spiritual changes be described or conveyed till we ourselves gain similarity of experience. God transposes our pleasures, taking the glamour from the guilty and transferring it to the blameless; by this transforming our lives. He increases the pleasure of unworldly enjoyments so we are independent of the worldly ones. But we cannot remain in this transformed world of His unless we are at peace both with ourself and all persons around us. Though from earliest childhood we may have found in the beauties of Nature a great delight, when we become the lover of God He passes His fingers over our hearts and our eyes and opens them to marvellous new powers for joy. Oh, the ecstasy that may be known in one short walk alone with God! The overflowing heart cries out to Him, What other lover is there can give such bliss as this, and what is all Nature but a lovely language between Thee and me! Then the soul spreads wings into the blue and sings to Him like soaring lark. But do not let us seek Him only because of His Delights, for so we might miss Him altogether. But let it be because it is His wish: because Perfection calls, and mystery calls to mystery, and love to love, and Light calls to the darkness and the Dawn is born. The glamour of God is come down about my soul, And He who made all loveliness has decked my heart in spring, And garlanded me round about with tender buds Of flowers and scented things, and love and light. I see no rain, no sad grey skies, For the glamour of God has come down about mine eyes, And the Voice of the Maker of all loveliness Calling to my soul, leads me enchanted Up the glittering mysteries of Infinity. ------ [Transcriber's notes: The name of the author, Lilian Staveley, is not mentioned on the title page of this text, but I have added it here. Also I have made two spelling changes: "subsitute another picture" to "substitute another picture" "accepts the sinner long long before he is a saint" to "accepts the sinner long before he is a saint".] 
14596	----	CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM The Bampton Lectures, 1899 Considered in Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford by WILLIAM RALPH INGE, D.D. Dean Of S. Paul's Methuen & Co. Ltd. 36 Essex Street W.c. London Extract From The Last Will And Testament Of The Late Rev. John Bampton Canon Of Salisbury ----"I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands and Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said University, and to be performed in the manner following: "I direct and appoint that upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term. "Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects--to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics--upon the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures--upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church--upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ--upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost--upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. "Also I direct that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be always printed within two months after they are preached; and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the City of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor entitled to the revenue, before they are printed. "Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice." PREFACE The first of the subjects which, according to the will of Canon Bampton, are prescribed for the Lecturers upon his foundation, is the confirmation and establishment of the Christian faith. This is the aim which I have kept in view in preparing this volume; and I should wish my book to be judged as a contribution to apologetics, rather than as a historical sketch of Christian Mysticism. I say this because I decided, after some hesitation, to adopt a historical framework for the Lectures, and this arrangement may cause my object to be misunderstood. It seemed to me that the instructiveness of tracing the development and operation of mystical ideas, in the forms which they have assumed as active forces in history, outweighed the disadvantage of appearing to waver between apology and narrative. A series of historical essays would, of course, have been quite unsuitable in the University pulpit, and, moreover, I did not approach the subject from that side. Until I began to prepare the Lectures, about a year and a half before they were delivered, my study of the mystical writers had been directed solely by my own intellectual and spiritual needs. I was attracted to them in the hope of finding in their writings a philosophy and a rule of life which would satisfy my mind and conscience. In this I was not disappointed; and thinking that others might perhaps profit by following the same path, I wished to put together and publish the results of my thought and reading. In such a scheme historical details are either out of place or of secondary value; and I hope this will be remembered by any historians who may take the trouble to read my book. The philosophical side of the subject is from my point of view of much greater importance. I have done my best to acquire an adequate knowledge of those philosophies, both ancient and modern, which are most akin to speculative Mysticism, and also to think out my own position. I hope that I have succeeded in indicating my general standpoint, and that what I have written may prove fairly consistent and intelligible; but I have felt keenly the disadvantage of having missed the systematic training in metaphysics given by the Oxford school of _Literæ Humaniores_, and also the difficulty (perhaps I should say the presumption) of addressing metaphysical arguments to an audience which included several eminent philosophers. I wish also that I had had time for a more thorough study of Fechner's works; for his system, so far as I understand it, seems to me to have a great interest and value as a scheme of philosophical Mysticism which does not clash with modern science. I have spoken with a plainness which will probably give offence of the debased supernaturalism which usurps the name of Mysticism in Roman Catholic countries. I desire to insult no man's convictions; and it is for this reason that I have decided not to print my analysis of Ribet's work (_La Mystique Divine, distinguée des Contrefaçons diaboliques_. Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1895, 3 vols.), which I intended to form an Appendix. It would have opened the eyes of some of my readers to the irreconcilable antagonism between the Roman Church and science; but though I translated and summarised my author faithfully, the result had all the appearance of a malicious travesty. I have therefore suppressed this Appendix; but with regard to Roman Catholic "Mysticism" there is no use in mincing matters. Those who find edification in signs and wonders of this kind, and think that such "supernatural phenomena," even if they were well authenticated instead of being ridiculous fables, could possibly establish spiritual truths, will find little or nothing to please or interest them in these pages. But those who reverence Nature and Reason, and have no wish to hear of either of them being "overruled" or "suspended," will, I hope, agree with me in valuing highly the later developments of mystical thought in Northern Europe. There is another class of "mystics" with whom I have but little sympathy--the dabblers in occultism. "Psychical research" is, no doubt, a perfectly legitimate science; but when its professors invite us to watch the breaking down of the middle wall of partition between matter and spirit, they have, in my opinion, ceased to be scientific, and are in reality hankering after the beggarly elements of the later Neoplatonism. The charge of "pantheistic tendency" will not, I hope, be brought against me without due consideration. I have tried to show how the Johannine Logos-doctrine, which is the basis of Christian Mysticism, differs from Asiatic Pantheism, from Acosmism, and from (one kind of) evolutionary Idealism. Of course, speculative Mysticism is nearer to Pantheism than to Deism; but I think it is possible heartily to eschew Deism without falling into the opposite error. I have received much help from many kind friends; and though some of them would not wish to be associated with all of my opinions, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of thanking them by name. From my mother and other members of my family, and relations, especially Mr. W.W. How, Fellow of Merton, I have received many useful suggestions. Three past or present colleagues have read and criticised parts of my work--the Rev. H. Rashdall, now Fellow of New College; Mr. H.A. Prichard, now Fellow of Trinity; and Mr. H.H. Williams, Fellow of Hertford. Mr. G.L. Dickinson, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, lent me an unpublished dissertation on Plotinus. The Rev. C. Bigg, D.D., whose Bampton Lectures on the Christian Platonists are known all over Europe, did me the kindness to read the whole of the eight Lectures, and so added to the great debt which I owe to him for his books. The Rev. J.M. Heald, formerly Scholar of Trinity, Cambridge, lent me many books from his fine library, and by inquiring for me at Louvain enabled me to procure the books on Mysticism which are now studied in Roman Catholic Universities. The Rev. Dr. Lindsay, who has made a special study of the German mystics, read my Lectures on that period, and wrote me a very useful letter upon them. Miss G.H. Warrack of Edinburgh kindly allowed me to use her modernised version of Julian of Norwich. I have ventured to say in my last Lecture--and it is my earnest conviction--that a more general acquaintance with mystical theology and philosophy is very desirable in the interests of the English Church at the present time. I am not one of those who think that the points at issue between Anglo-Catholics and Anglo-Protestants are trivial: history has always confirmed Aristotle's famous dictum about parties--[Greek: gignontai ai staseis ou peri mikrôn all' ek mikrôn, stasiazousi de peri megalôn]--but I do not so far despair of our Church, or of Christianity, as to doubt that a reconciling principle must and will be found. Those who do me the honour to read these Lectures will see to what quarter I look for a mediator. A very short study would be sufficient to dispel some of the prejudices which still hang round the name of Mysticism--e.g., that its professors are unpractical dreamers, and that this type of religion is antagonistic to the English mind. As a matter of fact, all the great mystics have been energetic and influential, and their business capacity is specially noted in a curiously large number of cases. For instance, Plotinus was often in request as a guardian and trustee; St. Bernard showed great gifts as an organiser; St. Teresa, as a founder of convents and administrator, gave evidence of extraordinary practical ability; even St. Juan of the Cross displayed the same qualities; John Smith was an excellent bursar of his college; Fénelon ruled his diocese extremely well; and Madame Guyon surprised those who had dealings with her by her great aptitude for affairs. Henry More was offered posts of high responsibility and dignity, but declined them. The mystic is not as a rule ambitious, but I do not think he often shows incapacity for practical life, if he consents to mingle in it. And so far is it from being true that Great Britain has produced but few mystics, that I am inclined to think the subject might be adequately studied from English writers alone. On the more intellectual side we have (without going back to Scotus Erigena) the Cambridge Platonists, Law and Coleridge; of devotional mystics we have attractive examples in Hilton and Julian of Norwich; while in verse the lofty idealism[1] and strong religious bent of our race have produced a series of poet-mystics such as no other country can rival. It has not been possible in these Lectures to do justice to George Herbert, Vaughan "the Silurist," Quarles, Crashaw, and others, who have all drunk of the same well. Let it suffice to say that the student who desires to master the history of Mysticism in Britain will find plenty to occupy his time. But for the religious public in general the most useful thing would be a judicious selection from the mystical writers of different times and countries. Those who are more interested in the practical and devotional than the speculative side may study with great profit some parts of St. Augustine, the sermons of Tauler, the _Theologia Germanica_, Hilton's _Scale of Perfection_, the Life of Henry Suso, St. Francis de Sales and Fénelon, the Sermons of John Smith and Whichcote's _Aphorisms_, and the later works of William Law, not forgetting the poets who have been mentioned. I can think of no course of study more fitting for those who wish to revive in themselves and others the practical idealism of the primitive Church, which gained for it its greatest triumphs. I conclude this Preface with a quotation from William Law on the value of the mystical writers. "Writers like those I have mentioned," he says in a letter to Dr. Trapp, "there have been in all ages of the Church, but as they served not the ends of popular learning, as they helped no people to figure or preferment in the world, and were useless to scholastic controversial writers, so they dropt out of public uses, and were only known, or rather unknown, under the name of mystical writers, till at last some people have hardly heard of that very name: though, if a man were to be told what is meant by a mystical divine, he must be told of something as heavenly, as great, as desirable, as if he was told what is meant by a real, regenerate, living member of the mystical body of Christ; for they were thus called for no other reason than as Moses and the prophets, and the saints of the Old Testament, may be called the spiritual Israel, or the true mystical Jews. These writers began their office of teaching as John the Baptist did, after they had passed through every kind of mortification and self-denial, every kind of trial and purification, both inward and outward. They were deeply learned in the mysteries of the kingdom of God, not through the use of lexicons, or meditating upon critics, but because they had passed from death unto life. They highly reverence and excellently direct the true use of everything that is outward in religion; but, like the Psalmist's king's daughter, they are all glorious within. They are truly sons of thunder, and sons of consolation; they break open the whited sepulchres; they awaken the heart, and show it its filth and rottenness of death: but they leave it not till the kingdom of heaven is raised up within it. If a man has no desire but to be of the spirit of the gospel, to obtain all that renovation of life and spirit which alone can make him to be in Christ a new creature, it is a great unhappiness to him to be unacquainted with these writers, or to pass a day without reading something of what they wrote." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: It is really time that we took to burning that travesty of the British character--the John Bull whom our comic papers represent "guarding his pudding"--instead of Guy Fawkes. Even in the nineteenth century, amid all the sordid materialism bred of commercial ascendancy, this country has produced a richer crop of imaginative literature than any other; and it is significant that, while in Germany philosophy is falling more and more into the hands of the empirical school, our own thinkers are nearly all staunch idealists.] CONTENTS LECTURE I. General Characteristics of Mysticism II. The Mystical Element in the Bible III. Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism--(1) In the East IV. Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism--(2) In the West V. Practical and Devotional Mysticism VI. Practical and Devotional Mysticism--_continued_ VII. Nature-Mysticism and Symbolism VIII. Nature-Mysticism--_continued_ APPENDIX A. Definitions of "Mysticism" and "Mystical Theology" APPENDIX B. The Greek Mysteries and Christian Mysticism APPENDIX C. The Doctrine of Deification APPENDIX D. The Mystical Interpretation of the Song of Solomon INDEX LECTURE I [Greek: "Hêmin de apodeikteon hôs ep' eutuchia tê megistê para Theôn hê toiautê mania didotai hê de dê apodeixis estai deinois men apistos, sophois de pistê"] PLATO, _Phædrus_, p. 245. "_Thoas_. Es spricht kein Gott; es spricht dein eignes Herz. _Iphigenia_. Sie reden nur durch unser Herz zu uns." GOETHE, _Iphigenie_. "Si notre vie est moins qu'une journée En l'éternel; si l'an qui fait le tour Chasse nos jours sans espoir de retour; Si périssable est toute chose née; Que songes-tu, mon âme emprisonnée? Pourquoi te plaît l'obscur de notre jour, Si, pour voler en un plus clair séjour, Tu as au dos l'aile bien empennée! Là est le bien que tout esprit désire, Là, le repos ou tout le monde aspire, Là est l'amour, là le plaisir encore! Là, ô mon âme, au plus haut ciel guidée, Tu y pourras reconnaître l'idée De la beauté qu'en ce monde j'adore!" OLD POET. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is."--I JOHN iii. 2, 3. No word in our language--not even "Socialism"--has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for symbolism or allegorism, sometimes for theosophy or occult science; and sometimes it merely suggests the mental state of a dreamer, or vague and fantastic opinions about God and the world. In Roman Catholic writers, "mystical phenomena" mean supernatural suspensions of physical law. Even those writers who have made a special study of the subject, show by their definitions of the word how uncertain is its connotation.[2] It is therefore necessary that I should make clear at the outset what I understand by the term, and what aspects of religious life and thought I intend to deal with in these Lectures. The history of the _word_ begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries.[3] A mystic [Greek: mystês] is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut ([Greek: myein]); or, possibly, he is one whose _eyes_ are still shut, one who is not yet an [Greek: epoptês].[4] The word was taken over, with other technical terms of the mysteries, by the Neoplatonists, who found in the existing mysteriosophy a discipline, worship, and rule of life congenial to their speculative views. But as the tendency towards quietism and introspection increased among them, another derivation for "Mysticism" was found--it was explained to mean deliberately shutting the eyes to all external things.[5] We shall see in the sequel how this later Neoplatonism passed almost entire into Christianity, and, while forming the basis of mediæval Mysticism, caused a false association to cling to the word even down to the Reformation.[6] The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin in that which is the raw material of all religion, and perhaps of all philosophy and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of the _beyond_, which is part of our nature as human beings. Men have given different names to these "obstinate questionings of sense and outward things." We may call them, if we will, a sort of higher instinct, perhaps an anticipation of the evolutionary process; or an extension of the frontier of consciousness; or, in religious language, the voice of God speaking to us. Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds. Religious Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realise the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or, more generally, as _the attempt to realise, in thought and feeling, the immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal_. Our consciousness of the beyond is, I say, the raw material of all religion. But, being itself formless, it cannot be brought directly into relation with the forms of our thought. Accordingly, it has to express itself by symbols, which are as it were the flesh and bones of ideas. It is the tendency of all symbols to petrify or evaporate, and either process is fatal to them. They soon repudiate their mystical origin, and forthwith lose their religious content. Then comes a return to the fresh springs of the inner life--a revival of spirituality in the midst of formalism or unbelief. This is the historical function of Mysticism--it appears as an independent active principle, the spirit of reformations and revivals. But since every active principle must find for itself appropriate instruments, Mysticism has developed a speculative and practical system of its own. As Goethe says, it is "the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings." In this way it becomes possible to consider it as a type of religion, though it must always be remembered that in becoming such it has incorporated elements which do not belong to its inmost being.[7] As a type of religion, then, Mysticism seems to rest on the following propositions or articles of faith:-- First, _the soul_ (as well as the body) _can see and perceive_--[Greek: esti de psychês aisthêsis tis], as Proclus says. We have an organ or faculty for the discernment of spiritual truth, which, in its proper sphere, is as much to be trusted as the organs of sensation in theirs. The second proposition is that, since we can only know what is akin to ourselves,[8] _man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the Divine nature_. "What we are, that we behold; and what we behold, that we are," says Ruysbroek. The curious doctrine which we find in the mystics of the Middle Ages, that there is at "the apex of the mind" a spark which is consubstantial with the uncreated ground of the Deity, is thus accounted for. We could not even begin to work out our own salvation if God were not already working in us. It is always "in His light" that "we see light." The doctrine has been felt to be a necessary postulate by most philosophers who hold that knowledge of God is possible to man. For instance, Krause says, "From finite reason as finite we might possibly explain the thought of itself, but not the thought of something that is outside finite reasonable beings, far less the absolute idea, in its contents infinite, of God. To become aware of God in knowledge we require certainly to make a freer use of our finite power of thought, but the thought of God itself is primarily and essentially an eternal operation of the eternal revelation of God to the finite mind." But though we are made in the image of God, our _likeness_ to Him only exists potentially.[9] The Divine spark already shines within us, but it has to be searched for in the innermost depths of our personality, and its light diffused over our whole being. This brings us to the third proposition--"_Without holiness no man may see the Lord_"; or, as it is expressed positively in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Sensuality and selfishness are absolute disqualifications for knowing "the things of the Spirit of God." These fundamental doctrines are very clearly laid down in the passage from St. John which I read as the text of this Lecture. The filial relation to God is already claimed, but the vision is inseparable from _likeness_ to Him, which is a hope, not a possession, and is only to be won by "purifying ourselves, even as He is pure." There is one more fundamental doctrine which we must not omit. Purification removes the obstacles to our union with God, but our guide on the upward path, _the true hierophant of the mysteries of God, is love_[10]. Love has been defined as "interest in its highest power";[11] while others have said that "it is of the essence of love to be disinterested." The contradiction is merely a verbal one. The two definitions mark different starting-points, but the two "ways of love" should bring us to the same goal. The possibility of disinterested love, in the ordinary sense, ought never to have been called in question. "Love is not love" when it asks for a reward. Nor is the love of man to God any exception. He who tries to be holy in order to be happy will assuredly be neither. In the words of the _Theologia Germanica_, "So long as a man seeketh his own highest good _because_ it is his, he will never find it." The mystics here are unanimous, though some, like St. Bernard, doubt whether perfect love of God can ever be attained, pure and without alloy, while we are in this life.[12] The controversy between Fénelon and Bossuet on this subject is well known, and few will deny that Fénelon was mainly in the right. Certainly he had an easy task in justifying his statements from the writings of the saints. But we need not trouble ourselves with the "mystic paradox," that it would be better to be with Christ in hell than without Him in heaven--a statement which Thomas à Kempis once wrote and then erased in his manuscript. For wherever Christ is, there is heaven: nor should we regard eternal happiness as anything distinct from "a true conjunction of the mind with God.[13]" "God is not without or above law: He _could_ not make men either sinful or miserable.[14]" To believe otherwise is to suppose an irrational universe, the one thing which a rational man cannot believe in. The mystic, as we have seen, makes it his life's aim to be transformed into the likeness of Him in whose image he was created.[15] He loves to figure his path as a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, which must be climbed step by step. This _scala perfectionis_ is generally divided into three stages. The first is called the purgative life, the second the illuminative, while the third, which is really the goal rather than a part of the journey, is called the unitive life, or state of perfect contemplation.[16] We find, as we should expect, some differences in the classification, but this tripartite scheme is generally accepted. The steps of the upward path constitute the ethical system, the rule of life, of the mystics. The first stage, the purgative life, we read in the _Theologia Germanica_, is brought about by contrition, by confession, by hearty amendment; and this is the usual language in treatises intended for monks. But it is really intended to include the civic and social virtues in this stage.[17] They occupy the lowest place, it is true; but this only means that they must be acquired by all, though all are not called to the higher flights of contemplation. Their chief value, according to Plotinus, is to teach us the meaning of _order_ and _limitation_ ([Greek: taxis] and [Greek: peras]), which are qualities belonging to the Divine nature. This is a very valuable thought, for it contradicts that aberration of Mysticism which calls God the Infinite, and thinks of Him as the Indefinite, dissolving all distinctions in the abyss of bare indetermination. When Ewald says, "the true mystic never withdraws himself wilfully from the business of life, no, not even from the smallest business," he is, at any rate, saying nothing which conflicts with the principles of Mysticism.[18] The purgative life necessarily includes self-discipline: does it necessarily include what is commonly known as asceticism? It would be easy to answer that asceticism means nothing but _training_, as men train for a race, or more broadly still, that it means simply "the acquisition of some greater power by practice.[19]" But when people speak of "asceticism," they have in their minds such severe "buffeting" of the body as was practised by many ancient hermits and mediæval monks. Is this an integral part of the mystic's "upward path"? We shall find reason to conclude that, while a certain degree of austere simplicity characterises the outward life of nearly all the mystics, and while an almost morbid desire to suffer is found in many of them, there is nothing in the system itself to encourage men to maltreat their bodies. Mysticism enjoins a dying life, not a living death. Moreover, asceticism, when regarded as a virtue or duty in itself, tends to isolate us, and concentrates our attention on our separate individuality. This is contrary to the spirit of Mysticism, which aims at realising unity and solidarity everywhere. Monkish asceticism (so far as it goes beyond the struggle to live unstained under unnatural conditions) rests on a dualistic view of the world which does not belong to the essence of Mysticism. It infected all the religious life of the Middle Ages, not Mysticism only.[20] The second stage, the illuminative life, is the concentration of all the faculties, will, intellect, and feeling, upon God. It differs from the purgative life, not in having discarded good works, but in having come to perform them, as Fénelon says, "no longer as virtues," that is to say, willingly and almost spontaneously. The struggle is now transferred to the inner life. The last stage of the journey, in which the soul presses towards the mark, and gains the prize of its high calling, is the unitive or contemplative life, in which man beholds God face to face, and is joined to Him. Complete union with God is the ideal limit of religion, the attainment of which would be at once its consummation and annihilation. It is in the continual but unending approximation to it that the life of religion subsists.[21] We must therefore beware of regarding the union as anything more than an infinite process, though, as its end is part of the eternal counsel of God, there is a sense in which it is already a fact, and not merely a thing desired. But the word deification holds a very large place in the writings of the Fathers, and not only among those who have been called mystics. We find it in Irenæus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well as in Gregory of Nyssa. St. Augustine is no more afraid of "deificari" in Latin than Origen of [Greek: theopoieisthai] in Greek. The subject is one of primary importance to anyone who wishes to understand mystical theology; but it is difficult for us to enter into the minds of the ancients who used these expressions, both because [Greek: theos] was a very fluid concept in the early centuries, and because our notions of _personality_ are very different from those which were prevalent in antiquity. On this latter point I shall have more to say presently; but the evidence for the belief in "deification," and its continuance through the Middle Ages, is too voluminous to be given in the body of these Lectures.[22] Let it suffice to say here that though such bold phrases as "God became man, that we might become God," were commonplaces of doctrinal theology at least till after Augustine, even Clement and Origen protest strongly against the "very impious" heresy that man is "a part of God," or "consubstantial with God.[23]" The attribute of Divinity which was chiefly in the minds of the Greek Fathers when they made these statements, was that of _imperishableness_. As to the means by which this union is manifested to the consciousness, there is no doubt that very many mystics believed in, and looked for, ecstatic revelations, trances, or visions. This, again, is one of the crucial questions of Mysticism. Ecstasy or vision begins when thought ceases, _to our consciousness_, to proceed from ourselves. It differs from dreaming, because the subject is awake. It differs from hallucination, because there is no organic disturbance: it is, or claims to be, a temporary enhancement, not a partial disintegration, of the mental faculties. Lastly, it differs from poetical inspiration, because the imagination is passive. That perfectly sane people often experience such visions there is no manner of doubt. St. Paul fell into a trance at his conversion, and again at a later period, when he seemed to be caught up into the third heaven. The most sober and practical of the mediæval mystics speak of them as common phenomena. And in modern times two of the sanest of our poets have recorded their experiences in words which may be worth quoting. Wordsworth, in his well-known "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," speaks of-- "That serene and blessed mood, In which ... the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood, Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." And Tennyson says,[24] "A kind of waking trance I have often had, quite from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individual itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being: and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, and the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life." Admitting, then, that these psychical phenomena actually occur, we have to consider whether ecstasy and kindred states are an integral part of Mysticism. In attempting to answer this question, we shall find it convenient to distinguish between the Neoplatonic vision of the super-essential One, the Absolute, which Plotinus enjoyed several times, and Porphyry only once, and the visions and "locutions" which are reported in all times and places, especially where people have not been trained in scientific habits of thought and observation. The former was held to be an exceedingly rare privilege, the culminating point of the contemplative life. I shall speak of it in my third Lecture; and shall there show that it belongs, not to the essence of Mysticism, and still less to Christianity, but to the Asiatic leaven which was mixed with Alexandrian thought, and thence passed into Catholicism. As regards visions in general, they were no invention of the mystics. They played a much more important part in the life of the early Church than many ecclesiastical historians are willing to admit. Tertullian, for instance, says calmly, "The majority, almost, of men learn God from visions.[25]" Such implicit reliance was placed on the Divine authority of visions, that on one occasion an ignorant peasant and a married man was made Patriarch of Alexandria against his will, because his dying predecessor had a vision that the man who should bring him a present of grapes on the next day should be his successor! In course of time visions became rarer among the laity, but continued frequent among the monks and clergy. And so the class which furnished most of the shining lights of Mysticism was that in which these experiences were most common. But we do not find that the masters of the spiritual life attached very much importance to them, or often appealed to them as aids to faith.[26] As a rule, visions were regarded as special rewards bestowed by the goodness of God on the struggling saint, and especially on the beginner, to refresh him and strengthen him in the hour of need. Very earnest cautions were issued that no efforts must be made to induce them artificially, and aspirants were exhorted neither to desire them, nor to feel pride in having seen them. The spiritual guides of the Middle Ages were well aware that such experiences often come of disordered nerves and weakened digestion; they believed also that they are sometimes delusions of Satan. Richard of St. Victor says, "As Christ attested His transfiguration by the presence of Moses and Elias, so visions should not be believed unless they have the authority of Scripture." Albertus Magnus tries to classify them, and says that those which contain a sensuous element are always dangerous. Eckhart is still more cautious, and Tauler attaches little value to them. Avila, the Spanish mystic, says that only those visions which minister to our spiritual necessities, and make us _more humble_, are genuine. Self-induced visions inflate us with pride, and do irreparable injury to health of mind and body.[27] It hardly falls within my task to attempt to determine what these visions really are. The subject is one upon which psychological and medical science may some day throw more light. But this much I must say, to make my own position clear: I regard these experiences as neither more nor less "supernatural" than other mental phenomena. Many of them are certainly pathological;[28] about others we may feel doubts; but some have every right to be considered as real irradiations of the soul from the light that "for ever shines," real notes of the harmony that "is in immortal souls." In illustration of this, we may appeal to three places in the Bible where revelations of the profoundest truths concerning the nature and counsels of God are recorded to have been made during ecstatic visions. Moses at Mount Horeb heard, during the vision of the burning bush, a proclamation of God as the "I am"--the Eternal who is exalted above time. Isaiah, in the words "Holy, Holy, Holy," perceived dimly the mystery of the Trinity. And St. Peter, in the vision of the sheet, learned that God is no respecter of persons or of nationalities. In such cases the highest intuitions or revelations, which the soul can in its best moments just receive, but cannot yet grasp or account for, make a language for themselves, as it were, and claim the sanction of external authority, until the mind is elevated so far as to feel the authority not less Divine, but no longer external. We may find fairly close analogies in other forms of that "Divine madness," which Plato says is "the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men"--such as the rapture of the poet, or (as Plato adds) of the lover.[29] And even the philosopher or man of science may be surprised into some such state by a sudden realisation of the sublimity of his subject. So at least Lacordaire believed when he wrote, "All at once, as if by chance, the hair stands up, the breath is caught, the skin contracts, and a cold sword pierces to the very soul. It is the sublime which has manifested itself![30]" Even in cases where there is evident hallucination, e.g. when the visionary sees an angel or devil sitting on his book, or feels an arrow thrust into his heart, there need be no insanity. In periods when it is commonly believed that such things may and do happen, the imagination, instead of being corrected by experience, is misled by it. Those who honestly expect to see miracles will generally see them, without detriment either to their truthfulness or sanity in other matters. The mystic, then, is not, as such, a visionary; nor has he any interest in appealing to a faculty "above reason," if reason is used in its proper sense, as the logic of the whole personality. The desire to find for our highest intuitions an authority wholly external to reason and independent of it,--a "purely supernatural" revelation,--has, as Récéjac says, "been the cause of the longest and the most dangerous of the aberrations from which Mysticism has suffered." This kind of supernaturalism is destructive of _unity_ in our ideas of God, the world, and ourselves; and it casts a slur on the faculties which are the appointed organs of communication between God and man. A revelation absolutely transcending reason is an absurdity: no such revelation could ever be made. In the striking phrase of Macarius, "the human mind is the throne of the Godhead." The supremacy of the reason is the favourite theme of the Cambridge Platonists, two of whom, Whichcote and Culverwel, are never tired of quoting the text, "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." "Sir, I oppose not rational to spiritual," writes Whichcote to Tuckney, "for spiritual is most rational." And again, "Reason is the Divine governor of man's life: it is the very voice of God.[31]" What we can and must transcend, if we would make any progress in Divine knowledge, is not reason, but that shallow rationalism which regards the data on which we can reason as a fixed quantity, known to all, and which bases itself on a formal logic, utterly unsuited to a spiritual view of things. Language can only furnish us with poor, misleading, and wholly inadequate images of spiritual facts; it supplies us with abstractions and metaphors, which do not really represent what we know or believe about God and human personality. St. Paul calls attention to this inadequacy by a series of formal contradictions: "I live, yet not I"; "dying, and behold we live"; "when I am weak, then I am strong," and so forth; and we find exactly the same expedient in Plotinus, who is very fond of thus showing his contempt for the logic of identity. When, therefore, Harnack says that "Mysticism is nothing else than rationalism applied to a sphere above reason," he would have done better to say that it is "reason applied to a sphere above rationalism.[32]" For Reason is still "king.[33]" Religion must not be a matter of _feeling_ only. St. John's command to "try every spirit" condemns all attempts to make emotion or inspiration independent of reason. Those who thus blindly follow the inner light find it no "candle of the Lord," but an _ignis fatuus_; and the great mystics are well aware of this. The fact is that the tendency to separate and half personify the different faculties--intellect, will, feeling--is a mischievous one. Our object should be so to _unify_ our personality, that our eye may be single, and our whole body full of light. We have considered briefly the three stages of the mystic's upward path. The scheme of life therein set forth was no doubt determined empirically, and there is nothing to prevent the simplest and most unlettered saint from framing his conduct on these principles. Many of the mediæval mystics had no taste for speculation or philosophy;[34] they accepted on authority the entire body of Church dogma, and devoted their whole attention to the perfecting of the spiritual life in the knowledge and love of God. But this cannot be said of the leaders. Christian Mysticism appears in history largely as an intellectual movement, the foster-child of Platonic idealism; and if ever, for a time, it forgot its early history, men were soon found to bring it back to "its old loving nurse the Platonic philosophy." It will be my task, in the third and fourth Lectures of this course, to show how speculative Christian Mysticism grew out of Neoplatonism; but we shall not be allowed to forget the Platonists even in the later Lectures. "The fire still burns on the altars of Plotinus," as Eunapius said. Mysticism is not itself a philosophy, any more than it is itself a religion. On its intellectual side it has been called "formless speculation.[35]" But until speculations or intuitions have entered into the forms of our thought, they are not current coin even for the thinker. The part played by Mysticism in philosophy is parallel to the part played by it in religion. As in religion it appears in revolt against dry formalism and cold rationalism, so in philosophy it takes the field against materialism and scepticism.[36] It is thus possible to speak of speculative Mysticism, and even to indicate certain idealistic lines of thought, which may without entire falsity be called the philosophy of Mysticism. In this introductory Lecture I can, of course, only hint at these in the barest and most summary manner. And it must be remembered that I have undertaken to-day to delineate the general characteristics of Mysticism, not of Christian Mysticism. I am trying, moreover, in this Lecture to confine myself to those developments which I consider normal and genuine, excluding the numerous aberrant types which we shall encounter in the course of our survey. The real world, according to thinkers of this school, is created by the thought and will of God, and exists in His mind. It is therefore spiritual, and above space and time, which are only the forms under which reality is set out as a process. When we try to represent to our minds the highest reality, the spiritual world, as distinguished from the world of appearance, we are obliged to form images; and we can hardly avoid choosing one of the following three images. We may regard the spiritual world as endless duration opposed to transitoriness, as infinite extension opposed to limitation in space, or as substance opposed to shadow. All these are, strictly speaking, symbols or metaphors,[37] for we cannot regard any of them as literally true statements about the nature of reality; but they are as near the truth as we can get in words. But when we think of time as a piece cut off from the beginning of eternity, so that eternity is only in the future and not in the present; when we think of heaven as a place somewhere else, and therefore not here; when we think of an upper ideal world which has sucked all the life out of this, so that we now walk in a vain shadow,--then we are paying the penalty for our symbolical representative methods of thought, and must go to philosophy to help us out of the doubts and difficulties in which our error has involved us. One test is infallible. Whatever view of reality deepens our sense of the tremendous issues of life in the world wherein we move, is _for us_ nearer the truth than any view which diminishes that sense. The truth is revealed to us that we may have _life_, and have it more abundantly. The world as it is, is the world as God sees it, not as we see it. Our vision is distorted, not so much by the limitations of finitude, as by sin and ignorance. The more we can raise ourselves in the scale of being, the more will our ideas about God and the world correspond to the reality. "Such as men themselves are, such will God Himself seem to them to be," says John Smith, the English Platonist. Origen, too, says that those whom Judas led to seize Jesus did not know who He was, for the darkness of their own souls was projected on His features.[38] And Dante, in a very beautiful passage, says that he felt that he was rising into a higher circle, because he saw Beatrice's face becoming more beautiful.[39] This view of reality, as a vista which is opened gradually to the eyes of the climber up the holy mount, is very near to the heart of Mysticism. It rests on the faith that the ideal not only ought to be, but _is_ the real. It has been applied by some, notably by that earnest but fantastic thinker, James Hinton, as offering a solution of the problem of evil. We shall encounter attempts to deal with this great difficulty in several of the Christian mystics. The problem among the speculative writers was how to reconcile the Absolute of philosophy, who is above all distinctions,[40] with the God of religion, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. They could not allow that evil has a substantial existence apart from God, for fear of being entangled in an insoluble Dualism. But if evil is derived from God, how can God be good? We shall find that the prevailing view was that "Evil has no substance." "There is nothing," says Gregory of Nyssa, "which falls outside of the Divine nature, except moral evil alone. And this, we may say paradoxically, has its being in not-being. For the genesis of moral evil is simply the privation of being.[41] That which, properly speaking, exists, is the nature of the good." The Divine nature, in other words, is that which excludes nothing, and contradicts nothing, except those attributes which are contrary to the nature of reality; it is that which harmonises everything except discord, which loves everything except hatred, verifies everything except falsehood, and beautifies everything except ugliness. Thus that which falls outside the notion of God, proves on examination to be not merely unreal, but unreality as such. But the relation of evil to the Absolute is not a religious problem. To our experience, evil exists as a positive force not subject to the law of God, though constantly overruled and made an instrument of good. On this subject we must say more later. Here I need only add that a sunny confidence in the ultimate triumph of good shines from the writings of most of the mystics, especially, I think, in our own countrymen. The Cambridge Platonists are all optimistic; and in the beautiful but little known _Revelations_ of Juliana of Norwich, we find in page after page the refrain of "All shall be well." "Sin is behovable,[42] but all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Since the universe is the thought and will of God expressed under the forms of time and space, everything in it reflects the nature of its Creator, though in different degrees. Erigena says finely, "Every visible and invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God." The purest mirror in the world is the highest of created things--the human soul unclouded by sin. And this brings us to a point at which Mysticism falls asunder into two classes. The question which divides them is this--In the higher stages of the spiritual life, shall we learn most of the nature of God by close, sympathetic, reverent observation of the world around us, including our fellow-men, or by sinking into the depths of our inner consciousness, and aspiring after direct and constant communion with God? Each method may claim the support of weighty names. The former, which will form the subject of my seventh and eighth Lectures, is very happily described by Charles Kingsley in an early letter.[43] "The great Mysticism," he says, "is the belief which is becoming every day stronger with me, that all symmetrical natural objects ... are types of some spiritual truth or existence.... Everything seems to be full of God's reflex if we could but see it.... Oh, to see, if but for a moment, the whole harmony of the great system! to hear once the music which the whole universe makes as it performs His bidding! When I feel that sense of the mystery that is around me, I feel a gush of enthusiasm towards God, which seems its inseparable effect." On the other side stand the majority of the earlier mystics. Believing that God is "closer to us than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet," they are impatient of any intermediaries. "We need not search for His footprints in Nature, when we can behold His face in ourselves,[44]" is their answer to St. Augustine's fine expression that all things bright and beautiful in the world are "footprints of the uncreated Wisdom.[45]" Coleridge has expressed their feeling in his "Ode to Dejection"-- "It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the West; I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life whose fountains are within." "Grace works from within outwards," says Ruysbroek, "for God is nearer to us than our own faculties. Hence it cannot come from images and sensible forms." "If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God," says Richard of St. Victor, "search out the depths of thine own spirit." The truth is that there are two movements,--a _systole_ and _diastole_ of the spiritual life,--an expansion and a concentration. The tendency has generally been to emphasise one at the expense of the other; but they must work together, for each is helpless without the other. As Shakespeare says[46]-- "Nor doth the eye itself, That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself, Not going from itself, but eye to eye opposed, Salutes each other with each other's form: For speculation turns not to itself Till it hath travelled, and is mirrored there, Where it may see itself." Nature is dumb, and our own hearts are dumb, until they are allowed to speak to each other. Then both will speak to us of God. Speculative Mysticism has occupied itself largely with these two great subjects--the immanence of God in nature, and the relation of human personality to Divine. A few words must be said, before I conclude, on both these matters. The Unity of all existence is a fundamental doctrine of Mysticism. God is in all, and all is in God. "His centre is everywhere, and His circumference nowhere," as St. Bonaventura puts it. It is often argued that this doctrine leads direct to Pantheism, and that speculative Mysticism is always and necessarily pantheistic. This is, of course, a question of primary importance. It is in the hope of dealing with it adequately that I have selected three writers who have been frequently called pantheists, for discussion in these Lectures. I mean Dionysius the Areopagite, Scotus Erigena, and Eckhart. But it would be impossible even to indicate my line of argument in the few minutes left me this morning. The mystics are much inclined to adopt, in a modified form, the old notion of an _anima mundi_. When Erigena says, "Be well assured that the Word--the second Person of the Trinity--is the Nature of all things," he means that the Logos is a cosmic principle, the Personality of which the universe is the external expression or appearance.[47] We are not now concerned with cosmological speculations, but the bearing of this theory on human personality is obvious. If the Son of God is regarded as an all-embracing and all-pervading cosmic principle, the "mystic union" of the believer with Christ becomes something much closer than an ethical harmony of two mutually exclusive wills. The question which exercises the mystics is not whether such a thing as fusion of personalities is possible, but whether, when the soul has attained union with its Lord, it is any longer conscious of a life distinct from that of the Word. We shall find that some of the best mystics went astray on this point. They teach a real _substitution_ of the Divine for human nature, thus depersonalising man, and running into great danger of a perilous arrogance. The mistake is a fatal one even from the speculative side, for it is only on the analogy of human personality that we can conceive of the perfect personality of God; and without personality the universe falls to pieces. Personality is not only the strictest unity of which we have any experience; it is the fact which creates the postulate of unity on which all philosophy is based. But it is possible to save personality without regarding the human spirit as a monad, independent and sharply separated from other spirits. Distinction, not separation, is the mark of personality; but it is separation, not distinction, that forbids union. The error, according to the mystic's psychology, is in regarding consciousness of self as the measure of personality. The depths of personality are unfathomable, as Heraclitus already knew;[48] the light of consciousness only plays on the surface of the waters. Jean Paul Richter is a true exponent of this characteristic doctrine when he says, "We attribute far too small dimensions to the rich empire of ourself, if we omit from it the unconscious region which resembles a great dark continent. The world which our memory peoples only reveals, in its revolution, a few luminous points at a time, while its immense and teeming mass remains in shade.... We daily see the conscious passing into unconsciousness; and take no notice of the bass accompaniment which our fingers continue to play, while our attention is directed to fresh musical effects.[49]" So far is it from being true that the self of our immediate consciousness is our true personality, that we can only attain personality, as spiritual and rational beings, by passing beyond the limits which mark us off as separate individuals. Separate individuality, we may say, is the bar which prevents us from realising our true privileges as persons.[50] And so the mystic interprets very literally that maxim of our Lord, in which many have found the fundamental secret of Christianity: "He that will save his life--his soul, his personality--shall lose it; and he that will lose his life for My sake shall find it." The false self must die--nay, must "die daily," for the process is gradual, and there is no limit to it. It is a process of infinite _expansion_--of realising new correspondences, new sympathies and affinities with the not-ourselves, which affinities condition, and in conditioning constitute, our true life as persons. The paradox is offensive only to formal logic. As a matter of experience, no one, I imagine, would maintain that the man who has practically realised, to the fullest possible extent, the common life which he draws from his Creator, and shares with all other created beings,--so realised it, I mean, as to draw from that consciousness all the influences which can play upon him from outside,--has thereby dissipated and lost his personality, and become less of a person than another who has built a wall round his individuality, and lived, as Plato says, the life of a shell-fish.[51] We may arrive at the same conclusion by analysing that unconditioned sense of duty which we call _conscience_. This moral sense cannot be a fixed code implanted in our consciousness, for then we could not explain either the variations of moral opinion, or the feeling of _obligation_ (as distinguished from necessity) which impels us to obey it. It cannot be the product of the existing moral code of society, for then we could not explain either the genesis of that public opinion or the persistent revolt against its limitations which we find in the greatest minds. The only hypothesis which explains the facts is that in conscience we feel the motions of the universal Reason which strives to convert the human organism into an organ of itself, a belief which is expressed in religious language by saying that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. If it be further asked, Which is our personality, the shifting _moi_ (as Fénelon calls it), or the ideal self, the end or the developing states? we must answer that it is both and neither, and that the root of mystical religion is in the conviction that it is at once both and neither.[52] The _moi_ strives to realise its end, but the end being an infinite one, no process can reach it. Those who have "counted themselves to have apprehended" have thereby left the mystical faith; and those who from the notion of a _progressus ad infinitum_ come to the pessimistic conclusion, are equally false to the mystical creed, which teaches us that we are already potentially what God intends us to become. The command, "Be ye perfect," is, like all Divine commands, at the same time a promise. It is stating the same paradox in another form to say that we can only achieve inner _unity_ by transcending mere individuality. The independent, impervious self shows its unreality by being inwardly discordant. It is of no use to enlarge the circumference of our life, if the fixed centre is always the _ego_. There are, if I may press the metaphor, other circles with other centres, in which we are vitally involved. And thus sympathy, or love, which is sympathy in its highest power, is the great _atoner_, within as well as without. The old Pythagorean maxim, that "a man must be _one_,[53]" is echoed by all the mystics. He must be one as God is one, and the world is one; for man is a microcosm, a living mirror of the universe. Here, once more, we have a characteristic mystical doctrine, which is perhaps worked out most fully in the "_Fons Vitæ_" of Avicebron (Ibn Gebirol), a work which had great influence in the Middle Ages. The doctrine justifies the use of _analogy_ in matters of religion, and is of great importance. One might almost dare to say that all conclusions about the world above us which are _not_ based on the analogy of our own mental experiences, are either false or meaningless. The idea of man as a microcosm was developed in two ways. Plotinus said that "every man is double," meaning that one side of his soul is in contact with the intelligible, the other with the sensible world. He is careful to explain that the doctrine of Divine Immanence does not mean that God _divides_ Himself among the many individuals, but that they partake of Him according to their degrees of receptivity, so that each one is potentially in possession of all the fulness of God. Proclus tries to explain how this can be. "There are three sorts of _Wholes_--the first, anterior to the parts; the second, composed of the parts; the third, knitting into one stuff the parts and the whole.[54]" In this third sense the whole resides in the parts, as well as the parts in the whole. St. Augustine states the same doctrine in clearer language.[55] It will be seen at once how this doctrine encourages that class of Mysticism which bids us "sink into the depths of our own souls" in order to find God. The other development of the theory that man is a microcosm is not less important and interesting. It is a favourite doctrine of the mystics that man, in his individual life, recapitulates the spiritual history of the race, in much the same way in which embryologists tell us that the unborn infant recapitulates the whole process of physical evolution. It follows that the Incarnation, the central fact of human history, must have its analogue in the experience of the individual. We shall find that this doctrine of the birth of an infant Christ in the soul is one of immense importance in the systems of Eckhart, Tauler, and our Cambridge Platonists. It is a somewhat perilous doctrine, as we shall see; but it is one which, I venture to think, has a future as well as a past, for the progress of modern science has greatly strengthened the analogies on which it rests. I shall show in my next Lecture how strongly St. Paul felt its value. This brief introduction will, I hope, have indicated the main characteristics of mystical theology and religion. It is a type which is as repulsive to some minds as it is attractive to others. Coleridge has said that everyone is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and one might perhaps adapt the epigram by saying that everyone is naturally either a mystic or a legalist. The classification does, indeed, seem to correspond to a deep difference in human characters; it is doubtful whether a man could be found anywhere whom one could trust to hold the scales evenly between--let us say--Fénelon and Bossuet. The cleavage is much the same as that which causes the eternal strife between tradition and illumination, between priest and prophet, which has produced the deepest tragedies in human history, and will probably continue to do so while the world lasts. The legalist--with his conception of God as the righteous Judge dispensing rewards and punishments, the "Great Taskmaster" in whose vineyard we are ordered to labour; of the Gospel as "the new law," and of the sanction of duty as a "categorical imperative"--will never find it easy to sympathise with those whose favourite words are St. John's triad--light, life, and love, and who find these the most suitable names to express what they know of the nature of God. But those to whom the Fourth Gospel is the brightest jewel in the Bible, and who can enter into the real spirit of St. Paul's teaching, will, I hope, be able to take some interest in the historical development of ideas which in their Christian form are certainly built upon those parts of the New Testament. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: See Appendix A for definitions of Mysticism and Mystical Theology.] [Footnote 3: See Appendix B for a discussion of the influence of the Greek mysteries upon Christian Mysticism.] [Footnote 4: Tholuck accepts the former derivation (cf. Suidas, [Greek: mystêria eklêthêsan para to tous akouontas myein to stoma kai mêdeni tauta exêgeisthai]); Petersen, the latter. There is no doubt that [Greek: myêsis] was opposed to [Greek: epopteia], and in this sense denoted _incomplete_ initiation; but it was also made to include the whole process. The prevailing use of the adjective [Greek: mystikos] is of something seen "through a glass darkly," some knowledge purposely wrapped up in symbols.] [Footnote 5: So Hesychius says, [Greek: Mystai, apo myô, myontes gar tas aisthêseis kai exô tôn sarkikôn phrontidôn genomenoi, outô tas theias analampseis edechonto.] Plotinus and Proclus both use [Greek: myô] of the "closed eye" of rapt contemplation.] [Footnote 6: I cannot agree with Lasson (in his book on Meister Eckhart) that "the connexion with the Greek mysteries throws no light on the subject." No writer had more influence upon the growth of Mysticism in the Church than Dionysius the Areopagite, whose main object is to present Christianity in the light of a Platonic mysteriosophy. The same purpose is evident in Clement, and in other Christian Platonists between Clement and Dionysius. See Appendix B.] [Footnote 7: It should also be borne in mind that every historical example of a mystical movement may be expected to exhibit characteristics which are determined by the particular forms of religious deadness in opposition to which it arises. I think that it is generally easy to separate these secondary, accidental characteristics from those which are primary and integral, and that we shall then find that the underlying substance, which may be regarded as the essence of Mysticism as a type of religion, is strikingly uniform.] [Footnote 8: The analogy used by Plotinus (_Ennead_ i. 6. 9) was often quoted and imitated: "Even as the eye could not behold the sun unless it were itself sunlike, so neither could the soul behold God if it were not Godlike." Lotze (_Microcosmus_, and cf. _Metaphysics_, 1st ed., p. 109) falls foul of Plotinus for this argument. "The reality of the external world is utterly severed from our senses. It is vain to call the eye sunlike, as if it needed a special occult power to copy what it has itself produced: fruitless are all mystic efforts to restore to the intuitions of sense, by means of a secret identity of mind with things, a reality outside ourselves." Whether the subjective idealism of this sentence is consistent with the subsequent dogmatic assertion that "nature is animated throughout," it is not my province to determine. The latter doctrine is held by a large school of mystics: the acosmistic tendency of the former has had only too much attraction for mystics of another school.] [Footnote 9: This distinction is drawn by Origen, and accepted by all the mystical writers.] [Footnote 10: Faith goes so closely hand in hand with love that the mystics seldom try to separate them, and indeed they need not be separated. William Law's account of their operation is characteristic. "When the seed of the new birth, called the inward man, has faith awakened in it, its faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the Divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like: it lays hold on Christ, puts on the Divine nature, and in a living and real manner grows powerful over all our sins, and effectually works out our salvation" (_Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration_).] [Footnote 11: R.L. Nettleship, _Remains_.] [Footnote 12: "Nescio si a quoquam homine quartus (gradus) in hac vita perfecte apprehenditur, ut se scilicet diligat homo tantum propter Deum. Asserant hoc si qui experti sunt: mihi (fateor) impossibile videtur" (_De diligendo Deo_, xv.; _Epist_. xi. 8).] [Footnote 13: From a sermon by Smith, the Cambridge Platonist. Plotinus, too, says well, [Greek: ei tis allo eidos êdonês peri ton spoudaion bion zêtei, ou ton spoudaion bion zêtei] (_Ennead_ i. 4. 12).] [Footnote 14: From Smith's sermons.] [Footnote 15: Pindar's [Greek: genoio oios essi mathôn] is a fine mystical maxim. (_Pyth._ 2. 131.)] [Footnote 16: Strictly, the unitive road (_via_) leads to the contemplative life (_vita_). Cf. Benedict, xiv., _De Servorum Dei beatific_., iii. 26, "Perfecta hæc mystica unio reperitur regulariter in perfecto contemplativo qui in vita purgativa et illuminativa, id est meditativa, et contemplativa diu versatus, ex speciali Dei favore ad infusam contemplativam evectus est." On the three ways, Suarez says, "Distinguere solent mystici tres vias, purgativam, illuminativam, et unitivam." Molinos was quite a heterodox mystic in teaching that there is but a "unica via, scilicet interna," and this proposition was condemned by a Bull of Innocent XI.] [Footnote 17: In Plotinus the civic virtues _precede_ the cathartic; but they are not, as with some perverse mystics, considered to lie _outside_ the path of ascent.] [Footnote 18: Tauler is careful to put social service on its true basis. "One can spin," he says, "another can make shoes; and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all." In a later Lecture I shall revert to the charge of indolent neglect of duties, so often preferred against the mystics.] [Footnote 19: R.L. Nettleship, _Remains_.] [Footnote 20: In a Roman Catholic manual I find: "Non raro sub nomine theologiæ mysticæ intelligitur etiam ascesis, sed immerito. Nam ascesis consuetas tantum et tritas perfectionis semitas ostendit, mystica autem adhuc excellentiorem viam demonstrat." This is to identify "mystical theology" with the higher rungs of the ladder. It has been used in this curious manner from the Middle Ages. Ribet says, "La mystique, comme science spéciale, fait partie de la théologie ascétique"; that part, namely, "dans lequel l'homme est réduit à la passivité par l'action souveraine de Dieu." "L'ascèse" is defined as "l'ascension de l'âme vers Dieu."] [Footnote 21: Cf. Professor W. Wallace's collected _Lectures and Essays_, p. 276.] [Footnote 22: See Appendix C on the Doctrine of Deification.] [Footnote 23: So Fénelon, after asserting the truth of mystical "transformation," adds: "It is false to say that transformation is a deification of the real and natural soul, or a hypostatic union, or an unalterable conformity with God."] [Footnote 24: _Life of Tennyson_, vol. i. p. 320. The curious experience, that the repetition of his own name induced a kind of trance, is used by the poet in his beautiful mystical poem, "The Ancient Sage." It would, indeed, have been equally easy to illustrate this topic from Wordsworth's prose and Tennyson's poetry.] [Footnote 25: See the very interesting note in Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. i. p. 53.] [Footnote 26: The Abbé Migne says truly, "Ceux qui traitent les mystiques de visionnaires seraient fort étonnés de voir quel peu de cas ils font des visions en elles-mémes." And St. Bonaventura says of visions, "Nec faciunt sanctum nec ostendunt: alioquin Balaam sanctus esset, _et asina_, quæ vidit Angelum."] [Footnote 27: The following passage from St. Francis de Sales is much to the same effect as those referred to in the text: "Les philosophes mesmes ont recogneu certaines espèces d'extases naturelles faictes par la véhémente application de l'esprit à la considération des choses relevées. Une marque de la bonne et sainete extase est qu'elle ne se prend ny attache jamais tant à l'entendement qu'à la volonté, laquelle elle esmeut, eschauffe, et remplit d'une puissante affection envers Dieu; de manière que si l'extase est plus belle que bonne, plus lumineuse qu'affective, elle est grandement douteuse et digne de soupçon."] [Footnote 28: Some of my readers may find satisfaction in the following passage of Jeremy Taylor: "Indeed, when persons have long been softened with the continual droppings of religion, and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of prayer, and the continual dyings of mortification--the fancy, which is a very great instrument of devotion, is kept continually warm, and in a disposition and aptitude to take fire, and to flame out in great ascents; and when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and call it what they please." Henry More, too, says that those who would "make their whole nature desolate of all animal figurations whatever," find only "a waste, silent solitude, and one uniform parchedness and vacuity. And yet, while a man fancies himself thus wholly Divine, he is not aware how he is even then held down by his animal nature; and that it is nothing but the stillness and fixedness of melancholy that thus abuses him, instead of the true Divine principle."] [Footnote 29: Plato, _Phædrus_, 244, 245; Ion, 534.] [Footnote 30: Lacordaire, _Conférences_, xxxvii.] [Footnote 31: Compare, too, the vigorous words of Henry More, the most mystical of the group: "He that misbelieves and lays aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of reason, upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle (which, a thousand to one, proves but the infatuation of melancholy, and a superstitious hallucination), is as ridiculous as if he would not use his natural eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernatural light, or till he had got a pair of spectacles made of the crystalline heaven, or of the _cælum empyreum_, to hang upon his nose for him to look through."] [Footnote 32: There is, of course, a sense in which any strong feeling lifts us "above reason." But this is using "reason" in a loose manner.] [Footnote 33: [Greek: ho nous basileus], says Plotinus.] [Footnote 34: Roman Catholic writers can assert that "la plupart des contemplatifs étaient dépourvus de toute culture littéraire." But their notion of "contemplation" is the passive reception of "supernatural favours,"--on which subject more will be said in Lectures IV. and VII.] [Footnote 35: "Die Mystik ist formlose Speculation," Noack, _Christliche Mystik_, p. 18.] [Footnote 36: The Atomists, from Epicurus downwards, have been especially odious to the mystics.] [Footnote 37: The theory that time is real, but not space, leads us into grave difficulties. It is the root of the least satisfactory kind of evolutionary optimism, which forgets, in the first place, that the idea of perpetual progress in time is hopelessly at variance with what we know of the destiny of the world; and, in the second place, that a mere _progressus_ is meaningless. Every created thing has its fixed goal in the realisation of the idea which was immanent in it from the first.] [Footnote 38: Origen in _Matth._, Com. Series, 100; _Contra Celsum_, ii. 64. Referred to by Bigg, _Christian Platonists of Alexandria_, p. 191.] [Footnote 39: _Paradiso_ viii. 13-- "Io non m'accorsi del salire in ella; Ma d'esserv' entro mi fece assai fede La donna mia ch'io vidi far più bella." ] [Footnote 40: "Deo nihil opponitur," says Erigena.] [Footnote 41: Compare Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, where it is shown that the essential attributes of Reality are _harmony_ and _inclusiveness_.] [Footnote 42: I.e. "necessary" or "expedient."] [Footnote 43: _Life_, vol. i. p. 55.] [Footnote 44: J. Smith, _Select Discourses_, v. So Bernard says (_De Consid._ v. I), "quid opus est scalis tenenti iam solium?"] [Footnote 45: Aug. _De Libero Arbitrio_, ii. 16, 17.] [Footnote 46: _Troilus and Cressida_, Act III. Scene 3.] [Footnote 47: This idea of the world as a living being is found in Plotinus: and Origen definitely teaches that "as our body, while consisting of many members, is yet an organism which is held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being which is upheld by the power and the Word of God." He also holds that the sun and stars are spiritual beings. St. Augustine, too (_De Civitate Dei_, iv. 12, vii. 5), regards the universe as a living organism; and the doctrine reappears much later in Giordano Bruno. According to this theory, we are subsidiary members of an all-embracing organism, and there may be intermediate will-centres between our own and that of the universal Ego. Among modern systems, that of Fechner is the one which seems to be most in accordance with these speculations. He views life under the figure of a number of concentric circles of consciousness, within an all-embracing circle which represents the consciousness of God.] [Footnote 48: [Greek: psuchês peirata ouk an exeuroio pasan epiporeuomenos hodon outô bathyn logon echei], Frag. 71.] [Footnote 49: J.P. Richter, _Selina_. Compare, too, Lotze, _Microcosmus_: "Within us lurks a world whose form we imperfectly apprehend, and whose working, when in particular phases it comes under our notice, surprises us with foreshadowings of unknown depths in our being."] [Footnote 50: As Lotze says, "The finite being does not contain in itself the conditions of its own existence." It must struggle to attain to complete personality; or rather, since personality belongs unconditionally only to God, to such a measure of personality as is allotted to us. Eternal life is nothing than the attainment of full personality, a conscious existence in God.] [Footnote 51: J.A. Picton (_The Mystery of Matter_, p. 356) puts the matter well: "Mysticism consists in the spiritual realisation of a grander and a boundless unity, that humbles all self-assertion by dissolving it in a wider glory. It does not follow that the sense of individuality is necessarily weakened. But habitual contemplation of the Divine unity impresses men with the feeling that individuality is phenomenal only. Hence the paradox of Mysticism. For apart from this phenomenal individuality, we should not know our own nothingness, and personal life is good only through the bliss of being lost in God. [Rather, I should say, through the bliss of finding our true life, which is hid with Christ in God.] True religious worship doth not consist in the acknowledgment of a greatness which is estimated by comparison, but rather in the sense of a Being who surpasses all comparison, because He gives to phenomenal existences the only reality they can know. Hence the deepest religious feeling necessarily shrinks from thinking of God as a kind of gigantic Self amidst a host of minor selves. The very thought of such a thing is a mockery of the profoundest devotion."] [Footnote 52: See, further, Appendix C, pp. 366-7.] [Footnote 53: [Greek: hena genesthai ton anthrôpon dei]: Pythagoras quoted by Clement. Cf. Plotinus, _Enn._ vi. 9. I, [Greek: kai hugieia de, hotan eis hen syntachthê to sôma, kai kallos hotan hê tou henos ta moria kataschê physis, kai aretê de psychês hotan eis hen kai eis mian homologian henôthê].] [Footnote 54: Proclus, _in Tim._ 83. 265.] [Footnote 55: Aug. _Ep._ 187. 19: "Deus totus adesse rebus omnibus potest, _et singulis totus_, quamvis in quibus habitat habeant eum pro suæ capacitatis diversitate, alii amplius, alii minus." More clearly still, Bonaventura, _Itin. ment. ad Deum_, 5: "Totum intra omnia, et totum extra: ac per hoc est sphæra intelligibilis, cuius centrum est ubique, et circumferentia nusquam."] LECTURE II [Greek: "To eu zên edidaxen epiphaneis ôs didaskalos, hina to aei zên husteron ôs theos chorêgêsê."] CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. "But souls that of His own good life partake He loves as His own self: dear as His eye They are to Him; He'll never them forsake: When they shall die, then God Himself shall die: They live, they live in blest eternity." HENRY MORE. "Amor Patris Filiique, Par amborum, et utrique Compar et consimilis: Cuncta reples, cuncta foves, Astra regis, coelum moves, Permanens immobilis. "Te docente nil obscurum, Te præsente nil impurum; Sub tua præsentia Gloriatur mens iucunda; Per te læta, per te munda Gaudet conscientia. "Consolator et fundator, Habitator et amator Cordium humilium; Pelle mala, terge sordes, Et discordes fac concordes, Et affer præsidium." ADAM OF ST. VICTOR THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God."--EPH. iii. 17-19. The task which now lies before me is to consider how far that type of religion and religious philosophy, which I tried in my last Lecture to depict in outline, is represented in and sanctioned by Holy Scripture. I shall devote most of my time to the New Testament, for we shall not find very much to help us in the Old. The Jewish mind and character, in spite of its deeply religious bent, was alien to Mysticism. In the first place, the religion of Israel, passing from what has been called Henotheism--the worship of a national God--to true Monotheism, always maintained a rigid notion of individuality, both human and Divine. Even prophecy, which is mystical in its essence, was in the early period conceived as unmystically as possible, Balaam is merely a mouthpiece of God; his message is external to his personality, which remains antagonistic to it. And, secondly, the Jewish doctrine of ideas was different from the Platonic. The Jew believed that the world, and the whole course of history, existed from all eternity in the mind of God, but as an unrealised purpose, which was actualised by degrees as the scroll of events was unfurled. There was no notion that the visible was in any way inferior to the invisible, or lacking in reality. Even in its later phases, after it had been partially Hellenised, Jewish idealism tended to crystallise as Chiliasm, or in "Apocalypses," and not, like Platonism, in the dream of a perfect world existing "yonder." In fact, the Jewish view of the external world was mainly that of naïve realism, but strongly pervaded by belief in an Almighty King and Judge. Moreover, the Jew had little sense of the Divine _in_ nature: it was the power of God _over_ nature which he was jealous to maintain. The majesty of the elemental forces was extolled in order to magnify the greater power of Him who made and could unmake them, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. The weakness and insignificance of man, as contrasted with the tremendous power of God, is the reflection which the contemplation of nature generally produced in his mind. "How can a man be just with God?" asks Job; "which removeth the mountains, and they know it not; when He overturneth them in His anger; which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble; which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars.... He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, that we should come together in judgment. There is no daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." Nor does the answer that came to Job out of the whirlwind give any hint of a "daysman" betwixt man and God, but only enlarges on the presumption of man's wishing to understand the counsels of the Almighty. Absolute submission to a law which is entirely outside of us and beyond our comprehension, is the final lesson of the book.[56] The nation exhibited the merits and defects of this type. On the one hand, it showed a deep sense of the supremacy of the moral law, and of personal responsibility; a stubborn independence and faith in its mission; and a strong national spirit, combined with vigorous individuality; but with these virtues went a tendency to externalise both religion and the ideal of well-being: the former became a matter of forms and ceremonies; the latter, of worldly possessions. It was only after the collapse of the national polity that these ideals became transmuted and spiritualised. Those disasters, which at first seemed to indicate a hopeless estrangement between God and His people, were the means of a deeper reconciliation. We can trace the process, from the old proverb that "to see God is death," down to that remarkable passage in Jeremiah where the approaching advent, or rather restoration, of spiritual religion, is announced with all the solemnity due to so glorious a message. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.... After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.[57]" That this knowledge of God, and the assurance of blessedness which it brings, is the reward of righteousness and purity, is the chief message of the great prophets and psalmists. "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil, he shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given unto him; his waters shall be sure. Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.[58]" This passage of Isaiah bears a very close resemblance to the 15th and 24th Psalms; and there are many other psalms which have been dear to Christian mystics. In some of them we find the "_amoris desiderium_"--the thirst of the soul for God--which is the characteristic note of mystical devotion; in others, that longing for a safe refuge from the provoking of all men and the strife of tongues, which drove so many saints into the cloister. Many a solitary ascetic has prayed in the words of the 73rd Psalm: "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." And verses like, "I will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning me," have been only too attractive to quietists. Other familiar verses will occur to most of us. I will only add that the warm faith and love which inspired these psalms is made more precious by the reverence for _law_ which is part of the older inheritance of the Israelites. There are many, I fear, to whom "the mystical element in the Old Testament" will suggest only the Cabbalistic lore of types and allegories which has been applied to all the canonical books, and with especial persistency and boldness to the Song of Solomon. I shall give my opinion upon this class of allegorism in the seventh Lecture of this course, which will deal with symbolism as a branch of Mysticism. It would be impossible to treat of it here without anticipating my discussion of a principle which has a much wider bearing than as a method of biblical exegesis. As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honour of true love was distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions, in which sexual imagery was freely used to symbolise the relation between the soul and its Lord. Such aberrations are as alien to sane Mysticism as they are to sane exegesis.[59] In Jewish writings of a later period, composed under Greek influence, we find plenty of Platonism ready to pass into Mysticism. But the Wisdom of Solomon does not fall within our subject, and what is necessary to be said about Philo and Alexandria will be said in the next Lecture. In the New Testament, it will be convenient to say a very few words on the Synoptic Gospels first, and afterwards to consider St. John and St. Paul, where we shall find most of our material. The first three Gospels are not written in the religious dialect of Mysticism. It is all the more important to notice that the fundamental doctrines on which the system (if we may call it a system) rests, are all found in them. The vision of God is promised in the Sermon on the Mount, and promised only to those who are pure in heart. The indwelling presence of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit, is taught in several places; for instance--"The kingdom of God is within you"; "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them"; "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." The unity of Christ and His members is implied by the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." Lastly, the great law of the moral world,--the law of gain through loss, of life through death,--which is the corner-stone of mystical (and, many have said, of Christian) ethics, is found in the Synoptists as well as in St. John. "Whosoever shall seek to gain his life (or soul) shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life (or soul) shall preserve it." The Gospel of St. John--the "spiritual Gospel," as Clement already calls it--is the charter of Christian Mysticism. Indeed, Christian Mysticism, as I understand it, might almost be called Johannine Christianity; if it were not better to say that a Johannine Christianity is the ideal which the Christian mystic sets before himself. For we cannot but feel that there are deeper truths in this wonderful Gospel than have yet become part of the religious consciousness of mankind. Perhaps, as Origen says, no one can fully understand it who has not, like its author, lain upon the breast of Jesus. We are on holy ground when we are dealing with St. John's Gospel, and must step in fear and reverence. But though the breadth and depth and height of those sublime discourses are for those only who can mount up with wings as eagles to the summits of the spiritual life, so simple is the language and so large its scope, that even the wayfaring men, though fools, can hardly altogether err therein. Let us consider briefly, first, what we learn from this Gospel about the nature of God, and then its teaching upon human salvation. There are three notable expressions about God the Father in the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John: "God is Love"; "God is Light"; and "God is Spirit." The form of the sentences teaches us that these three qualities belong so intimately to the nature of God that they usher us into His immediate presence. We need not try to get behind them, or to rise above them into some more nebulous region in our search for the Absolute. Love, Light, and Spirit are for us names of God Himself. And observe that St. John does not, in applying these semi-abstract words to God, attenuate in the slightest degree His personality. God _is_ Love, but He also exercises love. "God so loved the world." And He is not only the "white radiance" that "for ever shines"; He can "draw" us to Himself, and "send" His Son to bring us back to Him. The word "Logos" does not occur in any of the discourses. The identification of Christ with the "Word" or "Reason" of the philosophers is St. John's own. But the statements in the prologue are all confirmed by our Lord's own words as reported by the evangelist. These fall under two heads, those which deal with the relation of Christ to the Father, and those which deal with His relation to the world. The pre-existence of Christ in glory at the right hand of God is proved by several declarations: "What if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?" "And now, O Father, glorify Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." His exaltation above time is shown by the solemn statement, "Before Abraham was, I am." And with regard to the world, we find in St. John the very important doctrine, which has never made its way into popular theology, that the Word is not merely the Instrument in the original creation,--"by (or through) Him all things were made,"--but the central Life, the Being in whom life existed and exists as an indestructible attribute, an underived prerogative,[60] the Mind or Wisdom who upholds and animates the universe without being lost in it. This doctrine, which is implied in other parts of St. John, seems to be stated explicitly in the prologue, though the words have been otherwise interpreted. "That which has come into existence," says St. John, "was in Him life" ([Greek: ho gegonen, en autô zôê ên.]) That is to say, the Word is the timeless Life, of which the temporal world is a manifestation. This doctrine was taught by many of the Greek Fathers, as well as by Scotus Erigena and other speculative mystics. Even if, with the school of Antioch and most of the later commentators, we transfer the words [Greek: ho gegonen] to the preceding sentence, the doctrine that Christ is the life as well as the light of the world can be proved from St. John.[61] The world is the poem of the Word to the glory of the Father: in it, and by means of it, He displays in time all the riches which God has eternally put within Him. In St. John, as in mystical theology generally, the Incarnation, rather than the Cross, is the central fact of Christianity. "The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us," is for him the supreme dogma. And it follows necessarily from the Logos doctrine, that the Incarnation, and all that followed it, is regarded primarily as a _revelation_ of life and light and truth. "That eternal life, which was with the Father, has been _manifested_ unto us," is part of the opening sentence of the first Epistle.[62] "This is the message which we have heard of Him and announce unto you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." In coming into the world, Christ "came unto His own." He had, in a sense, only to show to them what was there already: Esaias, long before, had "seen His glory, and spoken of Him." The mysterious estrangement, which had laid the world under the dominion of the Prince of darkness, had obscured but not quenched the light which lighteth _every_ man--the inalienable prerogative of all who derive their being from the Sun of Righteousness. This central Light is Christ, and Christ only. He alone is the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Door, the Living Bread, and the True Vine. He is at once the Revealer and the Revealed, the Guide and the Way, the Enlightener and the Light. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him. The teaching of this Gospel on the office of the Holy Spirit claims special attention in our present inquiry. The revelation of God in Christ was complete: there can be no question that St. John claims for Christianity the position of the one eternally true revelation. But without the gradual illumination of the Spirit it is partly unintelligible and partly unobserved.[63] The purpose of the Incarnation was to reveal God _the Father_: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." In these momentous words (it has been said) "the idea of God receives an abiding embodiment, and the Father is brought for ever within the reach of intelligent devotion.[64]" The purpose of the mission of the Comforter is to reveal _the Son_. He takes the place of the ascended Christ on earth as a living and active principle in the hearts of Christians. His office it is to bring to remembrance the teachings of Christ, and to help mankind gradually to understand them. There were also many things, our Lord said, which could not be said at the time to His disciples, who were unable to bear them. These were left to be communicated to future generations by the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of development had never before received so clear an expression; and few could venture to record it so clearly as St. John, who could not be suspected of contemplating a time when the teachings of the human Christ might be superseded. Let us now turn to the human side of salvation, and trace the upward path of the Christian life as presented to us in this Gospel. First, then, we have the doctrine of the new birth: "Except a man be born anew (or, from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God." This is further explained as a being born "of water and of the Spirit"--words which are probably meant to remind us of the birth of the world-order out of chaos as described in Genesis, and also to suggest the two ideas of purification and life. (Baptism, as a symbol of purification, was, of course, already familiar to those who first heard the words.) Then we have a doctrine of _faith_ which is deeper than that of the Synoptists. The very expression [Greek: pisteuein eis], "to believe _on_," common in St. John and rare elsewhere, shows that the word is taking a new meaning. Faith, in St. John, is no longer regarded chiefly as a condition of supernatural favours; or, rather, the mountains which it can remove are no material obstructions. It is an act of the whole personality, a self-dedication to Christ. It must precede knowledge: "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching," is the promise. It is the "_credo ut intelligam_" of later theology. The objection has been raised that St. John's teaching about faith moves in a vicious circle. His appeal is to the inward witness; and those who cannot hear this inward witness are informed that they must first believe, which is just what they can find no reason for doing. But this criticism misses altogether the drift of St. John's teaching. Faith, for him, is not the acceptance of a proposition upon evidence; still less is it the acceptance of a proposition in the teeth of evidence. It is, in the first instance, the resolution "to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis"; that is (may we not say?), to follow Christ wherever He may lead us. Faith begins with an experiment, and ends with an experience.[65] "He that believeth in Him hath the witness in himself"; that is the verification which follows the venture. That even the power to make the experiment is given from above; and that the experience is not merely subjective, but an universal law which has had its supreme vindication in history,--these are two facts which we learn afterwards. The converse process, which begins with a critical examination of documents, cannot establish what we really want to know, however strong the evidence may be. In this sense, and in this only, are Tennyson's words true, that "nothing worthy proving can be proven, nor yet disproven." Faith, thus defined, is hardly distinguishable from that mixture of admiration, hope, and love by which Wordsworth says that we live. Love especially is intimately connected with faith. And as the Christian life is to be considered as, above all things, a state of union with Christ, and of His members with one another, love of the brethren is inseparable from love of God. So intimate is this union, that hatred towards any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God. The mystical union is indeed rather a bond between Christ and the Church, and between man and man as members of Christ, than between Christ and individual souls. Our Lord's prayer is "that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." The personal relation between the soul and Christ is not to be denied; but it can only be enjoyed when the person has "come to himself" as a member of a body. This involves an inward transit from the false isolated self to the larger life of sympathy and love which alone makes us persons. Those who are thus living according to their true nature are rewarded with an intense unshakeable conviction which makes them independent of external evidences. Like the blind man who was healed, they can say, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." The words "we know" are repeated again and again in the first Epistle, with an emphasis which leaves no room for doubt that the evangelist was willing to throw the main weight of his belief on this inner assurance, and to attribute it without hesitation to the promised presence of the Comforter. We must observe, however, that this knowledge or illumination is _progressive_. This is proved by the passages already quoted about the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also implied by the words, "This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Eternal life is not [Greek: gnôsis], knowledge as a possession, but the state of acquiring knowledge ([Greek: hina gignôskôsin]). It is significant, I think, that St. John, who is so fond of the verb "to know," never uses the substantive [Greek: gnôsis]. The state of progressive unification, in which we receive "grace upon grace," as we learn more and more of the "fulness" of Christ, is called by the evangelist, in the verse just quoted and elsewhere, _eternal life_. This life is generally spoken of as a present possession rather than a future hope. "He that believeth on the Son _hath_ everlasting life"; "he _is passed_ from death unto life"; "we _are_ in Him that is true, even Jesus Christ. This _is_ the true God, and eternal life." The evangelist is constantly trying to transport us into that timeless region in which one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. St. John's Mysticism is thus patent to all; it is stamped upon his very style, and pervades all his teaching. Commentators who are in sympathy with this mode of thought have, as we might expect, made the most of this element in the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, some of them, I cannot but think, have interpreted it so completely in the terms of their own idealism, that they have disregarded or explained away the very important qualifications which distinguish the Johannine theology from some later mystical systems. Fichte, for example, claims St. John as a supporter of his system of subjective idealism (if that is a correct description of it), and is driven to some curious bits of exegesis in his attempt to justify this claim. And Reuss (to give one example of his method) says that St. John cannot have used "the last day" in the ordinary sense, "because mystical theology has nothing to do with such a notion.[66]" He means, I suppose, that the mystic, who likes to speak of heaven as a state, and of eternal life as a present possession, has no business to talk about future judgment. I cannot help thinking that this is a very grave mistake. There is no doubt that those who believe space and time to be only forms of our thought, must regard the traditional eschatology as symbolical. We are not concerned to maintain that there will be, literally, a great assize, holden at a date and place which could be announced if we knew it. If that is all that Reuss means, perhaps he is right in saying that "mystical theology has nothing to do with such a notion." But if he means that such expressions as those referred to in St. John, about eternal life as something here and now, imply that judgment is now, _and therefore not in the future_, he is attributing to the evangelist, and to the whole array of religious thinkers who have used similar expressions, a view which is easy enough to understand, but which is destitute of any value, for it entirely fails to satisfy the religious consciousness. The feeling of the contrast between what ought to be and what is, is one of the deepest springs of faith in the unseen. It can only be ignored by shutting our eyes to half the facts of life. It is easy to say with Browning, "God's in His heaven: all's right with the world," or with Emerson, that justice is not deferred, and that everyone gets exactly his deserts in this life; but it would require a robust confidence or a hard heart to maintain these propositions while standing among the ruins of an Armenian village, or by the deathbed of innocence betrayed. There is no doubt a sense in which it may be said that the ideal is the actual; but only when we have risen in thought to a region above the antitheses of past, present, and future, where "_is_" denotes, not the moment which passes as we speak, but the everlasting Now in the mind of God. This is not a region in which human thought can live; and the symbolical eschatology of religion supplies us with forms in which it is possible to think. The basis of the belief in future judgment is that deep conviction of the rationality of the world-order, or, in religious language, of the wisdom and justice of God, which we cannot and will not surrender. It is authenticated by an instinctive assurance which is strongest in the strongest minds, and which has nothing to do with any desire for spurious "consolations";[67] it is a conviction, not merely a hope, and we have every reason to believe that it is part of the Divine element in our nature. This conviction, like other mystical intuitions, is formless: the forms or symbols under which we represent it are the best that we can get. They are, as Plato says, "a raft" on which we may navigate strange seas of thought far out of our depth. We may use them freely, as if they were literally true, only remembering their symbolical character when they bring us into conflict with natural science, or when they tempt us to regard the world of experience as something undivine or unreal. It is important to insist on this point, because the extreme difficulty (or rather impossibility) of determining the true relations of becoming and being, of time and eternity, is constantly tempting us to adopt some facile solution which really destroys one of the two terms. The danger which besets us if we follow the line of thought natural to speculative Mysticism, is that we may think we have solved the problem in one of two ways, neither of which is a solution at all. Either we may sublimate our notion of spirit to such an extent that our idealism becomes merely a sentimental way of looking at the actual; or, by paring down the other term in the relation, we may fall into that spurious idealism which reduces this world to a vain shadow having no relation to reality. We shall come across a good deal of "acosmistic" philosophy in our survey of Christian Platonism; and the sentimental rationalist is with us in the nineteenth century; but neither of the two has any right to appeal to St. John. Fond as he is of the present tense, he will not allow us to blot from the page either "unborn to-morrow or dead yesterday." We have seen that he records the use by our Lord of the traditional language about future judgment. What is even more important, he asserts in the strongest possible manner, at the outset both of his Gospel and Epistle, the necessity of remembering that the Christian revelation was conveyed by certain historical events. "The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we have seen His glory." "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life ... that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." And again in striking words he lays it down as the test whereby we may distinguish the spirit of truth from Antichrist or the spirit of error, that the latter "confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." The later history of Mysticism shows that this warning was very much needed. The tendency of the mystic is to regard the Gospel history as only one striking manifestation of an universal law. He believes that every Christian who is in the way of salvation recapitulates "the whole process of Christ" (as William Law calls it)--that he has his miraculous birth, inward death, and resurrection; and so the Gospel history becomes for the Gnostic (as Clement calls the Christian philosopher) little more than a dramatisation of the normal psychological experience.[68] "Christ crucified is teaching for babes," says Origen, with startling audacity; and heretical mystics have often fancied that they can rise above the Son to the Father. The Gospel and Epistle of St. John stand like a rock against this fatal error, and in this feature some German critics have rightly discerned their supreme value to mystical theology.[69] "In all life," says Grau, "there is not an abstract unity, but an unity in plurality, an outward and inward, a bodily and spiritual; and life, like love, unites what science and philosophy separate." This co-operation of the sensible and spiritual, of the material and ideal, of the historical and eternal, is maintained throughout by St. John. "His view is mystical," says Grau, "because all life is mystical." It is true that the historical facts hold, for St. John, a subordinate place as _evidences_. His main _proof_ is, as I have said, experimental. But a spiritual revelation of God without its physical counterpart, an Incarnation, is for him an impossibility, and a Christianity which has cut itself adrift from the Galilean ministry is in his eyes an imposture. In no other writer, I think, do we find so firm a grasp of the "psychophysical" view of life which we all feel to be the true one, if only we could put it in an intelligible form.[70] There is another feature in St. John's Gospel which shows his affinity to Mysticism, though of a different kind from that which we have been considering. I mean his fondness for using visible things and events as symbols. This objective kind of Mysticism will form the subject of my last two Lectures, and I will here only anticipate so far as to say that the belief which underlies it is that "everything, in being what it is, is symbolic of something more." The Fourth Gospel is steeped in symbolism of this kind. The eight miracles which St. John selects are obviously chosen for their symbolic value; indeed, he seems to regard them mainly as acted parables. His favourite word for miracles is [Greek: sêmeia], "signs" or "symbols." It is true that he also calls them "works," but this is not to distinguish them as supernatural. All Christ's actions are "works," as parts of His one "work." As evidences of His Divinity, such "works" are inferior to His "words," being symbolic and external. Only those who cannot believe on the evidence of the words and their echo in the heart, may strengthen their weak faith by the miracles. But "blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed." And besides these "signs," we have, in place of the Synoptic parables, a wealth of allegories, in which Christ is symbolised as the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Door of the Sheep, the good Shepherd, the Way, and the true Vine. Wind and water are also made to play their part. Moreover, there is much unobtrusive symbolism in descriptive phrases, as when he says that Nicodemus came by night, that Judas went out into the night, and that blood and water flowed from our Lord's side; and the washing of the disciples' feet was a symbolic act which the disciples were to understand hereafter. Thus all things in the world may remind us of Him who made them, and who is their sustaining life. In treating of St. John, it was necessary to protest against the tendency of some commentators to interpret him simply as a speculative mystic of the Alexandrian type. But when we turn to St. Paul, we find reason to think that this side of his theology has been very much underestimated, and that the distinctive features of Mysticism are even more marked in him than in St. John. This is not surprising, for our blessed Lord's discourses, in which nearly all the doctrinal teaching of St. John is contained, are for all Christians; they rise above the oppositions which must always divide human thought and human thinkers. In St. Paul, large-minded as he was, and inspired as we believe him to be, we may be allowed to see an example of that particular type which we are considering. St. Paul states in the clearest manner that Christ _appeared_ to him, and that this revelation was the foundation of his Christianity and apostolic commission. "Neither did I receive the Gospel from man,[71]" he says, "nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ." It appears that he did not at first[72] think it necessary to "confer with flesh and blood"--to collect evidence about our Lord's ministry, His death and resurrection; he had "seen" and felt Him, and that was enough. "It was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me,[73]" he says simply, using the favourite mystical phraseology. The study of "evidences," in the usual sense of the term in apologetics, he rejects with distrust and contempt.[74] External revelation cannot make a man religious. It can put nothing new into him. If there is nothing answering to it in his mind, it will profit him nothing. Nor can philosophy make a man religious. "Man's wisdom," "the wisdom of the world," is of no avail to find spiritual truth. "God chose the foolish things of the world, to put to shame them that are wise." "The word of the Cross is, to them that are perishing, foolishness." By this language he, of course, does not mean that Christianity is irrational, and therefore to be believed on authority. That would be to lay its foundation upon external evidences, and nothing could be further from the whole bent of his teaching. What he does mean, and say very clearly, is that the carnal mind is disqualified from understanding Divine truths; "it cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned." He who has not raised himself above "the world," that is, the interests and ideals of human society as it organises itself apart from God, and above "the flesh," that is, the things which seem desirable to the "average sensual man," does not possess in himself that element which can be assimilated by Divine grace. The "mystery" of the wisdom of God is necessarily hidden from him. St. Paul uses the word "mystery" in very much the same sense which St. Chrysostom[75] gives to it in the following careful definition: "A mystery is that which is everywhere proclaimed, but which is not understood by those who have not right judgment. It is revealed, not by cleverness, but by the Holy Ghost, as we are able to receive it. And so we may call a mystery a secret ([Greek: aporrêton]), for even to the faithful it is not committed in all its fulness and clearness." In St. Paul the word is nearly always found in connexion with words denoting revelation or publication[76]. The preacher of the Gospel is a hierophant, but the Christian mysteries are freely communicated to all who can receive them. For many ages these truths were "hid in God,[77]" but now all men may be "illuminated,[78]" if they will fulfil the necessary conditions of initiation. These are to "cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,[79]" and to have love, without which all else will be unavailing. But there are degrees of initiation. "We speak wisdom among the perfect," he says (the [Greek: teleioi] are the fully initiated); but the carnal must still be fed with milk. Growth in knowledge, growth in grace, and growth in love, are so frequently mentioned together, that we must understand the apostle to mean that they are almost inseparable. But this knowledge, grace, and love is itself the work of the indwelling God, who is thus in a sense the organ as well as the object of the spiritual life. "The Spirit searcheth all things," he says, "yea, the deep things of God." The man who has the Spirit dwelling in him "has the mind of Christ." "He that is spiritual judgeth all things," and is himself "judged of no man." It is, we must admit frankly, a dangerous claim, and one which may easily be subversive of all discipline. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty"; but such liberty may become a cloak of maliciousness. The fact is that St. Paul had himself trusted in "the Law," and it had led him into grievous error. As usually happens in such cases, his recoil from it was almost violent. He exalts the inner light into an absolute criterion of right and wrong, that no corner of the moral life may remain in bondage to Pharisaism. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and the stoning of Stephen were a crushing condemnation of legal and ceremonial righteousness; the law written in the heart of man, or rather spoken there by the living voice of the Holy Spirit, could never so mislead men as to make them think that they were doing God service by condemning and killing the just. Such memories might well lead St. Paul to use language capable of giving encouragement even to fanatical Anabaptists. But it is significant that the boldest claims on behalf of liberty all occur in the _earlier_ Epistles. The subject of St. Paul's visions and revelations is one of great difficulty. In the Acts we have full accounts of the appearance in the sky which caused, or immediately preceded, his conversion. It is quite clear that St. Paul himself regarded this as an appearance of the same kind as the other Christophanies granted to apostles and "brethren," and of a different kind from such visions as might be seen by any Christian. It was an unique favour, conferring upon him the apostolic prerogatives of an eye-witness. Other passages in the Acts show that during his missionary journeys St. Paul saw visions and heard voices, and that he believed himself to be guided by the "Spirit of Jesus." Lastly, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he records that "more than fourteen years ago" he was in an ecstasy, in which he was "caught up into the third heaven," and saw things unutterable. The form in which this experience is narrated suggests a recollection of Rabbinical pseudo-science; the substance of the vision St. Paul will not reveal, nor will he claim its authority for any of his teaching.[80] These recorded experiences are of great psychological interest; but, as I said in my last Lecture, they do not seem to me to belong to the essence of Mysticism. Another mystical idea, which is never absent from the mind of St. Paul, is that the individual Christian must live through, and experience personally, the redemptive process of Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ were for him the revelation of a law, the law of redemption through suffering. The victory over sin and death was won _for_ us; but it must also be won _in_ us. The process is an universal law, not a mere event in the past.[81] It has been exemplified in history, which is a progressive unfurling or revelation of a great mystery, the meaning of which is now at last made plain in Christ.[82] And it must also appear in each human life. "We were buried with Him," says St. Paul to the Romans,[83] "through baptism into death," "that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life." And again,[84] "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you." And, "If ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above.[85]" The law of redemption, which St. Paul considers to have been triumphantly summed up by the death and resurrection of Christ,[86] would hardly be proved to be an universal law if the Pauline Christ were only the "heavenly man," as some critics have asserted. St. Paul's teaching about the Person of Christ was really almost identical with the Logos doctrine as we find it in St. John's prologue, and as it was developed by the mystical philosophy of a later period. Not only is His pre-existence "in the form of God" clearly taught,[87] but He is the agent in the creation of the universe, the vital principle upholding and pervading all that exists. "The Son," we read in the Epistle to the Colossians,[88] "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist" (that is, "hold together," as the margin of the Revised Version explains it). "All things are summed up in Christ," he says to the Ephesians.[89] "Christ is _all_ and in all," we read again in the Colossians.[90] And in that bold and difficult passage of the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians he speaks of the "reign" of Christ as coextensive with the world's history. When time shall end, and all evil shall be subdued to good, Christ "will deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father," "that God may be all in all.[91]" Very important, too, is the verse in which he says that the Israelites in the wilderness "drank of that spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ.[92]" It reminds us of Clement's language about the Son as the Light which broods over all history. The passage from the Colossians, which I quoted just now, contains another mystical idea besides that of Christ as the universal source and centre of life. He is, we are told, "the Image of the invisible God," and all created beings are, in their several capacities, images of Him. Man is essentially "the image and glory of God";[93] the "perfect man" is he who has come "to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.[94]" This is our _nature_, in the Aristotelian sense of completed normal development; but to reach it we have to slay the false self, the old man, which is informed by an actively maleficent agency, "flesh" which is hostile to "spirit." This latter conception does not at present concern us; what we have to notice is the description of the upward path as an inner transit from the false isolation of the natural man into a state in which it is possible to say, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.[95]" In the Epistle to the Galatians he uses the favourite mystical phrase, "until Christ be formed in you";[96] and in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians[97] he employs a most beautiful expression in describing the process, reverting to the figure of the "mirror," dear to Mysticism, which he had already used in the First Epistle: "We all with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory." Other passages, which refer primarily to the future state, are valuable as showing that St. Paul lends no countenance to that abstract idea of eternal life as freedom from all earthly conditions, which has misled so many mystics. Our hope, when the earthly house of our tabernacle is dissolved, is not that we may be unclothed, but that we may be _clothed upon_ with our heavenly habitation. The body of our humiliation is to be changed and glorified, according to the mighty working whereby God is able to subdue all things unto Himself. And therefore our whole spirit and soul _and body_ must be preserved blameless; for the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, not the prison-house of a soul which will one day escape out of its cage and fly away. St. Paul's conception of Christ as the Life as well as the Light of the world has two consequences besides those which have been already mentioned. In the first place, it is fatal to religious individualism. The close unity which joins us to Christ is not so much a unity of the individual soul with the heavenly Christ, as an organic unity of all men, or, since many refuse their privileges, of all Christians, with their Lord. "We, being many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.[98]" There must be "no schism in the body,[99]" but each member must perform its allotted function. St. Augustine is thoroughly in agreement with St. Paul when he speaks of Christ and the Church as "unus Christus." Not that Christ is "divided," so that He cannot be fully present to any individual--that is an error which St. Paul, St. Augustine, and the later mystics all condemn; but as the individual cannot reach his real personality as an isolated unit, he cannot, as an isolated unit, attain to full communion with Christ. The second point is one which may seem to be of subordinate importance, but it will, I think, awaken more interest in the future than it has done in the past. In the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul clearly teaches that the victory of Christ over sin and death is of import, not only to humanity, but to the whole of creation, which now groans and travails in pain together, but which shall one day be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. This recognition of the spirituality of matter, and of the unity of all nature in Christ, is one which we ought to be thankful to find in the New Testament. It will be my pleasant task, in the last two Lectures of this course, to show how the later school of mystics prized it. The foregoing analysis of St. Paul's teaching has, I hope, justified the statement that all the essentials of Mysticism are to be found in his Epistles. But there are also two points in which his authority has been claimed for false and mischievous developments of Mysticism. These two points it will be well to consider before leaving the subject. The first is a contempt for the historical framework of Christianity. We have already seen how strongly St. John warns us against this perversion of spiritual religion. But those numerous sects and individual thinkers who have disregarded this warning, have often appealed to the authority of St. Paul, who in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians says, "Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more." Here, they say, is a distinct admission that the worship of the historical Christ, "the man Christ Jesus," is a stage to be passed through and then left behind. There is just this substratum of truth in a very mischievous error, that St. Paul _does_ tell us[100] that he _began_ to teach the Corinthians by giving them in the simplest possible form the story of "Jesus Christ and Him crucified." The "mysteries" of the faith, the "wisdom" which only the "perfect" can understand, were deferred till the converts had learned their first lessons. But if we look at the passage in question, which has shocked and perplexed many good Christians, we shall find that St. Paul is not drawing a contrast between the earthly and the heavenly Christ, bidding us worship the Second Person of the Trinity, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and to cease to contemplate the Cross on Calvary. He is distinguishing rather between the sensuous presentation of the facts of Christ's life, and a deeper realisation of their import. It should be our aim to "know no man after the flesh"; that is to say, we should try to think of human beings as what they are, immortal spirits, sharers with us of a common life and a common hope, not as what they appear to our eyes. And the same principle applies to our thoughts about Christ. To know Christ after the flesh is to know Him, not as man, but as _a_ man. St. Paul in this verse condemns all religious materialism, whether it take the form of hysterical meditation upon the physical details of the passion, or of an over-curious interest in the manner of the resurrection. There is no trace whatever in St. Paul of any aspiration to rise above Christ to the contemplation of the Absolute--to treat Him as only a step in the ladder. This is an error of false Mysticism; the true mystic follows St. Paul in choosing as his ultimate goal the fulness of Christ, and not the emptiness of the undifferentiated Godhead. The second point in which St. Paul has been supposed to sanction an exaggerated form of Mysticism, is his extreme disparagement of external religion--of forms and ceremonies and holy days and the like. "One man hath faith to eat all things; but he that is weak eateth herbs.[101]" "One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike." "He that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, and giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks." "Why turn ye back to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage again? Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed labour upon you in vain.[102]" "Why do ye subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not, nor taste, nor touch, after the precepts and doctrines of men?[103]" These are strongly-worded passages, and I have no wish to attenuate their significance. Any Christian priest who puts the observance of human ordinances-- fast-days, for example--at all on the same level as such duties as charity, generosity, or purity, is teaching, not Christianity, but that debased Judaism against which St. Paul waged an unceasing polemic, and which is one of those dead religions which has to be killed again in almost every generation.[104] But we must not forget that these vigorous denunciations _do_ occur in a polemic against Judaism. They bear the stamp of the time at which they were written perhaps more than any other part of St. Paul's Epistles, except those thoughts which were connected with his belief in the approaching end of the world. St. Paul certainly did not intend his Christian converts to be anarchists in religious matters. There is evidence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that his spiritual presentation of Christianity had already been made an excuse for disorderly licence. The usual symptoms of degenerate Mysticism had appeared at Corinth. There were men there who called themselves "spiritual persons[105]" or prophets, and showed an arrogant independence; there were others who wished to start sects of their own; others who carried antinomianism into the sphere of morals; others who prided themselves on various "spiritual gifts." As regards the last class, we are rather surprised at the half-sanction which the apostle gives to what reads like primitive Irvingism;[106] but he was evidently prepared to enforce discipline with a strong hand. Still, it may be fairly said that he trusts mainly to his personal ascendancy, and to his teaching about the organic unity of the Christian body, to preserve or restore due discipline and cohesion. There have been hardly any religious leaders, if we except George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, who have valued ceremonies so little. In this, again, he is a genuine mystic. Of the other books of the New Testament it is not necessary to say much. The Epistle to the Hebrews cannot be the work of St. Paul. It shows strong traces of Jewish Alexandrianism; indeed, the writer seems to have been well acquainted with the Book of Wisdom and with Philo. Alexandrian idealism is always ready to pass into speculative Mysticism, but the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews can hardly be called mystical in the sense in which St. Paul was a mystic. The most interesting side of his theology, from our present point of view, is the way in which he combines his view of religious ordinances as types and adumbrations of higher spiritual truths, with a comprehensive view of history as a progressive realisation of a Divine scheme. The keynote of the book is that mankind has been educated partly by ceremonial laws and partly by "promises." Systems of laws and ordinances, of which the Jewish Law is the chief example, have their place in history. They rightly claim obedience until the practical lessons which they can teach have been learned, and until the higher truths which they conceal under the protecting husk of symbolism can be apprehended without disguise. Then their task is done, and mankind is no longer bound by them. In the same way, the "promises" which were made under the old dispensation proved to be only symbols of deeper and more spiritual blessings, which in the moral childhood of humanity would not have appeared desirable; they were (not delusions, but) _illusions_, "God having prepared some better thing" to take their place. The doctrine is one of profound and far-reaching importance. In this Epistle it is certainly connected with the idealistic thought that all visible things are symbols, and that every truth apprehended by finite intelligences must be only the husk of a deeper truth. We may therefore claim the Epistle to the Hebrews as containing in outline a Christian philosophy of history, based upon a doctrine of symbols which has much in common with some later developments of Mysticism. In the Apocalypse, whoever the author may be, we find little or nothing of the characteristic Johannine Mysticism, and the influence of its vivid allegorical pictures has been less potent in this branch of theology than might perhaps have been expected. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 56: In referring thus to the Book of Job, I rest nothing on any theory as to its date. Whenever it was written, it illustrates that view of the relation of man to God with which Mysticism can never be content. But, of course, the antagonism between our personal claims and the laws of the universe must be done justice to before it can be surmounted.] [Footnote 57: Jer. xxxi. 31-34.] [Footnote 58: Isa. xxxiii. 14-17.] [Footnote 59: See Appendix D, on the devotional use of the Song of Solomon.] [Footnote 60: Leathes, _The Witness of St. John to Christ_, p. 244.] [Footnote 61: The punctuation now generally adopted was invented (probably) by the Antiochenes, who were afraid that the words "without Him was not anything made" might, if unqualified, be taken to include the Holy Spirit. Cyril of Alexandria comments on the older punctuation, but explains the verse wrongly. "The Word, as Life by nature, was in the things which have become, mingling Himself by participation in the things that are." Bp. Westcott objects to this, that "the one life is regarded as dispersed." Cyril, however, guards against this misconception ([Greek: ou kata merismon tina kai alloiôsin]). He says that created things share in "the one life as they are able." But some of his expressions are objectionable, as they seem to assume a material substratum, animated _ab extra_ by an infusion of the Logos. Augustine's commentary on the verse is based on the well-known passage of Plato's _Republic_ about the "ideal bed." "Arca in opere non est vita; arca in arte vita est. Sic Sapientia Dei, per quam facta sunt omnia, secundum artem continet omnia antequam fabricat omnia. Quæ fiunt ... foris corpora sunt, in arte vita sunt." Those who accept the common authorship of the Gospel and the Apocalypse will find a confirmation of the view that [Greek: ên] refers to ideal, extra-temporal existence, in Rev. iv. 11: "Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they _were_ ([Greek: êsan] is the true reading) and were created." There is also a very interesting passage in Eusebius (_Proep. Ev._ xi. 19): [Greek: kai outos ara ên ho logos kath' hon aei onta ta gignomena egeneto, hôsper Hêrakleitos an axiôseie.] This is so near to the words of St. John's prologue as to suggest that the apostle, writing at Ephesus, is here referring deliberately to the lofty doctrine of the great Ephesian idealist, whom Justin claims as a Christian before Christ, and whom Clement quotes several times with respect.] [Footnote 62: It will be seen that I assume that the first Epistle is the work of the evangelist.] [Footnote 63: Westcott on John xiv. 26.] [Footnote 64: Westcott.] [Footnote 65: Cf. _Theologia Germanica_, chap. 48: "He who would know before he believeth cometh never to true knowledge.... I speak of a certain truth which it is possible to know by experience, but which ye must believe in before ye know it by experience, else ye will never come to know it truly."] [Footnote 66: On the second coming of Christ, cf. John v. 25, xxi. 23; I John ii. 28, iii. 2. Scholten goes so far as to expunge v. 25 and 28, 29 as spurious.] [Footnote 67: The allegation that the Christian persuades himself of a future life because it is the most comfortable belief to hold, seems to me utterly contemptible. Certain views about heaven and hell are no doubt traceable to shallow optimism; but the belief in immortality is in itself rather awful than consoling. Besides, what sane man would wish to be deceived in such a matter?] [Footnote 68: Henry More brings this charge against the Quakers. There are, he says, many good and wholesome things in their teaching, but they mingle with them a "slighting of the history of Christ, and making a mere allegory of it--tending to the utter overthrow of that warrantable, though more external frame of Christianity, which Scripture itself points out to us" (_Mastix, his letter to a Friend_, p. 306).] [Footnote 69: E.g. Strauss and Grau, quoted in Lilienfeld's _Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future_.] [Footnote 70: The intense moral dualism of St. John has been felt by many as a discordant note; and though it is not closely connected with his Mysticism, a few words should perhaps be added about it. It has been thought strange that the Logos, who is the life of all things that are, should have to invade His own kingdom to rescue it from its _de facto_ ruler, the Prince of darkness; and stranger yet, that the bulk of mankind should seemingly be "children of the devil," born of the flesh, and incapable of salvation. The difficulty exists, but it has been exaggerated. St. John does not touch either the metaphysical problem of the origin of evil, or predestination in the Calvinistic sense. The vivid contrasts of light and shade in his picture express his judgment on the tragic fate of the Jewish people, The Gospel is not a polemical treatise, but it bears traces of recent conflicts. St. John wishes to show that the rejection of Christ by the Jews was morally inevitable; that their blindness and their ruin followed naturally from their characters and principles. Looking back on the memories of a long life, he desires to trace the operation of uniform laws in dividing the wheat of humanity from the chaff. He is content to observe how [Greek: êthos anthrôpô daimôn], without speculating on the reason why characters differ. In offering these remarks, I am assuming, what seems to me quite certain, that St. John selected from our Lord's discourses those which suited his particular object, and that in the setting and arrangement he allowed himself a certain amount of liberty.] [Footnote 71: Gal. i. 12.] [Footnote 72: 1 Cor. xv. shows that he subsequently satisfied himself of the truth of the other Christophanies.] [Footnote 73: Gal, i. 15, 16.] [Footnote 74: 1 Cor. i. and ii.] [Footnote 75: Chrysostom _in_ I _Cor_., Hom. vii. 2.] [Footnote 76: See Lightfoot on Col. i. 26.] [Footnote 77: Eph. iii. 9.] [Footnote 78: 2 Tim. i. 10 ([Greek: phôtizein]); cf. Eph. i. 9.] [Footnote 79: 2 Cor. vii. 1.] [Footnote 80: In spite of this, he is attacked for this passage in the _Pseudo-Clementine Homilies_ (xvii. 19), where "Simon Magus" is asked, "Can anyone be made wise to teach through a vision?"] [Footnote 81: Compare a beautiful passage in R.L. Nettleship's _Remains_: "To live is to die into something more perfect.... God can only make His work to be truly _His_ work, by eternally dying, sacrificing what is dearest to Him."] [Footnote 82: Col. i. 26, ii. 2, iv. 3; Eph. iii. 2-9. I have allowed myself to quote from these Epistles because I am myself a believer in their genuineness. The Mysticism of St. Paul might be proved from the undisputed Epistles only, but we should then lose some of the most striking illustrations of it.] [Footnote 83: Rom. vi. 4.] [Footnote 84: Rom. viii. 11.] [Footnote 85: St. Paul's mystical language about death and resurrection has given rise to much controversy. On the one hand, we have writers like Matthew Arnold, who tell us that St. Paul unconsciously substitutes an ethical for a physical resurrection--an eternal life here and now for a future reward. On the other, we have writers like Kabisch (_Eschatologie des Paulus_), who argue that the apostle's whole conception was materialistic, his idea of a "spiritual body" being that of a body composed of very fine atoms (like those of Lucretius' "_anima_"), which inhabits the earthly body of the Christian like a kernel within its husk, and will one day (at the resurrection) slough off its muddy vesture of decay, and thenceforth exist in a form which can defy the ravages of time. Of the two views, Matthew Arnold's is much the truer, even though it should be proved that St. Paul sometimes pictures the "spiritual body" in the way described. But the key to the problem, in St. Paul as in St. John, is that pyscho-physical theory which demands that the laws of the spiritual world shall have their analogous manifestations in the world of phenomena. Death must, somehow or other, be conquered in the visible as well as in the invisible sphere. The law of life through death must be deemed to pervade every phase of existence. And as a mere prolongation of physical life under the same conditions is impossible, and, moreover, would not fulfil the law in question, we are bound to have recourse to some such symbol as "spiritual body." It will hardly be disputed that the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the whole man has taken a far stronger hold of the religious consciousness of mankind than the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul, or that this doctrine is plainly taught by St. Paul. All attempts to turn his eschatology into a rationalistic (Arnold) or a materialistic (Kabisch) theory must therefore be decisively rejected.] [Footnote 86: Col. iii. 1.] [Footnote 87: Phil. ii. 6.] [Footnote 88: Col. i. 15-17.] [Footnote 89: Eph. i. 10.] [Footnote 90: Col. iii. 11.] [Footnote 91: 1 Cor. xv. 24-28.] [Footnote 92: 1 Cor. x. 4.] [Footnote 93: 1 Cor. xi. 7.] [Footnote 94: Eph. iv. 13.] [Footnote 95: Gal. ii. 20.] [Footnote 96: Gal. iv. 19.] [Footnote 97: 2 Cor. iii. 18.] [Footnote 98: Rom. xii. 5.] [Footnote 99: 1 Cor. xii. 25.] [Footnote 100: 1 Cor. ii. 1, 2.] [Footnote 101: Rom. xiv.] [Footnote 102: Gal. iv. 9-11.] [Footnote 103: Col. ii. 20-22.] [Footnote 104: I have been reminded that great tenderness is due to the "sancta simplicitas" of the "anicula Christiana," whose religion is generally of this type. I should agree, if the "anicula" were not always so ready with her faggot when a John Huss is to be burnt.] [Footnote 105: 1 Cor. xiv. 37.] [Footnote 106: There seem to have been two conceptions of the operations of the Spirit in St. Paul's time: (a) He comes fitfully, with visible signs, and puts men beside themselves; (b) He is an abiding presence, enlightening, guiding, and strengthening. St. Paul lays weight on the latter view, without repudiating the former. See H. Gunkel, _Die Wirkungen des H. Geistes nach der popul. Anschauung d. apostol. Zeit und d. Lehre der Paulus._] LECTURE III [Greek: "Dio dê dikaiôs monê pteroutai hê tou philosophou dianoia pros gar ekeinois aei esti mnêmê kata dunamin, pros oisper theos ôn theios esti. tois de dê toioutois anêr hupomnêmasin orthôs chrômenos, teleous aei teletas teloumenos, teleos ontôs monos gignetai."] PLATO, _Phædrus_, p. 249. LICHT UND FARBE "Wohne, du ewiglich Eines, dort bei dem ewiglich Einen! Farbe, du wechselnde, komm' freundlich zum Menschen herab!" SCHILLER. "Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna, Legato con amore in un volume, Ciò che per l'universo si squaderna; Sustanzia ed accidente, e lor costume, Tutti conflati insieme par tal modo, Che ciò ch'io dico è un semplice lume." DANTE, _Paradiso_, c. 33. CHRISTIAN PLATONISM AND SPECULATIVE MYSTICISM I. IN THE EAST "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man coming into the world."--JOHN i. 9. "He made darkness His hiding place, His pavilion round about Him; darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies."--Ps. xviii. 11. I have called this Lecture "Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism." Admirers of Plato are likely to protest that Plato himself can hardly be called a mystic, and that in any case there is very little resemblance between the philosophy of his dialogues and the semi-Oriental Mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. I do not dispute either of these statements; and yet I wish to keep the name of Plato in the title of this Lecture. The affinity between Christianity and Platonism was very strongly felt throughout the period which we are now to consider. Justin Martyr claims Plato (with Heraclitus[107] and Socrates) as a Christian before Christ; Athenagoras calls him the best of the forerunners of Christianity, and Clement regards the Gospel as perfected Platonism.[108] The Pagans repeated so persistently the charge that Christ borrowed from Plato what was true in His teaching, that Ambrose wrote a treatise to confute them. As a rule, the Christians did not deny the resemblance, but explained it by saying that Plato had plagiarised from Moses--a curious notion which we find first in Philo. In the Middle Ages the mystics almost canonised Plato: Eckhart speaks of him, quaintly enough, as "the great priest" (_der grosse Pfaffe_); and even in Spain, Louis of Granada calls him "divine," and finds in him "the most excellent parts of Christian wisdom." Lastly, in the seventeenth century the English Platonists avowed their intention of bringing back the Church to "her old loving nurse the Platonic philosophy." These English Platonists knew what they were talking of; but for the mediæval mystics Platonism meant the philosophy of Plotinus adapted by Augustine, or that of Proclus adapted by Dionysius, or the curious blend of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Jewish philosophy which filtered through into the Church by means of the Arabs. Still, there was justice underlying this superficial ignorance. Plato is, after all, the father of European Mysticism.[109] Both the great types of mystics may appeal to him--those who try to rise through the visible to the invisible, through Nature to God, who find in earthly beauty the truest symbol of the heavenly, and in the imagination--the image-making faculty--a raft whereon we may navigate the shoreless ocean of the Infinite; and those who distrust all sensuous representations as tending "to nourish appetites which we ought to starve," who look upon this earth as a place of banishment, upon material things as a veil which hides God's face from us, and who bid us "flee away from hence as quickly as may be," to seek "yonder," in the realm of the ideas, the heart's true home. Both may find in the real Plato much congenial teaching--that the highest good is the greatest likeness to God--that the greatest happiness is the vision of God--that we should seek holiness not for the sake of external reward, but because it is the health of the soul, while vice is its disease--that goodness is unity and harmony, while evil is discord and disintegration--that it is our duty and happiness to rise above the visible and transitory to the invisible and permanent. It may also be a pleasure to some to trace the fortunes of the positive and negative elements in Plato's teaching--of the humanist and the ascetic who dwelt together in that large mind; to observe how the world-renouncing element had to grow at the expense of the other, until full justice had been done to its claims; and then how the brighter, more truly Hellenic side was able to assert itself under due safeguards, as a precious thing dearly purchased, a treasure reserved for the pure and humble, and still only to be tasted carefully, with reverence and godly fear. There is, of course, no necessity for connecting this development with the name of Plato. The way towards a reconciliation of this and other differences is more clearly indicated in the New Testament; indeed, nothing can strengthen our belief in inspiration so much as to observe how the whole history of thought only helps us to _understand_ St. Paul and St. John better, never to pass beyond their teaching. Still, the traditional connexion between Plato and Mysticism is so close that we may, I think, be pardoned for keeping, like Ficinus, a lamp burning in his honour throughout our present task. It is not my purpose in these Lectures to attempt a historical survey of Christian Mysticism. To attempt this, within the narrow limits of eight Lectures, would oblige me to give a mere skeleton of the subject, which would be of no value, and of very little interest. The aim which I have set before myself is to give a clear presentation of an important type of Christian life and thought, in the hope that it may suggest to us a way towards the solution of some difficulties which at present agitate and divide us. The path is beset with pitfalls on either side, as will be abundantly clear when we consider the startling expressions which Mysticism has often found for itself. But though I have not attempted to give even an outline of the history of Mysticism, I feel that the best and safest way of studying this or any type of religion is to consider it in the light of its historical development, and of the forms which it has actually assumed. And so I have tried to set these Lectures in a historical framework, and, in choosing prominent figures as representatives of the chief kinds of Mysticism, to observe, so far as possible, the chronological order. The present Lecture will carry us down to the Pseudo-Dionysius, the influence of whose writings during the next thousand years can hardly be overestimated. But if we are to understand how a system of speculative Mysticism, of an Asiatic rather than European type, came to be accepted as the work of a convert of St. Paul, and invested with semi-apostolic authority, we must pause for a few minutes to let our eyes rest on the phenomenon called Alexandrianism, which fills a large place in the history of the early Church. We have seen how St. Paul speaks of a _Gnosis_ or higher knowledge, which can be taught with safety only to the "perfect" or "fully initiated";[110] and he by no means rejects such expressions as the _Pleroma_ (the totality of the Divine attributes), which were technical terms of speculative theism. St. John, too, in his prologue and other places, brings the Gospel into relation with current speculation, and interprets it in philosophical language. The movement known as Gnosticism, both within and without the Church, was an attempt to complete this reconciliation between speculative and revealed religion, by systematising the symbols of transcendental mystical theosophy.[111] The movement can only be understood as a premature and unsuccessful attempt to achieve what the school of Alexandria afterwards partially succeeded in doing. The anticipations of Neoplatonism among the Gnostics would probably be found to be very numerous, if the victorious party had thought their writings worth preserving. But Gnosticism was rotten before it was ripe. Dogma was still in such a fluid state, that there was nothing to keep speculation within bounds; and the Oriental element, with its insoluble dualism, its fantastic mythology and spiritualism, was too strong for the Hellenic. Gnosticism presents all the features which we shall find to be characteristic of degenerate Mysticism. Not to speak of its oscillations between fanatical austerities and scandalous licence, and its belief in magic and other absurdities, we seem, when we read Irenæus' description of a Valentinian heretic, to hear the voice of Luther venting his contempt upon some "_Geisterer_" of the sixteenth century, such as Carlstadt or Sebastian Frank. "The fellow is so puffed up," says Irenæus, "that he believes himself to be neither in heaven nor on earth, but to have entered within the Divine Pleroma, and to have embraced his guardian angel. On the strength of which he struts about as proud as a cock. These are the self-styled 'spiritual persons,' who say they have already reached perfection." The later Platonism could not even graft itself upon any of these Gnostic systems, and Plotinus rejects them as decisively as Origen. Still closer is the approximation to later speculation which we find in Philo, who was a contemporary of St. Paul. Philo and his Therapeutæ were genuine mystics of the monastic type. Many of them, however, had not been monks all their life, but were retired men of business, who wished to spend their old age in contemplation, as many still do in India. They were, of course, not Christians, but Hellenised Jews, though Eusebius, Jerome, and the Middle Ages generally thought that they were Christians, and were well pleased to find monks in the first century.[112] Philo's object is to reconcile religion and philosophy--in other words, Moses and Plato.[113] His method[114] is to make Platonism a development of Mosaism, and Mosaism an implicit Platonism. The claims of orthodoxy are satisfied by saying, rather audaciously, "All this is Moses' doctrine, not mine." His chief instrument in this difficult task is allegorism, which in his hands is a bad specimen of that pseudo-science which has done so much to darken counsel in biblical exegesis. His speculative system, however, is exceedingly interesting. God, according to Philo, is unqualified and pure Being, but _not_ superessential. He is emphatically [Greek: ho ôn], the "I am," and the most _general_ ([Greek: to genikôtaton]) of existences. At the same time He is without qualities ([Greek: apoios]), and ineffable ([Greek: arrêtos]). In His inmost nature He is inaccessible; as it was said to Moses, "Thou shalt see what is behind Me, but My face shall not be seen." It is best to contemplate God in silence, since we can compare Him to nothing that we know. All our knowledge of God is really God dwelling in us. He has breathed into us something of His nature, and is thus the archetype of what is highest in ourselves. He who is truly inspired "may with good reason be called God." This blessed state may, however, be prepared for by such mediating agencies as the study of God's laws in nature; and it is only the highest class of saints--the souls "born of God"--that are exalted above the need of symbols. It would be easy to show how Philo wavers between two conceptions of the Divine nature--God as simply transcendent, and God as immanent. But this is one of the things that make him most interesting. His Judaism will not allow him really to believe in a God "without qualities." The Logos dwells with God as His Wisdom (or sometimes he calls Wisdom, figuratively, the mother of the Logos). He is the "second God," the "Idea of Ideas"; the other Ideas or Powers are the forces which he controls--"the Angels," as he adds, suddenly remembering his Judaism. The Logos is also the mind of God expressing itself in act: the Ideas, therefore, are the content of the mind of God. Here he anticipates Plotinus; but he does not reduce God to a logical point. His God is self-conscious, and reasons. By the agency of the Logos the worlds were made: the intelligible world, the [Greek: kosmos noêtos], is the Logos acting as Creator. Indeed, Philo calls the intelligible universe "the only and beloved Son of God"; just as Erigena says, "Be assured that the Word is the Nature of all things." The Son represents the world before God as High Priest, Intercessor, and Paraclete. He is the "divine Angel" that guides us; He is the "bread of God," the "dew of the soul," the "convincer of sin": no evil can touch the soul in which He dwells: He is the eternal image of the Father, and we, who are not yet fit to be called sons of God, may call ourselves His sons. Philo's ethical system is that of the later contemplative Mysticism. Knowledge and virtue can be obtained only by renunciation of self. Contemplation is a higher state than activity. "The soul should cut off its right hand." "It should shun the whirlpool of life, and not even touch it with the tip of a finger." The highest stage is when a man leaves behind his finite self-consciousness, and sees God face to face, standing in Him from henceforward, and knowing Him not by reason, but by clear certainty. Philo makes no attempt to identify the Logos with the Jewish Messiah, and leaves no room for an Incarnation. This remarkable system anticipates the greater part of Christian and Pagan Neoplatonism. The astonishing thing is that Philo's work exercised so little influence on the philosophy of the second century. It was probably regarded as an attempt to evolve Platonism out of the Pentateuch, and, as such, interesting only to the Jews, who were at this period becoming more and more unpopular.[115] The same prejudice may possibly have impaired the influence of Numenius, another semi-mystical thinker, who in the age of the Antonines evolved a kind of Trinity, consisting of God, whom he also calls Mind; the Son, the maker of the world, whom he does _not_ call the Logos; and the world, the "grandson," as he calls it. His Jewish affinities are shown by his calling Plato "an Atticising Moses." It was about one hundred and fifty years after Philo that St. Clement of Alexandria tried to do for Christianity what Philo had tried to do for Judaism. His aim is nothing less than to construct a philosophy of religion--a Gnosis, "knowledge," he calls it--which shall "initiate" the educated Christian into the higher "mysteries" of his creed. The Logos doctrine, according to which Christ is the universal Reason,[116] the Light that lighteth every man, here asserts its full rights. Reasoned belief is the superstructure of which faith[117] is the foundation. "Knowledge," says Clement, "is more than faith." "Faith is a summary knowledge of urgent truths, suitable for people who are in a hurry; but knowledge is scientific faith." "If the Gnostic (the philosophical Christian) had to choose between the knowledge of God and eternal salvation, and it were possible to separate two things so inseparably connected, he would choose without the slightest hesitation the knowledge of God." On the wings of this "knowledge" the soul rises above all earthly passions and desires, filled with a calm disinterested love of God. In this state a man can distinguish truth from falsehood, pure gold from base metal, in matters of belief; he can see the connexion of the various dogmas, and their harmony with reason; and in reading Scripture he can penetrate beneath the literal to the spiritual meaning. But when Clement speaks of reason or knowledge, he does not mean merely intellectual training. "He who would enter the shrine must be pure," he says, "and purity is to think holy things." And again, "The more a man loves, the more deeply does he penetrate into God." Purity and love, to which he adds diligent study of the Scriptures, are all that is _necessary_ to the highest life, though mental cultivation may be and ought to be a great help.[118] History exhibits a progressive training of mankind by the Logos. "There is one river of truth," he says, "which receives tributaries from every side." All moral evil is caused either by ignorance or by weakness of will. The cure for the one is knowledge, the cure for the other is discipline.[119] In his doctrine of God we find that he has fallen a victim to the unfortunate negative method, which he calls "analysis." It is the method which starts with the assertion that since God is exalted above Being, we cannot say what He is, but only what He is not. Clement apparently objects to saying that God is above Being, but he strips Him of all attributes and qualities till nothing is left but a nameless point; and this, too, he would eliminate, for a point is a numerical unit, and God is above the idea of the Monad. We shall encounter this argument far too often in our survey of Mysticism, and in writers more logical than Clement, who allowed it to dominate their whole theology and ethics. The Son is the Consciousness of God. The Father only sees the world as reflected in the Son. This bold and perhaps dangerous doctrine seems to be Clement's own. Clement was not a deep or consistent thinker, and the task which he has set himself is clearly beyond his strength. But he gathers up most of the religious and philosophical ideas of his time, and weaves them together into a system which is permeated by his cultivated, humane, and genial personality. Especially interesting from the point of view of our present task is the use of mystery-language which we find everywhere in Clement. The Christian revelation is "the Divine (or holy) mysteries," "the Divine secrets," "the secret Word," "the mysteries of the Word"; Jesus Christ is "the Teacher of the Divine mysteries"; the ordinary teaching of the Church is "the lesser mysteries"; the higher knowledge of the Gnostic, leading to full initiation ([Greek: epopteia]) "the great mysteries." He borrows _verbatim_ from a Neopythagorean document a whole sentence, to the effect that "it is not lawful to reveal to profane persons the mysteries of the Word"--the "Logos" taking the place of "the Eleusinian goddesses." This evident wish to claim the Greek mystery-worship, with its technical language, for Christianity, is very interesting, and the attempt was by no means unfruitful. Among other ideas which seem to come direct from the mysteries is the notion of _deification by the gift of immortality_. Clement[120] says categorically, [Greek: to mê phtheiresthai theiotêtos metechein esti]. This is, historically, the way in which the doctrine of "deification" found its way into the scheme of Christian Mysticism. The idea of immortality as the attribute constituting Godhead was, of course, as familiar to the Greeks as it was strange to the Jews.[121] Origen supplies some valuable links in the history of speculative Mysticism, but his mind was less inclined to mystical modes of thought than was Clement's. I can here only touch upon a few points which bear directly upon our subject. Origen follows Clement in his division of the religious life into two classes or stages, those of faith and knowledge. He draws too hard a line between them, and speaks with a professorial arrogance of the "popular, irrational faith" which leads to "somatic Christianity," as opposed to the "spiritual Christianity" conferred by Gnosis or Wisdom.[122] He makes it only too clear that by "somatic Christianity" he means that faith which is based on the gospel history. Of teaching founded upon the historical narrative, he says, "What better method could be devised to assist the masses?" The Gnostic or Sage no longer needs the crucified Christ. The "eternal" or "spiritual" Gospel, which is his possession, "shows clearly all things concerning the Son of God Himself, both the mysteries shown by His words, and the things of which His acts were the symbols.[123]" It is not that he denies or doubts the truth of the Gospel history, but he feels that events which only happened once can be of no importance, and regards the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as only one manifestation of an universal law, which was really enacted, not in this fleeting world of shadows, but in the eternal counsels of the Most High. He considers that those who are thoroughly convinced of the universal truths revealed by the Incarnation and Atonement, need trouble themselves no more about their particular manifestations in time. Origen, like the Neoplatonists, says that God is above or beyond Being; but he is sounder than Clement on this point, for he attributes self-consciousness[124] and reason to God, who therefore does not require the Second Person in order to come to Himself. Also, since God is not wholly above reason, He can be approached by reason, and not only by ecstatic vision. The Second Person of the Trinity is called by Origen, as by Clement, "the Idea of Ideas." He is the spiritual activity of God, the World-Principle, the One who is the basis of the manifold. Human souls have fallen through sin from their union with the Logos, who became incarnate in order to restore them to the state which they have lost. Everything spiritual is indestructible; and therefore every spirit must at last return to the Good. For the Good alone exists; evil has no existence, no substance. This is a doctrine which we shall meet with again. Man, he expressly asserts, cannot be consubstantial with God, for man can change, while God is immutable. He does not see, apparently, that, from the point of view of the Platonist, his universalism makes man's freedom to change an illusion, as belonging to time only and not to eternity. While Origen was working out his great system of ecclesiastical dogmatic, his younger contemporary Plotinus, outside the Christian pale, was laying the coping-stone on the edifice of Greek philosophy by a scheme of idealism which must always remain one of the greatest achievements of the human mind.[125] In the history of Mysticism he holds a more undisputed place than Plato; for some of the most characteristic doctrines of Mysticism, which in Plato are only thrown out tentatively, are in Plotinus welded into a compact whole. Among the doctrines which first receive a clear exposition in his writings are, his theory of the Absolute, whom he calls the One, or the Good; and his theory of the Ideas, which differs from Plato's; for Plato represents the mind of the World-Artist as immanent in the Idea of the Good, while Plotinus makes the Ideas immanent in the universal mind; in other words, the real world (which he calls the "intelligible world," the sphere of the Ideas) is in the mind of God. He also, in his doctrine of Vision, attaches an importance to _revelation_ which was new in Greek philosophy. But his psychology is really the centre of his system, and it is here that the Christian Church and Christian Mysticism, in particular, is most indebted to him. The _soul_ is with him the meeting-point of the intelligible and the phenomenal. It is diffused everywhere.[126] Animals and vegetables participate in it;[127] and the earth has a soul which sees and hears.[128] The soul is immaterial and immortal, for it belongs to the world of real existence, and nothing that _is_ can cease to be.[129] The body is in the soul, rather than the soul in the body. The soul creates the body by imposing form on matter, which in itself is No-thing, pure indetermination, and next door to absolute non-existence.[130] Space and time are only forms of our thought. The concepts formed by the soul, by classifying the things of sense, are said to be "Ideas unrolled and separate," that is, they are conceived as separate in space and time, instead of existing all together in eternity. The nature of the soul is triple; it is presented under three forms, which are at the same time the three stages of perfection which it can reach.[131] There is first and lowest the animal and sensual soul, which is closely bound up with the body; then there is the logical, reasoning soul, the distinctively _human_ part; and, lastly, there is the superhuman stage or part, in which a man "thinks himself according to the higher intelligence, with which he has become identified, knowing himself no longer as a man, but as one who has become altogether changed, and has transferred himself into the higher region." The soul is thus "made one with Intelligence without losing herself; so that they two are both one and two." This is exactly Eckhart's doctrine of the _funkelein_, if we identify Plotinus' [Greek: Nous] with Eckhart's "God," as we may fairly do. The soul is not altogether incarnate in the body; part of it remains above, in the intelligible world, whither it desires to return in its entirety. The world is an image of the Divine Mind, which is itself a reflection of the One. It is therefore not bad or evil. "What more beautiful image of the Divine could there be," he asks, "than this world, except the world yonder?" And so it is a great mistake to shut our eyes to the world around us, "and all beautiful things.[132]" The love of beauty will lead us up a long way--up to the point when the love of the Good is ready to receive us. Only we must not let ourselves be entangled by sensuous beauty. Those who do not quickly rise beyond this first stage, to contemplate "ideal form, the universal mould," share the fate of Hylas; they are engulfed in a swamp, from which they never emerge. The universe resembles a vast chain, of which every being is a link. It may also be compared to rays of light shed abroad from one centre. Everything flowed from this centre, and everything desires to flow back towards it. God draws all men and all things towards Himself as a magnet draws iron, with a constant unvarying attraction. This theory of emanation is often sharply contrasted with that of evolution, and is supposed to be discredited by modern science; but that is only true if the emanation is regarded as a process in time, which for the Neoplatonist it is not.[133] In fact, Plotinus uses the word "evolution" to explain the process of nature.[134] The whole universe is one vast organism,[135] and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.[136] This is why a "faint movement of sympathy[137]" stirs within us at the sight of any living creature. So Origen says, "As our body, while consisting of many members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being, which is held together by one soul--the power and the Logos of God." All existence is drawn upwards towards God by a kind of centripetal attraction, which is unconscious in the lower, half conscious in the higher organisms. Christian Neoplatonism tended to identify the Logos, as the Second Person of the Trinity, with the [Greek: Nous], "Mind" or "Intelligence," of Plotinus, and rightly; but in Plotinus the word Logos has a less exalted position, being practically what we call "law," regarded as a vital force.[138] Plotinus' Trinity are the One or the Good, who is above existence, God as the Absolute; the Intelligence, who occupies the sphere of real existence, organic unity comprehending multiplicity--the One-Many, as he calls it, or, as we might call it, God as thought, God existing in and for Himself; and the Soul, the One and Many, occupying the sphere of appearance or imperfect reality--God as action. Soulless matter, which only exists as a logical abstraction, is arrived at by looking at things "in disconnexion, dull and spiritless." It is the sphere of the "merely many," and is zero, as "the One who is not" is Infinity. The Intelligible World is timeless and spaceless, and contains the archetypes of the Sensible World. The Sensible World is _our_ view of the Intelligible World. When we say it does not exist, we mean that we shall not always see it in this form. The "Ideas" are the ultimate form in which things are regarded by Intelligence, or by God. [Greek: Nous] is described as at once [Greek: stasis] and [Greek: kinêsis], that is, it is unchanging itself, but the whole cosmic process, which is ever in flux, is eternally present to it as a process. Evil is disintegration.[139] In its essence it is not merely unreal, but unreality as such. It can only _appear_ in conjunction with some low degree of goodness which suggests to Plotinus the fine saying that "vice at its worst is still human, being mixed with something opposite to itself.[140]" The "lower virtues," as he calls the duties of the average citizen,[141] are not only purgative, but teach us the principles of _measure_ and _rule_, which are Divine characteristics. This is immensely important, for it is the point where Platonism and Asiatic Mysticism finally part company.[142] But in Plotinus, as in his Christian imitators, they do _not_ part company. The "marching orders" of the true mystic are those given by God to Moses on Sinai, "See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed thee in the mount.[143]" But Plotinus teaches that, as the sensible world is a shadow of the intelligible, so is action a shadow of contemplation, suited to weak-minded persons.[144] This is turning the tables on the "man of action" in good earnest; but it is false Platonism and false Mysticism. It leads to the heartless doctrine, quite unworthy of the man, that public calamities are to the wise man only stage tragedies--or even stage comedies.[145] The moral results of this self-centred individualism are exemplified by the mediæval saint and visionary, Angela of Foligno, who congratulates herself on the deaths of her mother, husband, and children, "who were great obstacles in the way of God." A few words must be said about the doctrine of ecstasy in Plotinus. He describes the conditions under which the vision is granted in exactly the same manner as some of the Christian mystics, e.g. St. Juan of the Cross. "The soul when possessed by intense love of Him divests herself of all form which she has, even of that which is derived from Intelligence; for it is impossible, when in conscious possession of any other attribute, either to behold or to be harmonised with Him. Thus the soul must be neither good nor bad nor aught else, that she may receive Him only, Him alone, she alone.[146]" While she is in this state, the One suddenly appears, "with nothing between," "and they are no more two but one; and the soul is no more conscious of the body or of the mind, but knows that she has what she desired, that she is where no deception can come, and that she would not exchange her bliss for all the heaven of heavens." What is the source of this strange aspiration to rise above Reason and Intelligence, which is for Plotinus the highest category of Being, and to come out "on the other side of Being" [Greek: epekeina tês ousias]? Plotinus says himself elsewhere that "he who would rise above Reason, falls outside it"; and yet he regards it as the highest reward of the philosopher-saint to converse with the hypostatised Abstraction who transcends all distinctions. The vision of the One is no part of his philosophy, but is a mischievous accretion. For though the "superessential Absolute" may be a logical necessity, we cannot make it, even in the most transcendental manner, an object of sense, without depriving it of its Absoluteness. What is really apprehended is not the Absolute, but a kind of "form of formlessness," an idea not of the Infinite, but of the Indefinite.[147] It is then impossible to distinguish "the One," who is said to be above all distinctions, from undifferentiated matter, the formless No-thing, which Plotinus puts at the lowest end of the scale. I believe that the Neoplatonic "vision" owes its place in the system to two very different causes. First, there was the direct influence of Oriental philosophy of the Indian type, which tries to reach the universal by wiping out all the boundary-lines of the particular, and to gain infinity by reducing self and the world to zero. Of this we shall say more when we come to Dionysius. And, secondly, the blank trance was a real psychical experience, quite different from the "visions" which we have already mentioned. Evidence is abundant; but I will content myself with one quotation.[148] In Amiel's _Journal_[149] we have the following record of such a trance: "Like a dream which trembles and dies at the first glimmer of dawn, all my past, all my present, dissolve in me, and fall away from my consciousness at the moment when it returns upon myself. I feel myself then stripped and empty, like a convalescent who remembers nothing. My travels, my reading, my studies, my projects, my hopes, have faded from my mind. All my faculties drop away from me like a cloak that one takes off, like the chrysalis case of a larva. I feel myself returning into a more elementary form." But Amiel, instead of expecting the advent of "the One" while in this state, feels that "the pleasure of it is deadly, inferior in all respects to the joys of action, to the sweetness of love, to the beauty of enthusiasm, or to the sacred savour of accomplished duty.[149]" We may now return to the Christian Platonists. We find in Methodius the interesting doctrine that the indwelling Christ constantly repeats His passion in remembrance, "for not otherwise could the Church continually conceive believers, and bear them anew through the bath of regeneration, unless Christ were repeatedly to die, emptying Himself for the sake of each individual." "Christ must be born mentally ([Greek: moêtôs]) in every individual," and each individual saint, by participating in Christ, "is born as a Christ." This is exactly the language of Eckhart and Tauler, and it is first clearly heard in the mouth of Methodius.[150] The new features are the great prominence given to _immanence_--the mystical union as an _opus operatum_, and the individualistic conception of the relation of Christ to the soul. Of the Greek Fathers who followed Athanasius, I have only room to mention Gregory of Nyssa, who defends the historical incarnation in true mystical fashion by an appeal to spiritual experience. "We all believe that the Divine is in everything, pervading and embracing it, and dwelling in it. Why then do men take offence at the dispensation of the mystery taught by the Incarnation of God, who is not, even now, outside of mankind?... If the _form_ of the Divine presence is not now the same, we are as much agreed that God is among us to-day, as that He was in the world then." He argues in another place that all other species of spiritual beings must have had their Incarnations of Christ; a doctrine which was afterwards condemned, but which seems to follow necessarily from the Logos doctrine. These arguments show very clearly that for the Greek theologians Christ is a cosmic principle, immanent in the world, though not confined by it; and that the scheme of salvation is regarded as part of the constitution of the universe, which is animated and sustained by the same Power who was fully manifested in the Incarnation. The question has been much debated, whether the influence of Persian and Indian thought can be traced in Neoplatonism, or whether that system was purely Greek.[151] It is a quite hopeless task to try to disentangle the various strands of thought which make up the web of Alexandrianism. But there is no doubt that the philosophers of Asia were held in reverence at this period. Origen, in justifying an esoteric mystery-religion for the educated, and a mythical religion for the vulgar, appeals to the example of the "Persians and Indians." And Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius of Tyana, says, or makes his hero say, that while all wish to live in the presence of God, "the Indians alone succeed in doing so." And certainly there are parts of Plotinus, and still more of his successors, which strongly suggest Asiatic influences.[152] When we turn from Alexandria to Syria, we find Orientalism more rampant. Speculation among the Syrian monks of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries was perhaps more unfettered and more audacious than in any other branch of Christendom at any period. Our knowledge of their theories is very limited, but one strange specimen has survived in the book of Hierotheus,[153] which the canonised Dionysius praises in glowing terms as an inspired oracle--indeed, he professes that his own object in writing was merely to popularise the teaching of his master. The book purports to be the work of Hierotheus, a holy man converted by St. Paul, and an instructor of the real Dionysius the Areopagite. A strong case has been made out for believing the real author to be a Syrian mystic, named Stephen bar Sudaili, who lived late in the fifth century. If this theory is correct, the date of Dionysius will have to be moved somewhat later than it has been the custom to fix it. The book of the holy Hierotheus on "the hidden mysteries of the Divinity" has been but recently discovered, and only a summary of it has as yet been made public. But it is of great interest and importance for our subject, because the author has no fear of being accused of Pantheism or any other heresy, but develops his particular form of Mysticism to its logical conclusions with unexampled boldness. He will show us better even than his pupil Dionysius whither the method of "analysis" really leads us. The system of Hierotheus is not exactly Pantheism, but Pan-Nihilism. Everything is an emanation from the Chaos of bare indetermination which he calls God, and everything will return thither. There are three periods of existence--(1) the present world, which is evil, and is characterised by motion; (2) the progressive union with Christ, who is all and in all--this is the period of rest; (3) the period of fusion of all things in the Absolute. The three Persons of the Trinity, he dares to say, will then be swallowed up, and even the devils are thrown into the same melting-pot. Consistently with mystical principles, these three world-periods are also phases in the development of individual souls. In the first stage the mind aspires towards its first principles; in the second it becomes Christ, the universal Mind; in the third its personality is wholly merged. The greater part of the book is taken up with the adventures of the Mind in climbing the ladder of perfection; it is a kind of theosophical romance, much more elaborate and fantastic than the "revelations" of mediæval mystics. The author professes to have himself enjoyed the ecstatic union more than once, and his method of preparing for it is that of the Quietists: "To me it seems right to speak without words, and understand without knowledge, that which is above words and knowledge; this I apprehend to be nothing but the mysterious silence and mystical quiet which destroys consciousness and dissolves forms. Seek, therefore, silently and mystically, that perfect and primitive union with the Arch-Good." We cannot follow the "ascent of the Mind" through its various transmutations. At one stage it is crucified, "with the soul on the right and the body on the left"; it is buried for three days; it descends into Hades;[154] then it ascends again, till it reaches Paradise, and is united to the tree of life: then it descends below all essences, and sees a formless luminous essence, and marvels that it is _the same essence_ that it has seen on high. Now it comprehends the truth, that God is consubstantial with the Universe, and that there are no real distinctions anywhere. So it ceases to wander. "All these doctrines," concludes the seer, "which are unknown even to angels, have I disclosed to thee, my son" (Dionysius, probably). "Know, then, that all nature will be confused with the Father--that nothing will perish or be destroyed, but all will return, be sanctified, united, and confused. Thus God will be all in all.[155]" There can be no difficulty in classifying this Syrian philosophy of religion. It is the ancient religion of the Brahmins, masquerading in clothes borrowed from Jewish allegorists, half-Christian Gnostics, Manicheans, Platonising Christians, and pagan Neoplatonists. We will now see what St. Dionysius makes of this system, which he accepts as from the hand of one who has "not only learned, but felt the things of God.[156]" The date and nationality of Dionysius are still matters of dispute.[157] Mysticism changes so little that it is impossible to determine the question by internal evidence, and for our purposes it is not of great importance. The author was a monk, perhaps a Syrian monk: he probably perpetrated a deliberate fraud--a pious fraud, in his own opinion--by suppressing his own individuality, and fathering his books on St. Paul's Athenian convert. The success of the imposture is amazing, even in that uncritical age, and gives much food for reflection. The sixth century saw nothing impossible in a book full of the later Neoplatonic theories--those of Proclus rather than Plotinus[158]--having been written in the first century. And the mediæval Church was ready to believe that this strange semi-pantheistic Mysticism dropped from the lips of St. Paul.[159] Dionysius is a theologian, not a visionary like his master Hierotheus. His main object is to present Christianity in the guise of a Platonic mysteriosophy, and he uses the technical terms of the mysteries whenever he can.[160] His philosophy is that of his day--the later Neoplatonism, with its strong Oriental affinities. Beginning with the Trinity, he identifies God the Father with the Neoplatonic Monad, and describes Him as "superessential Indetermination," "super-rational Unity," "the Unity which unifies every unity," "superessential Essence," "irrational Mind," "unspoken Word," "the absolute No-thing which is above all existence.[161]" Even now he is not satisfied with the tortures to which he has subjected the Greek language. "No monad or triad," he says, "can express the all-transcending hiddenness of the all-transcending super-essentially super-existing super-Deity.[162]" But even in the midst of this barbarous jargon he does not quite forget his Plato. "The Good and Beautiful," he says, "are the cause of all things that are; and all things love and aspire to the Good and Beautiful, which are, indeed, the sole objects of their desire." "Since, then, the Absolute Good and Beautiful is honoured by eliminating all qualities from it, the non-existent also ([Greek: to mê on]) must participate in the Good and Beautiful." This pathetic absurdity shows what we are driven to if we try to graft Indian nihilism upon the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Plotinus tried hard to show that his First Person was very different from his lowest category--non-existent "matter"; but if we once allow ourselves to define the Infinite as the Indefinite, the conclusion which he deprecated cannot long be averted. "God is the Being of all that is." Since, then, Being is identical with God or Goodness, evil, as such, does not exist; it only exists by its participation in good. Evil, he says, is not in things which exist; a good tree cannot bear evil fruit; it must, therefore, have another origin. But this is dualism, and must be rejected.[163] Nor is evil in God, nor of God; nor in the angels; nor in the human soul; nor in the brutes; nor in inanimate nature; nor in matter. Having thus hunted evil out of every corner of the universe, he asks--Is evil, then, simply privation of good? But privation is not evil in itself. No; evil must arise from "disorderly and inharmonious motion." As dirt has been defined as matter in the wrong place, so evil is good in the wrong place. It arises by a kind of accident; "all evil is done with the object of gaining some good; no one does evil as evil." Evil in itself is that which is "nohow, nowhere, and no thing"; "God sees evil as good." Students of modern philosophy will recognise a theory which has found influential advocates in our own day: that evil needs only to be supplemented, rearranged, and transmuted, in order to take its place in the universal harmony.[164] All things flow out from God, and all will ultimately return to Him. The first emanation is the Thing in itself ([Greek: auto to einai]), which corresponds to the Plotinian [Greek: Nous], and to the Johannine Logos. He also calls it "Life in itself" and "Wisdom in itself" ([Greek: autozôê, autosophia]). Of this he says, "So then the Divine Wisdom in knowing itself will know all things. It will know the material immaterially, and the divided inseparably, and the many as one ([Greek: heniaiôs]), knowing all things by the standard of absolute unity." These important speculations are left undeveloped by Dionysius, who merely states them dogmatically. The universe is evolved from the Son, whom he identifies with the "Thing in itself," "Wisdom," or "Life in itself." In creation "the One is said to become multiform." The world is a necessary process of God's being. He created it "as the sun shines," "without premeditation or purpose." The Father is simply One; the Son has also plurality, namely, the words (or reasons) which make existence ([Greek: tous ousiopoious logous]), which theology calls fore-ordinations ([Greek: proorismous]). But he does not teach that all separate existences will ultimately be merged in the One. The highest Unity gives to all the power of striving, on the one hand, to share in the One; on the other, to persist in their own individuality. And in more than one passage he speaks of God as a Unity comprehending, not abolishing differences.[165] "God is before all things"; "Being is in Him, and He is not in Being." Thus Dionysius tries to safeguard the transcendence of God, and to escape Pantheism. The outflowing process is appropriated by the mind by the _positive_ method--the downward path through finite existences: its conclusion is, "God is All." The return journey is by the _negative_ road, that of ascent to God by abstraction and analysis: its conclusion is, "All is not God.[166]" The negative path is the high road of a large school of mystics; I will say more about it presently. The mystic, says Dionysius, "must leave behind all things both in the sensible and in the intelligible worlds, till he enters into the darkness of nescience that is truly mystical." This "Divine darkness," he says elsewhere, "is the light unapproachable" mentioned by St. Paul, "a deep but dazzling darkness," as Henry Vaughan calls it. It is dark through excess of light[167]. This doctrine really renders nugatory what he has said about the persistence of distinctions after the restitution of all things; for as "all colours agree in the dark," so, for us, in proportion as we attain to true knowledge, all distinctions are lost in the absolute. The soul is bipartite. The higher portion sees the "Divine images" directly, the lower by means of symbols. The latter are not to be despised, for they are "true impressions of the Divine characters," and necessary steps, which enable us to "mount to the one undivided truth by analogy." This is the way in which we should use the Scriptures. They have a symbolic truth and beauty, which is intelligible only to those who can free themselves from the "puerile myths[168]" (the language is startling in a saint of the Church!) in which they are sometimes embedded. Dionysius has much to say about love[169], but he uses the word [Greek: erôs], which is carefully avoided in the New Testament. He admits that the Scriptures "often use" [Greek: agapê], but justifies his preference for the other word by quoting St. Ignatius, who says of Christ, "My Love [Greek: erôs] is crucified.[170]" Divine Love, he finely says, is "an eternal circle, from goodness, through goodness, and to goodness." The mediæval mystics were steeped in Dionysius, though his system received from them certain modifications under the influence of Aristotelianism. He is therefore, for us, a very important figure; and there are two parts of his scheme which, I think, require fuller consideration than has been given them in this very slight sketch. I mean the "negative road" to God, and the pantheistic tendency. The theory that we can approach God only by analysis or abstraction has already been briefly commented on. It is no invention of Dionysius. Plotinus uses similar language, though his view of God as the fulness of all _life_ prevented him from following the negative path with thoroughness. But in Proclus we find the phrases, afterwards so common, about "sinking into the Divine Ground," "forsaking the manifold for the One," and so forth. Basilides, long before, evidently carried the doctrine to its extremity: "We must not even call God ineffable," he says, "since this is to make an assertion about Him; He is above every name that is named.[171]" It was a commonplace of Christian instruction to say that "in Divine matters there is great wisdom in confessing our ignorance"--this phrase occurs in Cyril's catechism.[172] But confessing our ignorance is a very different thing from refusing to make any positive statements about God. It is true that all our language about God must be inadequate and symbolic; but that is no reason for discarding all symbols, as if we could in that way know God as He knows Himself. At the bottom, the doctrine that God can be described only by negatives is neither Christian nor Greek, but belongs to the old religion of India. Let me try to state the argument and its consequence in a clear form. Since God is the Infinite, and the Infinite is the antithesis of the finite, every attribute which can be affirmed of a finite being may be safely denied of God. Hence God can only be _described_ by negatives; He can only be _discovered_ by stripping off all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He can only be _reached_ by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of personality, and sinking or rising into our "uncreated nothingness"; and He can only be _imitated_ by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the passionless "apathy" of an universal which is nothing in particular. Thus we see that the whole of those developments of Mysticism which despise symbols, and hope to see God by shutting the eye of sense, hang together. They all follow from the false notion of God as the abstract Unity transcending, or rather excluding, all distinctions. Of course, it is not intended to _exclude_ distinctions, but to rise above them; but the process of abstraction, or subtraction, as it really is, can never lead us to "the One.[173]" The only possible unification with such an Infinite is the [Greek: atermôn nêgretos hupnos] of Nirvana.[174] Nearly all that repels us in mediæval religious life--its "other-worldliness" and passive hostility to civilisation--the emptiness of its ideal life--its maltreatment of the body--its disparagement of family life--the respect which it paid to indolent contemplation--springs from this one root. But since no one who remains a Christian can exhibit the results of this theory in their purest form, I shall take the liberty of quoting a few sentences from a pamphlet written by a native Indian judge who I believe is still living. His object is to explain and commend to Western readers the mystical philosophy of his own country:[175]--"He who in perfect rest rises from the body and attains the highest light, comes forth in his own proper form. This is the immortal soul. The ascent is by the ladder of one's thoughts. To know God, one must first know one's own spirit in its purity, unspotted by thought. The soul is hidden behind the veil of thought, and only when thought is worn off, becomes visible to itself. This stage is called knowledge of the soul. Next is realised knowledge of God, who rises from the bosom of the soul. This is the end of progress; differentiation between self and others has ceased. All the world of thought and senses is melted into an ocean without waves or current. This dissolution of the world is also known as the death of the sinful or worldly 'I,' which veils the true Ego. Then the formless Being of the Deity is seen in the regions of pure consciousness beyond the veil of thought. Consciousness is wholly distinct from thought and senses; it knows them; they do not know it. The only proof is an appeal to spiritual experience." In the highest stage one is absolutely inert, "knowing nothing in particular.[176]" Most of this would have been accepted as precious truth by the mediæval Church mystics.[177] The words nakedness, darkness, nothingness, passivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages. We shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men talk," repeats the old jargon for pages together. German Mysticism really rested on another basis, and when Luther had the courage to break with ecclesiastical tradition, the _via negativa_ rapidly disappeared within the sphere of his influence. But it held sway for a long time--so long that we cannot complain if many have said, "This is the essence of Mysticism." Mysticism is such a vague word, that one must not quarrel with any "private interpretation" of it; but we must point out that this limitation excludes the whole army of symbolists, a school which, in Europe at least, has shown more vitality than introspective Mysticism. I regard the _via negativa_ in metaphysics, religion, and ethics as the great accident of Christian Mysticism. The break-up of the ancient civilisation, with the losses and miseries which it brought upon humanity, and the chaos of brutal barbarism in which Europe weltered for some centuries, caused a widespread pessimism and world-weariness which is foreign to the temper of Europe, and which gave way to energetic and full-blooded activity in the Renaissance and Reformation. Asiatic Mysticism is the natural refuge of men who have lost faith in civilisation, but will not give up faith in God. "Let us fly hence to our dear country!" We hear the words already in Plotinus--nay, even in Plato. The sun still shone in heaven, but on earth he was eclipsed. Mysticism cuts too deep to allow us to live comfortably on the surface of life; and so all "the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world" pressed upon men and women till they were fain to throw it off, and seek peace in an invisible world of which they could not see even a shadow round about them. But I do not think that the negative road is a pure error. There is a negative side in religion, both in thought and practice. We are first impelled to seek the Infinite by the limitations of the finite, which appear to the soul as bonds and prison walls. It is natural first to think of the Infinite as that in which these barriers are done away. And in practice we must die daily, if our inward man is to be daily renewed. We must die to our lower self, not once only but continually, so that we may rise on stepping stones of many dead selves to higher things.[178] We must die to our first superficial views of the world around us, nay, even to our first views of God and religion, unless the childlike in our faith is by arrest of growth to become the childish. All the good things of life have first to be renounced, and then given back to us, before they can be really ours. It was necessary that these truths should be not only taught, but lived through. The individual has generally to pass through the quagmire of the "everlasting No," before he can set his feet on firm ground; and the Christian races, it seems, were obliged to go through the same experience. Moreover, there is a sense in which all moral effort aims at destroying the conditions of its own existence, and so ends logically in self-negation. Our highest aim as regards ourselves is to eradicate, not only sin, but temptation. We do not feel that we have won the victory until we no longer wish to offend. But a being who was entirely free from temptation would be either more or less than a man--"either a beast or a God," as Aristotle says.[179] There is, therefore, a half truth in the theory that the goal of earthly striving is negation and absorption. But it at once becomes false if we forget that it is a goal which cannot be reached in time, and which is achieved, not by good and evil neutralising each other, but by death being swallowed up in victory. If morality ceases to be moral when it has achieved its goal, it must pass into something which includes as well as transcends it--a condition which is certainly not fulfilled by contemplative passivity.[180] These thoughts should save us from regarding the saints of the cloister with impatience or contempt. The limitations incidental to their place in history do not prevent them from being glorious pioneers among the high passes of the spiritual life, who have scaled heights which those who talk glibly about "the mistake of asceticism" have seldom even seen afar off. We must next consider briefly the charge of Pantheism, which has been flung rather indiscriminately at nearly all speculative mystics, from Plotinus to Emerson. Dionysius, naturally enough, has been freely charged with it. The word is so loosely and thoughtlessly used, even by writers of repute, that I hope I may be pardoned if I try to distinguish (so far as can be done in a few words) between the various systems which have been called pantheistic. True Pantheism must mean the identification of God with the totality of existence, the doctrine that the universe is the complete and only expression of the nature and life of God, who on this theory is only immanent and not transcendent. On this view, everything in the world belongs to the Being of God, who is manifested equally in everything. Whatever is real is perfect; reality and perfection are the same thing. Here again we must go to India for a perfect example. "The learned behold God alike in the reverend Brahmin, in the ox and in the elephant, in the dog and in him who eateth the flesh of dogs.[181]" So Pope says that God is "as full, as perfect, in a hair as heart." The Persian Sufis were deeply involved in this error, which leads to all manner of absurdities and even immoralities. It is inconsistent with any belief in _purpose_, either in the whole or in the parts. Evil, therefore, cannot exist for the sake of a higher good: it must be itself good. It is easy to see how this view of the world may pass into pessimism or nihilism; for if everything is equally real and equally Divine, it makes no difference, except to our tempers, whether we call it everything or nothing, good or bad. None of the writers with whom we have to deal can fairly be charged with this error, which is subversive of the very foundations of true religion. Eckhart, carried away by his love of paradox, allows himself occasionally to make statements which, if logically developed, would come perilously near to it; and Emerson's philosophy is more seriously compromised in this direction. Dionysius is in no such danger, for the simple reason that he stands too near to Plato. The pantheistic tendency of mediæval Realism requires a few words of explanation, especially as I have placed the name of Plato at the head of this Lecture. Plato's doctrine of ideas aimed at establishing the transcendence of the highest Idea--that of God. But the mediæval doctrine of ideas, as held by the extreme Realists, sought to find room in the _summum genus_ for a harmonious coexistence of all things. It thus tended towards Pantheism;[182] while the Aristotelian Realists maintained the substantial character of individuals outside the Being of God. "This view," says Eicken, "which quite inverted the historical and logical relation of the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies, was maintained till the close of the Middle Ages." We may also call pantheistic any system which regards the cosmic process as a real _becoming_ of God. According to this theory, God comes to Himself, attains full self-consciousness, in the highest of His creatures, which are, as it were, the organs of His self-unfolding Personality. This is not a philosophy which commends itself specially to speculative mystics, because it involves the belief that _time_ is an ultimate reality. If in the cosmic process, which takes place in time, God becomes something which He was not before, it cannot be said that He is exalted above time, or that a thousand years are to Him as one day. I shall say in my fourth Lecture that this view cannot justly be attributed to Eckhart. Students of Hegel are not agreed whether it is or is not part of their master's teaching.[183] The idea of _will_ as a world-principle--not in Schopenhauer's sense of a blind force impelling from within, but as the determination of a conscious Mind--lifts us at once out of Pantheism.[184] It sets up the distinction between what is and what ought to be, which Pantheism cannot find room for, and at the same time implies that the cosmic process is already complete in the consciousness of God, which cannot be held if He is subordinated to the category of time. God is more than the All, as being the perfect Personality, whose Will is manifested in creation under necessarily imperfect conditions. He is also in a sense less than the All, since pain, weakness, and sin, though known to Him as infinite Mind, can hardly be felt by Him as infinite Perfection. The function of evil in the economy of the universe is an inscrutable mystery, about which speculative Mysticism merely asserts that the solution cannot be that of the Manicheans. It is only the Agnostic[185] who will here offer the dilemma of Dualism or Pantheism, and try to force the mystic to accept the second alternative. There are two other views of the universe which have been called pantheistic, but incorrectly. The first is that properly called _Acosmism_, which we have encountered as Orientalised Platonism. Plato's theory of ideas was popularised into a doctrine of two separate worlds, related to each other as shadow and substance. The intelligible world, which is in the mind of God, alone exists; and thus, by denying reality to the visible world, we get a kind of idealistic Pantheism. But the notion of God as abstract Unity, which, as we have seen, was held by the later Neoplatonists and their Christian followers, seems to make a real world impossible; for bare Unity cannot create, and the metaphor of the sun shedding his rays explains nothing. Accordingly the "intelligible world," the sphere of reality, drops out, and we are left with only the infra-real world and the supra-real One. So we are landed in nihilism or Asiatic Mysticism[186]. The second is the belief in the _immanence_ of a God who is also transcendent. This should be called _Panentheism_, a useful word coined by Krause, and not Pantheism. In its true form it is an integral part of Christian philosophy, and, indeed, of all rational theology. But in proportion as the indwelling of God, or of Christ, or the Holy Spirit in the heart of man, is regarded as an _opus operatum_, or as complete _substitution_ of the Divine for the human, we are in danger of a self-deification which resembles the maddest phase of Pantheism[187]. Pantheism, as I understand the word, is a pitfall for Mysticism to avoid, not an error involved in its first principles. But we need not quarrel with those who have said that speculative Mysticism is the Christian form of Pantheism. For there is much truth in Amiel's dictum, that "Christianity, if it is to triumph over Pantheism, must absorb it." Those are no true friends to the cause of religion who would base it entirely upon dogmatic supernaturalism. The passion for facts which are objective, isolated, and past, often prevents us from seeing facts which are eternal and spiritual. We cry, "Lo here," and "Lo there," and forget that the kingdom of God is within us and amongst us. The great service rendered by the speculative mystics to the Christian Church lies in their recognition of those truths which Pantheism grasps only to destroy. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 107: The mention of Heraclitus is very interesting. It shows that the Christians had already recognised their affinity with the great speculative mystic of Ephesus, whose fragments supply many mottoes for essays on Mysticism. The identification of the Heraclitean [Greek: nous-logos] with the Johannine Logos appears also in Euseb. _Præp. Ev_. xi. 19, quoted above.] [Footnote 108: [Greek: ho panta aristos Platôn--oion pheothoroumenos], he calls him.] [Footnote 109: "Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts," says Emerson truly.] [Footnote 110: The doctrine of reserve in religious teaching, which some have thought dishonest, rests on the self-evident proposition that it takes two to tell the truth--one to speak, and one to hear.] [Footnote 111: "Man kann den Gnosticismus des zweiten Jahrhunderts als theologisch-transcendente Mystik, und die eigentliche Mystik als substantiell-immanente Gnosis bezeichnen" (Noack).] [Footnote 112: See Conybeare's interesting account of the Therapeutæ in his edition of Philo, _On the Contemplative Life_, and his refutation of the theory of Lucius, Zeller, etc., that the Therapeutæ belong to the end of the third century.] [Footnote 113: _Stoical_ influence is also strong in Philo.] [Footnote 114: The Jewish writer Aristobulus (about 160 B.C.) is said to have used the same argument in an exposition of the Pentateuch addressed to Ptolemy Philometor.] [Footnote 115: Compare Philo's own account (_in Flaceum_) of the anti-Semitic outrages at Alexandria.] [Footnote 116: There is a very explicit identification of Christ with [Greek: Nous] in the second book of the _Miscellanies_: "He says, Whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear. And who is 'He'? Let Epicharmus answer: [Greek: Nous hora]," etc.] [Footnote 117: See Bigg, _Christian Platonists of Alexandria_, especially pp. 92, 93.] [Footnote 118: [Greek: Pistis] is here used in the familiar sense (which falls far short of the Johannine) of assent to particular dogmas. [Greek: Gnôsis] welds these together into a consistent whole, and at the same time confers a more immediate apprehension of truth.] [Footnote 119: [Greek: askêsis] or [Greek: praxis].] [Footnote 120: _Strom_, v. 10. 63.] [Footnote 121: See, further, Appendices B and C.] [Footnote 122: In Origen, [Greek: sophia] is a higher term than [Greek: gnôsis].] [Footnote 123: The Greek word is [Greek: ainigmata] "riddles." On the whole subject see Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. ii. p. 342.] [Footnote 124: God, he says (_Tom. in Matth_. xiii. 569), is not the absolutely unlimited; for then He could not have self-consciousness: His omnipotence is limited by His goodness and wisdom (cf. _Cels_. iii. 493).] [Footnote 125: I hope it is not necessary to apologise for devoting a few pages to Plotinus in a work on Christian Mysticism. Every treatise on religious thought in the early centuries of our era must take account of the parallel developments of religious philosophy in the old and the new religions, which illustrate and explain each other.] [Footnote 126: _Enn_. i. 8. 14, [Greek: ouden estin ho amoiron esti psychês].] [Footnote 127: _Enn_. iii. 2. 7; iv. 7. 14.] [Footnote 128: _Enn_. iv. 4. 26.] [Footnote 129: _Enn_. iv. 1. 1.] [Footnote 130: Matter is [Greek: alogos, skia logou kai ekptôsis] _Enn_. vi. 3. 7; [Greek: eidôlon kai phantasma ogkou kai hopostaseôs ephesis] _Enn_. iii. 6. 7. If matter were _nothing_, it could not desire to be something; it is only no-thing--[Greek: apeiria, aoristia].] [Footnote 131: These three stages correspond to the three stages in the mystical ladder which appear in nearly all the Christian mystics.] [Footnote 132: The passages in which Plotinus (following Plato) bids us mount by means of the beauty of the external world, do not contradict those other passages in which he bids us "turn from things without to look within" (_Enn_. iv. 8. 1). Remembering that postulate of all Mysticism, that we only know a thing by _becoming_ it, we see that we can only know the world by finding it in ourselves, that is, by cherishing those "best hours of the mind" (as Bacon says) when we are lifted above ourselves into union with the world-spirit.] [Footnote 133: Plotinus guards against this misconception of his meaning, _Enn_. v. 1. 6, [Greek: ekpodôn de êmin estô genesis hê en chronô].] [Footnote 134: [Greek: zôê exelittomenê], _Enn_. i. 4. 1.] [Footnote 135: See especially _Enn_. iv. 4. 32, 45.] [Footnote 136: _Enn_. iv. 5. 3, [Greek: sympathes to zôon tode to pan heautô]; iv. 9. 1, [Greek: hôste emou pathontos synaisthanesthai to pan].] [Footnote 137: _Enn_. iv. 5. 2, [Greek: sympatheia amydra].] [Footnote 138: See Bigg, _Neoplatonism_, pp. 203, 204. He shows that with the Stoics, who were Pantheists, the Logos was regarded as a first cause; while with the Neoplatonists, who were Theists and Transcendentalists, it was a secondary cause. In Plotinus, the Intelligence ([Greek: Nous]) is "King" (_Enn_. v. 3. 3), and "the law of Being" (_Enn_. v. 9. 5). But the Johannine Logos is both immanent and transcendent. When Erigena says, "Certius cognoscas verbum Naturam omnium esse," he gives a true but incomplete account of the Nature of the Second Person of the Trinity.] [Footnote 139: See especially the interesting passage, _Enn_. i. 8. 3.] [Footnote 140: _Enn_. i. 8. 13, [Greek: eti anthrôpikon hê kakia, memigmenê tini enantiô].] [Footnote 141: The "civil virtues" are the four cardinal virtues. Plotinus says that justice is mainly "minding one's business" [Greek: oikeiopagia]. "The purifying virtues" deliver us from sin; but [Greek: hê spoudê ouk exô hamartias einai, alla theon einai].] [Footnote 142: Compare Hegel's criticism of Schelling, in the latter's Asiatic period, "This so-called wisdom, instead of being yielded up to the influence of Divinity _by its contempt of all proportion and definiteness_, does really nothing but give full play to accident and caprice. Nothing was ever produced by such a process better than mere dreams" (_Vorrede zur Phänomenologie_, p. 6).] [Footnote 143: Heb. viii. 5.] [Footnote 144: _Enn_. iii. 8. 4, [Greek: hotan asthenêsôsin eis to theôrein, skian theôrias kai logou tên praxin poiountai]. Cf. Amiel's _Journal_, p. 4, "action is coarsened thought."] [Footnote 145: _Enn_. iii. 2. 15, [Greek: hypokriseis] and [Greek: paignion]; and see iv. 3. 32, on love of family and country.] [Footnote 146: _Enn_. vi. 7. 34.] [Footnote 147: It would be an easy and rather amusing task to illustrate these and other aberrations of speculative Mysticism from Herbert Spencer's philosophy. E.g., he says that, though we cannot know the Absolute, we may have "an indefinite consciousness of it." "It is impossible to give to this consciousness any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever," and yet it is quite certain that we have it. Herbert Spencer's Absolute is, in fact, _matter without form_. This would seem to identify it rather with the all but non-existing "matter" of Plotinus (see Bigg, _Neoplatonism_, p. 199), than with the superessential "One"; but the later Neoplatonists found themselves compelled to call _both_ extremes [Greek: to mê on]. Plotinus struggles hard against this conclusion, which threatens to make shipwreck of his Platonism. "Hierotheus," whose sympathies are really with Indian nihilism, welcomes it.] [Footnote 148: The following advice to directors, quoted by Ribet, may be added: "Director valde attendat ad personas languidæ valetudinis. Si tales personæ a Deo in quamdam quietis orationem eleventur, contingit ut in omnibus exterioribus sensibus certum defectum ac speciem quamdam deliquii experiantur cum magna interna suavitate, quod extasim aut raptum esse facillime putant. Cum Dei Spiritui resistere nolint, deliquio illi totas se tradunt, et per multas horas, cum gravissimo valetudinis præiudicio in tali mentis stupiditate persistunt." Genuine ecstasy, according to these authorities, seldom lasted more than half an hour, though one Spanish writer speaks of an hour.] [Footnote 149: Mrs. Humphry Ward's translation, p. 72.] [Footnote 150: But we should not forget that the author of the _Epistle to Diognetus_ speaks of the Logos as [Greek: pantote neos en hagiôn kardiais gennômenos]. In St. Augustine we find it in a rather surprisingly bold form; cf. _in Joh. tract._ 21, n. 8: "Gratulemur et grates agamus non solum nos Christianos factos esse, sed Christum ... Admiramini, gaudete: Christus facti sumus." But this is really quite different from saying, "Ego Christus factus sum."] [Footnote 151: "Greek" must here be taken to include the Hellenised Jews. Those who are best qualified to speak on Jewish philosophy believe that it exercised a strong influence at Alexandria.] [Footnote 152: Proclus used to say that a philosopher ought to show no exclusiveness in his worship, but to be the hierophant of the whole world. This eclecticism was not confined to cultus.] [Footnote 153: This account of "Hierotheus" is, of course, taken from Frothingham's most interesting monograph.] [Footnote 154: So Ruysbroek says, "We must not remain on the top of the ladder, but must descend."] [Footnote 155: Another description of the process of [Greek: haplôsis] may be found in the curious work of Ibn Tophail, translated by Ockley, and much valued by the Quakers, _The Improvement of Human Reason, exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Tophail, newly translated by Simon Ockley_, 1708.] [Footnote 156: [Greek: ou monon mathôn alla kai pathôn ta theia.]] [Footnote 157: See Harnack, vol. iv. pp. 282, 283. Frothingham's theory necessitates a later date for Dionysius than that which Harnack believes to be most probable; the latter is in favour of placing him in the second half of the fourth century. The writings of Dionysius are quoted not much later than 500.] [Footnote 158: E.g., he agrees with Iamblichus and Proclus (in opposition to Plotinus) that "the One" is exalted above "Goodness."] [Footnote 159: At the present time the more pious opinion among Romanists seems to be that the writings are genuine; but Schram admits that "there is a dispute" about their date, and some Roman Catholic writers frankly give them up.] [Footnote 160: E.g., [Greek: katharsis, phôtismos, myêsis, epopteia, theôsis; hierotelestai] and [Greek: mystagôgoi] (of the bishops), [Greek: phôtistikoi] (of the priests), [Greek: kathartikoi] (of the deacons).] [Footnote 161: [Greek: hyperousios aoristia--hyper noun hynotês--henas henopoios hapasês henados--hyperousios ousia kai nous anoêtos kai logos arrêtos--alogia kai anoêsia kai anônymia--auto de mê on ôs pasês ousias epekeina.]] [Footnote 162: [Greek: oudemia ê monas ê trias exagei tên hyper panta krypsiotêta tês hyper panta hyperousiôs hyperousês hypertheotêtos.]] [Footnote 163: [Greek: monas estai pasês dyados archê] is stated by Dionysius as an axiom.] [Footnote 164: See especially Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_, some chapters of which show a certain sympathy with Oriental speculative Mysticism. The theory set forth in the text must not be confounded with true pantheism, to which every phenomenon is equally Divine as it stands. See below, at the end of this Lecture.] [Footnote 165: See _De Div. Nom._ iv. 8; xi. 3.] [Footnote 166: Dionysius distinguishes _three_ movements of the human mind--the _circular_, wherein the soul returns in upon itself; the _oblique_, which includes all knowledge acquired by reasoning, research, etc.; and the _direct_, in which we rise to higher truths by using outward things as symbols. The last two he regards as inferior to the "circular" movement, which he also calls "simplification" [Greek: haplôsis].] [Footnote 167: The highest stage (he says) is to reach [Greek: ton hyperphôton gnophon kai di' ablepsias kai agnôsias idein kai gnônai].] [Footnote 168: [Greek: tolmôsa theoplasia] and [Greek: paidariôdês phantasia] are phrases which he applies to Old Testament narratives.] [Footnote 169: As a specimen of his language, we may quote [Greek: esti de ekstatikos ho theios erôs, ouk eôn eautôn einai tous erastas, alla tôn erômenôn] (_De Div. Nom_. iv. 13).] [Footnote 170: I am inclined to agree with Dr. Bigg (_Bampton Lectures_, Introduction, pp. viii, ix), that Dionysius and the later mystics are right in their interpretation of this passage. Bishop Lightfoot and some other good scholars take it to mean, "My earthly affections are crucified." See the discussion in Lightfoot's edition of Ignatius, and in Bigg's Introduction. I am not aware how the vindicators of "Dionysius" explain the curious fact that he had read Ignatius!] [Footnote 171: See Harnack, vol. iii. pp. 242, 243. St. Augustine accepts this statement, which he repeats word for word.] [Footnote 172: Compare also Hooker: "Of Thee our fittest eloquence is silence, while we confess without confessing that Thy glory is unsearchable and beyond our reach."] [Footnote 173: Unity is a characteristic or simple condition of real being, but it is not in itself a principle of being, so that "the One" could exist substantially by itself. To personify the barest of abstractions, call it God, and then try to imitate it, would seem too absurd a fallacy to have misled any one, if history did not show that it has had a long and vigorous life.] [Footnote 174: Cf. Sir W. Hamilton (_Discussions_, p. 21): "By abstraction we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of consciousness. But what remains? Nothing. When we attempt to conceive it as reality, we hypostatise the zero."] [Footnote 175: The Hon. P. Ramanathan, C.M.G., Attorney-General of Ceylon, _The Mystery of Godliness_. This interesting essay was brought to my notice by the kindness of the Rev. G.U. Pope, D.D., University Teacher in Tamil and Telugu at Oxford.] [Footnote 176: Hunt's summary of the philosophy of the Vedanta Sara (_Pantheism and Christianity_, p. 19) may help to illustrate further this type of thought. "Brahma is called the universal soul, of which all human souls are a part. These are likened to a succession of sheaths, which envelop each other like the coats of an onion. The human soul frees itself by knowledge from the sheath. But what is this knowledge? To know that the human intellect and all its faculties are ignorance and delusion. This is to take away the sheath, and to find that God is all. Whatever is not Brahma is nothing. So long as a man perceives himself to be anything, he is nothing. When he discovers that his supposed individuality is no individuality, then he has knowledge. Man must strive to rid himself of himself as an object of thought. He must be only a subject. As subject he is Brahma, while the objective world is mere phenomenon."] [Footnote 177: We may compare with them the following maxims, which, enclosed in an outline of Mount Carmel, form the frontispiece to an early edition of St. Juan of the Cross:-- "To enjoy Infinity, do not desire to taste of finite things. "To arrive at the knowledge of Infinity, do not desire the knowledge of finite things. "To reach to the possession of Infinity, desire to possess nothing. "To be included in the being of Infinity, desire to be thyself nothing whatever. "The moment that thou art resting in a creature, thou art ceasing to advance towards Infinity. "In order to unite thyself to Infinity, thou must surrender finite things without reserve." After reading such maxims, we shall probably be inclined to think that "the Infinite" as a name for God might be given up with advantage. There is nothing Divine about a _tabula rasa_.] [Footnote 178: Cf. Richard of St. Victor, _de Præp. Anim._ 83, "ascendat per semetipsum super semetipsum."] [Footnote 179: The same is true of our attitude towards external nature. We are always trying to rise from the shadow to the substance, from the symbol to the thing symbolised, and so far the followers of the negative road are right; but the life of Mysticism (on this side) consists in the process of spiritualising our impressions; and to regard the process as completed is to lose shadow and substance together.] [Footnote 180: It may be objected that I have misused the term _via negativa_, which is merely the line of argument which establishes the transcendence of God, as the "affirmative road" establishes His immanence. I am far from wishing to depreciate a method which when rightly used is a safeguard against Pantheism, but the whole history of mediæval Mysticism shows how mischievous it is when followed exclusively.] [Footnote 181: See Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, vol. i. p. 58.] [Footnote 182: Seth, _Hegelianism and Personality_, states this more strongly. He argues that "the ultimate goal of Realism is a thorough-going Pantheism." God is regarded as the _summum genus_, the ultimate Substance of which all existing things are accidents. The genus inheres in the species, and the species in individuals, as an entity common to all and _identical in each_, an entity to which individual differences adhere as accidents.] [Footnote 183: McTaggart, _Studies in Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 159 sq., argues that Hegel means that the Absolute Idea exists eternally in its full perfection. There can be no _real_ development in time. "Infinite time is a false infinite of endless aggregation." The whole discussion is very instructive and interesting.] [Footnote 184: So Lasson says well, in his book on Meister Eckhart, "Mysticism views everything from the standpoint of teleology, while Pantheism generally stops at causality."] [Footnote 185: As, for instance, Leslie Stephen tries to do in his _Agnostic's Apology_.] [Footnote 186: The system of Spinoza, based on the canon, "Omnis determinatio est negatio," proceeds by wiping out all dividing lines, which he regards as illusions, in order to reach the ultimate truth of things. This, as Hegel showed, is acosmism rather than Pantheism, and certainly not "atheism." The method of Spinoza should have led him, as the same method led Dionysius, to define God as [Greek: hyperousios aoristia]. He only escapes this conclusion by an inconsistency. See E. Caird, _Evolution of Religion_, vol. i. pp. 104, 105.] [Footnote 187: There is a third system which is called pantheistic; but as it has nothing to do with Mysticism, I need not try to determine whether it deserves the name or not. It is that which deifies physical law. Sometimes it is "materialism grown sentimental," as it has been lately described; sometimes it issues in stern Fatalism. This is Stoicism; and high Calvinism is simply Christian Stoicism. It has been called pantheistic, because it admits only one Will in the universe.] LECTURE IV [Greek: "Edizêsamên emeôuton."] HERACLITUS. "La philosophie n'est pas philosophie si elle ne touche à l'abîme; mais elle cesse d'être philosophie si elle y tombe." COUSIN. "Denn Alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, Wenn es im Sein beharren will." GOETHE. "Seek no more abroad, say I, House and Home, but turn thine eye Inward, and observe thy breast; There alone dwells solid Rest. Say not that this House is small, Girt up in a narrow wall: In a cleanly sober mind Heaven itself full room doth find. Here content make thine abode With thyself and with thy God. Here in this sweet privacy May'st thou with thyself agree, And keep House in peace, tho' all Th' Universe's fabric fall." JOSEPH BEAUMONT. "The One remains, the many change and pass: Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly: Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity." SHELLEY. CHRISTIAN PLATONISM AND SPECULATIVE MYSTICISM 2. IN THE WEST "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"--1 COR. iii. 16. We have seen that Mysticism, like most other types of religion, had its cradle in the East. The Christian Platonists, whom we considered in the last Lecture, wrote in Greek, and we had no occasion to mention the Western Churches. But after the Pseudo-Dionysius, the East had little more to contribute to Christian thought. John of Damascus, in the eighth century, half mystic and half scholastic, need not detain us. The Eastern Churches rapidly sank into a deplorably barbarous condition, from which they have never emerged. We may therefore turn away from the Greek-speaking countries, and trace the course of Mysticism in the Latin and Teutonic races. Scientific Mysticism in the West did not all pass through Dionysius. Victorinus, a Neoplatonic philosopher, was converted to Christianity in his old age, about 360 A.D. The story of his conversion, and the joy which it caused in the Christian community, is told by St. Augustine[188]. He was a deep thinker of the speculative mystical type, but a clumsy and obscure writer, in spite of his rhetorical training. His importance lies in his position as the first Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in Latin. The Trinitarian doctrine of Victorinus anticipates in a remarkable manner that of the later philosophical mystics. The Father, he says, eternally knows Himself in the Son. The Son is the self-objectification of God, the "_forma_" of God[189], the utterance of the Absolute. The Father is "_cessatio_," "_silentium_," "_quies_"; but He is also "_motus_" while the Son is "_motio_." There is no contradiction between "_motus_" and "_cessatio_" since "_motus_" is not the same as "_mutatio_." "Movement" belongs to the "being" of God; and this eternal "movement" is the generation of the Son. This eternal generation is exalted above time. All life is _now_: we live always in the present, not in the past or future; and thus our life is a symbol of eternity, to which all things are for ever present[190]. The generation of the Son is at the same time the creation of the archetypal world; for the Son is the cosmic principle[191], through whom all that potentially _is_ is actualised. He even says that the Father is to the Son as [Greek: ho mê ôn] to [Greek: ho ôn], thus taking the step which Plotinus wished to avoid, and applying the same expression to the superessential God as to infra-essential matter.[192] This actualisation is a self-limitation of God,[193] but involves no degradation. Victorinus uses language implying the subordination of the Son, but is strongly opposed to Arianism. The Holy Ghost is the "bond" (_copula_) of the Trinity, joining in perfect love the Father and the Son. Victorinus is the first to use this idea, which afterwards became common. It is based on the Neoplatonic triad of _status, progressio, regressus_ ([Greek: monê, proodos, epistrophê]). In another place he symbolises the Holy Ghost as the female principle, the "Mother of Christ" in His eternal life. This metaphor is a relic of Gnosticism, which the Church wisely rejected. The second Person of the Trinity contains in Himself the archetypes of everything. He is the "_elementum_," "_habitaculum_," "_habitator_," "_locus_" of the universe. The material world was created for man's probation. All spirits pre-existed, and their partial immersion in an impure material environment is a degradation from which they must aspire to be delivered. But the whole mundane history of a soul is only the realisation of the idea which had existed from all eternity in the mind of God. These doctrines show that Victorinus is involved in a dualistic view of matter, and in a form of predestinarianism; but he has no definite teaching on the relation of sin to the ideal world. His language about Christ and the Church is mystical in tone. "The Church is Christ," he says; "The resurrection of Christ is our resurrection"; and of the Eucharist, "The body of Christ is life." We now come to St. Augustine himself, who at one period of his life was a diligent student of Plotinus. It would be hardly justifiable to claim St. Augustine as a mystic, since there are important parts of his teaching which have no affinity to Mysticism; but it touched him on one side, and he remained half a Platonist. His natural sympathy with Mysticism was not destroyed by the vulgar and perverted forms of it with which he was first brought in contact. The Manicheans and Gnostics only taught him to distinguish true Mysticism from false: he soon saw through the pretensions of these sectaries, while he was not ashamed to learn from Plotinus. The mystical or Neoplatonic element in his theology will be clearly shown in the following extracts. In a few places he comes dangerously near to some of the errors which we found in Dionysius. God is above all that can be said of Him. We must not even call Him ineffable;[194] He is best adored in silence,[195] best known by nescience,[196] best described by negatives.[197] God is absolutely immutable; this is a doctrine on which he often insists, and which pervades all his teaching about predestination. The world pre-existed from all eternity in the mind of God; in the Word of God, by whom all things were made, and who is immutable Truth, all things and events are stored up together unchangeably, and all are one. God sees the time-process not as a process, but gathered up into one harmonious whole. This seems very near to acosmism, but there are other passages which are intended to guard against this error. For instance, in the _Confessions_[198] he says that "things above are better than things below; but all creation together is better than things above"; that is to say, true reality is something higher than an abstract spirituality.[199] He is fond of speaking of the _Beauty_ of God; and as he identifies beauty with symmetry,[200] it is plain that the formless "Infinite" is for him, as for every true Platonist, the bottom and not the top of the scale of being. Plotinus had perhaps been the first to speak of the Divine nature as the meeting-point of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; and this conception, which is of great value, appears also in Augustine. There are three grades of beauty, they both say, corporeal, spiritual, and divine,[201] the first being an image of the second, and the second of the third.[202] "Righteousness is the truest beauty,[203]" Augustine says more than once. "All that is beautiful comes from the highest Beauty, which is God." This is true Platonism, and points to Mysticism of the symbolic kind, which we must consider later. St. Augustine is on less secure ground when he says that evil is simply the splash of dark colour which gives relief to the picture; and when in other places he speaks of it as simple privation of good. But here again he closely follows Plotinus.[204] St. Augustine was not hostile to the idea of a World-Soul; he regards the universe as a living organism;[205] but he often warns his readers against identifying God and the world, or supposing that God is merely immanent in creation. The Neoplatonic teaching about the relation of individual souls to the World-Soul may have helped him to formulate his own teaching about the mystical union of Christians with Christ. His phrase is that Christ and the Church are "_una persona_." St. Augustine arranges the ascent of the soul in seven stages.[206] But the higher steps are, as usual, purgation, illumination, and union. This last, which he calls "the vision and contemplation of truth," is "not a step, but the goal of the journey." When we have reached it, we shall understand the wholesomeness of the doctrines with which we were fed, as children with milk; the meaning of such "hard sayings" as the resurrection of the body will become plain to us. Of the blessedness which attends this state he says elsewhere,[207] "I entered, and beheld with the mysterious eye of my soul the light that never changes, above the eye of my soul, above my intelligence. It was something altogether different from any earthly illumination. It was higher than my intelligence because it made me, and I was lower because made by it. He who knows the truth knows that light, and he who knows that light knows eternity. Love knows that light." And again he says,[208] "What is this which flashes in upon me, and thrills my heart without wounding it? I tremble and I burn; I tremble, feeling that I am unlike Him; I burn, feeling that I am like Him." One more point must be mentioned before we leave St. Augustine. In spite of, or rather because of, his Platonism, he had nothing but contempt for the later Neoplatonism, the theurgic and theosophic apparatus of Iamblichus and his friends. I have said nothing yet about the extraordinary development of magic in all its branches, astrology, necromancy, table-rapping, and other kinds of divination, charms and amulets and witchcraft, which brought ridicule upon the last struggles of paganism. These aberrations of Nature-Mysticism will be dealt with in their later developments in my seventh Lecture. St. Augustine, after mentioning some nonsensical incantations of the "abracadabra" kind, says, "A Christian old woman is wiser than these philosophers." In truth, the spirit of Plato lived in, and not outside Christianity, even in the time of Porphyry. And on the cultus of angels and spirits, which was closely connected with theurgic superstition, St. Augustine's judgment is very instructive. "Whom should I find," he asks, "to reconcile me to Thee? Should I approach the angels? With what prayers, with what rites? Many, as I hear, have tried this method, and have come to crave for curious visions, and have been deceived, as they deserved.[209]" In spite of St. Augustine's Platonism and the immense influence which he exercised, the Western Church was slow in developing a mystical theology. The Greek Mysticism, based on emanation, was not congenial to the Western mind, and the time of the German, with its philosophy of immanence, was not yet. The tendency of Eastern thinkers is to try to gain a view of reality as a whole, complete and entire: the form under which it most readily pictures it is that of _space_. The West seeks rather to discover the universal laws which in every part of the universe are working out their fulfilment. The form under which it most readily pictures reality is that of _time_.[210] Thus Neoplatonism had to undergo certain modifications before it could enter deeply into the religious consciousness of the West. The next great name is that of John Scotus Erigena,[211] an English or Irish monk, who in the ninth century translated Dionysius into Latin. Erigena is unquestionably one of the most remarkable figures of the Middle Ages. A bold and independent thinker, he made it his aim to elucidate the vague theories of Dionysius, and to present them as a consistent philosophical system worked out by the help of Aristotle and perhaps Boethius.[212] He intends, of course, to keep within the limits permitted to Christian speculation; but in reality he does not allow dogma to fetter him. The Christian Alexandrians were, on the whole, more orthodox than their language; Erigena's language partially veils the real audacity of his speculation. He is a mystic only by his intellectual affinities;[213] the warmth of pious aspiration and love which makes Dionysius, amid all his extravagance, still a religious writer, has cooled entirely in Erigena. He can pray with fervour and eloquence for intellectual enlightenment; but there was nothing of the prophet or saint about him, to judge from his writings. Still, though one might dispute his title to be called either a Christian or a mystic, we must spare a few minutes to this last flower of Neoplatonism, which bloomed so late on our northern islands. God, says Erigena, is called Essence or Being; but, strictly speaking, He is not "Being";[214] for Being arises in opposition to not-Being, and there is no opposition to the Absolute, or God. Eternity, the abode or nature of God, is homogeneous and without parts, one, simple, and indivisible. "God is the totality of all things which are and are not, which can and cannot be. He is the similarity of the similar, the dissimilarity of the dissimilar, the opposition of opposites, and the contrariety of contraries. All discords are resolved when they are considered as parts of the universal harmony." All things begin from unity and end in unity: the Absolute can contain nothing self-contradictory. And so God cannot be called Goodness, for Goodness is opposed to Badness, and God is above this distinction. Goodness, however is a more comprehensive term than Being. There may be Goodness without Being, but not Being without Goodness; for Evil is the negation of Being. "The Scripture openly pronounces this," says Erigena; "for we read, God saw all things; and _not_, lo, they were, but, lo, they were very good." All things are, in so far as they are good. "But the things that are not are also called good, and are far better than those which are." Being, in fact, is a defect, "since it separates from the superessential Good." The feeling which prompts this strange expression is that since time and space are themselves onesided appearances, a fixed limit must be set to the amount of goodness and reality which can be represented under these conditions. Erigena therefore thinks that to enter the time-process must be to contract a certain admixture of unreality or evil. In so far as life involves _separateness_ (not distinction), this must be true; but the manifold is only evil when it is discordant and antagonistic to unity. That the many-in-one should appear as the one-in-many, is the effect of the forms of time and space in which it appears; the statement that "the things which are not are far better than those which are," is only true in the sense that the world of appearance is permeated by evil as yet unsubdued, which in the Godhead exists only as something overcome or transmuted. Erigena says that God is above all the categories, including that of relation. It follows that the Persons of the Trinity, which are only "relative names," are fused in the Absolute.[215] We may make statements about God, if we remember that they are only metaphors; but whatever we deny about Him, we deny truly.[216] This is the "negative road" of Dionysius, from whom Erigena borrows a number of uncouth compounds. But we can see that he valued this method mainly as safeguarding the transcendence of God against pantheistic theories of immanence. The religious and practical aspects of the doctrine had little interest for him. The destiny of all things is to "rest and be quiet" in God. But he tries to escape the conclusion that all distinctions must disappear; rather, he says, the return to God raises creatures into a higher state, in which they first attain their true being. All individual types will be preserved in the universal. He borrows an illustration, not a very happy one, from Plotinus. "As iron, when it becomes red-hot, seems to be turned into pure fire, but remains no less iron than before; so when body passes into soul, and rational substances into God, they do not lose their identity, but preserve it in a higher state of being." Creation he regards as a necessary self-realisation of God. "God was not," he says, "before He made the universe." The Son is the Idea of the World; "be assured," he says, "that the Word is the nature of all things." The primordial causes or ideas--Goodness, Being, Life, etc., _in themselves_, which the Father made in the Son--are in a sense the creators of the world, for the order of all things is established according to them. God created the world, not out of nothing, nor out of something, but out of Himself.[217] The creatures have always pre-existed "yonder" in the Word; God has only caused them to be realised in time and space. "Thought and Action are identical in God." "He sees by working and works by seeing." Man is a microcosm. The fivefold division of nature--corporeal, vital, sensitive, rational, intellectual--is all represented in his organisation. The corruptible body is an "accident," the consequence of sin. The original body was immortal and incorruptible. This body will one day be restored. Evil has no substance, and is destined to disappear. "Nothing contrary to the Divine goodness and life and blessedness can be coeternal with them." The world must reach perfection, when all will ultimately be God. "The loss and absence of Christ is the torment of the whole creation, nor do I think that there is any other." There is no "place of punishment" anywhere. Erigena is an admirable interpreter of the Alexandrians and of Dionysius, but he emphasises their most dangerous tendencies. We cannot be surprised that his books were condemned; it is more strange that the audacious theories which they repeat from Dionysius should have been allowed to pass without censure for so long. Indeed, the freedom of speculation accorded to the mystics forms a remarkable exception to the zeal for exact orthodoxy which characterised the general policy of the early Church. The explanation is that in the East Mysticism has seldom been revolutionary, and has compensated for its speculative audacity by the readiness of its outward conformity. Moreover, the theories of Dionysius about the earthly and heavenly hierarchies were by no means unwelcome to sacerdotalism. In the West things were different. Mysticism there has always been a spirit of reform, generally of revolt. There is much even in Erigena, whose main affinities were with the East, which forecasts the Reformation. He is the father, not only of Western Mysticism and scholasticism, but of rationalism as well.[218] But the danger which lurked in his speculations was not at first recognised. His book on predestination was condemned in 855 and 859 for its universalist doctrine,[219] and two hundred years later his Eucharistic doctrine, revived by Berengar, was censured.[220] But it was not till the thirteenth century that a general condemnation was passed upon him. This judgment followed the appearance of a strongly pantheistic or acosmistic school of mystics, chief among whom was Amalric of Bena, a master of theology at Paris about 1200. Amalric is a very interesting figure, for his teaching exhibits all the features which are most characteristic of extravagant Mysticism in the West--its strong belief in Divine immanence, not only in the Church, but in the individual; its uncompromising rationalism, contempt for ecclesiastical forms, and tendency to evolutionary optimism. Among the doctrines attributed to Amalric and his followers are a pantheistic identification of man with God, and a negation of matter; they were said to teach that unconsecrated bread was the body of Christ, and that God spoke through Ovid (a curious choice!), as well as through St. Augustine. They denied the resurrection of the body, and the traditional eschatology, saying that "he who has the knowledge of God in himself has paradise within him." They insisted on a progressive historical revelation--the reign of the Father began with Abraham, that of the Son with Christ, that of the Spirit with themselves. They despised sacraments, believing that the Spirit works without means. They taught that he who lives in love can do no wrong, and were suspected, probably truly, of the licentious conduct which naturally follows from such a doctrine. This antinomianism is no part of true Mysticism; but it is often found in conjunction with mystical speculation among the half-educated. It is the vulgar perversion of Plotinus' doctrine that matter is nothing, and that the highest part of our nature can take no stain.[221] We find evidence of immorality practised "in nomine caritatis" among the Gnostics and Manicheans of the first centuries, and these heresies never really became extinct. The sects of the "Free Spirit," who flourished later in the thirteenth century, had an even worse reputation than the Amalricians. They combined with their Pantheism a Determinism which destroyed all sense of responsibility. On the other hand, the followers of Ortlieb of Strassburg, about the same period, advocated an extreme asceticism based on a dualistic or Manichean view of the world; and they combined with this error an extreme rationalism, teaching that the historical Christ was a mere man; that the Gospel history has only a symbolical truth; that the soul only, without the body, is immortal; and that the Pope and his priests are servants of Satan. The problem for the Church was how to encourage the warm love and faith of the mystics without giving the rein to these mischievous errors. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries produced several famous writers, who attempted to combine scholasticism and Mysticism.[222] The leaders in this attempt were Bernard,[223] Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, and (later) Gerson. Their works are not of great value as contributions to religious philosophy, for the Schoolmen were too much afraid of their authorities--Catholic tradition and Aristotle--to probe difficulties to the bottom; and the mystics, who, by making the renewed life of the soul their starting-point, were more independent, were debarred, by their ignorance of Greek, from a first-hand knowledge of their intellectual ancestors. But in the history of Mysticism they hold an important place.[224] Speculation being for them restricted within the limits of Church-dogma, they were obliged to be more psychological and less metaphysical than Dionysius or Erigena. The Victorines insist often on self-knowledge as the way to the knowledge of God and on self-purification as more important than philosophy. "The way to ascend to God," says Hugo, "is to descend into oneself.[225]" "The ascent is through self above self," says Richard; we are to rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things. "Let him that thirsts to see God clean his mirror, let him make his own spirit bright," says Richard again. The Victorines do not disparage reason, which is the organ by which mankind in general apprehend the things of God; but they regard ecstatic contemplation as a supra-rational state or faculty, which can only be reached _per mentis excessum_, and in which the naked truth is seen, no longer in a glass darkly.[226] This highest state, in which "Reason dies in giving birth to Ecstasy, as Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin," is not on the high road of the spiritual life. It is a rare gift, bestowed by supernatural grace. Richard says that the first stage of contemplation is an expansion of the soul, the second an exaltation, the third an _alienation_. The first arises from human effort, the second from human effort assisted by Divine grace, the third from Divine grace alone. The predisposing conditions for the third state are devotion (_devotio_), admiration (_admiratio_), and joy (_exaltatio_); but these cannot _produce_ ecstasy, which is a purely supernatural infusion. This sharp opposition between the natural and the supernatural, which is fully developed first by Richard of St. Victor, is the distinguishing feature of Catholic Mysticism. It is an abandonment of the great aim which the earlier Christian idealists had set before themselves, namely, to find spiritual law in the normal course of nature, and the motions of the Divine Word in the normal processes of mind. St. John's great doctrine of the Logos as a cosmic principle is now dropped. Roman Catholic apologists[227] claim that Mysticism was thus set free from the "idealistic pantheism" of the Neoplatonist, and from the "Gnostic-Manichean dualism" which accompanies it. The world of space and time (they say) is no longer regarded, as it was by the Neoplatonist, as a fainter effluence from an ideal world, nor is human individuality endangered by theories of immanence. Both nature and man regain a sort of independence. We once more tread as free men on solid ground, while occasional "supernatural phenomena" are not wanting to testify to the existence of higher powers. We have seen that the Logos-doctrine (as understood by St. Clement) is exceptionally liable to perversion; but the remedy of discarding it is worse than the disease. The unscriptural[228] and unphilosophical cleft between natural and supernatural introduces a more intractable dualism than that of Origen. The faculty which, according to this theory, possesses immediate intuition into the things of God is not only irresponsible to reason, but stands in no relation to it. It ushers us into an entirely new world, where the familiar criteria of truth and falsehood are inapplicable. And what it reveals to us is not a truer and deeper view of the actual, but a wholly independent cosmic principle which invades the world of experience as a disturbing force, spasmodically subverting the laws of nature in order to show its power over them.[229] For as soon as the formless intuition of contemplation begins to express itself in symbols, these symbols, when untested by reason, are transformed into hallucinations. The warning of Plotinus, that "he who tries to rise above reason falls outside of it," receives a painful corroboration in such legends as that of St. Christina, who by reason of her extreme saintliness frequently soared over the tops of trees. The consideration of these alleged "mystical phenomena" belongs to objective Mysticism, which I hope to deal with in a later Lecture. Here I will only say that the scholastic-mystical doctrine of "supernatural" interventions, which at first sight seems so attractive, has led in practice to the most barbarous and ridiculous superstitions.[230] Another good specimen of scholastic Mysticism is the short treatise, _De adhærendo Deo_, of Albertus Magnus. It shows very clearly how the "negative road" had become the highway of mediæval Catholicism, and how little could be hoped for civilisation and progress from the continuance of such teaching. "When St. John says that God is a Spirit," says Albert in the first paragraph of his treatise, "and that He must be worshipped in spirit, he means that the mind must be cleared of all images. When thou prayest, shut thy door--that is, the doors of thy senses ... keep them barred and bolted against all phantasms and images.... Nothing pleases God more than a mind free from all occupations and distractions.... Such a mind is in a manner transformed into God, for it can think of nothing, and understand nothing, and love nothing, except God: other creatures and itself it only sees in God.... He who penetrates into himself, and so transcends himself, ascends truly to God.... He whom I love and desire is above all that is sensible and all that is intelligible; sense and imagination cannot bring us to Him, but only the desire of a pure heart. This brings us into the darkness of the mind, whereby we can ascend to the contemplation even of the mystery of the Trinity.... Do not think about the world, nor about thy friends, nor about the past, present, or future; but consider thyself to be outside the world and alone with God, as if thy soul were already separated from the body, and had no longer any interest in peace or war, or the state of the world. Leave thy body, and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light.... Let nothing come between thee and God.... The soul in contemplation views the world from afar off, just as, when we proceed to God by the way of abstraction, we deny Him, first all bodily and sensible attributes, then intelligible qualities, and, lastly, that _being_ (_esse_) which keeps Him among created things. This, according to Dionysius, is the best mode of union with God." Bonaventura resembles Albertus in reverting more decidedly than the Victorines to the Dionysian tradition. He expatiates on the passivity and nakedness of the soul which is necessary in order to enter into the Divine darkness, and elaborates with tiresome pedantry his arbitrary schemes of faculties and stages. However, he gains something by his knowledge of Aristotle, which he uses to correct the Neoplatonic doctrine of God as abstract Unity. "God is 'ideo omnimodum,'" he says finely, "quia summe unum." He is "totum intra omnia et totum extra"--a succinct statement that God is both immanent and transcendent. His proof of the Trinity is original and profound. It is the nature of the Good to impart itself, and so the highest Good must be "summe diffusivum sui," which can only be in hypostatic union. The last great scholastic mystic is Gerson, who lived from 1363 to 1429. He attempts to reduce Mysticism to an exact science, tabulating and classifying all the teaching of his predecessors. A very brief summary of his system is here given. Gerson distinguishes symbolical, natural, and mystical theology, confining the last to the method which rests on inner experiences, and proceeds by the negative road. The experiences of the mystic have a greater certainty than any external revelations can possess. Gerson's psychology may be given in outline as follows: The cognitive power has three faculties: (1) simple intelligence or natural light, an outflow from the highest intelligence, God Himself; (2) the understanding, which is on the frontier between the two worlds; (3) sense-consciousness. To each of these three faculties answers one of the affective faculties: (1) synteresis;[231] (2) understanding, rational desire; (3) sense-affections. To these again correspond three _activities_: (1) contemplation; (2) meditation;[232] (3) thought. Mystical theology differs from speculative (i.e. scholastic), in that mystical theology belongs to the affective faculties, not the cognitive; that it does not depend on logic, and is therefore open even to the ignorant; that it is _not_ open to the unbelieving, since it rests upon faith and love; and that it brings peace, whereas speculation breeds unrest. The "means of mystical theology" are seven: (i.) the call of God; (ii.) certainty that one is called to the contemplative life--all are not so; (iii.) freedom from encumbrances; (iv.) concentration of interests upon God; (v.) perseverance; (vi.) asceticism; but the body must not be maltreated if it is to be a good servant; (vii.) shutting the eye to all sense perceptions.[233] Such teaching as this is of small value or interest. Mysticism itself becomes arid and formal in the hands of Gerson. The whole movement was doomed to failure, inasmuch as scholasticism was philosophy in chains, and the negative road was Mysticism blindfolded. No fruitful reconciliation between philosophy and piety could be thus achieved. The decay of scholasticism put an end to these attempts at compromise. Henceforward the mystics either discard metaphysics, and develop their theology on the devotional and ascetic side--the course which was followed by the later Catholic mystics; or they copy Erigena in his independent attitude towards tradition. In this Lecture we are following the line of speculative Mysticism, and we have now to consider the greatest of all speculative mystics, Meister Eckhart, who was born soon after the middle of the thirteenth century.[234] He was a Dominican monk, prior of Erfurt and vicar of Thuringen, and afterwards vicar-general for Bohemia. He preached a great deal at Cologne about 1325; and before this period had come into close relations with the Beghards and Brethren of the Free Spirit--societies of men and women who, by their implicit faith in the inner light, resembled the Quakers, though many of them, as has been said, were accused of immoral theories and practices. His teaching soon attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and some of his doctrines were formally condemned by the Pope in 1329, immediately after his death. The aim of Eckhart's religious philosophy is to find a speculative basis for the doctrines of the Church, which shall at the same time satisfy the claims of spiritual religion. His aims are purely constructive, and he shows a distaste for polemical controversy. The writers whom he chiefly cites by name are Dionysius, Augustine, Gregory, and Boethius; but he must have read Erigena, and probably Averroes, writers to whom a Catholic could hardly confess his obligations.[235] He also frequently introduces quotations with the words, "A master saith." The "master" is nearly always Thomas Aquinas, to whom Eckhart was no doubt greatly indebted, though it would be a great mistake to say, as some have done, that all Eckhart can be found in the _Summa_. For instance, he sets himself in opposition to Thomas about the "spark," which Thomas regarded as a faculty of the soul, while Eckhart, in his later writings, says that it is uncreated.[236] His double object leads him into some inconsistencies. Intellectually, he is drawn towards a semi-pantheistic idealism; his heart makes him an Evangelical Christian. But though it is possible to find contradictions in his writings, his transparent intellectual honesty and his great powers of thought, combined with deep devoutness and childlike purity of soul, make him one of the most interesting figures in the history of Christian philosophy. Eckhart wrote in German; that is to say, he wrote for the public, and not for the learned only. His desire to be intelligible to the general reader led him to adopt an epigrammatic antithetic style, and to omit qualifying phrases. This is one reason why he laid himself open to so many accusations of heresy.[237] Eckhart distinguishes between "the Godhead" and "God." The Godhead is the abiding potentiality of Being, containing within Himself all distinctions, as yet undeveloped. He therefore cannot be the object of knowledge, nor of worship, being "Darkness" and "Formlessness.[238]" The Triune God is evolved from the Godhead. The Son is the Word of the Father, His uttered thought; and the Holy Ghost is "the Flower of the Divine Tree," the mutual love which unites the Father and the Son. Eckhart quotes the words which St. Augustine makes Christ say of Himself: "I am come as a Word from the heart, as a ray from the sun, as heat from the fire, as fragrance from the flower, as a stream from a perennial fountain." He insists that the generation of the Son is a continual process. The universe is the expression of the whole thought of the Father; it is the language of the Word. Eckhart loves startling phrases, and says boldly, "Nature is the lower part of the Godhead," and "Before creation, God was not God." These statements are not so crudely pantheistic as they sound. He argues that without the Son the Father would not be God, but only undeveloped potentiality of being. The three Persons are not merely accidents and modes of the Divine Substance, but are inherent in the Godhead.[239] And so there can never have been a time when the Son was not. But the generation of the Son necessarily involves the creation of an ideal world; for the Son is Reason, and Reason is constituted by a cosmos of ideas. When Eckhart speaks of creation and of the world which had no beginning, he means, not the world of phenomena, but the world of ideas, in the Platonic sense. The ideal world is the complete expression of the thought of God, and is above space and time. He calls it "non-natured nature," as opposed to "diu genâ-tûrte nâtûre," the world of phenomena.[240] Eckhart's doctrine here differs from that of Plotinus in a very important particular. The Neoplatonists always thought of emanation as a diffusion of rays from a sun, which necessarily decrease in heat and brightness as they recede from the central focus. It follows that the second Person of the Trinity, the [Greek: Nous] or Intelligence, is subordinate to the First, and the Third to the Second. But with Eckhart there is no subordination. The Son is the pure brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His Person. "The eternal fountain of things is the Father; the image of things in Him is the Son, and love for this Image is the Holy Ghost." All created things abide "formless" (as possibilities) in the ground of the Godhead, and all are realised in the Son. The Alexandrian Fathers, in identifying the Logos with the Platonic [Greek: Nous], the bearer of the World-Idea, had found it difficult to avoid subordinating Him to the Father. Eckhart escapes this heresy, but in consequence his view of the world is more pantheistic. For his intelligible world is really God--it is the whole content of the Divine mind.[241] The question has been much debated, whether Eckhart really falls into pantheism or not. The answer seems to me to depend on what is the obscurest part of his whole system--the relation of the phenomenal world to the world of ideas. He offers the Christian dogma of the Incarnation of the Logos as a kind of explanation of the passage of the "prototypes" into "externality." When God "speaks" His ideas, the phenomenal world arises. This is an incarnation. But the process by which the soul emancipates itself from the phenomenal and returns to the intelligible world, is also called a "begetting of the Son." Thus the whole process is a circular one--from God and back to God again. Time and space, he says, were created with the world. Material things are outside each other, spiritual things in each other. But these statements do not make it clear how Eckhart accounts for the imperfections of the phenomenal world, which he is precluded from explaining, as the Neoplatonists did, by a theory of emanation. Nor can we solve the difficulty by importing modern theories of evolution into his system. The idea of the world-history as a gradual realisation of the Divine Personality was foreign to Eckhart's thought. Stöckl, indeed, tries to father upon him the doctrine that the human mind is a necessary organ of the self-development of God. But this theory cannot be found in Eckhart. The "necessity" which impels God to "beget His Son" is not a physical but a moral necessity. "The good must needs impart itself," he says.[242] The fact is that his view of the world is much nearer to acosmism than to pantheism. "Nothing hinders us so much from the knowledge of God as time and place," he says. He sees in phenomena only the negation of being, and it is not clear how he can also regard them as the abode of the immanent God.[243] It would probably be true to say that, like most mediæval thinkers, he did not feel himself obliged to give a permanent value to the transitory, and that the world, except as the temporary abode of immortal spirits, interested him but little. His neglect of history, including the earthly life of Christ, is not at all the result of scepticism about the miraculous. It is simply due to the feeling that the Divine process in the "everlasting Now" is a fact of immeasurably greater importance than any occurrence in the external world can be. When a religious writer is suspected of pantheism, we naturally turn to his treatment of the problem of evil. To the true pantheist all is equally divine, and everything for the best or for the worst, it does not much matter which.[244] Eckhart certainly does not mean to countenance this absurd theory, but there are passages in his writings which logically imply it; and we look in vain for any elucidation, in his doctrine of sin, of the dark places in his doctrine of God.[245] In fact, he adds very little to the Neoplatonic doctrine of the nature of evil. Like Dionysius, he identifies Being with Good, and evil, as such, with not-being. Moral evil is self-will: it is the attempt, on the part of the creature, to be a particular This or That outside of God. But what is most distinctive in Eckhart's ethics is the new importance which is given to the doctrine of immanence. The human soul is a microcosm, which in a manner contains all things in itself. At the "apex of the mind" there is a Divine "spark," which is so closely akin to God that it is one with Him, and not merely united to Him.[246] In his teaching about this "ground of the soul" Eckhart wavers. His earlier view is that it is created, and only the medium by which God transforms us to Himself. But his later doctrine is that it is uncreated, the immanence of the Being and Nature of God Himself. "Diess Fünkelein, das ist Gott," he says once. This view was adopted by Ruysbroek, Suso, and (with modifications by) Tauler, and became one of their chief tenets.[247] This spark is the organ by which our personality holds communion with God and knows Him. It is with reference to it that Eckhart uses the phrase which has so often been quoted to convict him of blasphemous self-deification--"the eye with which I see God is the same as that with which He sees me.[248]" The "uncreated spark" is really the same as the grace of God, which raises us into a Godlike state. But this grace, according to Eckhart (at least in his later period), is God Himself acting like a human faculty in the soul, and transforming it so that "man himself becomes grace." The following is perhaps the most instructive passage: "There is in the soul something which is above the soul, Divine, simple, a pure nothing; rather nameless than named, rather unknown than known. Of this I am accustomed to speak in my discourses. Sometimes I have called it a power, sometimes an uncreated light, and sometimes a Divine spark. It is absolute and free from all names and all forms, just as God is free and absolute in Himself. It is higher than knowledge, higher than love, higher than grace. For in all these there is still _distinction_. In this power God doth blossom and flourish with all His Godhead, and the Spirit flourisheth in God. In this power the Father bringeth forth His only-begotten Son, as essentially as in Himself; and in this light ariseth the Holy Ghost. This spark rejecteth all creatures, and will have only God, simply as He is in Himself. It rests satisfied neither with the Father, nor with the Son, nor with the Holy Ghost, nor with the three Persons, so far as each existeth in its particular attribute. It is satisfied only with the superessential essence. It is determined to enter into the simple Ground, the still Waste, the Unity where no man dwelleth. Then it is satisfied in the light; then it is one: it is one in itself, as this Ground is a simple stillness, and in itself immovable; and yet by this immobility are all things moved." It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure; but our own nature and personality remain intact. It is plain that we could not see God unless our personality remained distinct from the personality of God. Complete fusion is as destructive of the possibility of love and knowledge as complete separation[249]. Eckhart gives to "the highest reason[250]" the primacy among our faculties, and in his earlier period identifies it with "the spark." He asserts the absolute supremacy of reason more strongly than anyone since Erigena. His language on this subject resembles that of the Cambridge Platonists. "Reasonable knowledge is eternal life," he says. "How can any external revelation help me," he asks, "unless it be verified by inner experience? The last appeal must always be to the deepest part of my own being, and that is my reason." "The reason," he says, "presses ever upwards. It cannot rest content with goodness or wisdom, nor even with God Himself; it must penetrate to the Ground from whence all goodness and wisdom spring." Thus Eckhart is not content with the knowledge of God which is mediated by Christ, but aspires to penetrate into the "Divine darkness" which underlies the manifestation of the Trinity. In fact, when he speaks of the imitation of Christ, he distinguishes between "the way of the manhood," which has to be followed by all, and "the way of the Godhead," which is for the mystic only. In this overbold aspiration to rise "from the Three to the One," he falls into the error which we have already noticed, and several passages in his writings advocate the quietistic self-simplification which belongs to this scheme of perfection. There are sentences in which he exhorts us to strip off all that comes to us from the senses, and to throw ourselves upon the heart of God, there to rest for ever, "hidden from all creatures[251]." But there are many other passages of an opposite tendency. He tells us that "the way of the manhood," which, of course, includes imitation of the active life of Christ, must be trodden first by all; he insists that in the state of union the faculties of the soul will act in a new and higher way, so that the personality is restored, not destroyed; and, lastly, he teaches that contemplation is only the means to a higher activity, and that this is, in fact, its object; "what a man has taken in by contemplation, that he pours out in love." There is no contradiction in the desire for rest combined with the desire for active service; for rest can only be defined as unimpeded activity; but in Eckhart there is, I think, a real inconsistency. The traditions of his philosophy pointed towards withdrawal from the world and from outward occupations--towards the monkish ideal, in a word; but the modern spirit was already astir within him. He preached in German to the general public, and his favourite themes are the present living operation of the Spirit, and the consecration of life in the world. There is, he shows, no contradiction between the active and the contemplative life; the former belongs to the faculties of the soul, the latter to its essence. In commenting on the story of Martha and Mary, those favourite types of activity and contemplation[252], he surprises us by putting Martha first. "Mary hath _chosen_ the good part; that is," he says, "she is striving to be as holy as her sister. Mary is still at school: Martha has learnt her lesson. It is better to feed the hungry than to see even such visions as St. Paul saw." "Besser ein Lebemeister als tausend Lesemeister." He discourages monkish religiosity and external badges of saintliness--"avoid everything peculiar," he says, "in dress, food, and language." "You need not go into a desert and fast; a crowd is often more lonely than a wilderness, and small things harder to do than great." "What is the good of the dead bones of saints?" he asks, in the spirit of a sixteenth century reformer; "the dead can neither give nor take[253]." This double aspect of Eckhart's teaching makes him particularly interesting; he seems to stand on the dividing-line between mediæval and modern Christianity. Like other mystics, he insists that love, when perfect, is independent of the hope of reward, and he shows great freedom in handling Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven. They are states, not places; separation from God is the misery of hell, and each man is his own judge. "We would spiritualise everything," he says, with especial reference to Holy Scripture.[254] In comparing the Mysticism of Eckhart with that of his predecessors, from Dionysius downwards, and of the scholastics down to Gerson, we find an obvious change in the disappearance of the long ladders of ascent, the graduated scales of virtues, faculties, and states of mind, which fill so large a place in those systems. These lists are the natural product of the imagination, when it plays upon the theory of _emanation_. But with Eckhart, as we have seen, the fundamental truth is the _immanence_ of God Himself, not in the faculties, but in the ground of the soul. The "spark of the soul" is for him really "divinæ particula auræ." "God begets His Son in me," he is fond of saying: and there is no doubt that, relying on a verse in the seventeenth chapter of St. John, he regards this "begetting" as analogous to the eternal generation of the Son.[255] This birth of the Son in the soul has a double aspect--the "eternal birth," which is unconscious and inalienable,[256] but which does not confer blessedness, being common to good and bad alike; and the assimilation of the faculties of the soul by the pervading presence of Christ, or in other words by grace, "quæ lux quædam deiformis est," as Ruysbroek says. The deification of our nature is therefore a thing to be striven for, and not given complete to start with; but it is important to observe that Eckhart places no intermediaries between man and God. "The Word is very nigh thee," nearer than any object of sense, and any human institutions; sink into thyself, and thou wilt find Him. The heavenly and earthly hierarchies of Dionysius, with the reverence for the priesthood which was built upon them, have no significance for Eckhart. In this as in other ways, he is a precursor of the Reformation. With Eckhart I end this Lecture on the speculative Mysticism of the Middle Ages. His successors, Ruysbroek, Suso, and Tauler, much as they resemble him in their general teaching, differ from him in this, that with none of them is the intellectual, philosophical side of primary importance. They added nothing of value to the speculative system of Eckhart; their Mysticism was primarily a _religion of the heart_ or a rule of life. It is this side of Mysticism to which I shall next invite your attention. It should bring us near to the centre of our subject: for a speculative religious system is best known by its fruits. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 188: _Conf._ viii. 2-5. The best account of the theology of Victorinus is Gore's article in the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_.] [Footnote 189: So Synesius calls the Son [Greek: patros morphê].] [Footnote 190: "Non enim vivimus præteritum aut vivimus futurum, sed semper præsenti utimur." "Æternitas semper per præsentiam habet omnia et hæc semper."] [Footnote 191: "Effectus est omnia," Victorinus says plainly.] [Footnote 192: Victorinus must have got this phrase from some Greek Neoplatonist. It was explained that [Greek: to mê on] may be used in four senses, and that it is not intended to identify the two extremes. But the very remarkable passage in Hierotheus (referred to in Lecture III.) shows that the two categories of [Greek: aoristia] cannot be kept apart.] [Footnote 193: "Ipse se ipsum circumterminavit."] [Footnote 194: _De Trin_. vii. 4. 7; _de Doctr. Christ_. i. 5. 5; _Serm_. 52. 16; _De Civ. Dei_, ix. 16.] [Footnote 195: _Contr. Adim. Man._ 11.] [Footnote 196: _De Ord._ ii. 16. 44, 18. 47.] [Footnote 197: _Enarrat. in Ps._ 85. 12.] [Footnote 198: _Conf._ vii. 13 _ad fin._] [Footnote 199: Compare with this sentence of the _Confessions_ the statement of Erigena quoted below, that "the things which are not are far better than those which are."] [Footnote 200: _Ep._ 120. 20. St. Augustine wrote in early life an essay "On the Beautiful and Fit," which he unhappily took no pains to preserve.] [Footnote 201: _De Ord._ ii. 16. 42, 59; Plot. _Enn._ i. 6. 4.] [Footnote 202: _De Lib. Arb._ ii. 16. 41; Plot. _Enn._ i. 6. 8, iii. 8. 11.] [Footnote 203: _Enarr. in Ps._ xliv. 3; _Ep._ 120. 20. Plot. _Enn._ i. 6. 4, says with more picturesqueness than usual [Greek: kalon to tês dikaiosynês kai sôphrosynês prosôpon, kai oute hesperos oute eôos outô kala]. (From Aristotle, _Eth._ v. 1. 15.)] [Footnote 204: _Ench._ iii. "etiam illud quod malum dicitur bene ordinatum est loco suo positum; eminentius commendat bona." St. Augustine also says (_Ench._ xi.), "cum omnino mali nomen non sit nisi privationis boni"; cf. Plot. _Enn._ iii. 2. 5, [Greek: holôs de to kakon elleipsin tou agathou theteon.] St. Augustine praises Plotinus for his teaching on the universality of Providence.] [Footnote 205: _De Civ. Dei_, iv. 12, vii. 5.] [Footnote 206: _De Quantitate Animæ_, xxx.] [Footnote 207: _Conf._ vii. 10. I have quoted Bigg's translation.] [Footnote 208: _Conf._ xi. 9.] [Footnote 209: St. Augustine does not reject the belief that visions are granted by the mediation of angels, but he expresses himself with great caution on the subject. Cf. _De Gen. ad litt._ xii. 30, "Sunt quædam excellentia et merito divina, quæ demonstrant angeli miris modis: utrum visa sua facili quadam et præpotenti iunctione vel commixtione etiam nostra esse facientes, an scientes nescio quo modo nostram in spiritu nostro informar visionem, difficilis perceptu et difficilior dictu res est."] [Footnote 210: See Lotze, _Microcosmus_, bk. viii. chap. 4, and other places. We may perhaps compare the Johannine [Greek: kosmos] with the Synoptic [Greek: aiôn] as examples of the two modes of envisaging reality.] [Footnote 211: Eriugena is, no doubt, the more correct spelling, but I have preferred to keep the name by which he is best known.] [Footnote 212: Erigena quotes also Origen, the two Gregorys, Basil, Maximus, Ambrose, and Augustine. Of pagan philosophers he puts Plato first, but holds Aristotle in high honour.] [Footnote 213: Stöckl calls him "ein fälscher Mystiker," because the Neoplatonic ("gnostic-rationalistic") element takes, for him, the place of supernaturalism. This, as will be shown later, is in accordance with the Roman Catholic view of Mysticism, which is not that adopted in these Lectures. For us, Erigena's defect as a mystic is rather to be sought in his extreme intellectualism.] [Footnote 214: "Dum vero (divina bonitas) incomprehensibilis intelligitur, per excellentiam non immerito _nihilum_ vocitatur."] [Footnote 215: This is really a revival of "modalism." The unorthodoxy of the doctrine becomes very apparent in some of Erigena's successors.] [Footnote 216: _De Div. Nat._ i. 36: "Iamdudum inter nos est confectum omnia quæ vel sensu corporeo vel intellectu vel ratione cognoscuntur de Deo merito creatore omnium, posse prædicari, dum nihil eorum quæ de se prædicantur pura veritatis contemplatio eum approbat esse." All affirmations about God are made "non proprie sed translative"; all negations "non translative sed proprie." Cf. also _ibid._ i. 1. 66, "verius fideliusque negatur in omnibus quam affirmatur"; and especially _ibid._ i. 5. 26, "theophanias autem dico visibilium et invisibilium species, quarum ordine et pulcritudine cognoscitur Deus esse et invenitur _non quid est, sed quia solummodo est._" Erigena tries to say (in his atrocious Latin) that the external world can teach us nothing about God, except the bare fact of His existence. No passage could be found to illustrate more clearly the real tendencies of the negative road, and the purely subjective Mysticism connected with it. Erigena will not allow us to infer, from the order and beauty of the world, that order and beauty are Divine attributes.] [Footnote 217: But it must be remembered that Erigena calls God "nihilum." His words about creation are, "Ac sic de nihilo facit omnia, de sua videlicet superessentialitate producit essentias, de supervitalitate vitas, de superintellectualitate intellectus, de negatione omnium quæ sunt et quæ non sunt, affirmationes omnium quæ sunt et quæ non sunt."] [Footnote 218: So Kaulich shows in his monograph on the speculative system of Erigena.] [Footnote 219: Erigena was roused by a work on predestination, written by Gotteschalk, and advocating Calvinistic views, to protest against the doctrine that God, who is life, can possibly predestine anyone to eternal death.] [Footnote 220: Berengar objected to the crudely materialistic theories of the real presence which were then prevalent. He protested against the statement that the transmutation of the elements takes place "vere et sensualiter," and that "portiunculæ" of the body of Christ lie upon the altar. "The mouth," he said, "receives the _sacrament_, the inner man the true body of Christ."] [Footnote 221: Similar teaching from the sacred books of the East is quoted by E. Caird, _Evolution of Religion_, vol. i. p. 355.] [Footnote 222: This is the accepted phrase for the work of the twelfth and thirteenth century theologians. We might also say that they modified uncompromising Platonic Realism by Aristotelian science. Cf. Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. vi. p. 43 (English translation): "Under what other auspices could this great structure be erected than under those of that Aristotelian Realism, which was at bottom a dialectic between the Platonic Realism and Nominalism; and which was represented as capable of uniting immanence and transcendence, history and miracle, the immutability of God and mutability, Idealism and Realism, reason and authority."] [Footnote 223: The great importance of Bernard in the history of Mysticism does not lie in the speculative side of his teaching, in which he depends almost entirely upon Augustine. His great achievement was to recall devout and loving contemplation to the image of the crucified Christ, and to found that worship of our Saviour as the "Bridegroom of the Soul," which in the next centuries inspired so much fervid devotion and lyrical sacred poetry. The romantic side of Mysticism, for good and for evil, received its greatest stimulus in Bernard's Poems and in his Sermons on the Canticles. This subject is dealt with in Appendix E.] [Footnote 224: Stöckl says of Hugo that the course of development of mediæval Mysticism cannot be understood without a knowledge of his writings. Stöckl's own account is very full and clear.] [Footnote 225: The "eye of contemplation" was given us "to see God within ourselves"; this eye has been blinded by sin. The "eye of reason" was given us "to see ourselves"; this has been injured by sin. Only the "eye flesh" remains in its pristine clearness. In things "above reason" we must trust to faith, "quæ non adiuvatur ratione ulla, quoniam non capit ea ratio."] [Footnote 226: Richard, who is more ecstatic than Hugo, gives the following account of this state: "Per mentis excessum extra semetipsum ductus homo ... lumen non per speculum in ænigmate sed in simplici veritate contemplatur." In this state "we forget all that is without and all that is within us." Reason and all other faculties are obscured. What then is our security against delusions? "The transfigured Christ," he says, "must be accompanied by Moses and Elias"; that is to say, visions must not be believed which conflict with the authority of Scripture.] [Footnote 227: See, especially, Stöckl, _Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters_, vol. i. pp. 382-384.] [Footnote 228: It is hardly necessary to point out that St. Paul's distinction between natural and spiritual (see esp. 1 Cor. ii.) is wholly different.] [Footnote 229: Contrast the Plotinian doctrine of ecstasy with the following: "Dieu élève à son grè aux plus hauts sommets, sans aucun mérite préalable. Osanne de Mantoue reçoit le don de la contemplation à peine agée de six ans. Christine est fiancée à dix ans, pendant une extase de trois jours; Marie d'Agrèda reçut des illuminations dès sa première enfance" (Ribet). Since Divine favours are believed to be bestowed in a purely arbitrary manner, the fancies of a child left alone in the dark are as good as the deepest intuitions of saint, poet, or philosopher. Moreover, God sometimes "asserts His liberty" by "elevating souls suddenly and without transition from the abyss of sin to the highest summits of perfection, just as in nature He asserts it by miracles" (Ribet). Such teaching is interesting as showing how the admission of caprice in the world of phenomena reacts upon the moral sense and depraves our conception of God and salvation. The faculty of contemplation, according to Roman Catholic teaching, is acquired "_either_ by virtue _or_ by gratuitous favour." The dualism of natural and supernatural thus allows men to claim independent merit, while the interventions of God are arbitrary and unaccountable.] [Footnote 230: Those who are interested to see how utterly defenceless this theory leaves us against the silliest delusions, may consult with advantage the _Dictionary of Mysticism_, by the Abbé Migne (_passim_), or, if they wish to ascend nearer to the fountain-head of these legends, there are the sixty folio volumes of _Acta Sanctorum_, compiled by the Bollandists. Görres and Ribet are also very full of these stories.] [Footnote 231: See Appendix C.] [Footnote 232: The difference between contemplation and meditation is explained by all the mediæval mystics. Meditation is "discursive," contemplation is "mentis in Deum suspensæ elevatio." Richard of St. Victor states the distinction epigrammatically--"per meditationem rimamur, per contemplationem miramur." ("Admiratio est actus consequens contemplationem sublimis veritatis."--Thomas Aquinas.)] [Footnote 233: This arbitrary schematism is very characteristic of this type of Mysticism, and shows its affinity to Indian philosophy. Compare "the eightfold path of Buddha," and a hundred other similar classifications in the sacred books of the East.] [Footnote 234: The date usually given, 1260, is probably too late; but the exact year cannot be determined.] [Footnote 235: Prof. Karl Pearson (_Mina_, 1886) says, "The Mysticism of Eckhart owes its leading ideas to Averroes." He traces the doctrine of the [Greek: Nous poiêtikos] from Aristotle, _de Anima_, through the Arabs to Eckhart, and finds a close resemblance between the "prototypes" or "ideas" of Eckhart and the "Dinge an sich" of Kant. But Eckhart's affinities with Plotinus and Hegel seem to me to be closer than those which he shows with Aristotle and Kant. On the connexion with Averroes, Lasson says that while there is a close resemblance between the Eckhartian doctrine of the "Seelengrund" and Averroes' _Intellectus Agens_ as the universal principle of reason in all men (monopsychism), they differ in this--that with Averroes personality is a phase or accident, but with Eckhart the eternal is immanent in the personality in such a way that the personality itself has a part in eternity (_Meister Eckhart der Mystiker_, pp. 348, 349). Personality is for Eckhart the eternal ground-form of all true being, and the notion of Person is the centre-point of his system. He says, "The word _I am_ none can truly speak but God alone." The individual must try to become a person, as the Son of God is a Person.] [Footnote 236: Denifle has devoted great pains to proving that Eckhart in his Latin works is very largely dependent upon Aquinas. His conclusions are welcomed and gladly adopted by Harnack, who, like Ritschl, has little sympathy with the German mystics, and considers that Christian Mysticism is really "Catholic piety." "It will never be possible," he says, "to make Mysticism Protestant without flying in the face of history and Catholicism." No one certainly would be guilty of the absurdity of "making Mysticism Protestant"; but it is, I think, even more absurd to "make it (Roman) Catholic," though such a view may unite the suffrages of Romanists and Neo-Kantians. See Appendix A, p. 346.] [Footnote 237: Preger (vol. iii. p. 140) says that Eckhart did _not_ try to be popular. But it is clear, I think, that he did try to make his philosophy intelligible to the average educated man, though his teaching is less ethical and more speculative than that of Tauler.] [Footnote 238: Sometimes he speaks of the Godhead as above the opposition of being and not being; but at other times he regards the Godhead as the universal Ground or Substance of the ideal world. "All things in God are one thing." "God is neither this nor that." Compare, too, the following passage: "(Gottes) einfeltige natur ist von formen formlos, von werden werdelos, von wesen wesenlos, und von sachen sachelos, und darum entgeht sie in allen werdenden dingen, und die endliche dinge müssen da enden."] [Footnote 239: I here agree with Preger against Lasson. It seems to me to be one of the most important and characteristic parts of Eckhart's system, that the Trinity is _not_ for him (as it was for Hierotheus) an emanation or appearance of the Absolute. But it is not to be denied that there are passages in Eckhart which support the other view.] [Footnote 240: Compare Spinoza's "natura naturata."] [Footnote 241: The ideas are "uncreated creatures"; they are "creatures in God but not in themselves." Preger states Eckhart's doctrine thus: "Gott denkt sein Wesen in untergeordnete Weise nachahmbar, und der Reflex dieses Denkens in dem göttlichen Bewusstsein, die Vorstellungen hievon, sind die Ideen." But in what sense is the ideal world "subordinate"? The Son in Eckhart holds quite a different relation to the Father from that which the [Greek: Noûs] holds to "the One" in Plotinus, as the following sentence will show: "God is for ever working in one eternal Now; this working of His is giving birth to His Son; He bears Him at every moment. From this birth proceed all things. God has such delight therein that _He uses up all His power in the process_. He bears Himself out of Himself into Himself. He bears Himself continually in the Son; in Him He speaks all things." The following passage from Ruysbroek is an attempt to define more precisely the nature of the Eckhartian Ideas: Before the temporal creation God saw the creatures, "et agnovit distincte in seipso in alteritate quadam--non tamen omnimoda alteritate; quidquid enim in Deo est Deus est." Our eternal life remains "perpetuo in divina essentia sine discretione," but continually flows out "per æternam Verbi generationem." Ruysbroek also says clearly that creation is the embodiment of the _whole_ mind of God: "Whatever lives in the Father hidden in the unity, lives in the Son 'in emanatione manifesta.'"] [Footnote 242: It is true that Eckhart was censured for teaching "Deum sine ipso nihil facere posse"; but the notion of a real _becoming_ of God in the human mind, and the attempt to solve the problem of evil on the theory of evolutionary optimism, are, I am convinced, alien to his philosophy. See, however, on the other side, Carrière, _Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit_, pp. 152-157.] [Footnote 243: See Lasson, _Meister Eckhart_, p. 351. Eckhart protests vigorously against the misrepresentation that he made the phenomenal world the _Wesen_ of God, and uses strongly acosmistic language in self-defence. But there seems to be a real inconsistency in this side of his philosophy.] [Footnote 244: I mean that a pantheist may with equal consistency call himself an optimist or a pessimist, or both alternately.] [Footnote 245: As when he says, "In God all things are one, from angel to spider." The inquisitors were not slow to lay hold of this error. Among the twenty-six articles of the gravamen against Eckhart we find, "Item, in omni opere, etiam malo, manifestatur et relucet _æqualiter_ gloria Dei." The word _æqualiter_ the stamp of true pantheism. Eckhart, however, whether consistently or not, frequently asserts the transcendence of God. "God is in the creatures, but above them." "He is above all nature, and is not Himself nature," etc. In dealing with _sin_, he is confronted with the obvious difficulty that if it is the nature of all phenomenal things to return to God, from whom they proceeded, the process which he calls the birth of the Son ought logically to occur in every conscious individual, for all have a like phenomenal existence. He attempts to solve this puzzle by the hypothesis of a double aspect of the new birth (see below). But I fear there is some justice in Professor Pearson's comment, "Thus his phenomenology is shattered upon his practical theology."] [Footnote 246: Other scholastics and mystics had taught that there is a _residue_ of the Godlike in man. The idea of a central point of the soul appears in Plotinus and Augustine, and the word _scintilla_ had been used of this faculty before Eckhart. The "synteresis" of Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, was substantially the same. But there is this difference, that while the earlier writers regard this resemblance to God as only a _residue_, Eckhart regards it as the true _Wesen_ of the soul, into which all its faculties may be transformed.] [Footnote 247: The following passage from Amiel (p. 44 of English edition) is an admirable commentary on the mystical doctrine of immanence:--"The centre of life is neither in thought nor in feeling nor in will, nor even in consciousness, so far as it thinks, feels, or wishes. For moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness, there is our being itself, our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which have entered into this last region, which have become ourselves, become spontaneous and involuntary, instinctive and unconscious, are really our life--that is to say, something more than our property. So long as we are able to distinguish any space whatever between the truth and us, we remain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire, the consciousness of life, are not yet quite life. But peace and repose can nowhere be found except in life and in eternal life, and the eternal life is the Divine life, is God. To become Divine is, then, the aim of life: then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of loss, because it is no longer outside of us, nor even in us, but we are it, and it is we; we ourselves are a truth, a will, a work of God. Liberty has become nature; the creature is one with its Creator--one through love."] [Footnote 248: No better exposition of the religious aspect of Eckhart's doctrine of immanence can be found than in Principal Caird's _Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion_, pp. 244, 245, as the following extract will show: "There is therefore a sense in which we can say that the world of finite intelligence, though distinct from God, is still, in its ideal nature, one with Him. That which God creates, and by which He reveals the hidden treasures of His wisdom and love, is still not foreign to His own infinite life, but one with it. In the knowledge of the minds that know Him, in the self-surrender of the hearts that love Him, it is no paradox to affirm that He knows and loves Himself. As He is the origin and inspiration of every true thought and pure affection, of every experience in which we forget and rise above ourselves, so is He also of all these the end. If in one point of view religion is the work of man, in another it is the work of God. Its true significance is not apprehended till we pass beyond its origin in time and in the experience of a finite spirit, to see in it the revelation of the mind of God Himself. In the language of Scripture, 'It is God that worketh in us to will and to do of His good pleasure: all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself.'"] [Footnote 249: Eckhart sees this (cf. Preger, vol. i. p. 421): "Personality in Eckhart is neither the faculties, nor the form (_Bild_), nor the essence, nor the nature of the Godhead, but it is rather the spirit which rises out of the essence, and is born by the irradiation of the form in the essence, which mingles itself with our nature and works by its means." The obscurity of this conception is not made any less by the distinction which Eckhart draws between the outer and inner consciousness in the personality. The outer consciousness is bound up with the earthly life; to it all images must come through sense; but in this way it can have no image of itself. But the higher consciousness is supra-temporal. The potential ground of the soul is and remains sinless; but the personality is also united to the bodily nature; its guilt is that it inclines to its sinful nature instead of to God.] [Footnote 250: Eckhart distinguishes the _intellectus agens_ (_diu wirkende Vernunft_) from the passive (_lîdende_) intellect. The office of the former is to present perceptions to the latter, set out under the forms of time and space. In his Strassburg period, the spark or _Ganster_, the _intellectus agens, diu oberste Vernunft_, and _synteresis_, seem to be identical; but later he says, "The active intellect cannot give what it has not got. It cannot see two ideas together, but only one after another. But if God works in the place of the active intellect, He begets (in the mind) many ideas in one point." Thus the "spark" becomes supra-rational and uncreated--the Divine essence itself.] [Footnote 251: The following sentence, for instance, is in the worst manner of Dionysius: "Thou shalt love God as He is, a non-God, a non-Spirit, a non-Person, a non-Form: He is absolute bare Unity." This is Eckhart's theory of the Absolute ("the Godhead") as distinguished from God. In these moods he wishes, like the Asiatic mystics, to sink in the bottomless sea of the Infinite. He also aspires to absolute [Greek: apatheia] (_Abgeschiedenheit_). "Is he sick? He is as fain to be sick as well. If a friend should die--in the name of God. If an eye should be knocked out--in the name of God." The soul has returned to its pre-natal condition, having rid itself of all "creatureliness."] [Footnote 252: Many passages might be quoted. The ordinary conclusion is that Mary chose the better part, because activity is confined to this life, while contemplation lasts for ever. Augustine treats the story of Leah and Rachel in the same way (_Contra Faust. Manich_. xxii. 52): "Lia interpretatur Laborans, Rachel autem Visum principium, sive Verbum ex quo videtur principium. Actio ergo humanæ mortalisque vitæ ... ipsa est Lia prior uxor Jacob; ac per hoc et infirmis oculis fuisse commemoratur. Spes vero æternæ contemplationis Dei, habens certam et delectabilem intelligentiam veritatis, ipsa est Rachel, unde etiam dicitur bona facie et pulcra specie," etc.] [Footnote 253: Moreover, he is never tired of insisting that the _Will_ is everything. "If your will is right, you cannot go wrong," he says. "With the will I can do everything." "Love resides in the will--the more will, the more love." "There is nothing evil but the evil will, of which sin is the appearance." "The value of human life depends entirely on the aim which it sets before itself." This over-insistence on purity of intention as the end, as well as the beginning, of virtue, is no doubt connected with Eckhart's denial of reality and importance to the world of time; he tries to show that it does not logically lead to Antinomianism. His doctrine that good works have no value in themselves differs from those of Abelard and Bernard, which have a superficial resemblance to it. Eckhart really regards the Catholic doctrine of good works much as St. Paul treated the Pharisaic legalism; but he is as unconscious of the widening gulf which had already opened between Teutonic and Latin Christianity, as of the discredit which his own writings were to help to bring upon the monkish view of life.] [Footnote 254: As an example of his free handling of the Old Testament, I may quote, "Do not suppose that when God made heaven and earth and all things, He made one thing to-day and another to-morrow. Moses says so, of course, but he knew better; he only wrote that for the sake of the populace, who could not have understood otherwise. God merely _willed_ and the world _was_."] [Footnote 255: E.g. "Da der vatter seynen sun in mir gebirt, da byn ich der selb sun und nitt eyn ander."] [Footnote 256: So Hermann of Fritslar says that the soul has two faces, the one turned towards this world, the other immediately to God. In the latter God flows and shines eternally, whether man is conscious of it or not. It is therefore according to man's nature as possessed of this Divine ground, to seek God, his original; and even in hell the suffering there has its source in hopeless contradiction of this indestructible tendency. See Vaughan, vol. i. p. 256; and the same teaching in Tauler, p. 185.] LECTURE V [Greek: "Ho thronos tês theiotêtos ho nous estin êmôn."] MACARIUS. "Thou comest not, thou goest not; Thou wert not, wilt not be; Eternity is but a thought By which we think of Thee." FABER. "Werd als ein Kind, werd taub und blind, Dein eignes Icht muss werden nicht: All Icht, all Nicht treib ferne nur; Lass Statt, lass Zeit, auch Bild lass weit, Geh ohne Weg den schmalen Steg, So kommst du auf der Wüste Spur. O Seele mein, aus Gott geh ein, Sink als ein Icht in Gottes Nicht, Sink in die ungegründte Fluth. Flich ich von Dir, du kommst zu mir, Verlass ich mich, so find ich Dich, O überwesentliches Gut!" _Mediæval German Hymn_. "Quid cælo dabimus? quantum est quo veneat omne? Impendendus homo est, Deus esse ut possit in ipso." MANILIUS. PRACTICAL AND DEVOTIONAL MYSTICISM "We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory."--2 COR. iii. 18. The school of Eckhart[257] in the fourteenth century produced the brightest cluster of names in the history of Mysticism. In Ruysbroek, Suso, Tauler, and the author of the _Theologia Germanica_ we see introspective Mysticism at its best. This must not be understood to mean that they improved upon the philosophical system of Eckhart, or that they are entirely free from the dangerous tendencies which have been found in his works. On the speculative side they added nothing of value, and none of them rivals Eckhart in clearness of intellect. But we find in them an unfaltering conviction that our communion with God must be a fact of experience, and not only a philosophical theory. With the most intense earnestness they set themselves to live through the mysteries of the spiritual life, as the only way to understand and prove them. Suso and Tauler both passed through deep waters; the history of their inner lives is a record of heroic struggle and suffering. The personality of the men is part of their message, a statement which could hardly be made of Dionysius or Erigena, perhaps not of Eckhart himself. John of Ruysbroek, "doctor ecstaticus," as the Church allowed him to be called, was born in 1293, and died in 1381. He was prior of the convent of Grünthal, in the forest of Soignies, where he wrote most of his mystical treatises, under the direct guidance, as he believed, of the Holy Spirit. He was the object of great veneration in the later part of his life. Ruysbroek was not a learned man, or a clear thinker.[258] He knew Dionysius, St. Augustine, and Eckhart, and was no doubt acquainted with some of the other mystical writers; but he does not write like a scholar or a man of letters. He resembles Suso in being more emotional and less speculative than most of the German school. Ruysbroek reverts to the mystical tradition, partially broken by Eckhart, of arranging almost all his topics in three or seven divisions, often forming a progressive scale. For instance, in the treatise "On the Seven Grades of Love," we have the following series, which he calls the "Ladder of Love": (1) goodwill; (2) voluntary poverty; (3) chastity; (4) humility; (5) desire for the glory of God; (6) Divine contemplation, which has three properties--intuition, purity of spirit, and nudity of mind; (7) the ineffable, unnameable transcendence of all knowledge and thought. This arbitrary schematism is the weakest part of Ruysbroek's writings, which contain many deep thoughts. His chief work, _Ordo spiritualium nuptiarum_, is one of the most complete charts of the mystic's progress which exist. The three stages are here the active life (_vita actuosa_), the internal, elevated, or affective life, to which all are not called, and the contemplative life, to which only a few can attain. The three parts of the soul, sensitive, rational, and spiritual, correspond to these three stages. The motto of the active life is the text, "_Ecce sponsus venit; exite obviam ei_." The Bridegroom "comes" three times: He came in the flesh; He comes into us by grace; and He will come to judgment. We must "go out to meet Him," by the three virtues of humility, love, and justice: these are the three virtues which support the fabric of the active life. The ground of all the virtues is humility; thence proceed, in order, obedience, renunciation of our own will, patience, gentleness, piety, sympathy, bountifulness, strength and impulse for all virtues, soberness and temperance, chastity. "This is the active life, which is necessary for us all, if we wish to follow Christ, and to reign with Him in His everlasting kingdom." Above the active rises the inner life. This has three parts. Our intellect must be enlightened with supernatural clearness; we must behold the inner coming of the Bridegroom, that is, the eternal truth; we must "go out" from the exterior to the inner life; we must go to _meet_ the Bridegroom, to enjoy union with His Divinity. Finally, the spirit rises from the inner to the contemplative life. "When we rise above ourselves, and in our ascent to God are made so simple that the love which embraces us is occupied only with itself, above the practice of all the virtues, then we are transformed and die in God to ourselves and to all separate individuality." God unites us with Himself in eternal love, which is Himself. "In this embrace and essential unity with God all devout and inward spirits are one with God by living immersion and melting away into Him; they are by grace one and the same thing with Him, because the same essence is in both." "For what we are, that we intently contemplate; and what we contemplate, that we are; for our mind, our life, and our essence are simply lifted up and united to the very truth, which is God. Wherefore in this simple and intent contemplation we are one life and one spirit with God. And this I call the contemplative life. In this highest stage the soul is united to God without means; it sinks into the vast darkness of the Godhead." In this abyss, he says, following his authorities, "the Persons of the Trinity transcend themselves"; "_there_ is only the eternal essence, which is the substance of the Divine Persons, where we are all one and uncreated, according to our prototypes." Here, "so far as distinction of persons goes, there is no more God nor creature"; "we have lost ourselves and been melted away into the unknown darkness." And yet we remain eternally distinct from God. The creature remains a creature, and loses not its creatureliness. We must be conscious of ourselves in God, and conscious of ourselves in ourselves. For eternal life consists in the knowledge of God, and there can be no knowledge without self-consciousness. If we could be blessed without knowing it, a stone, which has no consciousness, might be blessed. Ruysbroek, it is plain, had no qualms in using the old mystical language without qualification. This is the more remarkable, because he was fully aware of the disastrous consequences which follow from the method of negation and self-deification. For Ruysbroek was an earnest reformer of abuses. He spares no one--popes, bishops, monks, and the laity are lashed in vigorous language for their secularity, covetousness, and other faults; but perhaps his sharpest castigation is reserved for the false mystics. There are some, he says, who mistake mere laziness for holy abstraction; others give the rein to "spiritual self-indulgence"; others neglect all religious exercises; others fall into antinomianism, and "think that nothing is forbidden to them"--"they will gratify any appetite which interrupts their contemplation": these are "by far the worst of all." "There is another error," he proceeds, "of those who like to call themselves 'theopaths.' They take every impulse to be Divine, and repudiate all responsibility. Most of them live in inert sloth." As a corrective to these errors, he very rightly says, "Christ must be the rule and pattern of all our lives"; but he does not see that there is a deep inconsistency between the imitation of Christ as the living way to the Father, and the "negative road" which leads to vacancy.[259] Henry Suso, whose autobiography is a document of unique importance for the psychology of Mysticism, was born in 1295[260]. Intellectually he is a disciple of Eckhart, whom he understands better than Ruysbroek; but his life and character are more like those of the Spanish mystics, especially St. Juan of the Cross. The text which is most often in his mouth is, "Where I am, there shall also My servant be"; which he interprets to mean that only those who have embraced to the full the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, can hope to be united to Him in glory. "No cross, no crown," is the law of life which Suso accepts in all the severity of its literal meaning. The story of the terrible penances which he inflicted on himself for part of his life is painful and almost repulsive to read; but they have nothing in common with the ostentatious self-torture of the fakir. Suso's deeply affectionate and poetical temperament, with its strong human loves and sympathies, made the life of the cloister very difficult for him. He accepted it as the highest life, and strove to conform himself to its ideals; and when, after sixteen years of cruel austerities, he felt that his "refractory body" was finally tamed, he discontinued his mortifications, and entered upon a career of active usefulness. In this he had still heavier crosses to carry, for he was persecuted and falsely accused, while the spiritual consolations which had cheered him in his early struggles were often withdrawn. In his old age, shortly before his death in 1365, he published the history of his life, which is one of the most interesting and charming of all autobiographies. Suso's literary gift is very remarkable. Unlike most ecstatic mystics, who declare on each occasion that "tongue cannot utter" their experiences, Suso's store of glowing and vivid language never fails. The hunger and thirst of the soul for God, and the answering love of Christ manifested in the inner man, have never found a more pure and beautiful expression. In the hope of inducing more readers to become acquainted with this gem of mediæval literature, I will give a few extracts from its pages. "The servitor of the eternal Wisdom," as he calls himself throughout the book, made the first beginning of his perfect conversion to God in his eighteenth year. Before that, he had lived as others live, content to avoid deadly sin; but all the time he had felt a gnawing reproach within him. Then came the temptation to be content with gradual progress, and to "treat himself well." But "the eternal Wisdom" said to him, "He who seeks with tender treatment to conquer a refractory body, wants common sense. If thou art minded to forsake all, do so to good purpose." The stern command was obeyed.[261] Very soon--it is the usual experience of ascetic mystics--he was encouraged by rapturous visions. One such, which came to him on St. Agnes' Day, he thus describes:--"It was without form or mode, but contained within itself the most entrancing delight. His heart was athirst and yet satisfied. It was a breaking forth of the sweetness of eternal life, felt as present in the stillness of contemplation. Whether he was in the body or out of the body, he knew not." It lasted about an hour and a half; but gleams of its light continued to visit him at intervals for some time after. Suso's loving nature, like Augustine's, needed an object of affection. His imagination concentrated itself upon the eternal Wisdom, personified in the Book of Proverbs in female form as a loving mistress, and the thought came often to him, "Truly thou shouldest make trial of thy fortune, whether this high mistress, of whom thou hast heard so much, will become thy love; for in truth thy wild young heart will not remain without a love." Then in a vision he saw her, radiant in form, rich in wisdom, and overflowing with love; it is she who touches the summit of the heavens, and the depths of the abyss, who spreads herself from end to end, mightily and sweetly disposing all things. And she drew nigh to him lovingly, and said to him sweetly, "My son, give me thy heart." At this season there came into his soul a flame of intense fire, which made his heart burn with Divine love. And as a "love token," he cut deep in his breast the name of Jesus, so that the marks of the letters remained all his life, "about the length of a finger-joint." Another time he saw a vision of angels, and besought one of them to show him the manner of God's secret dwelling in the soul. An angel answered, "Cast then a joyous glance into thyself, and see how God plays His play of love with thy loving soul." He looked immediately, and saw that his body over his heart was as clear as crystal, and that in the centre was sitting tranquilly, in lovely form, the eternal Wisdom, beside whom sat, full of heavenly longing, the servitor's own soul, which leaning lovingly towards God's side, and encircled by His arms, lay pressed close to His heart. In another vision he saw "the blessed master Eckhart," who had lately died in disfavour with the rulers of the Church. "He signified to the servitor that he was in exceeding glory, and that his soul was quite transformed, and made Godlike in God." In answer to questions, "the blessed Master" told him that "words cannot tell the manner in which those persons dwell in God who have really detached themselves from the world, and that the way to attain this detachment is to die to self, and to maintain unruffled patience with all men." Very touching is the vision of the Holy Child which came to him in church on Candlemas Day. Kneeling down in front of the Virgin, who appeared to him, "he prayed her to show him the Child, and to suffer him also to kiss it. When she kindly offered it to him, he spread out his arms and received the beloved One. He contemplated its beautiful little eyes, he kissed its tender little mouth, and he gazed again and again at all the infant members of the heavenly treasure. Then, lifting up his eyes, he uttered a cry of amazement that He who bears up the heavens is so great, and yet so small, so beautiful in heaven and so childlike on earth. And as the Divine Infant moved him, so did he act toward it, now singing now weeping, till at last he gave it back to its mother." When at last he was warned by an angel, he says, to discontinue his austerities, "he spent several weeks very pleasantly," often weeping for joy at the thought of the grievous sufferings which he had undergone. But his repose was soon disturbed. One day, as he sat meditating on "life as a warfare," he saw a vision of a comely youth, who vested him in the attire of a knight,[262] saying to him, "Hearken, sir knight! Hitherto thou hast been a squire; now God wills thee to be a knight. And thou shalt have fighting enough!" Suso cried, "Alas, my God! what art Thou about to do unto me? I thought that I had had enough by this time. Show me how much suffering I have before me." The Lord said, "It is better for thee not to know. Nevertheless I will tell thee of three things. Hitherto thou hast stricken thyself. Now I will strike thee, and thou shalt suffer publicly the loss of thy good name. Secondly, where thou shalt look for love and faithfulness, there shalt thou find treachery and suffering. Thirdly, hitherto thou hast floated in Divine sweetness, like a fish in the sea; this will I now withdraw from thee, and thou shalt starve and wither. Thou shalt be forsaken both by God and the world, and whatever thou shalt take in hand to comfort thee shall come to nought." The servitor threw himself on the ground, with arms outstretched to form a cross, and prayed in agony that this great misery might not fall upon him. Then a voice said to him, "Be of good cheer, I will be with thee and aid thee to overcome." The next chapters show how this vision or presentiment was verified. The journeys which he now took exposed him to frequent dangers, both from robbers and from lawless men who hated the monks. One adventure with a murderer is told with delightful simplicity and vividness. Suso remains throughout his life thoroughly human, and, hard as his lot had been, he is in an agony of fear at the prospect of a violent death. The story of the outlaw confessing to the trembling monk how, besides other crimes, he had once pushed into the Rhine a priest who had just heard his confession, and how the wife of the assassin comforted Suso when he was about to drop down from sheer fright, forms a quaint interlude in the saint's memoirs. But a more grievous trial awaited him. Among other pastoral work, he laboured much to reclaim fallen women; and a pretended penitent, whose insincerity he had detected, revenged herself by a slander which almost ruined him.[263] Happily, the chiefs of his order, whose verdict he had greatly dreaded, completely exonerated him, after a full investigation, and his last years seem to have been peaceful and happy. The closing chapters of the Life are taken up by some very interesting conversations with his spiritual "daughter," Elizabeth Stäglin, who wished to understand the obscurer doctrines of Mysticism. She asks him about the doctrine of the Trinity, which he expounds on the general lines of Eckhart's theology. She, however, remembers some of the bolder phrases in Eckhart, and says, "But there are some who say that, in order to attain to perfect union, we must divest ourselves of God, and turn only to the inwardly-shining light." "That is false," replies Suso, "if the words are taken in their ordinary sense. But the common belief about God, that He is a great Taskmaster, whose function is to reward and punish, _is_ cast out by perfect love; and in this sense the spiritual man _does_ divest himself of God, as conceived of by the vulgar. Again, in the highest state of union, the soul takes no note of the Persons _separately_; for it is not the Divine Persons taken singly that confer bliss, but the Three in One." Suso here gives a really valuable turn to one of Eckhart's rashest theses. "_Where_ is heaven?" asks his pupil next. "The intellectual _where_" is the reply, "is the essentially-existing unnameable nothingness. So we must call it, because we can discover no mode of being, under which to conceive of it. But though it seems to us to be no-thing, it deserves to be called something rather than nothing." Suso, we see, follows Dionysius, but with this proviso. The maiden now asks him to give her a figure or image of the self-evolution of the Trinity, and he gives her the figure of concentric circles, such as appear when we throw a stone into a pond. "But," he adds, "this is as unlike the formless truth as a black Moor is unlike the beautiful sun." Soon after, the holy maiden died, and Suso saw her in a vision, radiant and full of heavenly joy, showing him how, guided by his counsels, she had found everlasting bliss. When he came to himself, he said, "Ah, God! blessed is the man who strives after Thee alone! He may well be content to suffer, whose pains Thou rewardest thus. God help us to rejoice in this maiden, and in all His dear friends, and to enjoy His Divine countenance eternally!" So ends Suso's autobiography. His other chief work, a Dialogue between the eternal Wisdom and the Servitor, is a prose poem of great beauty, the tenor of which may be inferred from the above extracts from the Life. Suso believed that the Divine Wisdom had indeed spoken through his pen; and few, I think, will accuse him of arrogance for the words which conclude the Dialogue. "Whosoever will read these writings of mine in a right spirit, can hardly fail to be stirred in his heart's depths, either to fervent love, or to new light, or to longing and thirsting for God, or to detestation and loathing of his sins, or to that spiritual aspiration by which the soul is renewed in grace." John Tauler was born at Strassburg about 1300, and entered a Dominican convent in 1315. After studying at Cologne and Paris, he returned to Strassburg, where, as a Dominican, he was allowed to officiate as a priest, although the town was involved in the great interdict of 1324. In 1339, however, he had to fly to Basel, which was the headquarters of the revivalist society who called themselves "the Friends of God." About 1346 he returned to Strassburg, and was devoted in his ministrations during the "black death" in 1348. He appears to have been strongly influenced by one of the Friends of God, a mysterious layman, who has been identified, probably wrongly, with Nicholas of Basel,[264] and, according to some, dated his "conversion" from his acquaintance with this saintly man. Tauler continued to preach to crowded congregations till his death in 1361. Tauler is a thinker as well as a preacher. Though in most points his teaching is identical with that of Eckhart,[265] he treats all questions in an independent manner, and sometimes, as for instance in his doctrine about the uncreated ground of the soul,[266] he differs from his master. There is also a perceptible change in the stress laid upon certain parts of the system, which brings Tauler nearer than Eckhart to the divines of the Reformation. In particular, his sense of sin is too deep for him to be satisfied with the Neoplatonic doctrine of its negativity, which led Eckhart into difficulties.[267] The little book called the _German Theology_, by an unknown author, also belongs to the school of Eckhart. It is one of the most precious treasures of devotional literature, and deserves to be better known than it is in this country. In some ways it is superior to the famous treatise of à Kempis, _On the Imitation of Christ_, since the self-centred individualism is less prominent. The author thoroughly understands Eckhart, but his object is not to view everything _sub specie oeternitatis_, but to give a practical religious turn to his master's speculations. His teaching is closely in accordance with that of Tauler, whom he quotes as an authority, and whom he joins in denouncing the followers of the "false light," the erratic mystics of the fourteenth century. The practical theology of these four German mystics of the fourteenth century--Ruysbroek, Suso, Tauler, and the writer of the _German Theology_, is so similar that it is possible to consider it in detail without taking each author separately. It is the crowning achievement of Christian Mysticism before the Reformation, except in the English Platonists of the seventeenth century, we shall not find anywhere a sounder and more complete scheme of doctrine built upon this foundation. The distinction drawn by Eckhart between the Godhead and God is maintained in the _German Theology_, and by Ruysbroek. The latter, as we have seen,[268] does not shrink from following the path of analysis to the end, and says plainly that in the Abyss there is no distinction of Divine and human persons, but only the eternal essence. Tauler also bids us "put out into the deep, and let down our nets"; but his "deep" is in the heart, not in the intellect. "My children, you should not ask about these great high problems," he says; and he prefers not to talk much about them, "for no teacher can teach what he has not lived through himself." Still he speaks, like Dionysius and Eckhart, of the "Divine darkness," "the nameless, formless nothing," "the wild waste," and so forth; and says of God that He is "the Unity in which all multiplicity is transcended," and that in Him are gathered up both becoming and being, eternal rest and eternal motion. In this deepest ground, he says, the Three Persons are implicit, not explicit. The Son is the Form of all forms, to which the "eternal, reasonable form created after God's image" (the Idea of mankind) longs to be conformed. The creation of the world, according to Tauler, is rather consonant with than necessary to the nature of God. The world, before it became actual, existed in its Idea in God, and this ideal world was set forth by means of the Trinity. It is in the Son that the Ideas exist "from all eternity." The Ideas are said to be "living," that is, they work as forms, and after the creation of matter act as universals above and in things. Tauler is careful to show that he is not a pantheist. "God is the Being of all beings," he says; "but He is none of all things." God is all, but all is not God; He far transcends the universe in which He is immanent. We look in vain to Tauler for an explanation of the obscurest point in Eckhart's philosophy, as to the relations of the phenomenal to the real. We want clearer evidence that temporal existence is not regarded as something illusory or accidental, an error which may be inconsistent with the theory of immanence as taught by the school of Eckhart, but which is too closely allied with other parts of their scheme. The indwelling of God in the soul is the real centre of Tauler's doctrine, but his psychology is rather intricate and difficult. He speaks of three phases of personal life, the sensuous nature, the reason, and the "third man"--the spiritual life or pure substance of the soul. He speaks also of an "uncreated ground," which is the abyss of the Godhead, but yet "in us," and of a "created ground," which he uses in a double sense, now of the empirical self, which is imperfect and must be purified, and now of the ideal man, as God intended him to be. This latter is "the third man," and is also represented by the "spark" at the "apex of the soul," which is to transform the rest of the soul into its own likeness. The "uncreated ground," in Tauler, works upon us through the medium of the "created ground," and not as in Eckhart, immediately. The "created ground," in this sense, he calls "the Image," which is identical with Eckhart's "spark." It is a creative principle as well as created, like the "Ideas" of Erigena. The _German Theology_ says that "the soul has two eyes,[269]" one of which, the right eye, sees into eternity, the other sees time and the creatures. The "right eye" is practically the same as Eckhart's "spark" and Tauler's "image." It is significant that the author tells us that we cannot see with both eyes together; the left eye must be shut before we can use the right.[270] The passage where this precept is given shows very plainly that the author, like the other fourteenth century mystics,[271] was still under the influence of mediæval dualism--the belief that the Divine begins where the earthly leaves off. It is almost the only point in this "golden little treatise," as Henry More calls it, to which exception must be taken.[272] The essence of sin is self-assertion or self-will, and consequent separation from God. Tauler has, perhaps, a deeper sense of sin than any of his predecessors, and he revives the Augustinian (anti-Pelagian) teaching on the miserable state of fallen humanity. Sensuality and pride, the two chief manifestations of self-will, have invaded the _whole_ of our nature. Pride is a sin of the spirit, and the poison has invaded "even the ground"--the "created ground," that is, as the unity of all the faculties. It will be remembered that the Neoplatonic doctrine was that the spiritual part of our nature can take no defilement. Tauler seems to believe that under one aspect the "created ground" is the transparent medium of the Divine light, but in this sense it is only potentially the light of our whole body. He will not allow the sinless _apex mentis_ to be identified with the personality. Separation from God is the source of all misery. Therein lies the pain of hell. The human soul can never cease to yearn and thirst after God; "and the greatest pain" of the lost "is that this longing can never be satisfied." In the _German Theology_, the necessity of rising above the "I" and "mine" is treated as the great saving truth. "When the creature claimeth for its own anything good, it goeth astray." "The more of self and me, the more of sin and wickedness. Be simply and wholly bereft of self." "So long as a man seeketh his own highest good _because_ it is his, he will never find it. For so long as he doeth this, he seeketh himself, and deemeth that he himself is the highest good." (These last sentences are almost verbally repeated in a sermon by John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist.) The three stages of the mystic's ascent appear in Tauler's sermons. We have first to practise self-control, till all our lower powers are governed by our highest reason. "Jesus cannot speak in the temple of thy soul till those that sold and bought therein are cast out of it." In this stage we must be under strict rule and discipline. "The old man must be subject to the old law, till Christ be born in him of a truth." Of the second stage he says, "Wilt thou with St. John rest on the loving breast of our Lord Jesus Christ, thou must be transformed into His beauteous image by a constant, earnest contemplation thereof." It is possible that God may will to call thee higher still; then let go all forms and images, and suffer Him to work with thee as His instrument. To some the very door of heaven has been opened--"this happens to some with a convulsion of the mind, to others calmly and gradually." "It is not the work of a day nor of a year." "Before it can come to pass, nature must endure many a death, outward and inward." In the first stage of the "dying life," he says elsewhere, we are much oppressed by the sense of our infirmities, and by the fear of hell. But in the third, "all our griefs and joys are a sympathy with Christ, whose earthly life was a mingled web of grief and joy, and this life He has left as a sacred testament to His followers." These last extracts show that the Cross of Christ, and the imitation of His life on earth, have their due prominence in Tauler's teaching. It is, of course, true that for him, as for all mystics, Christ _in_ us is more than Christ _for_ us. But it is unfair to put it in this way, as if the German mystics wished to contrast the two views of redemption, and to exalt one at the expense of the other. Tauler's wish is to give the historical redemption its true significance, by showing that it is an universal as well as a particular fact. When he says, "We should worship Christ's humanity only in union with this divinity," he is giving exactly the same caution which St. Paul expresses in the verse about "knowing Christ after the flesh." In speaking of the highest of the three stages, passages were quoted which advocate a purely passive state of the will and intellect.[273] This quietistic tendency cannot be denied in the fourteenth century mystics, though it is largely counteracted by maxims of an opposite kind. "God draws us," says Tauler, "in three ways, first, by His creatures; secondly, by His voice in the soul, when an eternal truth mysteriously suggests itself, as happens not infrequently in morning sleep." (This is interesting, being evidently the record of personal experience.) "Thirdly, without resistance or means, when the will is quite subdued." "What is given through means is tasteless; it is seen through a veil, and split up into fragments, and bears with it a certain sting of bitterness." There are other passages in which he is obviously under the influence of Dionysius; as when he speaks of "dying to all distinctions"; in fact, he at times preaches "simplification" in an unqualified form. But, on the other hand, no Christian teachers have made more of the _active will_ than these pupils of Eckhart.[274] "Ye are as holy as ye truly will to be holy," says Ruysbroek. "With the will one may do everything," we read in Tauler. And against the perversion of the "negative road" he says, "we must lop and prune vices, not nature, which is in itself good and noble." And "Christ Himself never arrived at the 'emptiness' of which these men (the false mystics) talk." Of contemplation he says, "Spiritual enjoyments are the food of the soul, and are only to be taken for nourishment and support to help us in our active work." "Sloth often makes men fain to be excused from their work and set to contemplation. Never trust in a virtue that has not been put into practice." These pupils of Eckhart all led strenuous lives themselves, and were no advocates of pious indolence. Tauler says, "Works of love are more acceptable to God than lofty contemplation": and, "All kinds of skill are gifts of the Holy Ghost.[275]" The process of deification is thus described by Ruysbroek and by Tauler. Ruysbroek writes: "All men who are exalted above their creatureliness into a contemplative life are one with this Divine glory--yea, _are_ that glory. And they see and feel and find in themselves, by means of this Divine light, that they are the same simple Ground as to their uncreated nature, since the glory shineth forth without measure, after the Divine manner, and abideth within them simply and without mode, according to the simplicity of the essence. Wherefore contemplative men should rise above reason and distinction, beyond their created substance, and gaze perpetually by the aid of their inborn light, and so they become transformed, and one with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see. Thus they arrive at that eternal image after which they were created, and contemplate God and all things without distinction, in a simple beholding, in Divine glory. This is the loftiest and most profitable contemplation to which men attain in this life." Tauler, in his sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, says: "The kingdom is seated in the inmost recesses of the spirit. When, through all manner of exercises, the outward man has been converted into the inward reasonable man, and thus the two, that is to say, the powers of the senses and the powers of the reason, are gathered up into the very centre of the man's being,--the unseen depths of his spirit, wherein lies the image of God,--and thus he flings himself into the Divine Abyss, in which he dwelt eternally before he was created; then when God finds the man thus firmly down and turned towards Him, the Godhead bends and nakedly descends into the depths of the pure waiting soul, and transforms the created soul, drawing it up into the uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes one with Him. Could such a man behold himself, he would see himself so noble that he would fancy himself God, and see himself a thousand times nobler than he is in himself, and would perceive all the thoughts and purposes, words and works, and have all the knowledge of all men that ever were." Suso and the _German Theology_ use similar language. The idea of deification startles and shocks the modern reader. It astonishes us to find that these earnest and humble saints at times express themselves in language which surpasses the arrogance even of the Stoics. We feel that there must be something wrong with a system which ends in obliterating the distinction between the Creator and His creatures. We desire in vain to hear some echo of Job's experience, so different in tone: "I have heard Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; _therefore_ I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." The proper effect of the vision of God is surely that which Augustine describes in words already quoted: "I tremble, and I burn. I tremble, in that I am unlike Him; I burn, in that I am like Him." Nor is this only the beginner's experience: St. Paul had almost "finished his course" when he called himself the chief of sinners. The joy which uplifts the soul, when it feels the motions of the Holy Spirit, arises from the fact that in such moments "the spirit's true endowments stand out plainly from its false ones"; we then see the "countenance of our genesis," as St. James calls it--the man or woman that God meant us to be, and know that we could _not_ so see it if we were wholly cut off from its realisation. But the clearer the vision of the ideal, the deeper must be our self-abasement when we turn our eyes to the actual. We must not escape from this sharp and humiliating contrast by mentally annihilating the self, so as to make it impossible to say, "Look on this picture, and on _this_." Such false humility leads straight to its opposite--extreme arrogance. Moreover, to regard deification as an accomplished fact, involves, as I have said (p. 33), a contradiction. The process of unification with the Infinite _must_ be a _progressus ad infinitum_. The pessimistic conclusion is escaped by remembering that the highest reality is supra-temporal, and that the destiny which God has designed for us has not merely a contingent realisation, but is in a sense already accomplished. There are, in fact, two ways in which we may abdicate our birthright, and surrender the prize of our high calling: we may count ourselves already to have apprehended, which must be a grievous delusion, or we may resign it as unattainable, which is also a delusion. These truths were well known to Tauler and his brother-mystics, who were saints as well as philosophers. If they retained language which appears to us so objectionable, it must have been because they felt that the doctrine of union with God enshrined a truth of great value. And if we remember the great Mystical paradox, "He that will lose his life shall save it," we shall partly understand how they arrived at it. It is quite true that the nearer we approach to God, the wider seems to yawn the gulf that separates us from Him, till at last we feel it to be infinite. But does not this conviction itself bring with it unspeakable comfort? How could we be aware of that infinite distance, if there were not something within us which can span the infinite? How could we feel that God and man are incommensurable, if we had not the witness of a higher self immeasurably above our lower selves? And how blessed is the assurance that this higher self gives us access to a region where we may leave behind not only external troubles and "the provoking of all men," but "the strife of tongues" in our own hearts, the chattering and growling of the "ape and tiger" within us, the recurring smart of old sins repented of, and the dragging weight of innate propensities! In this state the will, desiring nothing save to be conformed to the will of God, and separating itself entirely from all lower aims and wishes, claims the right of an immortal spirit to attach itself to eternal truth alone, having nothing in itself, and yet possessing all things in God. So Tauler says, "Let a man lovingly cast all his thoughts and cares, and his sins too, as it were, on that unknown Will. O dear child! in the midst of all these enmities and dangers, sink thou into thy ground and nothingness. Let the tower with all its bells fall on thee; yea, let all the devils in hell storm out upon thee; let heaven and earth and all the creatures assail thee, all shall but marvellously serve thee; sink thou into thy nothingness, and the better part shall be thine." This hope of a real transformation of our nature by the free gift of God's grace is the _only_ message of comfort for those who are tied and bound by the chain of their sins. The error comes in, as I have said before, when we set before ourselves the idea of God the Father, or of the Absolute, instead of Christ, as the object of imitation. Whenever we find such language as that quoted from Ruysbroek, about "rising above all distinctions," we may be sure that this error has been committed. Mystics of all times would have done well to keep in their minds a very happy phrase which Irenæus quotes from some unknown author, "He spoke well who said that the infinite (_immensum_) Father is _measured_ (_mensuratum_) in the Son: _mensura enim Patris Filius_.[276]" It is to this "measure," not to the immeasureable, that we are bidden to aspire. Eternity is, for Tauler, "the everlasting Now"; but in his popular discourses he uses the ordinary expressions about future reward and punishment, even about hell fire; though his deeper thought is that the hopeless estrangement of the soul from God is the source of all the torments of the lost. Love, says Tauler, is the "beginning, middle, and end of virtue." Its essence is complete self-surrender. We must lose ourselves in the love of God as a drop of water is lost in the ocean. It only remains to show how Tauler combats the fantastic errors into which some of the German mystics had fallen in his day. The author of the _German Theology_ is equally emphatic in his warnings against the "false light"; and Ruysbroek's denunciation of the Brethren of the Free Spirit has already been quoted. Tauler, in an interesting sermon[277], describes the heady arrogance, disorderly conduct, and futile idleness of these fanatics, and then gives the following maxims, by which we may distinguish the false Mysticism from the true. "Now let us know how we may escape these snares of the enemy. No one can be free from the observance of the laws of God and the practice of virtue. No one can unite himself to God in emptiness without true love and desire for God. No one can be holy without becoming holy, without good works. No one may leave off doing good works. No one may rest in God without love for God. No one can be exalted to a stage which he has not longed for or felt." Finally, he shows how the example of Christ forbids all the errors which he is combating. The _Imitation of Christ_ has been so often spoken of as the finest flower of Christian Mysticism, that it is impossible to omit all reference to it in these Lectures. And yet it is not, properly speaking, a mystical treatise. It is the ripe fruit of mediæval Christianity as concentrated in the life of the cloister, the last and best legacy, in this kind, of a system which was already decaying; but we find in it hardly a trace of that independence which made Eckhart a pioneer of modern philosophy, and the fourteenth century mystics forerunners of the Reformation. Thomas à Kempis preaches a Christianity of the _heart_; but he does not exhibit the distinguishing characteristics of Mysticism. The title by which the book is known is really the title of the first section only, and it does not quite accurately describe the contents of the book. Throughout the treatise we feel that we are reading a defence of the recluse and his scheme of life. Self-denial, renunciation of the world, prayer and meditation, utter humility and purity, are the road to a higher joy, a deeper peace, than anything which the world can give us. There are many sentences which remind us of the Roman Stoics, whose main object was by detachment from the world to render themselves invulnerable. Not that Thomas à Kempis shrinks from bearing the Cross. The Cross of Christ is always before him, and herein he is superior to those mystics who speak only of the Incarnation. But the monk of the fifteenth century was perhaps more thrown back upon himself than his predecessors in the fourteenth. The monasteries were no longer such homes of learning and centres of activity as they had been. It was no longer evident that the religious orders were a benefit to civilisation. That indifference to human interests, which we feel to be a weak spot in mediæval thought generally, and in the Neoplatonists to whom mediæval thought was so much indebted, reaches its climax in Thomas à Kempis. Not only does he distrust and disparage all philosophy, from Plato to Thomas Aquinas, but he shuns society and conversation as occasions of sin, and quotes with approval the pitiful epigram of Seneca, "Whenever I have gone among men, I have returned home less of a man." It is, after all, the life of the "shell-fish," as Plato calls it, which he considers the best. The book cannot safely be taken as a guide to the Christian life as a whole. What we do find in it, set forth with incomparable beauty and unstudied dignity, are the Christian graces of humility, simplicity, and purity of heart. It is very significant that the mystics, who had undermined sacerdotalism, and in many other ways prepared the Reformation, were shouldered aside when the secession from Rome had to be organised. The Lutheran Church was built by other hands. And yet the mystics of Luther's generation, Carlstadt and Sebastian Frank, are far from deserving the contemptuous epithets which Luther showered upon them. Carlstadt endeavoured to deepen the Lutheran notion of faith by bringing it into closer connexion with the love of God to man and of man to God; Sebastian Frank developed the speculative system of Eckhart and Tauler in an original and interesting manner. But speculative Mysticism is a powerful solvent, and Protestant Churches are too ready to fall to pieces even without it. "I will not even answer such men as Frank," said Luther in 1545; "I despise them too much. If my nose does not deceive me, he is an enthusiast or spiritualist, who is content with nothing but Spirit, spirit, spirit, and cares not at all for Bible, Sacrament, or Preaching." The teaching which the sixteenth century spurned so contemptuously was almost identical with that of Eckhart and Tauler, whose names were still revered. But it was not wanted just then. It was not till the next generation, when superstitious veneration for the letter of Scripture was bringing back some of the evils of the unreformed faith, that Mysticism in the person of Valentine Weigel was able to resume its true task in the deepening and spiritualising of religion in Germany. But instead of following any further the course of mystical theology in Germany, I wish to turn for a few minutes to our own country. I am the more ready to do so, because I have come across the statement, repeated in many books, that England has been a barren field for mystics. It is assumed that the English character is alien to Mysticism--that we have no sympathy, as a nation, for this kind of religion. Some writers hint that it is because we are too practical, and have too much common sense. The facts do not bear out this view. There is no race, I think, in which there is a richer vein of idealism, and a deeper sense of the mystery of life, than our own. In a later Lecture I hope to illustrate this statement from our national poetry. Here I wish to insist that even the Mysticism of the cloister, which is the least satisfying to the energetic and independent spirit of our countrymen, might be thoroughly and adequately studied from the works of English mystics alone. I will give two examples of this mediæval type. Both of them lived before the Reformation, near the end of the fourteenth century; but in them, as in Tauler, we find very few traces of Romish error. Walter Hilton or Hylton[278], a canon of Thurgarton, was the author of a mystical treatise, called _The Scale (or Ladder) of Perfection_. The following extracts, which are given as far as possible in his own words, will show in what manner he used the traditional mystical theology. There are two lives, the active and the contemplative, but in the latter there are many stages. The highest state of contemplation a man cannot enjoy always, "but only by times, when he is visited"; "and, as I gather from the writings of holy men, the time of it is very short." "This part of contemplation God giveth where He will." Visions and revelations, of whatever kind, "are not true contemplation, but merely secondary. The devil may counterfeit them"; and the only safeguard against these impostures is to consider whether the visions have helped or hindered us in devotion to God, humility, and other virtues. "In the third stage of contemplation," he says finely, "reason is turned into light, and will into love." "Spiritual prayer," by which he means vocal prayer not in set words, belongs to the second part of contemplation. "It is very wasting to the body of him who uses it much, wounding the soul with the blessed sword of love." "The most vicious or carnal man on earth, were he once strongly touched with this sharp sword, would be right sober and grave for a great while after." The highest kind of prayer of all is the prayer of quiet, of which St. Paul speaks, "I will pray with the understanding also[279]." But this is not for all; "a pure heart, indeed, it behoveth him to have who would pray in this manner." We must fix our affections first on the humanity of Christ. Since our eyes cannot bear the unclouded light of the Godhead, "we must live under the shadow of His manhood as long as we are here below." St. Paul tells his converts that he first preached to them of the humanity and passion of Christ, but afterwards of the Godhead, how that Christ is the power and wisdom of God[280]. "Christ is lost, like the piece of money in the parable; but where? In thy house, that is, in thy soul. Thou needest not run to Rome or Jerusalem to seek Him. He sleepeth in thy heart, as He did in the ship; awaken Him with the loud cry of thy desire. Howbeit, I believe that thou sleepest oftener to Him than He to thee." Put away "distracting noises," and thou wilt hear Him. First, however, find the image of sin, which thou bearest about with thee. It is no bodily thing, no real thing--only a lack of light and love. It is a false, inordinate love of thyself, from whence flow all the deadly sins. "Fair and foul is a man's soul--foul without like a beast, fair within like an angel." "But the sensual man doth not bear about the image of sin, but is borne by it." The true light is love of God, the false light is love of the world. But we must pass through darkness to go from one to the other. "The darker the night is, the nearer is the true day." This is the "darkness" and "nothing" spoken of by the mystics, "a rich nothing," when the soul is "at rest as to thoughts of any earthly thing, but very busy about thinking of God." "But the night passeth away; the day dawneth." "Flashes of light shine through the chinks of the walls of Jerusalem; but thou art not there yet." "But now beware of the midday fiend, that feigneth light as if it came from Jerusalem. This light appears between two black rainy clouds, whereof the upper one is presumption and self-exaltation, and the lower a disdaining of one's neighbour. This is not the light of the true sun." This darkness, through which we must pass, is simply the death of self-will and all carnal affections; it is that dying to the world which is the only gate of life. The way in which Hilton conceives the "truly mystical darkness" of Dionysius is very interesting. As a psychical experience, it has its place in the history of the inner life. The soul _does_ enter into darkness, and the darkness is not fully dispelled in this world; "thou art not there yet," as he says. But the psychical experience is in Hilton _entirely dissociated_ from the metaphysical idea of absorption into the Infinite. The chains of Asiatic nihilism are now at last shaken off, easily and, it would seem, unconsciously. The "darkness" is felt to be only the herald of a brighter dawn: "the darker the night, the nearer is the true day." It is, I think, gratifying to observe how our countryman strikes off the fetters of the time-honoured Dionysian tradition, the paralysing creed which blurs all distinctions, and the "negative road" which leads to darkness and not light; and how in consequence his Mysticism is sounder and saner than even that of Eckhart or Tauler. Before leaving Hilton, it may be worth while to quote two or three isolated maxims of his, as examples of his wise and pure doctrine. "There are two ways of knowing God--one chiefly by the imagination, the other by the understanding. The understanding is the mistress, and the imagination is the maid." "What is heaven to a reasonable soul? Nought else but Jesus God." "Ask of God nothing but this gift of love, which is the Holy Ghost. For there is no gift of God that is both the giver and the gift, but this gift of love." My other example of English Mysticism in the Middle Ages is Julian or Juliana of Norwich,[281] to whom were granted a series of "revelations" in the year 1373, she being then about thirty years old. She describes with evident truthfulness the manner in which the visions came to her. She ardently desired to have a "bodily sight" of her Lord upon the Cross, "like other that were Christ's lovers"; and she prayed that she might have "a grievous sickness almost unto death," to wean her from the world and quicken her spiritual sense. The sickness came, and the vision; for they thought her dying, and held the crucifix before her, till the figure on the Cross changed into the semblance of the living Christ. "All this was showed by three parts--that is to say, by bodily sight, and by words formed in my understanding, and by ghostly sight.[282]" "But the ghostly sight I cannot nor may not show it as openly nor as fully as I would." Her later visions came to her sometimes during sleep, but most often when she was awake. The most pure and certain were wrought by a "Divine illapse" into the spiritual part of the soul, the mind and understanding, for these the devil cannot counterfeit. Juliana was certainly perfectly honest and perfectly sane. The great charm of her little book is the sunny hopefulness and happiness which shines from every page, and the tender affection for her suffering Lord which mingles with her devotion without ever becoming morbid or irreverent. It is also interesting to see how this untaught maiden (for she shows no traces of book learning) is led by the logic of the heart straight to some of the speculative doctrines which we have found in the philosophical mystics. The brief extracts which follow will illustrate all these statements. The crucified Christ is the one object of her devotion. She refused to listen to "a proffer in my reason," which said, "Look up to heaven to His Father." "Nay, I may not," she replied, "for Thou art my heaven. For I would liever have been in that pain till Doomsday than to come to heaven otherwise than by Him." "Me liked none other heaven than Jesus, which shall be my bliss when I come there." And after describing a vision of the crucifixion, she says, "How might any pain be more than to see Him that is all my life and all my bliss suffer?" Her estimate of the value of means of grace is very clear and sound. "In that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind, how we use, for lack of understanding and knowing of love, to make [use of] many means. Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God and more very delight that we faithfully pray to Himself of His goodness, and cleave thereto by His grace, with true understanding and steadfast by love, than if we made [use of] all the means that heart can think. For if we made [use of] all these means, it is too little, and not full worship to God; but in His goodness is all the whole, and _there_ faileth right nought. For this, as I shall say, came into my mind. In the same time we pray to God for [the sake of] His holy flesh and precious blood, His holy passion, His dearworthy death and wounds: and all the blessed kinship, the endless life that we have of all this, is His goodness. And we pray Him for [the sake of] His sweet mother's love, that Him bare; and all the help that we have of her is of His goodness." And yet "God of His goodness hath advanced means to help us, full fair and many; of which the chief and principal mean is the blessed nature that He took of the maid, with all the means that go afore and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless salvation. Wherefore it pleaseth Him that we seek Him and worship Him through means, understanding and knowing that He is the goodness of all. For the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need. It quickeneth our soul, and bringeth it on life, and maketh it for to wax in grace and virtue. It is nearest in nature and readiest in grace; for it is the same grace that the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know verily that He hath us all in Himself beclosed." "After this our Lord showed concerning Prayers. In which showing I see two conditions signified by our Lord; one is rightfulness, another is assured trust. But oftentimes our trust is not full; for we are not sure that God heareth us, as we think because of our unworthiness, and because we feel right nought; for we are as barren and dry oftentimes after our prayers as we were before.... But our Lord said to me, 'I am the ground of thy beseechings: first, it is My will that thou have it; and then I make thee to wish for it; and then I make thee to beseech it, and thou beseechest it. How then should it be that thou shouldest not have thy beseeching?' ... For it is most impossible that we should beseech mercy and grace and not have it. For all things that our good Lord maketh us to beseech, Himself hath ordained them to us from without beginning. Here may we see that our beseeching is not the cause of God's goodness; and that showed He soothfastly in all these sweet words which He saith: 'I am the ground.' And our good Lord willeth that this be known of His lovers in earth; and the more that we know it the more should we beseech, if it be wisely taken; and so is our Lord's meaning. Merry and joyous is our Lord of our prayer, and He looketh for it; and He willeth to have it; because with His grace He would have us like to Himself in condition as we are in kind. Therefore saith He to us 'Pray inwardly, although thou think it has no savour to thee: for it is profitable, though thou feel not, though thou see not, yea, though thou think thou canst not.'" "And also to prayer belongeth thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a true inward knowing, with great reverence and lovely dread turning ourselves with all our mights unto the working that our good Lord stirreth us to, rejoicing and thanking inwardly. And sometimes for plenteousness it breaketh out with voice and saith: Good Lord! great thanks be to Thee: blessed mote Thou be." "Prayer is a right understanding of that fulness of joy that is to come, with great longing and certain trust.... Then belongeth it to us to do our diligence, and when we have done it, then shall we yet think that it is nought; and in sooth it is. But if we do as we can, and truly ask for mercy and grace, all that faileth us we shall find in Him. And thus meaneth He where He saith: 'I am the ground of thy beseeching.' And thus in this blessed word, with the Showing, I saw a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads." Juliana's view of human personality is remarkable, as it reminds us of the Neoplatonic doctrine that there is a higher and a lower self, of which the former is untainted by the sins of the latter. "I saw and understood full surely," she says, "that in every soul that shall be saved there is a godly will that never assented to sin, nor ever shall; which will is so good that it may never work evil, but evermore continually it willeth good, and worketh good in the sight of God.... We all have this blessed will whole and safe in our Lord Jesus Christ." This "godly will" or "substance" corresponds to the spark of the German mystics. "I saw no difference," she says, "between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God. And yet my understanding took, that our substance is _in_ God--that is to say, that God is God, and our substance a creature in God. Highly ought we to enjoy that God dwelleth in our soul, and much more highly, that our soul dwelleth in God.... Thus was my understanding led to know, that our soul is _made_ Trinity, like to the unmade Blessed Trinity, known and loved from without beginning, and in the making oned to the Maker. This sight was full sweet and marvellous to behold, peaceable and restful, sure and delectable." "As anent our substance and our sense-part, both together may rightly be called our soul; and that is because of the oneing that they have in God. The worshipful City that our Lord Jesus sitteth in, it is our sense-soul, in which He is enclosed, and our natural substance is beclosed in Jesus, sitting with the blessed soul of Christ at rest in the Godhead." Our soul cannot reach its full powers until our sense-nature by the virtue of Christ's passion be "brought up to the substance." This fulfilment of the soul "is grounded in nature. That is to say, our reason is grounded in God, which is substantial Naturehood; out of this substantial Nature mercy and grace spring and spread into us, working all things in fulfilling of our joy: these are our ground, in which we have our increase and our fulfilling. For in nature we have our life and our being, and in mercy and grace we have our increase and our fulfilling." In one of her visions she was shown our Lord "scorning the fiend's malice, and noughting his unmight." "For this sight I laught mightily, and that made them to laugh that were about me. But I saw not Christ laugh. After this I fell into graveness, and said, 'I see three things: I see game, scorn, and earnest. I see game, that the fiend is overcome; I see scorn, in that God scorneth him, and he shall be scorned; and I see earnest, in that he is overcome by the blissful passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that was done in full earnest and with sober travail.'" Alternations of mirth and sadness followed each other many times, "to learn me that it is speedful to some souls to feel on this wise." Once especially she was left to herself, "in heaviness and weariness of my life, and irksomeness of myself, that scarcely I could have pleasure to live.... For profit of a man's soul he is sometimes left to himself; although sin is not always the cause; for in that time I sinned not, wherefore I should be so left to myself; for it was so sudden. Also, I deserved not to have this blessed feeling. But freely our Lord giveth when He will, and suffereth us to be in woe sometime. And both is one love." Her treatment of the problem of evil is very characteristic. "In my folly, often I wondered why the beginning of sin was not letted; but Jesus, in this vision, answered and said, 'Sin is behovable,[283] but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' In this naked word _sin_ our Lord brought to my mind generally all that is not good.... But I saw not sin; for I believe it had no manner of substance, nor any part of being, nor might it be known but by the pain that is caused thereof; and this pain ... purgeth and maketh us to know ourself, and ask mercy. In these same words ('all shall be well') I saw an high and marvellous privity hid in God." She wondered _how_ "all shall be well," when Holy Church teacheth us to believe that many shall be lost. But "I had no other answer but this, 'I shall save my word in all things, and I shall make all thing well.'" "This is the great deed that our Lord God shall do; but what the deed shall be, and how it shall be done, there is no creature beneath Christ that knoweth it, ne shall wit it till it is done." "I saw no wrath but on man's party," she says, "and that forgiveth He in us. It is the most impossible that may be, that God should be wroth.... Our life is all grounded and rooted in love.... Suddenly is the soul oned to God, when it is truly peaced in itself; for in Him is found no wrath. And thus I saw, when we be all in peace and love, we find no contrariousness, nor no manner of letting, through that contrariousness which is now in us; nay, our Lord God of His goodness maketh it to us full profitable." No visions of hell were ever showed to her. In place of the hideous details of torture which some of the Romish visionaries describe almost with relish, Juliana merely reports, "To me was showed none harder hell than sin." Again and again she rings the changes on the words which the Lord said to her, "I love thee and thou lovest Me, and our love shall never be disparted in two." "The love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning; in which love," she concludes, "we have our beginning, and all this shall be seen in God without end." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 257: The indebtedness of the fourteenth century mystics to Eckhart is now generally recognised, at any rate in Germany; but before Pfeiffer's work his name had been allowed to fall into most undeserved obscurity. This was not the fault of his scholars, who, in spite of the Papal condemnation of his writings, speak of Eckhart with the utmost reverence, as the "great," "sublime," or "holy" master.] [Footnote 258: "Vir ut ferunt devotus sed parum litteratus," says the Abbé Trithême (_ap._ Gessner, _Biblioth._). "Rusbrochius cum idiota esset" (_Dyon. Carth._ Serm. i.). Compare Rousselot, _Les Mystiques Espagnols_, p. 493.] [Footnote 259: Maeterlinck, Ruysbroek's latest interpreter, is far too complimentary to the intellectual endowments of his fellow-countryman. "Ce moine possédait un des plus sages, des plus exacts, et des plus subtils organes philosophiques qui aient jamais existé." He thinks it marvellous that "il sait, à son insu, le platonisme de la Grèce, le soufisme de la Perse, le brahmanisme de I'Inde et le bouddhisme de Thibet," etc. In reality, Ruysbroek gets all his philosophy from Eckhart, and his manner of expounding it shows no abnormal acuteness. But Maeterlinck's essay in _Le Trésor des Humbles_ contains some good things--e.g. "Les verités mystiques ne peuvent ni vieillir ni mourir.... Une oeuvre ne vieillit qu'en proportion de son antimysticisme."] [Footnote 260: So Preger, probably rightly. Noack places his birth five years later. The chronology of the _Life_ is very loose.] [Footnote 261: The extreme asceticism which was practised by Suso, and (though to a less degree) by Tauler, is not enjoined by them as a necessary part of a holy life. "We are to kill our passions, not our flesh and blood," as Tauler says.] [Footnote 262: It would be very interesting to trace the influence of the chivalric idea on religious Mysticism. Chivalry, the worship of idealised womanhood, is itself a mystical cult, and its relation to religious Mysticism appears throughout the "Divine Comedy" and "Vita Nuova" (see especially the incomparable paragraph which concludes this latter), and in the sonnet of M. Angelo translated by Wordsworth, "No mortal object did these eyes behold," etc.] [Footnote 263: Nothing in the book is more touching than the scene when the baby, deserted by its mother, Suso's false accuser, is brought to him. Suso takes the child in his arms, and weeps over it with affectionate words, while the infant smiles up at him. In spite of the calumny which he knew was being spread wherever it would most injure him, he insists on paying for the child's maintenance, rather than leave it to die from neglect. The Italian mystic Scupoli, the author of a beautiful devotional work called the _Spiritual Combat_, was calumniated in a similar manner.] [Footnote 264: By Schmidt, whose researches formed the basis of several popular accounts of Tauler's life. Preger and Denifle both reject the identification of the mysterious stranger with Nicholas; Denifle doubts his existence altogether. The subject is very fully discussed by Preger] [Footnote 265: Tauler was well read in the earlier mystics. He cites Proclus, Augustine (frequently), Dionysius, Bernard, and the Victorines; also Aristotle and Aquinas.] [Footnote 266: Tauler adheres to the doctrine of an "uncreated ground," but he holds that it must always act upon us through the medium of the "created ground." He evidently considered Eckhart's later doctrine as too pantheistic. See below, p. 183.] [Footnote 267: See p. 155. In my estimate of Tauler's doctrine, I have made no use of the treatise on _The Imitation of the Poverty of Christ_, which Noack calls his masterpiece, and the kernel of his Mysticism. The work is not by Tauler.] [Footnote 268: See above, p. 170.] [Footnote 269: This expression is found first, I think, in Richard of St. Victor; but St. Augustine speaks of "oculus interior atque intelligibilis" (_De div. quæst._ 46).] [Footnote 270: But Christ, he says, could see with both eyes at once; the left in no way hindered the right.] [Footnote 271: Tauler often uses similar language; as, for instance, when he says, "The natural light of the reason must be entirely brought to nothing, if God is to enter with His light."] [Footnote 272: Stöckl criticises the _Theologia Germanica_ in a very hostile spirit. He finds it in "pantheism," by which he means acosmism, and also "Gnostic-Manichean dualism," the latter being his favourite charge against the Lutherans and their forerunners. He considers that this latter tendency is more strongly marked in the _German Theology_ than in the other works of the Eckhartian school, in that the writer identifies "the false light" with the light of nature, and selfhood with sin; "devil, sin, Adam, old man, disobedience, selfhood, individuality, mine, me, nature, self-will, are all the same; they all represent what is against God and without God." Accordingly, salvation consists in annihilation of the self, and substitution for God for it. There is no doubt that the writer of this treatise is deeply impressed with the belief that the root of sin is self-will, and that the new birth must be a complete transformation; but it must be remembered that the language of piety is less guarded than that of dogmatic disputation, and that the theology of such a book must be judged by its whole tendency. My own judgment is that, taken as a whole, it is safer than Tauler or Ruysbroek, and much safer than Eckhart. The strongly-marked "ethical dualism" is of very much the same kind as that which we find in St. John's Gospel. Taken as a theory of the origin and nature of evil, it no doubt does hold out a hand to Manicheism; but I do not think that the writer meant it to be so taken, any more than St. John did.] [Footnote 273: Throughout the fourteenth century, and still more in the fifteenth, we can trace an increasing prominence given to subjugation of the _will_ in mystical theology. This change is to be attributed partly to the influence of the Nominalist science of Duns Scotus, which gradually gained (at least this point) the ascendancy over the school of Aquinas. It may be escribed as a transition from the more speculative Mysticism towards quietism. In the fourteenth century writings, such as the _Theologia Germanica_, we merely welcome a new and valuable aspect of the religious life; since the change is connected with a distrust of reason, and a return to standpoint of harsh legalism, we cannot regard it as an improvement.] [Footnote 274: Compare p. 161, for similar teaching in Eckhart himself.] [Footnote 275: See the quotation on p. 11, note.] [Footnote 276: Irenæus, _Contra Har_. iv. 6.] [Footnote 277: No. 31. on Psalm xci. 13.] [Footnote 278: Hilton's book has been reprinted from the edition of 1659, with an introduction by the Rev. J.B. Dalgairns. Very little is known about the author's life, but his book was widely read, and was "chosen to be the guide of good Christians in the courts of kings and in the world." The mother of Henry VII. valued it very highly. I have also used Mr. Guy's edition in my quotations from _The Scale of Perfection_.] [Footnote 279: 1 Cor. xiv. 15. This text was also appealed to by the Quietists of the post-Reformation period.] [Footnote 280: The texts to which he refers are those which Origen uses in the same manner. Compare 1 Cor. i. 23, ii. 2, Gal. vi. 14, with 1 Cor. i. 24.] [Footnote 281: Julian (born 1343) was probably a Benedictine nun of Carrow, near Norwich, but lived for the greater part of her life in an anchorage in the churchyard of St. Julian at Norwich. There is a copy of her _Revelations_ in the British Museum. Editions by Cressy, 1670; reprint issued 1843; by Collins, 1877. See, further, in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. In my quotations from her, I have used an unpublished version kindly lent me by Miss G.H. Warrack. It is just so far modernised as to be intelligible to those who are not familiar with fourteenth century English.] [Footnote 282: This was a recognised classification. Scaramelli says, "Le visioni corporce sono favori propri dei principianti, che incomminciano a camminare nella via dello spirito.... Le visioni immaginari sono proprie dei principianti e dei proficienti, che non sono ancor bene purgati.... Le visioni intellectuali sono proprie di quelli che si trovano gia in istato di perfezione." It comes originally from St. Augustine (_De Gen. ad litt._ xii. 7, n. 16): "Hæc sunt tria genera visionum.... Primum ergo appellemus corporale, quia per corpus percipitur, et corporis sensibus exhibetur. Secundum spirituale: quidquid enim corpus non est, et tamen aliquid est, iam recte dicitur spiritus; et utique non est corpus, quamvis corpori similis sit, imago absentis corporis, nee ille ipse obtutus quo cernitur. Tertium vero intellectuale, ab intellectu."] [Footnote 283: That is, "necessary" or "profitable."] LECTURE VI "O heart, the equal poise of Love's both parts, Big alike with wounds and darts, Live in these conquering leaves, live still the same, And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame! Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill, And bleed, and wound, and yield, and conquer still. Let this immortal life, where'er it comes, Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms. Let mystic deaths wait on it, and wise souls be The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee. O sweet incendiary! show here thy art Upon this carcase of a hard, cold heart; Let all thy scattered shafts of light, that play Among the leaves of thy large books of day, Combined against this breast at once break in, And take away from me myself and sin; This glorious robbery shall thy bounty be, And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me. O thou undaunted daughter of desires! By all thy dower of lights and fires, By all the eagle in thee, all the dove, By all thy lives and deaths of love, By thy large draughts of intellectual day, And by thy thirsts of love more large than they; By all thy brim-fill'd bowls of fierce desire, By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire, By the full kingdom of that final kiss That seized thy parting soul and seal'd thee His; By all the heavens thou hast in Him, Fair sister of the seraphim! By all of Him we have in Thee, Leave nothing of myself in me: Let me so read thy life, that I Unto all life of mine may die." CRASHAW, _On St. Teresa_. "In a dark night, Burning with ecstasies wherein I fell, Oh happy plight, Unheard I left the house wherein I dwell, The inmates sleeping peacefully and well. "Secure from sight; By unknown ways, in unknown robes concealed, Oh happy plight; And to no eye revealed, My home in sleep as in the tomb was sealed. "Sweet night, in whose blessed fold No human eye beheld me, and mine eye None could behold. Only for Guide had I His Face whom I desired so ardently." ST. JUAN OF THE CROSS (translated by Hutchings). PRACTICAL AND DEVOTIONAL MYSTICISM--_continued_ "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."--Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26. We have seen that the leaders of the Reformation in Germany thrust aside speculative Mysticism with impatience. Nor did Christian Platonism fare much better in the Latin countries. There were students of Plotinus in Italy in the sixteenth century, who fancied that a revival of humane letters, and a better acquaintance with philosophy, were the best means of combating the barbaric enthusiasms of the North. But these Italian Neoplatonists had, for the most part, no deep religious feelings, and they did not exhibit in their lives that severity which the Alexandrian philosophers had practised. And so, when Rome had need of a Catholic mystical revival to stem the tide of Protestantism, she could not find what she required among the scholars and philosophers of the Papal court. The Mysticism of the counter-Reformation had its centre in Spain. It has been said that "Mysticism is the philosophy of Spain.[284]" This does not mean that idealistic philosophy flourished in the Peninsula, for the Spanish race has never shown any taste for metaphysics. The Mysticism of Spain is psychological; its point of departure is not the notion of Being or of Unity, but the human soul seeking reconcilation with God. We need not be on our guard against pantheism in reading the Spanish mystics; they show no tendency to obliterate the dividing lines of personality, or to deify sinful humanity. The cause of this peculiarity is to be sought partly in the strong individualism of the Spanish character, and partly in external circumstances.[285] Free thought in Spain was so sternly repressed, that those tendencies of mystical religion which are antagonistic to Catholic discipline were never allowed to display themselves. The Spanish mystics remained orthodox Romanists, subservient to their "directors" and "superiors," and indefatigable in making recruits for the cloister. Even so, they did not escape the attention of the Inquisition; and though two among them, St. Teresa and St. Juan of the Cross, were awarded the badge of sanctity, the fate of Molinos showed how Rome had come to dread even the most submissive mystics. The early part of the sixteenth century was a period of high culture in Spain. The universities of Salamanca and Alcala were famous throughout Europe; the former is said (doubtless with great exaggeration) to have contained at one time fourteen thousand students. But the Inquisition, which had been founded to suppress Jews and Mahometans, was roused to a more baneful activity by the appearance of Protestantism in Spain. Before the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish people, who up to that time had been second to none in love of liberty and many-sided energy, had been changed into sombre fanatics, sunk in ignorance and superstition, and retaining hardly a trace of their former buoyancy and healthy independence.[286] The first _Index Expurgatorius_ was published in 1546; the burning of Protestants began in 1559. Till then, Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek had circulated freely in Spain. But the Inquisition condemned them all, except Ruysbroek. The same rigour was extended to the Arabian philosophers, and so their speculations influenced Spanish theology much less than might have been expected from the long sojourn of the Moors in the Peninsula. Averroism was known in Spain chiefly through the medium of the _Fons Vitæ_ of Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron). Dionysius and the scholastic mystics of the Middle Ages were, of course, allowed to be read. But besides these, the works of Plato and Plotinus were accessible in Latin translations, and were highly valued by some of the Spanish mystics. This statement may surprise those who have identified Spanish Mysticism with Teresa and Juan of the Cross, and who know how little Platonism is to be found in their theology. But these two militant champions of the counter-Reformation numbered among their contemporaries mystics of a different type, whose writings, little known in this country, entitle them to an honourable place in the roll of Christian Platonists. We find in them most of the characteristic doctrines of Christian Neoplatonism: the radiation of all things from God and their return to God; the immanence of God in all things;[287] the notion of man as a microcosm, vitally connected with all the different orders of creation;[288] the Augustinian doctrine of Christ and His members as "one Christ";[289] insistence upon disinterested love;[290] and admonitions to close the eye of sense.[291] This last precept, which, as I have maintained, is neither true Platonism nor true Mysticism, must be set against others in which the universe is said to be a copy of the Divine Ideas, "of which Plotinus has spoken divinely," the creation of Love, which has given form to chaos, and stamped it with the image of the Divine beauty; and in which we are exhorted to rise through the contemplation of nature to God.[292] Juan de Angelis, in his treatise on the spiritual nuptials, quotes freely, not only from Plato, Plotinus, and Virgil, but from Lucretius, Ovid, Tibullus, and Martial. But this kind of humanism was frowned upon by the Church, in Spain as elsewhere. These were not the weapons with which Lutheranism could be fought successfully. Juan d'Avila was accused before the Inquisition in 1534, and one of his books was placed on the Index of 1559; Louis de Granada had to take refuge in Portugal; Louis de Leon, who had the courage to say that the Song of Solomon is only a pastoral idyll, was sent to a dungeon for five years.[293] Even St. Teresa narrowly escaped imprisonment at Seville; and St. Juan of the Cross passed nine months in a black hole at Toledo. Persecution, when applied with sufficient ruthlessness, seldom fails of its immediate object. It took only about twelve years to destroy Protestantism in Spain; and the Holy Office was equally successful in binding Mysticism hand and foot.[294] And so we must not expect to find in St. Teresa or St. Juan any of the characteristic independence of Mysticism. The inner light which they sought was not an illumination of the intellect in its search for truth, but a consuming fire to burn up all earthly passions and desires. Faith presented them with no problems; all such questions had been settled once for all by Holy Church. They were ascetics first and Church Reformers next; neither of them was a typical mystic.[295] The life of St. Teresa[296] is more interesting than her teaching. She had all the best qualities of her noble Castilian ancestors-- simplicity, straightforwardness, and dauntless courage; and the record of her self-denying life is enlivened by numerous flashes of humour, which make her character more lovable. She is best known as a visionary, and it is mainly through her visions that she is often regarded as one of the most representative mystics. But these visions do not occupy a very large space in the story of her life. They were frequent during the first two or three years of her convent life, and again between the ages of forty and fifty: there was a long gap between the two periods, and during the last twenty years of her life, when she was actively engaged in founding and visiting religious houses, she saw them no more. This experience was that of many other saints of the cloister. Spiritual consolations seem to be frequently granted to encourage young beginners;[297] then they are withdrawn, and only recovered after a long period of dryness and darkness; but in later life, when the character is fixed, and the imagination less active, the vision fades into the light of common day. In considering St. Teresa's visions, we must remember that she was transparently honest and sincere; that her superiors strongly disliked and suspected, and her enemies ridiculed, her spiritual privileges; that at the same time they brought her great fame and influence; that she was at times haunted by doubts whether she ever really saw them; and, lastly, that her biographers have given them a more grotesque and materialistic character than is justified by her own descriptions. She tells us herself that her reading of St. Augustine's _Confessions_, at the age of forty-one, was a turning-point in her life. "When I came to his conversion," she says, "and read how he heard the voice in the garden, it was just as if the Lord called me." It was after this that she began again to see visions--or rather to have a sudden sense of the presence of God, with a suspension of all the faculties. In these trances she generally heard Divine "locutions." She says that "the words were very clearly formed, and unmistakable, though not heard by the bodily ear. They are quite unlike the words framed by the imagination, which are muffled" (_cosa sorda_). She describes her visions of Christ very carefully. First He stood beside her while she was in prayer, and she heard and saw Him, "though not with the eyes of the body, nor of the soul." Then by degrees "His sacred humanity was completely manifested to me, as it is painted after the Resurrection." (This last sentence suggests that sacred pictures, lovingly gazed at, may have been the source of some of her visions.) Her superiors tried to persuade her that they were delusions; but she replied, "If they who said this told me that a person who had just finished speaking to me, whom I knew well, was not that person, but they knew that I fancied it, doubtless I should believe them, rather than what I had seen; but if this person left behind him some jewels as pledges of his great love, and I found myself rich having been poor, I could not believe it if I wished. And these jewels I could show them. For all who knew me saw clearly that my soul was changed; the difference was great and palpable." The answer shows that for Teresa the question was not whether the manifestations were "subjective" or "objective," but whether they were sent by God or Satan. One of the best chapters in her autobiography, and perhaps the most interesting from our present point of view, is the allegory under which she describes the different kinds of prayer. The simile is not original--it appears in St. Augustine and others; but it is more fully worked out by St. Teresa, who tells us "it has always been a great delight to me to think of my soul as a garden, and of the Lord as walking in it." So here she says, "Our soul is like a garden, rough and unfruitful, out of which God plucks the weeds, and plants flowers, which we have to water by prayer. There are four ways of doing this--First, by drawing the water from a well; this is the earliest and most laborious process. Secondly, by a water-wheel which has its rim hung round with little buckets. Third, by causing a stream to flow through it. Fourth, by rain from heaven. The first is ordinary prayer, which is often attended by great sweetness and comfort. But sometimes the well is dry. What then? The love of God does not consist in being able to weep, nor yet in delights and tenderness, but in serving with justice, courage, and humility. The other seems to me rather to receive than to give. The second is the prayer of quiet, when the soul understands that God is so near to her that she need not talk aloud to Him." In this stage the Will is absorbed, but the Understanding and Memory are still active. (Teresa, following the scholastic mystics, makes these the three faculties of the soul.) In the third stage God becomes, as it were, the Gardener. "It is a sleep of the faculties, which are not entirely suspended, nor yet do they understand how they work." In the fourth stage, the soul labours not at all; all the faculties are quiescent. As she pondered how she might describe this state, "the Lord said these words to me: She (the soul) unmakes herself, my daughter, to bring herself closer to Me. It is no more she that lives, but I. As she cannot comprehend what she sees, understanding she ceases to understand." Years after she had attained this fourth stage, Teresa experienced what the mystics call "the great dereliction," a sense of ineffable loneliness and desolation, which nevertheless is the path to incomparable happiness. It was accompanied by a kind of catalepsy, with muscular rigidity and cessation of the pulses. These intense joys and sorrows of the spirit are the chief events of Teresa's life for eight or ten years. They are followed by a period of extreme practical activity, when she devoted herself to organising communities of bare-footed Carmelites, whose austerity and devotion were to revive the glories of primitive Christianity. In this work she showed not only energy, but worldly wisdom and tact in no common degree. Her visions had certainly not impaired her powers as an organiser and ruler of men and women. Her labours continued without intermission till, at the age of sixty-seven, she was struck down by her last illness. "This _saint_ will be no longer wanted," she said, with a sparkle of her old vivacity, when she knew that she was to die. It is not worth while to give a detailed account of St. Teresa's mystical theology. Its cardinal points are that the religious life consists in complete conformity to the will of God, so that at last the human will becomes purely "passive" and "at rest"; and the belief in Christ as the sole ground of salvation, on which subject she uses language which is curiously like that of the Lutheran Reformers. Her teaching about passivity and the "prayer of quiet" is identical with that which the Pope afterwards condemned in Molinos; but it is only fair to remember that Teresa was not canonised for her theology, but for her life, and that the Roman Church is not committed to every doctrine which can be found in the writings of her saints. The real character of St. Teresa's piety may be seen best in some of her prayers, such as this which follows:-- "O Lord, how utterly different are Thy thoughts from our thoughts! From a soul which is firmly resolved to love Thee alone, and which has surrendered her whole will into Thy hands, Thou demandest only that she should hearken, strive earnestly to serve Thee, and desire only to promote Thine honour. She need seek and choose no path, for Thou doest that for her, and her will follows Thine; while Thou, O Lord, takest care to bring her to fuller perfection." In theory, it may not be easy to reconcile "earnest striving" with complete surrender and abrogation of the will, but the logic of the heart does not find them incompatible. Perhaps no one has spoken better on this matter than the Rabbi Gamaliel, of whom it is reported that he prayed, "O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my will, that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will." But quietistic Mysticism often puts the matter on a wrong basis. Self-will is to be annihilated, not (as St. Teresa sometimes implies) because our thoughts are so utterly different from God's thoughts that they cannot exist in the same mind, but because self-interest sets up an unnatural antagonism between them. The will, like the other faculties, only realises itself in its fulness when God worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. St. Juan of the Cross, the fellow-workman of St. Teresa in the reform of monasteries, is a still more perfect example of the Spanish type of Mysticism. His fame has never been so great as hers; for while Teresa's character remained human and lovable in the midst of all her austerities, Juan carried self-abnegation to a fanatical extreme, and presents the life of holiness in a grim and repellent aspect. In his disdain of all compromise between the claims of God and the world, he welcomes every kind of suffering, and bids us choose always that which is most painful, difficult, and humiliating. His own life was divided between terrible mortifications and strenuous labour in the foundation of monasteries. Though his books show a tendency to Quietism, his character was one of fiery energy and unresting industry. Houses of "discalced" Carmelites sprang up all over Spain as the result of his labours. These monks and nuns slept upon bare boards, fasted eight months in the year, never ate meat, and wore the same serge dress in winter and summer. In some of these new foundations the Brethren even vied with each other in adding voluntary austerities to this severe rule. It was all part of the campaign against Protestantism. The worldliness and luxury of the Renaissance period were to be atoned for by a return to the purity and devotion of earlier centuries. The older Catholic ideal--the mediæval type of Christianity--was to be restored in all its completeness in the seventeenth century. This essentially militant character of the movement among the Carmelites must not be lost sight of: the two great Spanish mystics were before all things champions of the counter-Reformation. The two chief works of St. Juan are _The Ascent of Mount Carmel_, and _The Obscure Night of the Soul_. Both are treatises on quietistic Mysticism of a peculiar type. At the beginning of _La Subida de Monte Carmelo_ he says, "The journey of the soul to the Divine union is called _night_ for three reasons: the point of departure is privation of all desire, and complete detachment from the world; the road is by faith, which is like night to the intellect; the goal, which is God, is incomprehensible while we are in this life." The soul in its ascent passes from one realm of darkness to another. First there is the "night of sense," in which the things of earth become dark to her. This must needs be traversed, for "the creatures are only the crumbs that fall from God's table, and none but dogs will turn to pick them up." "One desire only doth God allow--that of obeying Him, and carrying the Cross." All other desires weaken, torment, blind, and pollute the soul. Until we are completely detached from all such, we cannot love God. "When thou dwellest upon anything, thou hast ceased to cast thyself upon the All." "If thou wilt keep anything with the All, thou hast not thy treasure simply in God." "Empty thy spirit of all created things, and thou wilt walk in the Divine light, for God resembles no created thing." Such is the method of traversing the "night of sense." Even at this early stage the forms and symbols of eternity, which others have found in the visible works of God, are discarded as useless. "God has no resemblance to any creature." The dualism or acosmism of mediæval thought has seldom found a harsher expression. In the night of sense, the understanding and reason are not blind; but in the second night, the night of faith, "all is darkness." "Faith is midnight"; it is the deepest darkness that we have to pass; for in the "third night, the night of memory and will," the dawn is at hand. "Faith" he defines as "the assent of the soul to what we have heard"--as a blind man would receive a statement about the colour of an object. We must be totally blind, "for a partially blind man will not commit himself wholly to his guide." Thus for St. Juan the whole content of revelation is removed from the scope of the reason, and is treated as something communicated from outside. We have, indeed, travelled far from St. Clement's happy confidence in the guidance of reason, and Eckhart's independence of tradition. The soul has three faculties--intellect, memory, and will. The imagination (_fantasia_) is a link between the sensitive and reasoning powers, and comes between the intellect and memory.[298] Of these faculties, "faith (he says) blinds the intellect, hope the memory, and love the will." He adds, "to all that is not God"; but "God in this life is like night." He blames those who think it enough to deny themselves "without annihilating themselves," and those who "seek for satisfaction in God." This last is "spiritual gluttony." "We ought to seek for bitterness rather than sweetness in God," and "to choose what is most disagreeable, whether proceeding from God or the world." "The way of God consisteth not in ways of devotion or sweetness, though these may be necessary to beginners, but in giving ourselves up to suffer." And so we must fly from all "mystical phenomena" (supernatural manifestations to the sight, hearing, and the other senses) "without examining whether they be good or evil." "For bodily sensations bear no proportion to spiritual things"; since the distance "between God and the creature is infinite," "there is no essential likeness or communion between them." Visions are at best "childish toys"; "the fly that touches honey cannot fly," he says; and the probability is that they come from the devil. For "neither the creatures, nor intellectual perceptions, natural or supernatural, can bring us to God, there being no proportion between them. Created things cannot serve as a ladder; they are only a hindrance and a snare." There is something heroic in this sombre interpretation of the maxim of our Lord, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." All that he hath--"yea, and his own life also"--intellect, reason, and memory--all that is most Divine in our nature--are cast down in absolute surrender at the feet of Him who "made darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about Him with dark water, and thick clouds to cover Him.[299]" In the "third night"--that of memory and will--the soul sinks into a holy inertia and oblivion (_santa ociosidad y olvido_), in which the flight of time is unfelt, and the mind is unconscious of all particular thoughts. St. Juan seems here to have brought us to something like the torpor of the Indian Yogi or of the hesychasts of Mount Athos. But he does not intend us to regard this state of trance as permanent or final. It is the last watch of the night before the dawn of the supernatural state, in which the human faculties are turned into Divine attributes, and by a complete transformation the soul, which was "at the opposite extreme" to God, "becomes, by participation, God." In this beatific state "one might say, in a sense, that the soul gives God to God, for she gives to God all that she receives of God; and He gives Himself to her. This is the mystical love-gift, wherewith the soul repayeth all her debt." This is the infinite reward of the soul who has refused to be content with anything short of infinity (_no se llenan menos que con lo Infinito_). With what yearning this blessed hope inspired St. Juan, is shown in the following beautiful prayer, which is a good example of the eloquence, born of intense emotion, which we find here and there in his pages: "O sweetest love of God, too little known; he who has found Thee is at rest; let everything be changed, O God, that we may rest in Thee. Everywhere with Thee, O my God, everywhere all things with Thee; as I wish, O my Love, all for Thee, nothing for me--nothing for me, everything for Thee. All sweetness and delight for Thee, none for me--all bitterness and trouble for me, none for Thee. O my God, how sweet to me Thy presence, who art the supreme Good! I will draw near to Thee in silence, and will uncover Thy feet,[300] that it may please Thee to unite me to Thyself, making my soul Thy bride; I will rejoice in nothing till I am in Thine arms. O Lord, I beseech Thee, leave me not for a moment, because I know not the value of mine own soul." Such faith, hope, and love were suffered to cast gleams of light upon the saint's gloomy and thorn-strewn path. But nevertheless the text of which we are most often reminded in reading his pages is the verse of Amos: "Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?" It is a terrible view of life and duty--that we are to denude ourselves of everything that makes us citizens of the world--that _nothing_ which is natural is capable of entering into relations with God--that all which is human must die, and have its place taken by supernatural infusion. St. Juan follows to the end the "negative road" of Dionysius, without troubling himself at all with the transcendental metaphysics of Neoplatonism. His nihilism or acosmism is not the result of abstracting from the notion of Being or of unity; its basis is psychological. It is "subjective" religion carried _almost_ to its logical conclusion. The Neoplatonists were led on by the hope of finding a reconciliation between philosophy and positive religion; but no such problems ever presented themselves to the Spaniards. We hear nothing of the relation of the creation to God, or _why_ the contemplation of it should only hinder instead of helping us to know its Maker. The world simply does not exist for St. Juan; nothing exists save God and human souls. The great human society has no interest for him; he would have us cut ourselves completely adrift from the aims and aspirations of civilised humanity, and, "since nothing but the Infinite can satisfy us," to accept nothing until our nothingness is filled with the Infinite. He does not escape from the quietistic attitude of passive expectancy which belongs to this view of life; and it is only by a glaring inconsistency that he attaches any value to the ecclesiastical symbolism, which rests on a very different basis from that of his teaching. But St. Juan's Mysticism brought him no intellectual emancipation, either for good or evil. Faith with him was the antithesis, not to _sight_, as in the Bible, but to reason. The sacrifice of reason was part of the crucifixion of the old man. And so he remained in an attitude of complete subservience to Church tradition and authority, and even to his "director," an intermediary who is constantly mentioned by these post-Reformation mystics. Even this unqualified submissiveness did not preserve him from persecution during his lifetime, and suspicion afterwards. His books were only authorised twenty-seven years after his death, which occurred in 1591; and his beatification was delayed till 1674. His orthodoxy was defended largely by references to St. Teresa, who had already been canonised. But it could not be denied that the quietists of the next century might find much support for their controverted doctrines in both writers. St. Juan's ideal of saintliness was as much of an anachronism as his scheme of Church reform. But no one ever climbed the rugged peaks of Mount Carmel with more heroic courage and patience. His life shows what tremendous moral force is generated by complete self-surrender to God. And happily neither his failure to read the signs of the times, nor his one-sided and defective grasp of Christian truth, could deprive him of the reward of his life of sacrifice--the reward, I mean, of feeling his fellowship with Christ in suffering. He sold "all that he had" to gain the pearl of great price, and the surrender was not made in vain. The later Roman Catholic mystics, though they include some beautiful and lovable characters, do not develop any further the type which we have found in St. Teresa and St. Juan. St. Francis de Sales has been a favourite devotional writer with thousands in this country. He presents the Spanish Mysticism softened and polished into a graceful and winning pietism, such as might refine and elevate the lives of the "honourable women" who consulted him. The errors of the quietists certainly receive some countenance from parts of his writings, but they are neutralised by maxims of a different tendency, borrowed eclectically from other sources.[301] A more consistent and less fortunate follower of St. Teresa was Miguel de Molinos, a Spanish priest, who came to Rome about 1670. His piety and learning won him the favour of Pope Innocent XI., who, according to Bishop Burnet, "lodged him in an apartment of the palace, and put many singular marks of his esteem upon him." In 1675 he published in Italian his _Spiritual Guide_, a mystical treatise of great interest. Molinos begins by saying that there are two ways to the knowledge of God--meditation or discursive thought, and "pure faith" or contemplation. Contemplation has two stages, active and passive, the latter being the higher.[302] Meditation he also calls the "exterior road"; it is good for beginners, he says, but can never lead to perfection. The "interior road," the goal of which is union with God, consists in complete resignation to the will of God, annihilation of all self-will, and an unruffled tranquillity or passivity of soul, until the mystical grace is supernaturally "infused." Then "we shall sink and lose ourselves in the immeasurable sea of God's infinite goodness, and rest there steadfast and immovable.[303]" He gives a list of tokens by which we may know that we are called from meditation to contemplation; and enumerates four means, which lead to perfection and inward peace--prayer, obedience, frequent communions, and inner mortification. The best kind of prayer is the prayer of silence;[304] and there are three silences, that of words, that of desires, and that of thought. In the last and highest the mind is a blank, and God alone speaks to the soul.[305] With the curious passion for subdivision which we find in nearly all Romish mystics, he distinguishes three kinds of "infusa contemplazione"--(1) satiety, when the soul is filled with God and conceives a hatred for all worldly things; (2) "un mentale eccesso" or elevation of the soul, born of Divine love and its satiety; (3) "security." In this state the soul would willingly even go to hell, if it were God's will. "Happy is the state of that soul which has slain and annihilated itself." It lives no longer in itself, for God lives in it. "With all truth we may say that it is deified." Molinos follows St. Juan of the Cross in disparaging visions, which he says are often snares of the devil. And, like him, he says much of the "horrible temptations and torments, worse than any which the martyrs of the early Church underwent," which form part of "purgative contemplation." He resembles the Spanish mystics also in his insistence on outward observances, especially "daily communion, when possible," but thinks frequent confession unnecessary, except for beginners. "The book was no sooner printed," says Bishop Burnet, "than it was much read and highly esteemed, both in Italy and Spain. The acquaintance of the author came to be much desired. Those who seemed in the greatest credit at Rome seemed to value themselves upon his friendship. Letters were writ to him from all places, so that a correspondence was settled between him and those who approved of his method, in many different places of Europe." "It grew so much to be the vogue in Rome, that all the nuns, except those who had Jesuits to their confessors, began to lay aside their rosaries and other devotions, and to give themselves much to the practice of mental prayer." Molinos had written with the object of "breaking the fetters" which hindered souls in their upward course. Unfortunately for himself, he also loosened some of the fetters in which the Roman priesthood desires to keep the laity[306]. And so, instead of the honours which had been grudgingly and suspiciously bestowed on his predecessors, Molinos ended his days in a dungeon[307]. His condemnation was followed by a sharp persecution of his followers in Italy, who had become very numerous; and, in France, Bossuet procured the condemnation and imprisonment of Madame Guyon, a lady of high character and abilities, who was the centre of a group of quietists. Madame de Guyon need not detain us here. Her Mysticism is identical with that of Saint Teresa, except that she was no visionary, and that her character was softer and less masculine. Her attractive personality, and the cruel and unjust treatment which she experienced during the greater part of her life, arouse the sympathy of all who read her story; but since my present object is not to exhibit a portrait gallery of eminent mystics, but to investigate the chief types of mystical thought, it will not be necessary for me to describe her life or make extracts from her writings. The character of her quietism may be illustrated by one example--the hymn on "The Acquiescence of Pure Love," translated by Cowper:-- "Love! if Thy destined sacrifice am I, Come, slay thy victim, and prepare Thy fires; Plunged in Thy depths of mercy, let me die The death which every soul that loves desires! "I watch my hours, and see them fleet away; The time is long that I have languished here; Yet all my thoughts Thy purposes obey, With no reluctance, cheerful and sincere. "To me 'tis equal, whether Love ordain My life or death, appoint me pain or ease My soul perceives no real ill in pain; In ease or health no real good she sees. "One Good she covets, and that Good alone; To choose Thy will, from selfish bias free And to prefer a cottage to a throne, And grief to comfort, if it pleases Thee. "That we should bear the cross is Thy command Die to the world, and live to self no more; Suffer unmoved beneath the rudest hand, As pleased when shipwrecked as when safe on shore." Fénelon was also a victim of the campaign against the quietists, though he was no follower of Molinos. He was drawn into the controversy against his will by Bossuet, who requested him to endorse an unscrupulous attack upon Madame Guyon. This made it necessary for Fénelon to define his position, which he did in his famous _Maxims of the Saints_. The treatise is important for our purposes, since it is an elaborate attempt to determine the limits of true and false Mysticism concerning two great doctrines--"disinterested love" and "passive contemplation." On the former, Fénelon's teaching may be summarised as follows: Self-interest must be excluded from our love of God, for self-love is the root of all evil. This predominant desire for God's glory need not be always explicit--it need only become so on extraordinary occasions; but it must always be implicit. There are five kinds of love for God: (i.) purely servile--the love of God's gifts apart from Himself; (ii.) the love of mere covetousness, which regards the love of God only as the condition of happiness; (iii.) that of hope, in which the desire for our own welfare is still predominant; (iv.) interested love, which is still mixed with self-regarding motives; (v.) disinterested love. He mentions here the "three lives" of the mystics, and says that in the purgative life love is mixed with the fear of hell; in the illuminative, with the hope of heaven; while in the highest stage "we are united to God in the peaceable exercise of pure love." "If God were to will to send the souls of the just to hell--so Chrysostom and Clement suggest--souls in the third state would not love Him less[308]." "Mixed love," however, is not a sin: "the greater part of holy souls never reach perfect disinterestedness in this life." We ought to wish for our salvation, because it is God's will that we should do so. Interested love coincides with resignation, disinterested with holy indifference. "St. Francis de Sales says that the disinterested heart is like wax in the hands of its God." We must continue to _co-operate_ with God's grace, even in the highest stage, and not cease to resist our impulses, as if all came from God. "To speak otherwise is to speak the language of the tempter." (This is, of course, directed against the immoral apathy attributed to Molinos.) The only difference between the vigilance of pure and that of interested love, is that the former is simple and peaceable, while the latter has not yet cast out fear. It is false teaching to say that we should hate ourselves; _we should be in charity with ourselves as with others_.[309] Spontaneous, unreflecting good acts proceed from what the mystics call the apex of the soul. "In such acts St. Antony places the most perfect prayer--unconscious prayer." Of prayer he says, "We pray as much as we desire, and we desire as much as we love." Vocal prayer cannot be (as the extreme quietists pretend) useless to contemplative souls; "for Christ has taught us a vocal prayer." He then proceeds to deal with "passive contemplation," and refers again to the "unconscious prayer" of St. Antony. But "pure contemplation is never unintermittent in this life." "Bernard, Teresa, and John say that their periods of pure contemplation lasted not more than half an hour." "Pure contemplation," he proceeds, "is negative, being occupied with no sensible image, no distinct and nameable idea; it stops only at the purely intellectual and abstract idea of being." Yet this idea includes, "as distinct objects," all the attributes of God--"as the Trinity, the humanity of Christ, and all His mysteries." "To deny this is to annihilate Christianity under pretence of purifying it, and to confound God with _néant_. It is to form a kind of deism which at once falls into atheism, wherein all real idea of God as distinguished from His creatures is rejected." Lastly, it is to advance two impieties--(i.) To suppose that there is or may be on the earth a contemplative who is no longer a traveller, and who no longer needs the way, since he has reached his destination. (ii.) To ignore that Jesus Christ is the way as well as the truth and the life, the finisher as well as the author of our faith. This criticism of the formless vision is excellent, but there is a palpable inconsistency between the definition of "negative contemplation" and the inclusion in it of "all the attributes of God as distinct objects." Contradictions of this sort abound in Fénelon, and destroy the value of his writings as contributions to religious philosophy, though in his case, as in many others, we may speak of "noble inconsistencies" which do more credit to his heart than discredit to his intellect. We may perhaps see here the dying spasm of the "negative method," which has crossed our path so often in this survey. The image of Jesus Christ, Fénelon continues, is not clearly seen by contemplatives at first, and may be withdrawn while the soul passes through the last furnace of trial; but we can never cease to need Him, "though it is true that the most eminent saints are accustomed to regard Him less as an exterior object than as the interior principle of their lives." They are in error who speak of possessing God in His supreme simplicity, and of no more knowing Christ after the flesh. Contemplation is called passive because it excludes the _interested_ activity of the soul, not because it excludes real action. (Here again Fénelon is rather explaining away than explaining his authorities.) The culmination of the "passive state" is "transformation," in which love is the life of the soul, as it is its being and substance. "Catherine of Genoa said, I find no more _me_; there is no longer any other _I_ but God." "But it is false to say that transformation is a deification of the real and natural soul, or a hypostatic union, or an unalterable conformity with God.[310]" In the passive state we are still liable to mortal sin. (It is characteristic of Fénelon that he contradicts, without rejecting, the substitution-doctrine plainly stated in the sentence from Catherine of Genoa.) In his letter to the Pope, which accompanies the "Explanation of the Maxims," Fénelon thus sums up his distinctions between true and false Mysticism:-- 1. The "permanent act" (i.e. an indefectible state of union with God) is to be condemned as "a poisoned source of idleness and internal lethargy." 2. There is an indispensable necessity of the distinct exercise of each virtue. 3. "Perpetual contemplation," making venial sins impossible, and abolishing the distinction of virtues, is impossible. 4. "Passive prayer," if it excludes the co-operation of free-will, is impossible. 5. There can be no "quietude" except the peace of the Holy Ghost, which acts in a manner so uniform that these acts seem, _to unscientific persons_, not distinct acts, but a single and permanent unity with God. 6. That the doctrine of pure love may not serve as an asylum for the errors of the Quietists, we assert that hope must always abide, as saith St. Paul. 7. The state of pure love is very rare, and it is intermittent. In reply to this manifesto, the "Three Prelates[311]" rejoin that Fénelon keeps the name of hope but takes away the thing; that he really preaches indifference to salvation; that he is in danger of regarding contemplation of Christ as a descent from the heights of pure contemplation; that he unaccountably says nothing of the "love of gratitude" to God and our Redeemer; that he "erects the rare and transient experiences of a few saints into a rule of faith." In this controversy about disinterested love, our sympathies are chiefly, but not entirely, with Fénelon. The standpoint of Bossuet is not religious at all. "Pure love," he says almost coarsely, "is opposed to the essence of love, which always desires the enjoyment of its object, as well as to the nature of man, who necessarily desires happiness." Most of us will rather agree with St. Bernard, that love, as such, desires nothing but reciprocation--"verus amor se ipso contentus est: habet præmium, sed id quod amatur." If the question had been simply whether religion is or is not in its nature mercenary, we should have felt no doubt on which side the truth lay. Self-regarding hopes and schemes may be schoolmasters to bring us to Christ; it seems, indeed, to be part of our education to form them, and then see them shattered one after another, that better and deeper hopes may be constructed out of the fragments; but a selfish Christianity is a contradiction in terms. But Fénelon, in his teaching about disinterested love, goes further than this. "A man's self," he says, "is his own greatest cross." "We must therefore become strangers to this self, this _moi._" Resignation is not a remedy; for "resignation suffers in suffering; one is as two persons in resignation; it is only pure love that loves to suffer." This is the thought with which many of us are familiar in James Hinton's _Mystery of Pain_. It is at bottom Stoical or Buddhistic, in spite of the emotional turn given to it by Fénelon. Logically, it should lead to the destruction of love; for love requires two living factors,[312] and the person who has attained a "holy indifference," who has passed wholly out of self, is as incapable of love as of any other emotion. The attempt "to wind ourselves too high for mortal man" has resulted, as usual, in two opposite errors. We find, on the one hand, some who try to escape the daily sacrifices which life demands, by declaring themselves bankrupt to start with. And, on the other hand, we find men like Fénelon, who are too good Christians to wish to shift their crosses in this way; but who allow their doctrines of "holy indifference" and "pure love" to impart an excessive sternness to their teaching, and demand from us an impossible degree of detachment and renunciation. The importance attached to the "prayer of quiet" can only be understood when we remember how much mechanical recitation of forms of prayer was enjoined by Romish "directors." It is, of course, possible for the soul to commune with God without words, perhaps even without thoughts;[313] but the recorded prayers of our Blessed Lord will not allow us to regard these ecstatic states as better than vocal prayer, when the latter is offered "with the spirit, and with the understanding also." The quietistic controversy in France was carried on in an atmosphere of political intrigues and private jealousies, which in no way concern us. But the great fact which stands out above the turmoil of calumny and misrepresentation is that the Roman Church, which in sore straits had called in the help of quietistic Mysticism to stem the flood of Protestantism, at length found the alliance too dangerous, and disbanded her irregular troops in spite of their promises to submit to discipline. In Fénelon, Mysticism had a champion eloquent and learned, and not too logical to repudiate with honest conviction consequences which some of his authorities had found it necessary to accept. He remained a loyal and submissive son of the Church, as did Molinos; and was, in fact, more guarded in his statements than Bossuet, who in his ignorance of mystical theology often blundered into dangerous admissions[314]. But the Jesuits saw with their usual acumen that Mysticism, even in the most submissive guise, is an independent and turbulent spirit; and by condemning Fénelon as well as Molinos, they crushed it out as a religious movement in the Latin countries. To us it seems that the Mysticism of the counter-Reformation was bound to fail, because it was the revival of a perverted, or at best a one-sided type. The most consistent quietists were perhaps those who brought the doctrine of quietism into most discredit, such as the hesychasts of Mount Athos. For at bottom it rests upon that dualistic or rather acosmistic view of life which prevailed from the decay of the Roman Empire till the Renaissance and Reformation. Its cosmology is one which leaves this world out of account except as a training ground for souls; its theory of knowledge draws a hard and fast line between natural and supernatural truths, and then tries to bring them together by intercalating "supernatural phenomena" in the order of nature; and in ethics it paralyses morality by teaching with St. Thomas Aquinas that "to love God _secundum se_ is more meritorious than to love our neighbour.[315]" All this is not of the essence of Mysticism, but belongs to mediæval Catholicism. It was probably a necessary stage through which Christianity, and Mysticism with it, had to pass. The vain quest of an abstract spirituality at any rate liberated the religious life from many base associations; the "negative road" is after all the holy path of self-sacrifice; and the maltreatment of the body, which began among the hermits of the Thebaid, was largely based on an instinctive recoil against the poison of sensuality, which had helped to destroy the old civilisation. But the resuscitation of mediæval Mysticism after the Renaissance was an anachronism; and except in the fighting days of the sixteenth century, it was not likely to appeal to the manliest or most intelligent spirits. The world-ruling papal polity, with its incomparable army of officials, bound to poverty and celibacy, and therefore invulnerable, was a _reductio ad absurdum_ of its world-renouncing doctrines, which Europe was not likely to forget. Introspective Mysticism had done its work--a work of great service to the human race. It had explored all the recesses of the lonely heart, and had wrestled with the angel of God through the terrors of the spiritual night even till the morning. "Tell me now Thy name" ... "I will not let Thee go until Thou bless me." These had been the two demands of the contemplative mystic--the only rewards which his soul craved in return for the sacrifice of every earthly delight. The reward was worth the sacrifice; but "God reveals Himself in many ways," and the spiritual Christianity of the modern epoch is called rather to the consecration of art, science, and social life than to lonely contemplation. In my last two Lectures I hope to show how an important school of mystics, chiefly between the Renaissance and our own day, have turned to the religious study of nature, and have found there the same illumination which the mediæval ascetics drew from the deep wells of their inner consciousness. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 284: Rousselot, _Les Mystiques Espagnols_, p. 3.] [Footnote 285: Among the latter must be mentioned the growth of Scotist Nominalism, on which see a note on p. 187. Ritschl was the first to point out how strongly Nominalism influenced the later Mysticism, by giving it its quietistic character. See Harnack, _History of Dogma_ (Eng. tr.), vol. vi. p. 107.] [Footnote 286: Cf. the beginning of the _Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, corregida y emendada por Juan de Luna_ (Paris, 1620). "The ignorance of the Spaniards is excusable. The Inquisitors are the cause. They are dreaded, not only by the people, but by the great lords, to such an extent that the mere mention of the Inquisition makes every head tremble like a leaf in the wind."] [Footnote 287: Pedro Malon de Chaide: "Las cosas en Dios son mismo Dios."] [Footnote 288: Alejo Venegas in Rousselot, p. 78: Louis de Leon, who is indebted to the _Fons Vitæ_.] [Footnote 289: Louis de Leon: "The members and the head are one Christ."] [Footnote 290: Diego de Stella affirms the mystic paradox, that it is better to be in hell with Christ than in glory without Him (_Medit._ iii.).] [Footnote 291: Juan d'Avila: "Let us put a veil between ourselves and all created things."] [Footnote 292: This side of Platonism appears in Pedro Malon, and especially in Louis de Granada. Compare also the beautiful ode of Louis de Leon, entitled "Noche Serena," where the eternal peace of the starry heavens is contrasted with the turmoil of the world-- "Quien es el que esto mira, Y precia la bajeza de la tierra, Y no gime y suspira Y rompe lo que encierra El alma, y destos bienes la destierra? Aqui vive al contento, Aqui reina la paz, aqui asentado En rico y alto asiento Esta el amor sagrado De glorias y deleites rodeado." ] [Footnote 293: After his release he was suffered to resume his lectures. A crowd of sympathisers assembled to hear his first utterance; but he began quietly with his usual formula, "Deciamos ahora," "We were saying just now."] [Footnote 294: The heresy of the "Alombrados" (Illuminati), which appeared in the sixteenth century, and was ruthlessly crushed by the Inquisition, belonged to the familiar type of degenerate Mysticism. Its adherents taught that the prayers of the Church were worthless, the only true prayer being a kind of ecstasy, without words or mental images. The "illuminated" need no sacraments, and can commit no sins. The mystical union once achieved is an abiding possession. There was another outbreak of the same errors in 1623, and a corresponding sect of _Illuminés_ in Southern France.] [Footnote 295: The real founder of Spanish quietistic Mysticism was Pedro of Alcantara (d. 1562). He was confessor to Teresa. Teresa is also indebted to Francisco de Osuna, in whose writings the principles of quietism are clearly taught. Cf. Heppe, _Geschichte der quietistichen Mystik_, p. 9.] [Footnote 296: The fullest and best account of St. Teresa is in Mrs. Cunninghame Graham's _Life and Times of Santa Teresa_ (2 vols.).] [Footnote 297: "Hæ imaginariæ visiones regulariter eveniunt vel incipientibus vel proficientibus nondum bene purgatis, ut communiter tenent mystæ" (_Lucern. Myst. Tract_, v. 3).] [Footnote 298: So in Plotinus [Greek: phantasia] comes between [Greek: physis] (the lower soul) and the perfect apprehension of [Greek: nous].] [Footnote 299: St. Juan follows the mediæval mystics in distinguishing between "meditation" and "contemplation." "Meditation," from which external images are not excluded, is for him an early and imperfect stage; he who is destined to higher things will soon discover signs which indicate that it is time to abandon it.] [Footnote 300: The reference is to Ruth iii. 7.] [Footnote 301: The somewhat feminine temper of Francis leads him to attach more value to fanciful symbolism than would have been approved by St. Juan, or even by St. Teresa. And we miss in him that steady devotion to the Person of Christ, and to Him alone, which gives the Spaniards, in spite of themselves, a sort of kinship with evangelical Christianity. St. Juan could never have written, "Honorez, reverez, et respectez d'un amour special la sacrée et glorieuse Vierge Marie. Elle est mère de nostre souverain père et par consequent nostre grand'mère" (!).] [Footnote 302: The three parts into which the book is divided deal respectively with the "darkness and dryness" by which God purifies the heart; the second stage, in which he insists, complete obedience to a spiritual director is essential; and the stage of higher illumination.] [Footnote 303: "Colà c' ingolfiano e ci perdiamo nel mare immenso dell' infinita sua bontà in cui restiamo stabili ed immobili."] [Footnote 304: It is interesting to find the "prayer of quiet" even in Plotinus. Cf. _Enn_. v. 1. 6: "Let us call upon God Himself before we thus answer--not with uttered words, but reaching forth our souls in prayer to Him; for thus alone can we pray, alone to Him who is alone."] [Footnote 305: He speaks, too, of "inner recollection" (il raccoglimento interiore), "mirandolo dentro te medesima nel più intimo del' anima tua, senza forma, specie, modo ò figura, in vista e generate notitia di fede amorosa ed oscura, senza veruna distinzione di perfezione ò attributo."] [Footnote 306: Cf. Bp. Burnet: "In short, everybody that was thought either sincerely devout, or that at least affected the reputation of it, came to be reckoned among the Quietists; and if these persons were observed to become more strict in their lives, more retired and serious in their mental devotions, yet there appeared less zeal in their whole deportment as to the exterior parts of the religion of that Church. They were not so assiduous at Mass, nor so earnest to procure Masses to be said for their friends; nor were they so frequently either at confession or in processions, so that the trade of those that live by these things was terribly sunk."] [Footnote 307: The _Spiritual Guide_ was well received at first in high quarters; but in 1681 a Jesuit preacher published a book on "the prayer of quiet," which raised a storm. The first commission of inquiry exonerated Molinos; but in 1685 the Jesuits and Louis XIV. brought strong pressure to bear on the Pope, and Molinos was accused of heresy. Sixty-eight false propositions were extracted from his writings, and formally condemned. They include a justification of disgraceful vices, which Molinos, who was a man of saintly character, could never have taught. But though the whole process against the author of the _Spiritual Guide_ was shamefully unfair, the book contains some highly dangerous teaching, which might easily be pressed into the service of immorality. Molinos saved his life by recanting all his errors, but was imprisoned till his death, about 1696. In 1687 the Inquisition arrested 200 persons for "quietist" opinions.] [Footnote 308: This "mystic paradox" has been mentioned already. It is developed at length in the _Meditations_ of Diego de Stella. Fénelon says that it is found in Cassian, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Anselm, "and a great number of saints." It is an unfortunate attempt to improve upon Job's fine saying, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," or the line in Homer which has been often quoted--[Greek: en de phaei kai olesson, epei ny toi euaden outôs.] But unless we form a very unworthy idea of heaven and hell, the proposition is not so much extravagant as self-contradictory.] [Footnote 309: The doctrine here condemned is Manichean, says Fénelon rightly.] [Footnote 310: St. Bernard (_De diligendo Deo_, x. 28) gives a careful statement of the deification-doctrine as he understands it: "Quomodo omnia in omnibus erit Deus, si in homine de homine quicquam supererit? _Manebit substantia sed in alia forma._" See Appendix C.] [Footnote 311: The Archbishop of Paris, the Bishop of Meaux (Bossuet), and the Bishop of Chartres.] [Footnote 312: If two beings are separate, they cannot influence each other inwardly. If they are not distinct, there can be no relations between them. Man is at once organ and organism, and this is why love between man and God is possible. The importance of maintaining that action between man and God must be reciprocal, is well shown by Lilienfeld, _Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft_, vol. v. p. 472 sq.] [Footnote 313: "Thought was not," says Wordsworth of one in a state of rapture; and again, "All his thoughts were steeped in feeling."] [Footnote 314: E.g., he writes to Madame Guyon, "Je n'ai jamais hesité un seul moment sur les états de Sainte Thérèse, parceque je n'y ai rien trouvé, que je ne trouvasse aussi dans l'ecriture." It is doubtful whether Bossuet had really read much of St. Teresa. Fénelon says much more cautiously, "Quelque respect et quelque admiration que j'aie pour Sainte Thérèse, je n'aurais jamais voulu donner au public tout ce qu'elle a écrit."] [Footnote 315: Of course there is a sense in which this is true; but I am speaking of the way in which it was understood by mediæval Catholicism.] LECTURE VII [Greek: En pasi tois physikois enesti ti thaumaston; kathaper Hêrakleitos legetai eipein; einai kai entautha theous.] ARISTOTLE, _de Partibus Animalium_, i. 5. "What if earth Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?" MILTON. "God is not dumb, that He should speak no more. If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness, And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; There towers the mountain of the voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find; but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore." LOWELL. "Of the Absolute in the theoretical sense I do not venture to speak; but this I maintain, that if a man recognises it in its manifestations, and always keeps his eye fixed upon it, he will reap a very great reward." GOETHE. NATURE-MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM "The creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."--ROM. viii. 21. It would be possible to maintain that all our happiness consists in finding sympathies and affinities underlying apparent antagonisms, in bringing harmony out of discord, and order out of chaos. Even the lowest pleasures owe their attractiveness to a certain temporary correspondence between our desires and the nature of things. Selfishness itself, the prime source of sin, misery, and ignorance, cannot sever the ties which bind us to each other and to nature; or if it succeeds in doing so, it passes into madness, of which an experienced alienist has said, that its essence is "concentrated egoism." Incidentally I may say that the peculiar happiness which accompanies every glimpse of insight into truth and reality, whether in the scientific, æsthetic, or emotional sphere, seems to me to have a greater apologetic value than has been generally recognised. It is the clearest possible indication that the true is for us the good, and forms the ground of a reasonable faith that all things, if we could see them as they are, would be found to work together for good to those who love God. "The true Mysticism," it has been lately said with much truth, "is the belief that everything, in being what it is, is symbolic of something more.[316]" All Nature (and there are few more pernicious errors than that which separates man from Nature) is the language in which God expresses His thoughts; but the thoughts are far more than the language.[317] Thus it is that the invisible things of God from the creation of the world may be clearly seen and understood from the things that are made; while at the same time it is equally true that here we see through a glass darkly, and know only in part. Nature half conceals and half reveals the Deity; and it is in this sense that it may be called a symbol of Him. The word "symbol," like several other words which the student of Mysticism has to use, has an ill-defined connotation, which produces confusion and contradictory statements. For instance, a French writer gives as his definition of Mysticism "the tendency to approach the Absolute, morally, by means of symbols.[318]" On the other hand, an English essayist denies that Mysticism is symbolic.[319] Mysticism, he says, differs from symbolism in that, while symbolism treats the connexion between symbol and substance as something accidental or subjective, Mysticism is based on a positive belief in the existence of life within life, of deep correspondences and affinities, not less real than those to which the common superficial consciousness of mankind bears witness. I agree with this statement about the basis of Mysticism, but I prefer to use the word symbol of that which has a real, and not merely a conventional affinity to the thing symbolised.[320] The line is by no means easy to draw. An aureole is not, properly speaking, a _symbol_ of saintliness,[321] nor a crown of royal authority, because in these instances the connexion of sign with significance is conventional. A circle is perhaps not a symbol of eternity, because the comparison appeals only to the intellect. But falling leaves are a symbol of human mortality, a flowing river of the "stream" of life, and a vine and its branches of the unity of Christ and the Church, because they are examples of the same law which operates through all that God has made. And when the Anglian noble, in a well-known passage of Bede, compares the life of man to the flight of a bird which darts quickly through a lighted hall out of darkness, and into darkness again, he has found a symbol which is none the less valid, because light and darkness are themselves only symbolically connected with life and death. The writer who denies that Mysticism is symbolic, means that the discovery of arbitrary and fanciful resemblances or types is no part of healthy Mysticism.[322] In this he is quite right; and the importance of the distinction which he wishes to emphasise will, I hope, become clear as we proceed. It is not possible always to say dogmatically, "_This_ is genuine Symbolism, and _that_ is morbid or fantastic"; but we do assert that there is a true and a false Symbolism, of which the true is not merely a legitimate, but a necessary mode of intuition; while the latter is at best a frivolous amusement, and at worst a degrading superstition.[323] But we shall handle our subject very inadequately if we consider only the symbolical value which may be attached to external objects. Our thoughts and beliefs about the spiritual world, so far as they are conceived under forms, or expressed in language, which belong properly only to things of time and space, are of the nature of symbols. In this sense it has been said that the greater part of dogmatic theology is the dialectical development of mystical symbols. For instance, the paternal relation of the First Person of the Trinity to the Second is a symbol; and the representation of eternity as an endless period of time stretching into futurity, is a symbol. We believe that the forms under which it is natural and necessary for us to conceive of transcendental truths have a real and vital relation to the ideas which they attempt to express; but their inadequacy is manifest if we treat them as facts of the same order as natural phenomena, and try to intercalate them, as is too often done, among the materials with which an abstract science has to deal. The two great sacraments are typical symbols, if we use the word in the sense which I give to it, as something which, in being what it is, is a sign and vehicle of something higher and better. This is what the early Church meant when it called the sacraments symbols.[324] A "symbol" at that period implied a mystery, and a "mystery" implied a revelation. The need of sacraments is one of the deepest convictions of the religious consciousness. It rests ultimately on the instinctive reluctance to allow any spiritual fact to remain without an external expression. It is obvious that all morality depends on the application of this principle to conduct. All voluntary external acts are symbolic of (that is, vitally connected with) internal states, and cannot be divested of this their essential character. It may be impossible to show how an act of the material body can purify or defile the immaterial spirit; but the correspondence between the outward and inward life cannot be denied without divesting morality of all meaning. The maxim of Plotinus, that "the mind can do no wrong," when transferred from his transcendental philosophy to matters of conduct, is a sophism no more respectable than that which Euripides puts into the mouth of one of his characters: "The tongue hath sworn; the heart remains unsworn." Every act of the will is the expression of a state of the soul; and every state of the soul must seek to find expression in an act of the will. Love, as we should all admit, is not love, so long as it is content to be only in thought, or "in word and in tongue"; it is only when it is love "in deed" that it is love "in truth.[325]" And it is the same with all other virtues, which are in this sense symbolic, as implying something beyond the external act. Nearly all the states or motions of the soul can find their appropriate expression in action. Charity in its manifold forms need not seek long for an object; and thankfulness and penitence, though they drive us first to silent prayer, are not satisfied till they have borne fruit in some act of gratitude or humility. But that deepest sense of communion with God, which is the very heart of religion, is in danger of being shut up in thought and word, which are inadequate expressions of any spiritual state. No doubt this highest state of the soul may find indirect expression in good works; but these fail to express the _immediacy_ of the communion which the soul has felt. The want of symbols to express these highest states of the soul is supplied by sacraments. A sacrament is a symbolic act, not arbitrarily chosen, but resting, to the mind of the recipient, on Divine authority, which has no ulterior object except to give expression to, and in so doing to effectuate,[326] a relation which is too purely spiritual to find utterance in the customary activities of life. There are three requisites (on the human side) for the validity of a sacramental act. The symbol must be appropriate; the thing symbolised must be a spiritual truth; and there must be the intention to perform the act _as_ a sacrament. The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper fulfil these conditions. Both are symbols of the mystical union between the Christian and his ascended Lord. Baptism symbolises that union in its inception, the Eucharist in its organic life. Baptism is received but once, because the death unto sin and the new birth unto righteousness is a definite entrance into the spiritual life, rather than a gradual process. The fact that in Christian countries Baptism in most cases precedes conversion does not alter the character of the sacrament; indeed, infant Baptism is by far the most appropriate symbol of our adoption into the Divine Sonship, to which we only consent after the event. It is only because we are already sons that we can say, "I will arise, and go unto my Father." The Holy Communion is the symbol of the maintenance of the mystical union, and of the "strengthening and refreshing of our souls," which we derive from the indwelling presence of our Lord. The Church claims an absolute prerogative for its duly ordained ministers in the case of this sacrament, because the common meal is the symbol of the organic unity of Christ and the Church as "unus Christus," a doctrine which the schismatic, as such, denies.[327] The communicant who believes only in an individual relation between Christ and separate persons, or in an "invisible Church," does not understand the meaning of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and can hardly be said to participate in it. There are two views of this sacrament which the "plain man" has always found much easier to understand than the symbolic view which is that of our Church. One is that it is a miracle or magical performance, the other is that it is a mere commemoration. Both are absolutely destructive of the idea of a sacrament. The latter view, that of some Protestant sects, was quite foreign to the early Church, so far as our evidence goes; the former, it is only just to say, is found in many of the Fathers, not in the grossly materialistic form which it afterwards assumed, but in such phrases as "the medicine of immortality" applied to the consecrated elements, where we are meant to understand that the elements have a mysterious power of preserving the receiver from the natural consequences of death.[328] But when we find that the same writers who use compromising phrases about the change that comes over the elements,[329] also use the language of symbolism, and remember, too, that a "miracle" was a very different thing to those who knew of no inflexible laws in the natural world from what it is to us, we shall not be ready to agree with those who have accused the third and fourth century Fathers of degrading the Lord's Supper into a magical ceremony. Most of the errors which have so grievously obscured the true nature of this sacrament have proceeded from attempts to answer the question, "How does the reception of the consecrated elements affect the inner state of the receiver?" To those who hold the symbolic view, as I understand it, it seems clear that the question of cause and effect must be resolutely cast aside. The reciprocal action of spirit and matter is the one great mystery which, to all appearance, must remain impenetrable to the finite intelligence. We do not ask whether the soul is the cause of the body, or the body of the soul; we only know that the two are found, in experience, always united. In the same way we should abstain, I think, from speculating on the effect of the sacraments, and train ourselves instead to consider them as divinely-ordered symbols, by which the Church, as an organic whole, and we as members of it, realise the highest and deepest of our spiritual privileges. There are other religious forms for which no Divine institution is claimed, but which have a quasi-sacramental value. And those who, "whether they eat, or drink, or whatever they do," do all to the glory of God, may be said to turn the commonest acts into sacraments. To the true mystic, life itself is a sacrament. It is natural, but unfortunate, that some of those who have felt this most strongly have shown a tendency to disparage observances which are simply acts of devotion, "mere forms," as they call them. The attempt to distinguish between conventional ceremonies, which have no essential connexion with the truth symbolised, and actions which are in themselves moral or immoral, is no doubt justifiable, but it should be remembered that this is the way in which antinomianism takes its rise. Many have begun by saying, "The heart, the motive, is all, the external act nothing; the spirit is all, the letter nothing. What can it matter whether I say my prayers in church or at home, on my knees or in bed, in words or in thought only? What can it matter whether the Eucharistic bread and wine are consecrated or not? whether I actually eat and drink or not?" And so on. The descent to Avernus is easy by this road. Perhaps no sect that has professed contempt for all ceremonial forms has escaped at least the imputation of scandalous licentiousness, with the honourable exception of the Quakers. The truth is that the need of symbols to express or represent our highest emotions is inwoven with human nature, and indifference to them is not, as many have supposed, a sign of enlightenment or of spirituality. It is, in fact, an unhealthy symptom. We do not credit a man with a warm heart who does not care to show his love in word and act; nor should we commend the common sense of a soldier who saw in his regimental colours only a rag at the end of a pole. It is one of the points in which we must be content to be children, and should be thankful that we may remain children with a clear conscience. I do not shrink from expressing my conviction that the true meaning of our sacramental system, which in its external forms is so strangely anticipated by the Greek mysteries, and in its inward significance strikes down to the fundamental principles of mystical Christianity, can only be understood by those who are in some sympathy with Mysticism. But it has not been possible to say much about the sacraments sooner than this late stage of our inquiry. We have hitherto been dealing with the subjective or introspective type of Mysticism, and it is plain that this form, when carried to its logical conclusion, is inconsistent with sacramental religion. Those who seek to ascend to God by the way of abstraction, the negative road, must regard all symbols as veils between our eyes and reality, and must wish to get rid of them as soon as possible. From this point of view, sacraments, like other ceremonial forms, can only be useful at a very early stage in the upward path, which leads us ultimately into a Divine darkness, where no forms can be distinguished. It is true that some devout mystics of this type have both observed and exacted a punctilious strictness in using all the appointed means of grace; but this inconsistency is easily accounted for.[330] The pressure of authority, loyalty to the established order, and human nature, which is stronger than either, has prevented them from casting away the time-honoured symbols and vehicles of Divine love. But a true appreciation of sacraments belongs only to those who can sympathise with the other branch of Mysticism--that which rests on belief in symbolism. To this branch of my subject I now invite your attention. If we expect to find ourselves at once in a larger air when we have taken leave of the monkish mystics, we shall be disappointed. The objective or symbolical type of Mysticism is liable to quite as many perversions as the subjective. If in the latter we found a tendency to revert to the apathy of the Indian Yogi, we shall observe in the former too many survivals of still more barbarous creeds. Indeed, I feel that it is almost necessary, as an introduction to this part of my subject, to consider very briefly the stages through which the religious consciousness of mankind has passed in its attempts to realise Divine immanence in Nature, for this is, of course, the foundation of all religious symbolism. The earliest belief seems to be that which has been called _Animism_, the belief that all natural forces are conscious living beings like ourselves. This is the primitive form of natural religion; and though it leads to some deplorable customs, it is not a morbid type, but a very early effort on the lines of true development[331]. The perverted form of primitive Animism is called _Fetishism_, which is the belief that supernatural powers reside in some visible object, which is the home or most treasured possession of a god or demon. The object may be a building, a tree, an animal, a particular kind of food, or indeed anything. Unfortunately this belief is not peculiar to savages. A degraded form of it is exhibited by the so-called neo-mystical school of modern France, and in the baser types of Roman Catholicism everywhere[332]. Primitive Animism believes in no natural laws. The next stage is to believe in laws which are frequently suspended by the intervention of an independent and superior power. Mediæval dualism regarded every breach of natural law as a vindication of the power of spirit over matter--not always, however, of Divine power, for evil spirits could produce very similar disturbances of the physical order. Thus arose that persistent tendency to "seek after a sign," in which the religion of the vulgar, even in our own day, is deeply involved. Miracle, in some form or other, is regarded as the real basis of belief in God. At this stage people never ask themselves whether any spiritual truth, or indeed anything worth knowing, could possibly be communicated or authenticated by thaumaturgic exhibitions. What attracts them at first is the evidence which these beliefs furnish, that the world in which they live is not entirely under the dominion of an unconscious or inflexible power, but that behind the iron mechanism of cause and effect is a will more like their own in its irregularity and arbitrariness. Afterwards, as the majesty of law dawns upon them, miracles are no longer regarded as capricious exercises of power, but as the operation of higher physical laws, which are only active on rare occasions. A truer view sees in them a materialisation of mystical symbols, the proper function of which is to act as interpreters between the real and the apparent, between the spiritual and material worlds. When they crystallise as portents, they lose all their usefulness. Moreover, the belief in celestial visitations has its dark counterpart in superstitious dread of the powers of evil, which is capable of turning life into a long nightmare, and has led to dreadful cruelties[333]. The error has still enough vitality to create a prejudice against natural science, which appears in the light of an invading enemy wresting province after province from the empire of the supernatural. But we are concerned with thaumaturgy only so far as it has affected Mysticism. At first sight the connexion may seem very slight; and slight indeed it is. But just as Mysticism of the subjective type is often entangled in theories which sublimate matter till only a vain shadow remains, so objective Mysticism has been often pervaded by another kind of false spiritualism--that which finds edification in palpable supernatural manifestations. These so-called "mystical phenomena" are so much identified with "Mysticism" in the Roman Catholic Church of to-day, that the standard treatises on the subject, now studied in continental universities, largely consist of grotesque legends of "levitation," "bilocation," "incandescence," "radiation," and other miraculous tokens of Divine favour[334]. The great work of Görres, in five volumes, is divided into Divine, Natural, and Diabolical Mysticism. The first contains stories of the miraculous enhancement of sight, hearing, smell, and so forth, which results from extreme holiness; and tells us how one saint had the power of becoming invisible, another of walking through closed doors, and a third of flying through the air. "Natural Mysticism" deals with divination, lycanthropy, vampires, second sight, and other barbarous superstitions. "Diabolical Mysticism" includes witchcraft, diabolical possession, and the hideous stories of incubi and succubæ. It is not my intention to say any more about these savage survivals, as I do not wish to bring my subject into undeserved contempt[335]. "These terrors, and this darkness of the mind," as Lucretius says, "must be dispelled, not by the bright shafts of the sun's light, but by the study of Nature's laws[336]." Some of these fables are quite obviously due to a materialisation of conventional symbols. These symbols are the picture language into which the imagination translates what the soul has felt. A typical case is that of the miniature image of Christ, which is said to have been found embedded in the heart of a deceased saint. The supposed miracle was, of course, the work of imagination; but this does not mean that those who reported it were deliberate liars. We know now that we must distinguish between observation and imagination, between the language of science and that of poetical metaphor; but in an age which abhorred rationalism this was not so clear[337]. Rationalism has its function in proving that such mystical symbols are not physical facts. But when it goes on to say that they are related to physical facts as morbid hallucinations to realities, it has stepped outside its province. Proceeding a little further as we trace the development of natural or objective religion, we come to the belief in _magic_, which in primitive peoples is closely associated with their first attempts at experimental science. What gives magic its peculiar character is that it is based on fanciful, and not on real correspondences. The uneducated mind cannot distinguish between associations of ideas which are purely arbitrary and subjective, and those which have a more universal validity. Not, of course, that all the affinities seized upon by primitive man proved illusory; but those which were not so ceased to be magical, and became scientific. The savage draws no distinction between the process by which he makes fire and that by which his priest calls down rain, except that the latter is a professional secret; drugs and spells are used indifferently to cure the sick; astronomy and astrology are parts of the same science. There is, however, a difference between the magic which is purely naturalistic and that which makes mystical claims. The magician sometimes claims that the spirits are subject to him, not because he has learned how to wield the forces which they must obey, but because he has so purged his higher faculties that the occult sympathies of nature have become apparent to him. His theosophy claims to be a spiritual illumination, not a scientific discovery. The error here is the application of spiritual clairvoyance to physical relations. The insight into reality, which is unquestionably the reward of the pure heart and the single eye, does not reveal to us in detail how nature should be subdued to our needs. No spirits from the vasty deep will obey our call, to show us where lies the road to fortune or to ruin. Physical science is an abstract inquiry, which, while it keeps to its proper subject--the investigation of the relations which prevail in the phenomenal world--is self-sufficient, and can receive nothing on external authority. Still less can the adept usurp Divine powers, and bend the eternal laws of the universe to his puny will. The turbid streams of theurgy and magic flowed into the broad river of Christian thought by two channels--the later Neoplatonism, and Jewish Cabbalism. Of the former something has been said already. The root-idea of the system was that all life may be arranged in a descending scale of potencies, forming a kind of chain from heaven to earth. Man, as a microcosm, is in contact with every link in the chain, and can establish relations with all spiritual powers, from the superessential One to the lower spirits or "dæmons." The philosopher-saint, who had explored the highest regions of the intelligence, might hope to dominate the spirits of the air, and compel them to do his bidding. Thus the door was thrown wide open for every kind of superstition. The Cabbalists followed much the same path. The word Cabbala means "oral tradition," and is defined by Reuchlin as "the symbolic reception of a Divine revelation handed down for the saving contemplation of God and separate forms.[338]" In another place he says, "The Cabbala is nothing else than symbolic theology, in which not only are letters and words symbols of things, but things are symbols of other things." This method of symbolic interpretation was held to have been originally communicated by revelation,[339] in order that persons of holy life might by it attain to a mystical communion with God, or deification. The Cabbalists thus held much the same relation to the Talmudists as the mystics to the scholastics in the twelfth century. But, as Jews, they remained faithful to the two doctrines of an inspired tradition and an inspired book, which distinguish them from Platonic mystics.[340] Pico de Mirandola (born 1463) was the first to bring the Cabbala into Christian philosophy, and to unite it with his Neoplatonism. Very characteristic of his age is the declaration that "there is no natural science which makes us so certain of the Divinity of Christ as Magic and the Cabbala.[341]" For there was at that period a curious alliance of Mysticism and natural science against scholasticism, which had kept both in galling chains; and both mystics and physicists invoked the aid of Jewish theosophy. Just as Pythagoras, Plato, and Proclus were set up against Aristotle, so the occult philosophy of the Jews, which on its speculative side was mere Neoplatonism, was set up against the divinity of the Schoolmen. In Germany, Reuchlin (1455-1522) wrote a treatise, _On the Cabbalistic Art_, in which a theological scheme resembling those of the Neoplatonists and speculative mystics was based on occult revelation. The book captivated Pope Leo X. and the early Reformers alike. The influence of Cabbalism at this period was felt not only in the growth of magic, but in the revival of the science of _allegorism_, which resembles magic in its doctrine of occult sympathies, though without the theurgic element. According to this view of nature, everything in the visible world has an emblematic meaning. Everything that a man saw, heard, or did--colours, numbers, birds, beasts, and flowers, the various actions of life--was to remind him of something else.[342] The world was supposed to be full of sacred cryptograms, and every part of the natural order testified in hieroglyphics[343] to the truths of Christianity. Thus the shamrock bears witness to the Trinity, the spider is an emblem of the devil, and so forth. This kind of symbolism was and is extensively used merely as a picture-language, in which there is no pretence that the signs are other than artificial or conventional. The language of signs may be used either to instruct those who cannot understand words, or to baffle those who can. Thus, a crucifix may be as good as a sermon to an illiterate peasant; while the sign of a fish was used by the early Christians because it was unintelligible to their enemies. This is not symbolism in the sense which I have given to the word in this Lecture.[344] But it is otherwise when the type is used as a _proof_ of the antitype. This latter method had long been in use in biblical exegesis. Pious persons found a curious satisfaction in turning the most matter of fact statements into enigmatic prophecies. Every verse must have its "mystical" as well as its natural meaning, and the search for "types" was a recognised branch of apologetics. Allegorism became authoritative and dogmatic, which it has no right to be. It would be rash to say that this pseudo-science, which has proved so attractive to many minds, is entirely valueless. The very absurdity of the arguments used by its votaries should make us suspect that there is a dumb logic of a more respectable sort behind them. There is, underlying this love of types and emblems, a strong conviction that if "one eternal purpose runs" through the ages, it must be discernible in small things as well as in great. Everything in the world, if we could see things as they are, must be symbolic of the Divine Power which made it and maintains it in being. We cannot believe that anything in life is meaningless, or has no significance beyond the fleeting moment. Whatever method helps us to realise this is useful, and in a sense true. So far as this we may go with the allegorists, while at the same time we may be thankful that the cobwebs which they spun over the sacred texts have now been cleared away, so that we can at last read our Bible as its authors intended it to be read.[345] Theosophical and magical Mysticism culminated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Just as the idealism of Plotinus lost itself in the theurgic system of Iamblichus, so the doctrine of Divine immanence preached by Eckhart and his school was followed by the Nature-Mysticism of Cornelius Agrippa[346] and Paracelsus.[347] The "negative road" had been discredited by Luther's invective, and Mysticism, instead of shutting her eyes to the world of phenomena, stretched forth her hands to conquer and annex it. The old theory of a World-Spirit, the pulsations of whose heart are felt in all the life of the universe, came once more into favour. Through all phenomena, it was believed, runs an intricate network of sympathies and antipathies, the threads of which, could they be disentangled, would furnish us with a clue through all the labyrinths of natural and supernatural science. The age was impatient to enter on the inheritance from which humanity had long been debarred; the methods of experimental science seemed tame and slow; and so we find, especially in Germany, an extraordinary outburst of Nature-Mysticism-- astrology, white magic, alchemy, necromancy, and what not--such as Christianity had not witnessed before. These pseudo-sciences (with which was mingled much real progress in medicine, natural history, and kindred sciences) were divided under three provinces or "vincula"--those of the Spiritual World, which were mainly magical invocations, diagrams, and signs; those of the Celestial World, which were taught by astrology; and those of the Elemental World, which consisted in the sympathetic influence of material objects upon each other. These secrets (it was held) are all discoverable by man; for man is a microcosm, or epitome of the universe, and there is nothing in it with which he cannot claim an affinity. In knowing himself, he knows both God and all the other works that God has made. The subject of Nature-Mysticism is a fascinating one; but I must here confine myself to its religious aspects. An attempt was soon made, by Valentine Weigel (1533-1588), Lutheran pastor at Tschopau, to bring together the new objective Mysticism--freed from its superstitious elements--and the traditional subjective Mysticism which the Middle Ages had handed down from Dionysius and the Neoplatonists. Weigel's cosmology is based on that of Paracelsus; and his psychology also reminds us of him. Man is a microcosm, and his nature has three parts--the outward material body, the astral spirit, and the immortal soul, which bears the image of God. The three faculties of the soul correspond to these three parts; they are sense, reason (_Vernunft_), and understanding (_Verstand_). These are the "three eyes" by which we get knowledge. The sense perceives material things; the reason, natural science and art; the understanding, which he also calls the spark, sees the invisible and Divine. He follows the scholastic mystics in distinguishing between natural and supernatural knowledge, but his method of distinguishing them is, I think, original. Natural knowledge, he says, is not conveyed by the object; it is the percipient subject which creates knowledge out of itself. The object merely provokes the consciousness into activity. In natural knowledge the subject is "active, not passive"; all that appears to come from without is really evolved from within. In supernatural knowledge the opposite is the case. The eye of the "understanding," which sees the Divine, is the spark in the centre of the soul where lies the Divine image. In this kind of cognition the subject must be absolutely passive; its thoughts must be as still as if it were dead. Just as in natural knowledge the object does not co-operate, so in supernatural knowledge the subject does not co-operate. Yet this supernatural knowledge does not come from without. The Spirit and Word of God are _within_ us. God is Himself the eye and the light in the soul, as well as the object which the eye sees by this light. Supernatural knowledge flows from within outwards, and in this way resembles natural knowledge. But since God is both the eye that sees and the object which it sees, it is not we who know God, so much as God who knows Himself in us. Our inner man is a mere instrument of God. Thus Weigel, who begins with Paracelsus, leaves off somewhere near Eckhart--and Eckhart in his boldest mood. But his chief concern is to attack the Bibliolaters (_Buchstabentheologen_) in the Lutheran Church, and to protest against the unethical dogma of imputed righteousness. We need not follow him into either of these controversies, which give a kind of accidental colouring to his theology. Speculative Mysticism, which is always the foe of formalism and dryness in religion, attacks them in whatever forms it finds them; and so, when we try to penetrate the essence of Mysticism by investigating its historical manifestations, we must always consider what was the system which in each case it was trying to purify and spiritualise. Weigel's Mysticism moves in the atmosphere of Lutheran dogmatics. But it also marks a stage in the general development of Christian Mysticism, by giving a positive value to scientific and natural knowledge as part of the self-evolution of the human soul. "Study nature," he says, "physics, alchemy, magic, etc.; for _it is all in you, and you become what you have learnt_." It is true that his religious attitude is rigidly quietistic; but this position is so inconsistent with the activity which he enjoins on the "reason," that he may claim the credit of having exhibited the contradiction between the positive and negative methods in a clear light; and to prove a contradiction is always the first step towards solving it. A more notable effort in the same direction was that of Jacob Böhme, who, though he had studied Weigel, brought to his task a philosophical genius which was all his own. Böhme was born in 1575 near Görlitz, where he afterwards settled as a shoemaker and glover. He began to write in 1612, and in spite of clerical opposition, which silenced him for five years, he produced a number of treatises between that date and his death in 1624. Böhme professed to write only what he had "seen" by Divine illumination. His visions are not (with insignificant exceptions) authenticated by any marvellous signs; he simply asserts that he has been allowed to see into the heart of things, and that the very Being of God has been laid open to his spiritual sight.[348] His was that type of mind to which every thought becomes an image, and a logical process is like an animated photograph. "I am myself my own book," he says; and in writing, he tries to transcribe on paper the images which float before his mind's eye. If he fails, it is because he cannot find words to describe what he is seeing. Böhme was an unlearned man; but when he is content to describe his visions in homely German, he is lucid enough. Unfortunately, the scholars who soon gathered round him supplied him with philosophical terms, which he forthwith either personified--for instance the word "Idea" called forth the image of a beautiful maiden--or used in a sense of his own. The study of Paracelsus obscured his style still more, filling his treatises with a bewildering mixture of theosophy and chemistry. The result is certainly that much of his work is almost unreadable; the nuggets of gold have to be dug out from a bed of rugged stone; and we cannot be surprised that the unmystical eighteenth century declared that "Behmen's works would disgrace Bedlam at full moon.[349]" But German philosophers have spoken with reverence of "the father of Protestant Mysticism," who "perhaps only wanted learning and the gift of clear expression to become a German Plato"; and Sir Isaac Newton shut himself up for three months to study Böhme, whose teaching on attraction and the laws of motion seemed to him to have great value.[350] For us, he is most interesting as marking the transition from the purely subjective type of Mysticism to Symbolism, or rather as the author of a brilliant attempt to fuse the two into one system. In my brief sketch of Böhme's doctrines I shall illustrate his teaching from the later works of William Law, who is by far its best exponent. Law was an enthusiastic admirer of Böhme, and being, unlike his master, a man of learning and a practised writer, was able to bring order out of the chaos in which Böhme left his speculations. In strength of intellect Law was Böhme's equal, and as a writer of clear and forcible English he has few superiors. Böhme's doctrine of God and the world resembles that of other speculative mystics, but he contributes a new element in the great stress which he lays on _antithesis_ as a law of being. "In Yes and No all things consist," he says. No philosopher since Heraclitus and Empedocles had asserted so strongly that "Strife is the father of all things." Even in the hidden life of the unmanifested Godhead he finds the play of Attraction and Diffusion, the resultant of which is a Desire for manifestation felt in the Godhead. As feeling this desire, the Godhead becomes "Darkness"; the light which illumines the darkness is the Son. The resultant is the Holy Spirit, in whom arise the archetypes of creation. So he explains Body, Soul, and Spirit as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; and the same formula serves to explain Good, Evil, and Free Will; Angels, Devils, and the World. His view of Evil is not very consistent; but his final doctrine is that the object of the cosmic process is to exhibit the victory of Good over Evil, of Love over Hatred.[351] He at least has the merit of showing that strife is so inwoven with our lives here that we cannot possibly soar above the conflict between Good and Evil. It must be observed that Böhme repudiated the doctrine that there is any evolution of God in time. "I say not that Nature is God," he says: "He Himself is all, and communicates His power to all His works." But the creation of the archetypes was not a temporal act. Like other Protestant mystics, he lays great stress on the indwelling presence of Christ. And, consistently with this belief, he revolts against the Calvinistic doctrine of imputed righteousness, very much as did the Cambridge Platonists a little later. "That man is no Christian," he says, "who doth merely comfort himself with the suffering, death, and satisfaction of Christ, and doth impute it to himself as a gift of favour, remaining himself still a wild beast and unregenerate.... If this said sacrifice is to avail for me, it must be wrought _in_ me. The Father must beget His Son in my desire of faith, that my faith's hunger may apprehend Him in His word of promise. Then I put Him on, in His entire process of justification, in my inward ground; and straightway there begins in me the killing of the wrath of the devil, death, and hell, from the inward power of Christ's death. I am inwardly dead, and He is my life; I live in Him, and not in my selfhood. I am an instrument of God, wherewith He doeth what He will." To the same effect William Law says, "Christ given _for_ us is neither more nor less than Christ given _into_ us. He is in no other sense our full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement, than as His nature and spirit are born and formed in us." Law also insists that the Atonement was the effect, not of the wrath, but of the love of God. "Neither reason nor scripture," he says, "will allow us to bring wrath into God Himself, as a temper of His mind, who is only infinite, unalterable, overflowing Love." "Wrath is atoned when sin is extinguished." This revolt against the forensic theory of the Atonement is very characteristic of Protestant Mysticism.[352] The disparagement of external rites and ordinances, which we have found in so many mystics, appears in William Law, though he was himself precise in observing all the rules of the English Church. "This pearl of eternity is the Church, a temple of God _within_ thee, the consecrated place of Divine worship, where alone thou canst worship God in spirit and in truth. In _spirit_, because thy spirit is that alone in thee which can unite and cleave unto God, and receive the working of the Divine Spirit upon thee. In _truth_, because this adoration in spirit is that truth and reality of which all outward forms and rites, though instituted by God, are only the figure for a time; but this worship is eternal. Accustom thyself to the holy service of this inward temple. In the midst of it is the fountain of living water, of which thou mayst drink and live for ever. There the mysteries of thy redemption are celebrated, or rather opened in life and power. There the supper of the Lamb is kept; the bread that came down from heaven, that giveth life to the world, is thy true nourishment: all is done, and known in real experience, in a living sensibility of the work of God on the soul. There the birth, the life, the sufferings, the death, the resurrection and ascension of Christ, are not merely remembered, but inwardly found and enjoyed as the real states of thy soul, which has followed Christ in the regeneration. When once thou art well grounded in this inward worship, thou wilt have learnt to live unto God above time and place. For every day will be Sunday to thee, and wherever thou goest thou wilt have a priest, a church, and an altar along with thee.[353]" In his teaching about faith and love, Law follows the best mystical writers; but none before him, I think, attained to such strong and growing eloquence in setting it forth. "There is but one salvation for all mankind, and the way to it is one; and that is, the desire of the soul turned to God. This desire brings the soul to God, and God into the soul; it unites with God, it co-operates with God, and is one life with God. O my God, just and true, how great is Thy love and mercy to mankind, that heaven is thus everywhere open, and Christ thus the common Saviour to all that turn the desire of their hearts to Thee!" And of love he says: "No creature can have any union or communion with the goodness of the Deity till its life is a spirit of love. This is the one only bond of union betwixt God and His creature." "Love has no by-ends, wills nothing but its own increase: everything is as oil to its flame. The spirit of love does not want to be rewarded, honoured, or esteemed; its only desire is to propagate itself, and become the blessing and happiness of everything that wants it." The doctrine of the Divine spark (_synteresis_) is held by Law, but in a more definitely Christian form than by Eckhart. "If Christ was to raise a new life like His own in every man, then every man must have had originally in the inmost spirit of his life a seed of Christ, or Christ as a seed of heaven, lying there in a state of insensibility, out of which it could not arise but by the mediatorial power of Christ.... For what could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self?... The Word of God is the hidden treasure of every human soul, immured under flesh and blood, till as a day-star it arises in our hearts, and changes the son of an earthly Adam into a son of God." Is not this the Platonic doctrine of _anamnesis_, Christianised in a most beautiful manner? Very characteristic of the later Mysticism is the language which both Böhme and Law use about the future state. "The soul, when it departs from the body," Böhme writes, "needeth not to go far; for where the body dies, there is heaven and hell. God is there, and the devil; yea, each in his own kingdom. There also is Paradise; and the soul needeth only to enter through the deep door in the centre." Law is very emphatic in asserting that heaven and hell are states, not places, and that they are "no foreign, separate, and imposed states, adjudged to us by the will of God." "Damnation," he says, "is the natural, essential state of our own disordered nature, which is impossible, in the nature of the thing, to be anything else but our own hell, both here and hereafter." "There is nothing that is supernatural," he says very finely, "in the whole system of our redemption. Every part of it has its ground in the workings and powers of nature, and all our redemption is only nature set right, or made to be that which it ought to be.[354] There is nothing that is supernatural but God alone.... Right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, happiness and misery, are as unchangeable in nature as time and space. Nothing, therefore, can be done to any creature supernaturally, or in a way that is without or contrary to the powers of nature; but every thing or creature that is to be helped, that is, to have any good done to it, or any evil taken out of it, can only have it done so far as the powers of nature are able, and rightly directed to effect it.[355]" It is difficult to abstain from quoting more passages like this, in which Faith, which had been so long directed only to the unseen and unknown, sheds her bright beams over this earth of ours, and claims all nature for her own. The laws of nature are now recognised as the laws of God, and for that very reason they cannot be broken or arbitrarily suspended. Redemption is a law of life. There will come a time[356], "the time of the lilies," as Böhme calls it, when all nature will be delivered from bondage. "All the design of Christian redemption," says Law, "is to remove everything that is unheavenly, gross, dark, wrathful, and disordered from every part of this fallen world." No text is oftener in his mouth than the words of St. Paul which I read as the text of this Lecture. That "dim sympathy" of the human spirit with the life of nature which Plotinus felt, but which mediæval dualism had almost quenched, has now become an intense and happy consciousness of community with all living things, as subjects of one all-embracing and unchanging law, the law of perfect love. Magic and portents, apparitions and visions, the raptures of "infused contemplation" and their dark Nemesis of Satanic delusions, can no more trouble the serenity of him who has learnt to see the same God in nature whom he has found in the holy place of his own heart. It was impossible to separate Law from the "blessed Behmen," whose disciple he was proud to profess himself. But in putting them together I have been obliged to depart from the chronological order, for the Cambridge Platonists, as they are usually called, come between. This, however, need cause no confusion, for the Platonists had no direct influence upon Law. Law, Nonjuror as well as mystic, remained a High Churchman by sympathy, and hated Rationalism; while the Platonists sprang from an Evangelical school, were never tired of extolling Reason, and regarded Böhme as a fanciful "enthusiast.[357]" And yet, we find so very much in common between the Platonists and William Law, that these party differences seem merely superficial. The same exalted type of Mysticism appears in both. The group of philosophical divines, who had their centre in some of the Cambridge colleges towards the middle of the seventeenth century, furnishes one of the most interesting and important chapters in the history of our Church. Never since the time of the early Greek Fathers had any orthodox communion produced thinkers so independent and yet so thoroughly loyal to the Church. And seldom has the Christian temper found a nobler expression than in the lives and writings of such men as Whichcote and John Smith.[358] These men made no secret of their homage to Plato. And let it be noticed that they were students of Plato and Plotinus more than of Dionysius and his successors. Their Platonism is not of the debased Oriental type, and is entirely free from self-absorbed quietism. The _via negativa_ has disappeared as completely in their writings as in those of Böhme; the world is for them as for him the mirror of the Deity; but, being philosophers and not physicists, they are most interested in claiming for religion the whole field of _intellectual_ life. They are fully convinced that there can be no ultimate contradiction between philosophy or science and Christian faith; and this accounts not only for their praise of "reason," but for the happy optimism which appears everywhere in their writings. The luxurious and indolent Restoration clergy, whose lives were shamed by the simplicity and spirituality of the Platonists, invented the word "Latitudinarian" to throw at them, "a long nickname which they have taught their tongues to pronounce as roundly as if it were shorter than it is by four or five syllables"; but they could not deny that their enemies were loyal sons of the Church of England.[359] What the Platonists meant by making reason the seat of authority may be seen by a few quotations from Whichcote and Smith, who for our purpose are, I think, the best representatives of the school. Whichcote answers Tuckney, who had remonstrated with him for "a vein of doctrine, in which reason hath too much given to it in the mysteries of faith";--"Too much" and "too often" on these points! "The Scripture is full of such truths, and I discourse on them too much and too often! Sir, I oppose not rational to spiritual, for spiritual is most rational." Elsewhere he writes, "He that gives reason for what he has said, has done what is fit to be done, and the most that can be done." "Reason is the Divine Governor of man's life; it is the very voice of God." "When the doctrine of the Gospel becomes the reason of our mind, it will be the principle of our life." "It ill becomes us to make our intellectual faculties Gibeonites.[360]" How far this teaching differs from the frigid "common-sense" morality prevalent in the eighteenth century, may be judged from the following, which stamps Whichcote as a genuine mystic. "Though liberty of judgment be everyone's right, yet how few there are that make use of this right! For the use of this right doth depend upon self-improvement by meditation, consideration, examination, prayer, and the like. These are things antecedent and prerequisite." John Smith, in a fine passage too long to quote in full, says: "Reason in man being _lumen de lumine_, a light flowing from the Fountain and Father of lights ... was to enable man to work out of himself all those notions of God which are the true groundwork of love and obedience to God, and conformity to Him.... But since man's fall from God, the inward virtue and vigour of reason is much abated, the soul having suffered a [Greek: pterorryêsis], as Plato speaks, a _defluvium pennarum_.... And therefore, besides the truth of natural inscription, God hath provided the truth of Divine revelation.... But besides this outward revelation, there is also an inward impression of it ... which is in a more special manner attributed to God.... God only can so shine upon our glassy understandings, as to beget in them a picture of Himself, and turn the soul like wax or clay to the seal of His own light and love. He that made our souls in His own image and likeness can easily find a way into them. The Word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul, imprints itself there as with the point of a diamond.... It is God alone that acquaints the soul with the truths of revelation, and also strengthens and raises the soul to better apprehensions even of natural truth, God being that in the intellectual world which the sun is in the sensible, as some of the ancient Fathers love to speak, and the ancient philosophers too, who meant God by their _Intellectus Agens_[361] whose proper work they supposed to be not so much to enlighten the object as the faculty." The Platonists thus lay great stress on the inner light, and identify it with the purified reason. The best exposition of their teaching on this head is in Smith's beautiful sermon on "The True Way or Method of attaining to Divine Knowledge." "Divinity," he says, "is a Divine life rather than a Divine science, to be understood rather by a spiritual sensation than by any verbal description. A good life is the _prolepsis_ of Divine science--the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Divinity is a true efflux from the eternal light, which, like the sunbeams, does not only enlighten, but also heat and enliven; and therefore our Saviour hath in His beatitudes connext purity of heart to the beatific vision." "Systems and models furnish but a poor wan light," compared with that which shines in purified souls. "To seek our divinity merely in books and writings is to seek the living among the dead"; in these, "truth is often not so much enshrined as entombed." "That which enables us to know and understand aright the things of God, must be a living principle of holiness within us. The sun of truth never shines into any unpurged souls.... Such as men themselves are, such will God Himself seem to be.... Some men have too bad hearts to have good heads.... He that will find truth must seek it with a free judgment and a sanctified mind." Smith was well read in mystical theology, and was aware how much his ideal differed from that of Dionysian Mysticism. His criticism of the _via negativa_ is so admirable that I must quote part of it. "Good men ... are content and ready to deny themselves for God. I mean not that they should deny their own reason, as some would have it, for that were to deny a beam of Divine light, and so to deny God, instead of denying ourselves for Him.... By self-denial, I mean the soul's quitting all its own interest in itself, and an entire resignation of itself to Him as to all points of service and duty; and thus the soul loses itself in God, and lives in the possession not so much of its own being as of the Divinity, desiring only to be great in God, to glory in His light, and spread itself in His fulness; to be filled always by Him, and to empty itself again into Him; to receive all from Him, and to expend all for Him; and so to live, not as its own, but as God's." Wicked men "maintain a _meum_ and _tuum_ between God and themselves," but the good man is able to make a full surrender of himself, "triumphing in nothing more than in his own nothingness, and in the allness of the Divinity. But, indeed, this his being nothing is the only way to be all things; this his having nothing the truest way of possessing all things.... The spirit of religion is always ascending upwards; and, spreading itself through the whole essence of the soul, loosens it from a self-confinement and narrowness, and so renders it more capacious of Divine enjoyment.... The spirit of a good man is always drinking in fountain-goodness, and fills itself more and more, till it be filled with all the fulness of God." "It is not a melancholy kind of sitting still, and slothful waiting, that speaks men enlivened by the Spirit and power of God. It is not religion to stifle and smother those active powers and principles which are within us.... Good men do not walk up and down the world merely like ghosts and shadows; but they are indeed living men, by a real participation from Him who is indeed a quickening Spirit." "Neither were it an happiness worth the having for a mind, like an hermit sequestered from all things else, to spend an eternity in self-converse and the enjoyment of such a diminutive superficial nothing as itself is.... We read in the Gospel of such a question of our Saviour's, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? We may invert it, What do you return within to see? A soul confined within the private and narrow cell of its own particular being? Such a soul deprives itself of all that almighty and essential glory and goodness which shines round about it, which spreads itself throughout the whole universe; I say, it deprives itself of all this, for the enjoying of such a poor, petty, and diminutive thing as itself is, which yet it can never enjoy truly in such retiredness." The English Platonists are equally sound on the subject of ecstasy. Whichcote says: "He doth not know God at all as He is, nor is he in a good state of religion, who doth not find in himself at times ravishings with sweet and lovely considerations of the Divine perfections." And Smith: "Who can tell the delights of those mysterious converses with the Deity, when reason is turned into sense, and faith becomes vision? The fruit of this knowledge is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.... By the Platonists' leave, this life and knowledge (that of the 'contemplative man') peculiarly belongs to the true and sober Christian. This life is nothing else but an infant-Christ formed in his soul. But we must not mistake: this knowledge is here but in its infancy." While we are here, "our own imaginative powers, which are perpetually attending the best acts of our souls, will be breathing a gross dew upon the pure glass of our understandings." "Heaven is first a temper, then a place," says Whichcote, and Smith says the same about hell. "Heaven is not a thing without us, nor is happiness anything distinct from a true conjunction of the mind with God." "Though we could suppose ourselves to be at truce with heaven, and all Divine displeasure laid asleep; yet would our own sins, if they continue unmortified, make an Ætna or Vesuvius within us.[362]" This view of the indissoluble connexion between holiness and blessedness, as between sin and damnation, leads Smith to reject strenuously the doctrine of imputed, as opposed to imparted, righteousness. "God does not bid us be warmed and filled," he says, "and deny us those necessities which our starving and hungry souls call for.... I doubt sometimes, some of our dogmata and notions about justification may puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits of ourselves than God hath of us, and that we profanely make the unspotted righteousness of Christ to serve only as a covering wherein to wrap our foul deformities and filthy vices, and when we have done, think ourselves in as good credit and repute with God as we are with ourselves, and that we are become Heaven's darlings as much as we are our own.[363]" These extracts will show that the English Platonists breathe a larger air than the later Romish mystics, and teach a religion more definitely Christian than Erigena and Eckhart. I shall now show how this happy result was connected with a more truly spiritual view of the external world than we have met with in the earlier part of our survey. That the laws of nature are the laws of God, that "man, as man, is averse to what is evil and wicked," that "evil is unnatural," and a "contradiction of the law of our being," which is only found in "wicked men and devils," is one of Whichcote's "gallant themes." And Smith sets forth the true principles of Nature-Mysticism in a splendid passage, with which I will conclude this Lecture:-- "God made the universe and all the creatures contained therein as so many glasses wherein He might reflect His own glory. He hath copied forth Himself in the creation; and in this outward world we may read the lovely characters of the Divine goodness, power, and wisdom.... But how to find God here, and feelingly to converse with Him, and being affected with the sense of the Divine glory shining out upon the creation, how to pass out of the sensible world into the intellectual, is not so effectually taught by that philosophy which professed it most, as by true religion. That which knits and unites God and the soul together can best teach it how to ascend and descend upon those golden links that unite, as it were, the world to God. That Divine Wisdom, that contrived and beautified this glorious structure, can best explain her own art, and carry up the soul back again in these reflected beams to Him who is the Fountain of them.... Good men may easily find every creature pointing out to that Being whose image and superscription it bears, and climb up from those darker resemblances of the Divine wisdom and goodness, shining out in different degrees upon several creatures, till they sweetly repose themselves in the bosom of the Divinity; and while they are thus conversing with this lower world ... they find God many times secretly flowing into their souls, and leading them silently out of the court of the temple into the Holy Place.... Thus religion, where it is in truth and power, renews the very spirit of our minds, and doth in a manner spiritualise this outward creation to us.... It is nothing but a thick mist of pride and self-love that hinders men's eyes from beholding that sun which enlightens them and all things else.... A good man is no more solicitous whether this or that good thing be mine, or whether my perfections exceed the measure of this or that particular creature; for whatsoever good he beholds anywhere, he enjoys and delights in it as much as if it were his own, and whatever he beholds in himself, he looks not upon it as his property, but as a common good; for all these beams come from one and the same Fountain and Ocean of light in whom he loves them all with an universal love.... Thus may a man walk up and down the world as in a garden of spices, and suck a Divine sweetness out of every flower. There is a twofold meaning in every creature, a literal and a mystical, and the one is but the ground of the other; and as the Jews say of their law, so a good man says of everything that his senses offer to him--it speaks to his lower part, but it points out something above to his mind and spirit. It is the drowsy and muddy spirit of superstition which is fain to set some idol at its elbow, something that may jog it and put it in mind of God. Whereas true religion never finds itself out of the infinite sphere of the Divinity ... it beholds itself everywhere in the midst of that glorious unbounded Being who is indivisibly everywhere. A good man finds every place he treads upon holy ground; to him the world is God's temple; he is ready to say with Jacob, 'How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.'" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 316: In R.L. Nettleship's _Remains_.] [Footnote 317: In addition to passages quoted elsewhere, the following sentence from Luthardt is a good statement of the symbolic theory: "Nature is a world of symbolism, a rich hieroglyphic book: everything visible conceals an invisible mystery, and the last mystery of all is God." Goethe's "Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss" would be better without the "nur," from our point of view.] [Footnote 318: Récéjac, _Essai sur les Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique_.] [Footnote 319: In the _Edinburgh Review_, October 1896. The article referred to, on "The Catholic Mystics of the Middle Ages," is beautifully written, and should be read by all who are interested in the subject.] [Footnote 320: This is Kant's use of the word. See Bosanquet, _History of Æsthetic_, p. 273: "A symbol is for Kant a perception or presentation which represents a conception neither conventionally as a mere sign, nor directly, but in the abstract, as a scheme, but indirectly though appropriately through a similarity between the rules which govern our reflection in the symbol and in the thing (or idea) symbolised." "In this sense beauty is a symbol of the moral order." Goethe's definition is also valuable: "That is true symbolism where the more particular represents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the inscrutable."] [Footnote 321: Or rather of power and dignity; for in some early Byzantine works even Satan is represented with a nimbus.] [Footnote 322: Emerson says rightly, "Mysticism (in a bad sense) consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one."] [Footnote 323: The distinction which Ruskin draws between the _fancy_ and the _imagination_ may help us to discern the true and the false in Symbolism. "Fancy has to do with the outsides of things, and is content therewith. She can never _feel_, but is one of the most purely and simply intellectual of the faculties. She cannot be made serious; no edge-tool, but she will play with: whereas the imagination is in all things the reverse. She cannot but be serious; she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, ever to smile.... There is reciprocal action between the intensity of moral feeling and the power of imagination. Hence the powers of the imagination may always be tested by accompanying tenderness of emotion.... Imagination is quiet, fancy restless; fancy details, imagination suggests.... All egotism is destructive of imagination, whose play and power depend altogether on our being able to forget ourselves.... Imagination has no respect for sayings or opinions: it is independent" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. chap. iii.).] [Footnote 324: Cf. Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. ii. p. 144: "What we nowadays understand by 'symbols' is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time (in the second century) 'symbol' denoted a thing which, in some kind of way, is that which it signifies; but, on the other hand, according to the ideas of that period, the really heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without being identical with it. Accordingly, the distinction of a symbolic and realistic conception of the Lord's Supper is altogether to be rejected." And vol. iv. p. 289: "The 'symbol' was never a mere type or sign, but always embodied a mystery." So Justin Martyr uses [Greek: symbolikôs eipein] and [Greek: eipein en mystêriô] as interchangeable terms; and Tertullian says that the name of Joshua was _nominis futuri sacramentum_.] [Footnote 325: So some thinkers have felt that "the Word" is not the best expression for the creative activity of God. The passage of Goethe where Faust rejects "Word," "Thought," and "Power," and finally translates, "In the beginning was the _Act_," is well known. And Philo, in a very interesting passage, says that Nature is the language in which God speaks; "but there is this difference, that while the human voice is made to be _heard_, the voice of God is made to be _seen_: what God says consists of acts, not of words" (_De Decem Orac_. II).] [Footnote 326: Aquinas says of the sacraments, "efficiunt quod figurant." The Thomists held that the sacraments are "causæ" of grace; the Scotists (Nominalists), that grace is their inseparable concomitant. The maintenance of a real correspondence between sign and significance seems to be essential to the idea of a sacrament, but then the danger of degrading it into magic lies close at hand.] [Footnote 327: In the case of irregular Baptism, the maxim holds: "Fieri non debuit; factum valet." Cf. Bp. Churton, _The Missionary's Foundation of Doctrine_, p. 129. The reason for this difference between the two sacraments is quite clear.] [Footnote 328: It is, of course, difficult to decide how far such statements were meant to be taken literally. But there is no doubt that both Baptism and the Eucharist were supposed to _confer_ immortality. Cf. Tert. _de Bapt._ 2 (621, Oehl.), "nonne mirandum est lavacro dilui mortem?"; Gregory of Nyssa, _Or. cat. magn._ 35, [Greek: mê dynasthai de phêmi dicha tês kata to loutron anagennêseôs en anastasei genesthai ton anthrôpon]. Basil, too, calls Baptism [Greek: dynamis eis tên anastasin]. Of the Eucharist, Ignatius uses the phrase quoted, [Greek: pharmakon tês athanasias], and [Greek: antidotos tou mê apothanein]; and Gregory of Nyssa uses the same language as about Baptism. See, further, in Appendices B and C.] [Footnote 329: E.g. [Greek: metallaxis] (Theodoret), [Greek: metabolê] (Cyril), [Greek: metapoiêsis] (Gregory Naz.), [Greek: metastoicheiôsis] (Theophylact). The last-named goes on to say that "we are in the same way _transelementated_ into Christ." The Christian Neoplatonists naturally regard the sacrament as symbolic. Origen is inclined to hold that _every_ action should be sacramental, and that material symbols, such as bread and wine, and participation in a ceremonial, cannot be necessary vehicles of spiritual grace; this is in accordance with the excessive idealism and intellectualism of his system. Dionysius calls the elements [Greek: symbola, eikones, antitypa, aisthêta tina anti noêtôn metalambanomena]; and Maximus, his commentator, defines a symbol as [Greek: aisthêton ti anti noêtou metalambanomenon].] [Footnote 330: Harnack (_History of Dogma_, vol. vi. p. 102, English edition) says: "In the centuries before the Reformation, a growing value was attached not only to the sacraments, but to crosses, amulets, relics, holy places, etc. As long as what the soul seeks is not the rock of assurance, but means for inciting to piety, it will create for itself a thousand holy things. It is therefore an extremely superficial view that regards the most inward Mysticism and the service of idols as contradictory. The opposite view, rather, is correct." I have seldom found myself able to agree with this writer's judgments upon Mysticism; and this one is no exception. The "most inward Mysticism" does not occupy itself much with external "incitements to piety," nor is this the motive with which a mystic could ever (e.g.) receive the Eucharist. The use of amulets, etc., which Harnack finds to have been spreading before the Reformation, and which was certainly very prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had very little to do with "the most inward Mysticism." My view as to the place of magic in the history of Mysticism is given in this Lecture; I protest against identifying it with the essence of Mysticism. Symbolic Mysticism soon outgrew it; introspective Mysticism never valued it. The use of visible things as stimulants to piety is another matter; it has its place in the systems of the Catholic mystics, but as a very early stage in the spiritual ascent. What I have said as to the inconsistency of a high sacramental doctrine with the favourite injunctions to "cast away all images," which we find in the mediæval mystics, is, I think, indisputable.] [Footnote 331: The most recent developments of German idealistic philosophy, as set forth in the cosmology of Lotze, and still more of Fechner, may perhaps be described as an attempt to preserve the truth of Animism on a much higher plane, without repudiating the universality of law.] [Footnote 332: I refer especially to Huysmans' two "mystical" novels, _En Route_ and _La Cathédrale_. The naked Fetishism of the latter book almost passes belief. We have a Madonna who is good-natured at Lourdes and cross-grained at La Salette; who likes "pretty speeches and little coaxing ways" in "paying court" to her, and who at the end is apostrophised as "our Lady of the Pillar," "our Lady of the Crypt." It may perhaps be excusable to resort to such expedients as these in the conversion of savages; but there is something singularly repulsive in the picture (drawn apparently from life) of a profligate man of letters seeking salvation in a Christianity which has lowered itself far beneath educated paganism. At any rate, let not the name of Mysticism be given to such methods.] [Footnote 333: I refer especially to the horrors connected with the belief in witchcraft, on which see Lecky, _Rationalism in Europe_, vol. i. "Remy, a judge of Nancy, boasted that he had put to death eight hundred witches in sixteen years." "In the bishopric of Wartzburg, nine hundred were burnt in one year." As late as 1850, some French peasants burnt alive a woman named Bedouret, whom they supposed to be a witch.] [Footnote 334: The degradation of Mysticism in the Roman Church since the Reformation may be estimated by comparing the definitions of Mysticism and Mystical Theology current in the Middle Ages with the following from Ribet, who is recognised as a standard authority on the subject: "La Theologie mystique, au point de vue subjectif et experimental, nous semble pouvoir être définie; une attraction surnaturelle et passive de l'âme vers Dieu, provenant d'une illumination et d'un embrasement intérieurs, qui préviennent la réflexion, surpassent l'effort humain, _et peuvent avoir sur le corps un retentissement merveilleux et irresistible_." "Au point de vue doctrinal et objectif, la mystique peut se définir: la science qui traite _des phénomènes surnaturels_, soit intimes, _soit extérieurs_, qui preparent, accompagnent, et suivent la contemplation divine." The time is past, if it ever existed, when such superstitions could be believed without grave injury to mental and moral health.] [Footnote 335: This language about the teaching of the Roman Church may be considered unseemly by those who have not studied the subject. Those who have done so will think it hardly strong enough. In self-defence, I will quote one sentence from Schram, whose work on "Mysticism" is considered authoritative, and is studied in the great Catholic university of Louvain: "Quæri potest utrum dæmon per turpem concubitum possit violenter opprimere marem vel feminam cuius obsessio permissa sit ob finem perfectionis et contemplationis acquirendæ." The answer is in the affirmative, and the evidence is such as could hardly be transcribed, even in Latin. Schram's book is mainly intended for the direction of confessing priests, and the evidence shows, as might have been expected, that the subjects of these "phenomena" are generally poor nuns suffering from hysteria.] [Footnote 336: At a time when many are hoping to find in the study of the obscurer psychical phenomena a breach in the "middle wall of partition" between the spiritual and material worlds, I may seem to have brushed aside too contemptuously the floating mass of popular beliefs which "spiritualists" think worthy of serious investigation. I must therefore be allowed to say that in my opinion psychical research has already established results of great value, especially in helping to break down that view of the _imperviousness_ of the ego which is fatal to Mysticism, and (I venture to think) to any consistent philosophy. Monadism, we may hope, is doomed. But the more popular kind of spiritualism is simply the old hankering after supernatural manifestations, which are always dear to semi-regenerate minds.] [Footnote 337: It is, I think, significant that the word "imagination" was slow in making its way into psychology. [Greek: Phantasia] is defined by Aristotle (_de Anima_, iii. 3) as [Greek: kinêsis hypo tês aisthêseôs tês kat energeian gignomenê], but it is not till Philostratus that the creative imagination is opposed to [Greek: mimêsis]. Cf. _Vit. Apoll._ vi. 19, [Greek: mimêsis men dêmiourgêsei ho eiden, phantasia de kai ho mê eiden].] [Footnote 338: Reuchlin, _De arte cabbalistica_: "Est enim Cabbala divinæ revelationis ad salutiferam Dei et formarum separatarum contemplationem traditæ symbolica receptio, quam qui coelesti sortiumtur afflatu recto nomine Cabbalici dicuntur, eorum vero discipulos cognomento Cabbalæos appellabimus, et qui alioquin eos imitari conantur, Cabbalistæ nominandi sunt."] [Footnote 339: The mystical Rabbis ascribe the Cabbala to the angel Razael, the reputed teacher of Adam in Paradise, and say that this angel gave Adam the Cabbala as his lesson-book. There is a clear and succinct account of the main Cabbalistic docrines in Hunt, _Pantheism and Christianity_, pp. 84-88.] [Footnote 340: But the notion that the deepest mysteries should not be entrusted to writing is found in Clement and Origen; cf. Origen, _Against Celsus_, vi. 26: [Greek: ouk akindynon tên tôn toioutôn saphêneian pisteusai graphê]. And Clement says: [Greek: ta aporrêta, kathaper ho theos, logô pisteuetai ou grammati]. The curious legend of an oral tradition also appears in Clement (_Hypolyp. Fragm._ in Eusebius, _H.E._ ii. I. 4): [Greek: Iakôbô tô dikaiô kai Iôanê kai Petrô meta tên anastasin paredôke tên gnôsin ho kyrios, outoi tois loipois apostolois paredôkan, oi de loipoi apostoloi tois hebdomêkonta, ôn eis ên kai Barnabas.] Origen, too, speaks of "things spoken in private to the disciples."] [Footnote 341: The following extract from Pico's _Apology_ may be interesting, as illustrating the close connexion between magic and science at this period: "One of the chief charges against me is that I am a magician. Have I not myself distinguished two kinds of magic? One, which the Greeks call [Greek: goêteia], depends entirely on alliance with evil spirits, and deserves to be regarded with horror, and to be punished; the other is magic in the proper sense of the word. The former subjects man to the evil spirits, the latter makes them serve him. The former is neither an art nor a science; the latter embraces the deepest mysteries, and the knowledge of the whole of Nature with her powers. While it connects and combines the forces scattered by God through the whole world, it does not so much work miracles as come to the help of working nature. Its researches into the sympathies of things enable it to bring to light hidden marvels from the secret treasure-houses of the world, just as if it created them itself. As the countryman trains the vine upon the elm, so the magician marries the earthly objects to heavenly bodies. His art is beneficial and Godlike, for it brings men to wonder at the works of God, than which nothing conduces more to true religion."] [Footnote 342: This was a very old theory. Cf. Lecky, _Rationalism in Europe_, vol. i. p. 264. "The _Clavis_ of St. Melito, who was bishop of Sardis, it is said, in the beginning of the second century, consists of a catalogue of many hundreds of birds, beasts, plants, and minerals that were symbolical of Christian virtues, doctrines, and personages."] [Footnote 343: The analogy between allegorism in religion and the hieroglyphic writing is drawn out by Clement, _Strom._ v. 4 and 7.] [Footnote 344: The distinction, however, would be unintelligible to the savage mind. To primitive man a _name_ is a symbol in the strictest sense. Hence, "the knowledge, invocation, and vain repetition of a deity's name constitutes in itself an actual, if mystic, union with the deity named" (Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 245). This was one of the chief reasons for making a secret of the cultus, and even of the name of a patron-deity. To reveal it was to admit strangers into the tutelage of the national god.] [Footnote 345: I do not find it possible to give a more honourable place than this to a system of biblical exegesis which has still a few defenders. It was first developed in Christian times by the Gnostics, and was eagerly adopted by Origen, who fearlessly applied it to the Gospels, teaching that "Christ's actions on earth were enigmas ([Greek: ainigmata]), to be interpreted by Gnosis." The method was often found useful in dealing with moral and scientific difficulties in the Old Testament; it enabled Dionysius to use very bold language about the literal meaning, as I showed in Lecture III. The Christian Platonists of Alexandria meant it to be an esoteric method: Clement calls it [Greek: symbolikôs philosophein]. It was held that [Greek: ta mystêria mystikôs paradidotai]; and even that Divine truths are honoured by enigmatic treatment ([Greek: hê krypsis hê mystikê semnopoiei to theion]). But the main use of allegorism was pietistic; and to this there can be no objection, unless the piety is morbid, as is the case in many commentaries on the Song of Solomon. Still, it can hardly be disputed that the countless books written to elaborate the principles of allegorism contain a mass of futility such as it would be difficult to match in any other class of literature. The best defence of the method is perhaps to be found in Keble's Tract (No. 89) on the "Mysticism" of the early Fathers. Keble's own poetry contains many beautiful examples of the true use of symbolism; but as an apologist of allegorism he does not distinguish between its use and abuse. Yet surely there is a vast difference between seeing in the "glorious sky embracing all" a type of "our Maker's love," and analysing the 153 fish caught in the Sea of Galilee into the square of the 12 Apostles + the square of the 3 Persons of the Trinity. The history of the doctrine of "signatures," which is the cryptogram theory applied to medicine, is very curious and interesting, "Citrons, according to Paracelsus, are good for heart affections, because they are heart-shaped; the _saphena riparum_ is to be applied to fresh wounds, because its leaves are spotted as with flecks of blood. A species of _dentaria_, whose roots resemble teeth, is a cure for toothache and scurvy."--Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, vol. ii. p. 77. It is said that some traces of this quaint superstition survive even in the modern materia medica. The alliance between medicine and Mysticism subsisted for a long time, and forms a curious chapter of history.] [Footnote 346: Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, a contemporary of Reuchlin, studied Cabbalism mainly as a magical science. He was nominally a Catholic, but attacked Rome and scholasticism quite in the spirit of Luther. His three chief works are, _On the Threefold Way of Knowing God, On the Vanity of Arts and Sciences_ (a ferocious attack on most of the professions), and _On Occult Philosophy_ (treating of natural, celestial, and religious magic). The "magician," he says, "must study three sciences--physics, mathematics, and theology." Agrippa's adventurous life ended in 1533.] [Footnote 347: Theophrastus Paracelsus (Philippus Bombastus von Hohenheim) was born in 1493, and died in 1541. His writings are a curious mixture of theosophy and medical science: "medicine," he taught, "has four pillars--philosophy, astronomy (or rather astrology), alchemy, and religion." He lays great stress on the doctrine that man is a microcosm, and on the law of Divine manifestation _by contraries_--the latter is a new feature which was further developed by Böhme.] [Footnote 348: "I saw," he says, "the Being of all Beings, the Ground and the Abyss; also, the birth of the Holy Trinity; the origin and first state of the world and of all creatures. I saw in myself the three worlds--the Divine or angelic world; the dark world, the original of Nature; and the external world, as a substance spoken forth out of the two spiritual worlds.... In my inward man I saw it well, as in a great deep; for I saw right through as into a chaos where everything lay wrapped, but I could not unfold it. Yet from time to time it opened itself within me, like a growing plant. For twelve years I carried it about within me, before I could bring it forth in any external form; till afterwards it fell upon me, like a bursting shower that killeth wheresoever it lighteth, as it will. Whatever I could bring into outwardness, that I wrote down. The work is none of mine; I am but the Lord's instrument, wherewith He doeth what He will."] [Footnote 349: This is from Bp. Warburton. "Sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled," is John Wesley's verdict.] [Footnote 350: See Overton, _Life of William Law_, p. 188.] [Footnote 351: I have omitted Böhme's gnostical theories as to the seven _Quellgeister_ as belonging rather to theosophy than to Mysticism. The resemblance to Basilides is here rather striking, but it must be a pure coincidence.] [Footnote 352: And of English Mysticism before the Reformation; cf. p. 208.] [Footnote 353: From the _Spirit of Prayer_. The sect of Behmenists in Germany, unlike Law, attended no church, and took no part in the Lord's Supper.--Overton, _Life of William Law_, p. 214.] [Footnote 354: This stimulating doctrine, that the soul, when freed from impediments, ascends naturally and inevitably to its "own place," is put into the mouth of Beatrice by Dante (_Paradiso_, i. 136)-- "Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo, Lo tuo salir, se non come d'un rivo Se d'alto monte scende giuso ad imo. Maraviglia sarebbe in te, se privo D'impedimento giu ti fossi assiso, Com' a terra quieto fuoco vivo. Quinci rivolce inver lo cielo il viso." ] [Footnote 355: It may be interesting to compare the following passage from George Fox, which dramatises the irruption of natural science, with its faith in fixed laws, into the sphere of the religious consciousness:--"One morning, while I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, a temptation beset me; and I sat still. It was said, _All things come by Nature_; and the elements and stars came over me, so that I was in a manner quite clouded by it. And as I sat still under it and let it alone, a living hope and a true voice arose in me, which said, _There is a living God who made all things_. Immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all; my heart was glad, and I praised the living God."] [Footnote 356: So we may fairly say, if we remember that we are speaking of what transcends time. Neither Böhme nor Law looks forward to a golden age on this earth.] [Footnote 357: Henry More's judgment is as follows: "Jacob Behmen, I conceive, is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above the rational; and though he was a good and holy man, his natural complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed, but retained its property still; and, therefore, his imagination being very busy about Divine things, he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving Divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his fancy; which, being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him, as well as the anxiety of reason does others of like integrity with himself."] [Footnote 358: Canon G.G. Perry, in his _Students' English Church History_, disposes of this noble group of men in one contemptuous paragraph, as a "class of divines who were neither Puritans nor High Churchmen," and makes the astounding statement that "to the school thus commenced, the deadness, carelessness, and indifference prevalent in the eighteenth century are in large measure to be attributed." It is of these very same men that Bishop Burnet writes, that if they had not appeared to combat the "laziness and negligence," the "ease and sloth" of the Restoration clergy, "the Church had quite lost her esteem over the nation." Alexander Knox (_Works_, vol. iii. p. 199) speaks of the rise of this school as a great instance of the design of Providence to supply to the Church what had never before been produced, writers who do "full honour at once to the elevation and the rationality of Christian piety.... In their writings we are invited to ascend, by having a prospect opened before us as luminous as it is sublime.... They are such writers as had never before existed.... No Church but the English Church could have produced them." Of John Smith he says, "My value for him is beyond what words can do justice to." The works of Whichcote, Smith, Cudworth, and Culverwel are happily accessible enough, and I beg my readers to study them at first hand. I do not believe that any Christian could rise from the perusal of the two first-named without having gained a lasting benefit in the deepening of his spiritual life and heightening of his faith.] [Footnote 359: A writer who signs himself S.P. (probably Simon Patrick, bishop of Ely), in a pamphlet called _A Brief Account of the new Sect of Latitude Men_ (1662), vindicates their attachment to the "virtuous mediocrity" of the Church of England, as distinguished from the "meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome, and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles."] [Footnote 360: Compare with these extracts the words of Leibnitz: "To despise reason in matters of religion is to my eyes certain proof either of an obstinacy that borders on fanaticism, or, what is worse, of hypocrisy."] [Footnote 361: See Appendix C.] [Footnote 362: The classical reader will be reminded of Lucretius, iii. 979-1036. Smith, however, would not have relished this comparison. He devotes part of one sermon to a refutation of the Epicurean poet, in whom he sees a precursor of his _bête noire_, Hobbes!] [Footnote 363: Compare with this the following passage of Jean de Labadie (1610-1674), the founder of a mystical school on the Continent: "Plusieurs sont bien aises d'ouyr dire qu'ils sont justifiés par Jesus-Christ, lavés de leurs péchés en son sang par la foí, par la repentance et par le baptême chrestien, et volontiers ils I'embrasent comme Justificateur, comme crucifié et mort pour eux; mais peu prennent part à sa croix, à sa mort, pour se faire spirituellement mourir avec Luy, crucifier leur chair avec la sienne, et porter en eux-mêmes les vives marques de sa croix et de sa mort. Peu le goutent comme Justificateur au dedans par l'Esprit consacrant et immolant le vieil homme à Dieu et par une pratique vraiment sainte, laquelle dompte le péché."] LECTURE VIII "For nothing worthy proving can be proven, Nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith! She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of Yes and No, She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage!'" TENNYSON, _The Ancient Sage_. "Of true religions there are only two: one of them recognises and worships the Holy that without form or shape dwells in and around us; and the other recognises and worships it in its fairest form. Everything that lies between these two is idolatry." GOETHE. "My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner within and inside me." KEPLER. "Getrost, das Leben schreitet Zum ew'gen Leben hin; Von innrer Gluth geweitet Verklärt sich unser Sinn. Die Sternwelt wird zerfliessen Zum goldnen Lebenswein, Wir werden sie geniessen Und lichte Sterne sein. "Die Lieb' ist freigegeben Und keine Trennung mehr Es wogt das volle Leben Wie ein unendlich Meer. Nur eine Nacht der Wonne, Ein ewiges Gedicht! Und unser Aller Sonne Ist Gottes Angesicht." NOVALIS. NATURE-MYSTICISM--_continued_ "The invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and Divinity."--ROM. i. 20. In my last Lecture I showed how the later Mysticism emancipated itself from the mischievous doctrine that the spiritual eye can only see when the eye of sense is closed. After the Reformation period the mystic tries to look with both eyes; his aim is to see God in all things, as well as all things in God. He returns with better resources to the task of the primitive religions, and tries to find spiritual law in the natural world. It is true that a strange crop of superstitions, the seeds of which had been sown long before, sprang up to mock his hopes. In necromancy, astrology, alchemy, palmistry, table-turning, and other delusions, we have what some count the essence, and others the reproach, of Mysticism. But these are, strictly speaking, scientific and not religious errors. From the standpoint of religion and philosophy, the important change is that, in the belief of these later mystics, the natural and the spiritual are, somehow or other, to be reconciled; the external world is no longer regarded as a place of exile from God, or as a delusive appearance; it is the living vesture of the Deity; and its "discordant harmony,[364]" though "for the many it needs interpreters,[365]" yet "has a voice for the wise" which speaks of things behind the veil. The glory of God is no longer figured as a blinding white light in which all colours are combined and lost; but is seen as a "many-coloured wisdom[366]" which shines everywhere, its varied hues appearing not only in the sanctuary of the lonely soul, but in all the wonders that science can discover, and all the beauties that art can interpret. Dualism, with the harsh asceticism which belongs to it, has given way to a brighter and more hopeful philosophy; men's outlook upon the world is more intelligent, more trustful, and more genial; only for those who perversely seek to impose the ethics of selfish individualism upon a world which obeys no such law, science has in reserve a blacker pessimism than ever brooded over the ascetic of the cloister. We shall not meet, in this chapter, any finer examples of the Christian mystic than John Smith and William Law. But these men, and their intellectual kinsmen, were far from exhausting the treasure of Nature-Mysticism. The Cambridge Platonists, indeed, somewhat undervalued the religious lessons of Nature. They were scholars and divines, and what lay nearest their heart was the consecration of the reason--that is, of the whole personality under the guidance of its highest faculty--to the service of truth and goodness. And Law, in his later years, was too much under the influence of Böhme's fantastic theosophy to bring to Nature that childlike spirit which can best learn her lessons. The Divine in Nature has hitherto been discerned more fully by the poet than by the theologian or the naturalist; and in this concluding Lecture I must deal chiefly with Christian poetry. The attitude towards Nature which we have now to consider is more contemplative than practical; it studies analogies in order to _know_ the unseen powers which surround us, and has no desire to bend them or make them its instruments. Our Lord's precept, "Consider the lilies," sanctions this religious use of Nature; and many of His parables, such as that of the Sower, show us how much we may learn from such analogies. And be it observed that it is the normal and regular in Nature which in these parables is presented for our study; the yearly harvest, not the three years' famine; the constant care and justice of God, not the "special providence" or the "special judgment." We need not wait for catastrophes to trace the finger of God. As for Christian poetry and art, we do not expect to find any theory of æsthetic in the New Testament; but we may perhaps extract from the precept quoted above the canon that the highest beauty that we can discern resides in the real and natural, and only demands the seeing eye to find it. In the Greek Fathers we find great stress laid on the glories of Nature as a revelation of God. Cyril says, "The wider our contemplation of creation, the grander will be our conception of God." And Basil uses the same language. We find, indeed, in these writers a marked tendency to exalt the religious value of natural beauty, and to disparage the function of art--a premonition, perhaps, of iconoclasm. Pagan art, which was decaying before the advent of Christ, could not, it appears, be quietly Christianised and carried on without a break. The true Nature-Mysticism is prominent in St. Francis of Assisi. He loves to see in all around him the pulsations of one life, which sleeps in the stones, dreams in the plants, and wakens in man. "He would remain in contemplation before a flower, an insect, or a bird, and regarded them with no dilettante or egoistic pleasure; he was interested that the plant should have its sun, the bird its nest; that the humblest manifestations of creative force should have the happiness to which they are entitled.[367]" So strong was his conviction that all living things are children of God, that he would preach to "my little sisters the birds," and even undertook the conversion of "the ferocious wolf of Agobio." This tender reverence for Nature, which is a mark of all true Platonism, is found, as we have seen, in Plotinus. It is also prominent in the Platonists of the Renaissance, such as Bruno and Campanella,[368] and in Petrarch, who loved to offer his evening prayers among the moonlit mountains. Suso has at least one beautiful passage on the sights and sounds of spring, and exclaims, "O tender God, if Thou art so loving in Thy creatures, how fair and lovely must Thou be in Thyself![369]" The Reformers, especially Luther and Zwingli, are more alive than might have been expected to the value of Nature's lessons; and the French mystics, Francis de Sales and Fénelon, write gracefully about the footprints of the Divine wisdom and beauty which may be traced everywhere in the world around us. But natural religion is not to be identified with Mysticism, and it would not further our present inquiry to collect passages, in prose or poetry, which illustrate the aids to faith which the book of Nature may supply. Nor need we dwell on such pure Platonism as we find in Spenser's "Hymn of Heavenly Beauty," or some of Shelley's poems, in which we are bidden to gaze upon the world as a mirror of the Divine Beauty, since our mortal sight cannot endure the "white radiance" of the eternal archetypes.[370] We have seen how this view of the world as a pale reflection of the Ideas leads in practice to a contempt for visible things; as, indeed, it does in Spenser's beautiful poem. He invites us, after learning Nature's lessons, to "Look at last up to that sovereign light, From whose pure beams all perfect beauty springs; That kindleth love in every godly spright, Even the love of God; which loathing brings Of this vile world and these gay-seeming things; With whose sweet pleasures being so possessed, Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest." This is not the keynote of the later Nature-Mysticism. We now expect that every new insight into the truth of things, every enlightenment of the eyes of our understanding, which may be granted us as the reward of faith, love, and purity of heart, will make the world around us appear, not viler and baser, but more glorious and more Divine. It is not a proof of spirituality, but of its opposite, if God's world seems to us a poor place. If we could see it as God sees it, it would be still, as on the morning of creation, "very good." The hymn which is ever ascending from the earth to the throne of God is to be listened for, that we may join in it. The laws by which all creation lives are to be studied, that we too may obey them. As for the beauty which is everywhere diffused so lavishly, it seems to be a gift of God's pure bounty, to bring happiness to the unworldly souls who alone are able to see and enjoy it. The greatest prophet of this branch of contemplative Mysticism is unquestionably the poet Wordsworth. It was the object of his life to be a religious teacher, and I think there is no incongruity in placing him at the end of the roll of mystical divines who have been dealt with in these Lectures. His intellectual kinship with the acknowledged representatives of Nature-Mysticism will, I hope, appear very plainly. Wordsworth was an eminently sane and manly spirit. He found his philosophy of life early, and not only preached but lived it consistently. A Platonist by nature rather than by study, he is thoroughly Greek in his distrust of strong emotions and in his love of all which the Greeks included under [Greek: sôphrosynê]. He was a loyal Churchman, but his religion was really almost independent of any ecclesiastical system. His ecclesiastical sonnets reflect rather the dignity of the Anglican Church than the ardent piety with which our other poet-mystics, such as Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw, adorn the offices of worship. His cast of faith, intellectual and contemplative rather than fervid, and the solitariness of his thought, forbade him to find much satisfaction in public ceremonial. He would probably agree with Galen, who in a very remarkable passage says that the study of nature, if prosecuted with the same earnestness and intensity which men bring to the contemplation of the "Mysteries," is even more fitted than they to reveal the power and wisdom of God; for "_the symbolism of the mysteries is more obscure than that of nature_." He shows his affinity with the modern spirit in his firm grasp of natural _law_. Like George Fox and William Law, he had to face the shock of giving up his belief in arbitrary interferences. There was a period when he lost his young faculty of generalisation; when he bowed before the inexorable dooms of an unknown Lawgiver--"the categorical imperative," till the gift of intuition was restored to him in fuller measure. This experience explains his attitude towards natural science. His reverence for _facts_ never failed him; "the sanctity and truth of nature," he says, "must not be tricked out with accidental ornaments"; but he looked askance at the science which tries to erect itself into a philosophy. Physics, he saw plainly, is an abstract study: its view of the world is an abstraction for certain purposes, and possesses less truth than the view of the poet.[371] And yet he looked forward to a time when science, too, shall be touched with fire from the altar;-- "Then her heart shall kindle; her dull eye, Dull and inanimate, no more shall hang Chained to its object in brute slavery." And in a remarkable passage of the "Prefaces" he says "If the time should ever come when that which is now called science shall be ready to put on as it were a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his Divine spirit to aid the transformation, and will welcome the Being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man." He feels that the loving and disinterested study of nature's laws must at last issue, not in materialism, but in some high and spiritual faith, inspired by the Word of God, who is Himself, as Erigena said, "the Nature of all things." In aloofness and loneliness of mind he is exceeded by no mystic of the cloister. It may be said far more truly of him than of Milton, that "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." In his youth he confesses that human beings had only a secondary interest for him;[372] and though he says that Nature soon led him to man, it was to man as a "unity," as "one spirit," that he was drawn, not to men as individuals.[373] Herein he resembled many other contemplative mystics; but it has been said truly that "it is easier to know man in general than a man in particular.[374]" The sage who "sits in the centre" of his being, and there "enjoys bright day,[375]" does not really know human beings as persons. It will be interesting to compare the steps in the ladder of perfection, as described by Wordsworth, with the schemes of Neoplatonism and introspective Mysticism. The three stages of the mystical ascent have been already explained. We find that Wordsworth, too, had his purgative, disciplinary stage. He began by deliberately crushing, not only the ardent passions to which he tells us that he was naturally prone, but all ambition and love of money, determining to confine himself to "such objects as excite no morbid passions, no disquietude, no vengeance, and no hatred," and found his reward in a settled state of calm serenity, in which all the thoughts flow like a clear fountain, and have forgotten how to hate and how to despise.[376] Wordsworth is careful to inculcate several safeguards for those who would proceed to the contemplative life. First, there must be strenuous aspiration to reach that infinitude which is our being's heart and home; we must press forward, urged by "hope that can never die, effort, and expectation, and desire, and something evermore about to be.[377]" The mind which is set upon the unchanging will not "praise a cloud,[378]" but will "crave objects that endure." In the spirit of true Platonism, as contrasted with its later aberrations, Wordsworth will have no blurred outlines. He tries always to see in Nature distinction without separation; his principle is the exact antithesis of Hume's atheistic dictum, that "things are conjoined, but not connected.[379]" The importance of this caution has been fully demonstrated in the course of our inquiry. Then, too, he knows that to imperfect man reason is a crown "still to be courted, never to be won." Delusions may affect "even the very faculty of sight," whether a man "look forth," or "dive into himself.[380]" Again, he bids us seek for real, and not fanciful analogies; no "loose types of things through all degrees"; no mythology; and no arbitrary symbolism. The symbolic value of natural objects is not that they remind us of something that they are not, but that they help us to understand something that they in part are. They are not intended to transport us away from this earth into the clouds. "This earth is the world of all of us," he says boldly, "in which we find our happiness or not at all.[381]" Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important of all, he recognises that the still small voice of God breathes not out of nature alone, nor out of the soul alone, but from the contact of the soul with nature. It is the marriage of the intellect of man to "this goodly universe, in love and holy passion," which produces these raptures. "Intellect" includes Imagination, which is but another name for Reason in her most exalted mood;[382] these must assist the eye of sense. Such is the discipline, and such are the counsels, by which the priest of Nature must prepare himself to approach her mysteries. And what are the truths which contemplation revealed to him? The first step on the way that leads to God was the sense of the _boundless_, growing out of musings on the finite; and with it the conviction that the Infinite and Eternal alone can be our being's heart and home--"we feel that we are greater than we know.[383]" Then came to him-- "The sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things.[384]" The worldliness and artificiality which set us out of tune with all this is worse than paganism.[385] Then this "higher Pantheism" developed into the sense of an all-pervading Personality, "a soul that is the eternity of thought." And with this heightened consciousness of the nature of God came also a deeper knowledge of his own personality, a knowledge which he describes in true mystical language as a "sinking into self from thought to thought." This may continue till man can at last "breathe in worlds to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil," and perceive "the forms whose kingdom is where time and space are not." These last lines describe a state analogous to the [Greek: opsis] of the Neoplatonists, and the _excessus mentis_ of the Catholic mystics. At this advanced stage the priest of Nature may surrender himself to ecstasy without mistrust. Of such minds he says-- "The highest bliss That flesh can know is theirs--the consciousness Of whom they are, habitually infused Through every image and through every thought, And all affections by communion raised From earth to heaven, from human to divine;... Thence cheerfulness for acts of daily life, Emotions which best foresight need not fear, Most worthy then of trust when most intense.[386]" There are many other places where he describes this "bliss ineffable," when "all his thoughts were steeped in feeling," as he listened to the song which every form of creature sings "as it looks towards the uncreated with a countenance of adoration and an eye of love,[387]" that blessed mood-- "In which the affections gently lead us on,-- Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.[388]" Is it not plain that the poet of Nature amid the Cumberland hills, the Spanish ascetic in his cell, and the Platonic philosopher in his library or lecture-room, have been climbing the same mountain from different sides? The paths are different, but the prospect from the summit is the same. It is idle to speak of collusion or insanity in the face of so great a cloud of witnesses divided by every circumstance of date, nationality, creed, education, and environment. The Carmelite friar had no interest in confirming the testimony of the Alexandrian professor; and no one has yet had the temerity to question the sanity of Wordsworth, or of Tennyson, whose description of the Vision in his "Ancient Sage" is now known to be a record of personal experience. These explorers of the high places of the spiritual life have only one thing in common--they have observed the conditions laid down once for all for the mystic in the 24th Psalm, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation." The "land which is very far off" is always visible to those who have climbed the holy mountain. It may be scaled by the path of prayer and mortification, or by the path of devout study of God's handiwork in Nature (and under this head I would wish to include not only the way traced out by Wordsworth, but that hitherto less trodden road which should lead the physicist to God); and, lastly, by the path of consecrated life in the great world, which, as it is the most exposed to temptations, is perhaps on that account the most blessed of the three.[389] It has been said of Wordsworth, as it has been said of other mystics, that he averts his eyes "from half of human fate." Religious writers have explained that the neglected half is that which lies beneath the shadow of the Cross. The existence of positive evil in the world, as a great fact, and the consequent need of redemption, is, in the opinion of many, too little recognised by Wordsworth, and by Mysticism in general. This objection has been urged both from the scientific and from the religious side. It is held by many students of Nature that her laws affirm a Pessimism and not an Optimism. "Red in tooth and claw with ravine," she shrieks against the creed that her Maker is a God of love. The only morality which she inculcates is that of a tiger in the jungle, or at best that of a wolf-pack. "It is not strange (says Lotze) that no nature-religions have raised their adherents to any high pitch of morality or culture.[390]" The answer to this is that Nature includes man as well as the brutes, and the merciful and moral man as well as the savage. Physical science, at any rate, can exclude nothing from the domain of Nature. And the Christian may say with all reverence that Nature includes, or rather is included by, Christ, the Word of God, by whom it was made. And the Word was made flesh to teach us that vicarious suffering, which we see to be the law of Nature, is a law of God, a thing not foreign to His own life, and therefore for all alike a condition of perfection, not a _reductio ad absurdum_ of existence. The _reductio ad absurdum_ is not of Nature, but of selfish individualism, which suffers shipwreck alike in objective and in subjective religion. It is precisely because the shadow of the Cross lies across the world, that we can watch Nature at work with "admiration, hope, and love," instead of with horror and disgust. The religious objection amounts to little more than that Mysticism has not succeeded in solving the problem of evil, which no philosophy has ever attacked with even apparent success. It is, however, with some reason that this difficulty has been pressed against the mystics; for they are bound by their principles to attempt some solution, and their tendency has been to attenuate the positive character of evil to a somewhat dangerous degree. But if we sift the charges often brought by religious writers against Mysticism, we shall generally find that there lies at the bottom of their disapproval a residuum of mediæval dualism, which wishes to see in Christ the conquering invader of a hostile kingdom. In practice, at any rate, the great mystics have not taken lightly the struggle with the law of sin in our members, or tried to "heal slightly" the wounds of the soul.[391] It is quite true that the later mystics have been cheerful and optimistic. But those who have found a kingdom in their own minds, and who have enough strength of character "to live by reason and not by opinion," as Whichcote says (in a maxim which was anticipated by that arch-enemy of Mysticism--Epicurus), are likely to be happier than other men. And, moreover, Wordsworth teaches us that almost, if not quite, every evil may be so transmuted by the "faculty which abides within the soul," that those "interpositions which would hide and darken" may "become contingencies of pomp, and serve to exalt her native brightness"; even as the moon, "rising behind a thick and lofty grove, turns the dusky veil into a substance glorious as her own." So the happy warrior is made "more compassionate" by the scenes of horror which he is compelled to witness. Whether this healing and purifying effect of sorrow points the way to a solution of the problem of evil or not, it is a high and noble faith, the one and only consolation which we feel not to be a mockery when we are in great trouble. These charges, then, do not seem to form a grave indictment against the type of Mysticism of which Wordsworth is the best representative. But he _does_ fall short of the ideal held up by St. John for the Christian mystic, in that his love and sympathy for inanimate Nature were (at any rate in his poetry) deeper than for humanity. And if there is any accusation which may justly be brought against the higher order of mystics (as opposed to representatives of aberrant types), I think it is this: that they have sought and found God in their own souls and in Nature, but not so often in the souls of other men and women: theirs has been a lonely religion. The grand old maxim, "Vides fratrem, vides Dominum tuum," has been remembered by them only in acts of charity. But in reality the love of human beings must be the shortest road to the vision of God. Love, as St. John teaches us, is the great hierophant of the Christian mysteries. It gives wings to contemplation and lightens the darkness which hides the face of God. When our emotions are deeply stirred, even Nature speaks to us with voices unheard before; while the man who is without human affection is either quite unmoved by her influences, or misreads all her lessons. The spiritualising power of human love is the redeeming principle in many sordid lives. Teutonic civilisation, which derives half of its restless energy from ideals which are essentially anti-Christian, and tastes which are radically barbarous, is prevented from sinking into moral materialism by its high standard of domestic life. The sweet influences of the home deprive even mammon-worship of half its grossness and of some fraction of its evil. As a schoolmaster to bring men and women to Christ, natural affection is without a rival. It is in the truest sense a symbol of our union with Him from whom every family in heaven and earth is named. It is needless to labour a thesis on which nearly all are agreed; but it may be worth pointing out that, though St. Paul felt the unique value of Christian marriage as a symbol of the mystical union of Christ and the Church, this truth was for the most part lost sight of by the mediæval mystics, who as monks and priests were, of course, cut off from domestic life. The romances of true love which the Old Testament contains were treated as prophecies wrapped up in riddling language, or as models for ecstatic contemplation. Wordsworth, though his own home was a happy one, does not supply this link in the mystical chain. The most noteworthy attempt to do so is to be found in the poetry of Robert Browning, whose Mysticism is in this way complementary to that of Wordsworth.[392] He resembles Wordsworth in always trying "to see the infinite in things," but considers that "little else (than the development of a soul) is worth study." This is not exactly a return to subjective Mysticism, for Browning is as well aware as Goethe that if "a talent grows best in solitude," a character is perfected only "in the stream of the world." With him the friction of active life, and especially the experience of human love, are necessary to realise the Divine in man. Quite in the spirit of St. John he asks, "How can that course be safe, which from the first produces carelessness to human love?" "Do not cut yourself from human weal ... there are strange punishments for such" as do so.[393] Solitude is the death of all but the strongest virtue, and in Browning's view it also deprives us of the strongest inner witness to the existence of a loving Father in heaven. For he who "finds love full in his nature" cannot doubt that in this, as in all else, the Creator must far surpass the creature.[394] Since, then, in knowing love we learn to know God, and since the object of life is to know God (this, the mystic's minor premiss, is taken for granted by Browning), it follows that love is the meaning of life; and he who finds it not "loses what he lived for, and eternally must lose it.[395]" "The mightiness of love is curled" inextricably round all power and beauty in the world. The worst fate that can befall us is to lead "a ghastly smooth life, dead at heart.[396]" Especially interesting is the passage where he chooses or chances upon Eckhart's image of the "spark" in the centre of the soul, and gives it a new turn in accordance with his own Mysticism-- "It would not be because my eye grew dim Thou could'st not find the love there, thanks to Him Who never is dishonoured in the spark He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark.[397]" Our language has no separate words to distinguish Christian love ([Greek: agapê]--_caritas_) from sexual love ([Greek: erôs]--_amor_); "charity" has not established itself in its wider meaning. Perhaps this is not to be regretted--at any rate Browning's poems could hardly be translated into any language in which this distinction exists. But let us not forget that the _ascetic_ element is as strong in Browning as in Wordsworth. Love, he seems to indicate, is no exception to the rule that our joys may be "three parts pain," for "where pain ends gain ends too.[398]" "Not yet on thee Shall burst the future, as successive zones Of several wonder open on some spirit Flying secure and glad from heaven to heaven; But thou shalt painfully attain to joy, While hope and fear and love shall keep thee man.[399]" He even carries this law into the future life, and will have none of a "joy which is crystallised for ever." Felt imperfection is a proof of a higher birthright:[400] if we have arrived at the completion of our nature as men, then "begins anew a tendency to God." This faith in unending progress as the law of life is very characteristic of our own age.[401] It assumes a questionable shape sometimes; but Browning's trust in real success through apparent disappointments--a trust even _based_ on the consciousness of present failure--is certainly one of the noblest parts of his religious philosophy. I have decided to end my survey of Christian Mysticism with these two English poets. It would hardly be appropriate, in this place, to discuss Carlyle's doctrine of symbols, as the "clothing" of religious and other kinds of truth. His philosophy is wanting in some of the essential features of Mysticism, and can hardly be called Christian without stretching the word too far. And Emerson, when he deals with religion, is a very unsafe guide. The great American mystic, whose beautiful character was as noble a gift to humanity as his writings, is more liable than any of those whom we have described to the reproach of having turned his back on the dark side of life. Partly from a fastidiousness which could not bear even to hear of bodily ailments, partly from the natural optimism of the dweller in a new country, and partly because he made a principle of maintaining an unruffled cheerfulness and serenity, he shut his eyes to pain, death, and sin, even more resolutely than did Goethe. The optimism which is built on this foundation has no message of comfort for the stricken heart. To say that "evil is only good in the making," is to repeat an ancient and discredited attempt to solve the great enigma. And to assert that perfect justice is meted out to individuals in this world, is surely mere dreaming. Moreover, we can hardly acquit him of playing with pantheistic Mysticism of the Oriental type, without seeing, or without caring, whither such speculations logically lead. "Within man," he tells us, "is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is _equally_ related--the eternal One." This is genuine Pantheism, and should carry with it the doctrine that all actions are equally good, bad, or indifferent. Emerson says that his wife kept him from antinomianism; but this is giving up the defence of his philosophy. He also differs from Christianity, and agrees with many Hegelians, in teaching that God, "the Over-Soul," only attains to self-consciousness in man; and this, combined with his denial of _degrees_ in Divine immanence, leads him to a self-deification of an arrogant and shocking kind, such as we find in the Persian Sufis, and in some heretical mystics of the Middle Ages. "I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am receptive of the great soul. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the universal Being circulate through me. I am part of God"; and much more to the same effect. This is not the language of those who have travelled up the mystical ladder, instead of only writing about it. It is far more objectionable than the bold phrases about deification which I quoted in my fifth Lecture from the fourteenth century mystics; because with them the passage into the Divine glory is the final reward, only to be attained "by all manner of exercises"; while for Emerson it seems to be a state already existing, which we can realise by a mere act of intellectual apprehension. And the phrase, "Man is a part of God,"--as if the Divine Spirit were _divided_ among the organs which express its various activities,--has been condemned by all the great speculative mystics, from Plotinus downwards. Emerson is perhaps at his best when he applies his idealism to love and friendship. The spiritualising and illuminating influence of pure comradeship has never been better or more religiously set forth. And though it is necessary to be on our guard against the very dangerous tendency of some of his teaching, we shall find much to learn from the brave and serene philosopher whose first maxim was, "Come out into the azure; love the day," and who during his whole life fixed his thoughts steadily on whatsoever things are pure, lovely, noble, and of good report. The constructive task which lies before the next century is, if I may say so without presumption, to spiritualise science, as morality and art have already been spiritualised. The vision of God should appear to us as a triple star of truth, beauty, and goodness.[402] These are the three objects of all human aspiration; and our hearts will never be at peace till all three alike rest in God. Beauty is the chief mediator between the good and the true;[403] and this is why the great poets have been also prophets. But Science at present lags behind; she has not found her God; and to this is largely due the "unrest of the age." Much has already been done in the right direction by divines, philosophers, and physicists, and more still, perhaps, by the great poets, who have striven earnestly to see the spiritual background which lies behind the abstractions of materialistic science. But much yet remains to be done. We may agree with Hinton that "Positivism bears a new Platonism in its bosom"; but the child has not yet come to the birth.[404] Meanwhile, the special work assigned to the Church of England would seem to be the development of a _Johannine_ Christianity, which shall be both Catholic and Evangelical without being either Roman or Protestant. It has been abundantly proved that neither Romanism nor Protestantism, regarded as alternatives, possesses enough of the truth to satisfy the religious needs of the present day. But is it not probable that, as the theology of the Fourth Gospel acted as a reconciling principle between the opposing sections in the early Church, so it may be found to contain the teaching which is most needed by both parties in our own communion? In St. John and St. Paul we find all the principles of a sound and sober Christian Mysticism; and it is to these "fresh springs" of the spiritual life that we must turn, if the Church is to renew her youth. I attempted in my second Lecture to analyse the main elements of Christian Mysticism as found in St. Paul and St. John. But since in the later Lectures I have been obliged to draw from less pure sources, and since, moreover, I am most anxious not to leave the impression that I have been advocating a vague spirituality tempered by rationalism, I will try in a few words to define my position apologetically, though I am well aware that it is a hazardous and difficult task. The principle, "Cuique in sua arte credendum est," applies to those who have been eminent for personal holiness as much as to the leaders in any other branch of excellence. Even in dealing with arts which are akin to each other, we do not invite poets to judge of music, or sculptors of architecture. We need not then be disturbed if we occasionally find men illustrious in other fields, who are as insensible to religion as to poetry. Our reverence for the character and genius of Charles Darwin need not induce us to lay aside either our Shakespeare or our New Testament.[405] The men to whom we naturally turn as our best authorities in spiritual matters, are those who seem to have been endowed with an "anima naturaliter Christiana," and who have devoted their whole lives to the service of God and the imitation of Christ. Now it will be found that these men of acknowledged and pre-eminent saintliness agree very closely in what they tell us about God. They tell us that they have arrived gradually at an unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediate experience, that God is a Spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in Him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can see His footprints everywhere in nature, and feel His presence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as they come to themselves they come to Him. They tell us that what separates us from Him and from happiness is, first, self-seeking in all its forms; and, secondly, sensuality in all its forms; that these are the ways of darkness and death, which hide from us the face of God; while the path of the just is like a shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. As they have toiled up the narrow way, the Spirit has spoken to them of Christ, and has enlightened the eyes of their understandings, till they have at least _begun_ to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and to be filled with all the fulness of God. So far, the position is unassailable. But the scope of the argument has, of course, its fixed limits. The inner light can only testify to spiritual truths. It always speaks in the present tense; it cannot guarantee any historical event, past or future. It cannot guarantee either the Gospel history or a future judgment. It can tell us that Christ is risen, and that He is alive for evermore, but not that He rose again the third day. It can tell us that the gate of everlasting life is open, but not that the dead shall be raised incorruptible. We have other faculties for investigating the evidence for past events; the inner light cannot certify them immediately, though it can give a powerful support to the external evidence. For though we are in no position to dogmatise about the relations of the temporal to the eternal, one fact does seem to stand out,--that the two are, _for us_, bound together. If, when we read the Gospels, "the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit" that here are the words of eternal life, and the character which alone in history is absolutely flawless, then it is natural for us to believe that there has been, at that point of time, an Incarnation of the Word of God Himself. That the revelation of Christ is an absolute revelation, is a dogmatic statement which, strictly speaking, only the Absolute could make. What _we_ mean by it is that after two thousand years we are unable to conceive of its being ever superseded in any particular. And if anyone finds this inadequate, he may be invited to explain what higher degree of certainty is within our reach. With regard to the future life, the same consideration may help us to understand why the Church has clung to the belief in a literal second coming of Christ to pronounce the dooms of all mankind. But our Lord Himself has taught us that in "that day and that hour" lies hidden a more inscrutable mystery than even He Himself, as man, could reveal. There is one other point on which I wish to make my position clear. The fact that human love or sympathy is the guide who conducts us to the heart of life, revealing to us God and Nature and ourselves, is proof that part of our life is bound up with the life of the world, and that if we live in these our true relations we shall not entirely die so long as human beings remain alive upon this earth. The progress of the race, the diminution of sin and misery, the advancing kingdom of Christ on earth,--these are matters in which we have a _personal_ interest. The strong desire that we feel--and the best of us feel it most strongly--that the human race may be better, wiser, and happier in the future than they are now or have been in the past, is neither due to a false association of ideas, nor to pure unselfishness. There is a sense in which death would not be the end of everything for us, even though in this life only we had hope in Christ. But when this comforting and inspiring thought is made to form the basis of a new Chiliasm--a belief in a millennium of perfected humanity on this earth, and when this belief is substituted for the Christian belief in an eternal life beyond our bourne of time and place, it is necessary to protest that this belief entirely fails to satisfy the legitimate hopes of the human race, that it is bad philosophy, and that it is flatly contrary to what science tells us of the destiny of the world and of mankind. The human spirit beats against the bars of space and time themselves, and could never be satisfied with any earthly utopia. Our true home must be in some higher sphere of existence, above the contradictions which make it impossible for us to believe that time and space are ultimate realities, and out of reach of the inevitable catastrophe which the next glacial age must bring upon the human race.[406] This world of space and time is to resemble heaven as far as it can; but a fixed limit is set to the amount of the Divine plan which can be realised under these conditions. Our hearts tell us of a higher form of existence, in which the doom of death is not merely deferred but abolished. This eternal world we here see through a glass darkly: at best we can apprehend but the outskirts of God's ways, and hear a small whisper of His voice; but our conviction is that, though our earthly house be dissolved (as dissolved it must be), we have a home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In this hope we may include all creation; and trust that in some way neither more nor less incomprehensible than the deliverance which we expect for ourselves, all God's creatures, according to their several capacities, may be set free from the bondage of corruption and participate in the final triumph over death and sin. Most firmly do I believe that this faith in immortality, though formless and inpalpable as the air we breathe, and incapable of definite presentation except under inadequate and self-contradictory symbols, is nevertheless enthroned in the centre of our being, and that those who have steadily set their affections on things above, and lived the risen life even on earth, receive in themselves an assurance which robs death of its sting, and is an earnest of a final victory over the grave. It is not claimed that Mysticism, even in its widest sense, is, or can ever be, the whole of Christianity. Every religion must have an institutional as well as a mystical element. Just as, if the feeling of immediate communion with God has faded, we shall have a dead Church worshipping "a dead Christ," as Fox the Quaker said of the Anglican Church in his day; so, if the seer and prophet expel the priest, there will be no discipline and no cohesion. Still, at the present time, the greatest need seems to be that we should return to the fundamentals of spiritual religion. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that both the old seats of authority, the infallible Church and the infallible book, are fiercely assailed, and that our faith needs reinforcements. These can only come from the depths of the religious consciousness itself; and if summoned from thence, they will not be found wanting. The "impregnable rock" is neither an institution nor a book, but a life or experience. Faith, which is an affirmation of the basal personality, is its own evidence and justification. Under normal conditions, it will always be strongest in the healthiest minds. There is and can be no appeal from it. If, then, our hearts, duly prepared for the reception of the Divine Guest, at length say to us, "This I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see," we may, in St. John's words, "have confidence towards God." The objection may be raised--"But these beliefs change, and merely reflect the degree of enlightenment or its opposite, which every man has reached." The conscience of the savage tells him emphatically that there are some things which he _must not do_; and blind obedience to this "categorical imperative" has produced not only all the complex absurdities of "taboo," but crimes like human sacrifice, and faith in a great many things that are not. "Perhaps we are leaving behind the theological stage, as we have already left behind those superstitions of savagery." Now the study of primitive religions does seem to me to prove the danger of resting religion and morality on unreasoning obedience to a supposed revelation; but that is not my position. The two forces which kill mischievous superstitions are the knowledge of nature, and the moral sense; and we are quite ready to give both free play, confident that both come from the living Word of God. The fact that a revelation is progressive is no argument that it is not Divine: it is, in fact, only when the free current of the religious life is dammed up that it turns into a swamp, and poisons human society. Of course we must be ready to admit with all humility, that _our_ notions of God are probably unworthy and distorted enough; but that is no reason why we should not follow the light which we have, or mistrust it on the ground that it is "too _good_ to be true." Nor would it be fair to say that this argument makes religion depend merely on _feeling_. A theology based on mere feeling is (as Hegel said) as much contrary to revealed religion as to rational knowledge. The fact that God is present to our feeling is no proof that He exists; our feelings include imaginations which have no reality corresponding to them. No, it is not feeling, but the _heart_ or _reason_ (whichever term we prefer), which speaks with authority. By the heart or reason I mean the whole personality acting in concord, an abiding mood of thinking, willing, and feeling. The life of the spirit perhaps begins with mere feeling, and perhaps will be consummated in mere feeling, when "that which is in part shall be done away"; but during its struggles to enter into its full inheritance, it gathers up into itself the activities of all the faculties, which act harmoniously together in proportion as the organism to which they belong is in a healthy state. Once more, this reliance on the inner light does not mean that every man must be his own prophet, his own priest, and his own saviour. The individual is not independent of the Church, nor the Church of the historical Christ. But the Church is a _living_ body and the Incarnation and Atonement are _living_ facts still in operation. They are part of the eternal counsels of God; and whether they are enacted in the Abyss of the Divine Nature, or once for all in their fulness on the stage of history, or in miniature, as it were, in your soul and mine, the process is the same, and the tremendous importance of those historical facts which our creeds affirm is due precisely to the fact that they are _not_ unique and isolated portents, but the supreme manifestation of the grandest and most universal laws. These considerations may well have a calming and reassuring influence upon those who, from whatever cause, are troubled by religious doubts. The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth, and is known by, them that are His. But we must not expect that "religious difficulties" will ever cease. Every truth that we know is but the husk of a deeper truth; and it may be that the Holy Spirit has still many things to say to us, which we cannot bear now. Each generation and each individual has his own problem, which has never been set in exactly the same form before: we must all work out our own salvation, for it is God who worketh in us. If we have realised the meaning of these words of St. Paul, which I have had occasion to quote so often in these Lectures, we cannot doubt that, though we now see through a glass darkly, and know only in part, we shall one day behold our Eternal Father face to face, and know Him even as we are known. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 364: Horace, _Ep._ i. 12. 19.] [Footnote 365: [Greek: polypoikilos sophia], Eph. iii. 10.] [Footnote 366: Pindar, _Olymp._ ii. 154.] [Footnote 367: Barine in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, April 1891.] [Footnote 368: The latter, like Fechner in our own century, holds that the stars are living organisms, whose "sensibility is full of pleasure."] [Footnote 369: See Illingworth's _Divine Immanence_, where this and other interesting passages are quoted. But Suso was, of course, _not_ a "Protestant mystic." And I cannot agree with the author when he says that Lucretius found no religious inspiration in Nature. The poet of the _Nature of Things_ shows himself to have been a lonely man, who had pondered much among the hills and by the sea, and who loved to taste the pure delights of the spring. Thence came to him the "holy joy and dread" ("quædam divina voluptas atque horror") which pulsates through his great poem as he shatters the barbarous mythology of paganism, and then, in the spirit of a priest rather than of a philosopher, turns the "bright shafts of day" upon the folly and madness of those who are slaves to the world or the flesh. The spirit of Lucretius is the spirit of modern science, which tends neither to materialism nor to atheism, whatever its friends and enemies may say.] [Footnote 370: Christian Platonism has never been more beautifully set forth than in the poem of Spenser named above. Compare, especially, the following stanzas:-- "The means, therefore, which unto us is lent Him to behold, is on His works to look, Which He hath made in beauty excellent, And in the same, as in a brazen book To read enregistered in every nooke His goodness, which His beauty doth declare: For all that's good is beautiful and fair. "Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation, To imp the wings of thy high-flying mind, Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation, From this dark world, whose damps the soul do blind, On that bright Sun of glory fix thine eyes, Cleared from gross mists of frail infirmities." Shelley sums up a great deal of Plotinus in the following stanza of "Adonais":-- "The One remains; the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity." Compare, too, the opening lines of "Alastor."] [Footnote 371: Compare the following sentences in Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_: "Nature viewed materialistically is only an abstraction for certain purposes, and has not a high degree of truth or reality. The poet's nature has much more.... Our principle, that the abstract is the unreal, moves us steadily upward.... It compels us in the end to credit nature with our higher emotions. That process can only cease when nature is quite absorbed into spirit, and at every stage of the process we find increase in reality."] [Footnote 372: "Prelude," viii. 340 sq.] [Footnote 373: "Prelude," viii. 668.] [Footnote 374: La Rochefoucauld.] [Footnote 375: These words, from Milton's "Comus," are applied to Wordsworth by Hazlitt.] [Footnote 376: "Prelude," iv. 1207-1229. The ascetic element in Wordsworth's ethics should by no means be forgotten by those who envy his brave and unruffled outlook upon life. As Hutton says excellently (_Essays_, p. 81), "there is volition and self-government in every line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from the steady resistance he opposes to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and regrets. He contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent humours, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful joy--turning defeat into victory, and victory into defeat." See the whole passage.] [Footnote 377: "Prelude," vi. 604-608.] [Footnote 378: "Miscell. Sonnets," xii.] [Footnote 379: See the Essay in which he deals with Macpherson: "In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse--everything is defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened--yet nothing distinct."] [Footnote 380: "Excursion," v. 500-514.] [Footnote 381: This seemed flat blasphemy to Shelley, whose idealism was mixed with Byronic misanthropy. "Nor was there aught the world contained of which he could approve."] [Footnote 382: "Prelude," xiv. 192. Wordsworth's psychology is very interesting. "Imagination" is for him ("Miscellaneous Sonnets," xxxv.) a "glorious faculty," whose function it is to elevate the more-than-reasoning mind; "'tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower of Faith," and "colour life's dark cloud with orient rays." This faculty is at once "more than reason," and identical with "Reason in her most exalted mood." I have said (p.21) that "Mysticism is reason applied to a sphere above rationalism" and this appears to be exactly Wordsworth's doctrine.] [Footnote 383: "Sonnets on the River Duddon," xxxiv.] [Footnote 384: "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," 95-102.] [Footnote 385: "Miscell. Sonnets," xxxiii.] [Footnote 386: "Prelude," xiv. 112-129.] [Footnote 387: "Prelude," ii. 396-418.] [Footnote 388: "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," 35-48.] [Footnote 389: Wordsworth's Mysticism contains a few subordinate elements which are of more questionable value. The "echoes from beyond the grave," which "the inward ear" sometimes catches, are dear to most of us; but we must not be too confident that they always come from God. Still less can we be sure that presentiments are "heaven-born instincts." Again, when the lonely thinker feels himself surrounded by "huge and mighty forms, that do not move like living men," it is a sign that the "dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being" has begun to work not quite healthily upon his imagination. And the doctrine of pre-existence, which appears in the famous Ode, is one which it has been hitherto impossible to admit into the scheme of Christian beliefs, though many Christian thinkers have dallied with it. Perhaps the true lesson of the Ode is that the childish love of nature, beautiful and innocent as it is, has to die and be born again in the consciousness of the grown man. That Wordsworth himself passed through this experience, we know from other passages in his writings. In his case, at any rate, the "light of common day" was, for a time at least, more splendid than the roseate hues of his childish imagination can possibly have been; and there seems to be no reason for holding the gloomy view that spiritual insight necessarily becomes dimmer as we travel farther from our cradles, and nearer to our graves. What fails us as we get older is only that kind of vision which is analogous to the "consolations" often spoken of by monkish mystics as the privilege of beginners. Amiel expresses exactly the same regret as Wordsworth: "Shall I ever enjoy again those marvellous reveries of past days?..." See the whole paragraph on p. 32 of Mrs. Humphry Ward's translation.] [Footnote 390: These objections are pressed by Lotze, and not only by avowed Pessimists. Lotze abhors what he calls "sentimental symbolism" because it interferes with his monadistic doctrines. I venture to say that any philosophy which divides man, as a being _sui generis_, from the rest of Nature, is inevitably landed either in Acosmism or in Manichean Dualism.] [Footnote 391: This is perhaps the best place to notice the mystical treatise of James Hinton, entitled _Man and his Dwelling-place_, which is chiefly remarkable for its attempt to solve the problem of evil. This writer pushes to an extremity the favourite mystical doctrine that we surround ourselves with a world after our own likeness, and considers that all the evil which we see in Nature is the "projection of our own deadness." Apart from the unlikelihood of a theory which makes man--"the roof and crown of things"--the only diseased and discordant element in the universe, the writer lays himself open to the fatal rejoinder, "Did Christ, then, see no sin or evil in the world?" The doctrines of sacrifice (vicarious suffering) as a blessed law of Nature ("the secret of the universe is learnt on Calvary"), and of the necessity of annihilating "the self" as the principle of evil, are pressed with a harsh and unnatural rigour. Our blessed Lord laid no such yoke upon us, nor will human nature consent to bear it. The "atonement" of the world by love is much better delineated by R.L. Nettleship, in a passage which seems to me to exhibit the very kernel of Christian Mysticism in its social aspect. "Suppose that all human beings felt permanently to each other as they now do occasionally to those they love best. All the pain of the world would be swallowed up in doing good. So far as we can conceive of such a state, it would be one in which there would be no 'individuals' at all, but an universal being in and for another; where being took the form of consciousness, it would be the consciousness of 'another' which was also 'oneself'--a _common_ consciousness. Such would be the 'atonement' of the world."] [Footnote 392: Charles Kingsley is another mystic of the same school.] [Footnote 393: Browning, _Paracelsus_, Act i.] [Footnote 394: Browning, "Saul," xvii.] [Footnote 395: Browning, "Cristina."] [Footnote 396: Browning, "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," xxx., xxxiii.] [Footnote 397: Browning, "_Any Wife to any Husband._"] [Footnote 398: Compare Plato's well-known sentence: [Greek: di algêdonôn kai odynôn gignetai hê ôpheleia, ou gar oion te allôs adikias apallattesthai].] [Footnote 399: Browning, _Paracelsus_.] [Footnote 400: Compare Pascal: "No one is discontented at not being a king, except a discrowned king."] [Footnote 401: It is almost as prominent in Tennyson as in Browning: "Give her the wages of going on, and not to die," is his wish for the human soul.] [Footnote 402: I had written these words before the publication of Principal Caird's _Sermons_, which contain, in my judgment, the most powerful defence of what I have called Christian Mysticism that has appeared since William Law. On p. 14 he says: "Of all things good and fair and holy there is a spiritual cognisance which precedes and is independent of that knowledge which the understanding conveys." He shows how in the contemplation of nature it is "by an organ deeper than intellectual thought" that "the revelation of material beauty flows in upon the soul." "And in like manner there is an apprehension of God and Divine things which comes upon the spirit as a living reality which it immediately and intuitively perceives." ... "There is a capacity of the soul, by which the truths of religion may be apprehended and appropriated." See the whole sermon, entitled, _What is Religion?_ and many other parts of the book.] [Footnote 403: Cf. Hegel (_Philosophy of Religion_, vol. ii. p. 8): "The Beautiful is essentially the Spiritual making itself known sensuously, presenting itself in sensuous concrete existence, but in such a manner that that existence is wholly and entirely permeated by the Spiritual, so that the sensuous is not independent, but has its meaning solely and exclusively in the Spiritual and through the Spiritual, and exhibits not itself, but the Spiritual."] [Footnote 404: Some reference ought perhaps to be made to Drummond's _Natural Law in the Spiritual World_. But Mysticism seeks rather to find spiritual law in the natural world--and some better law than Drummond's Calvinism. (And I cannot help thinking that, though Evolution explains much and contradicts nothing in Christianity, it is in danger of proving an _ignis fatuus_ to many, especially to those who are inclined to idealistic pantheism. There can be no progress or development in God, and the cosmic process as we know it cannot have a higher degree of reality than the categories of time and place under which it appears. As for the millennium of perfected humanity on this earth, which some Positivists and others dream of,--Christianity has nothing to say against it, but science has a great deal.) See below, p. 328.] [Footnote 405: In the Life of Charles Darwin there is an interesting letter, in which he laments the gradual decay of his taste for poetry, as his mind became a mere "machine for grinding out general laws" from a mass of observations. The decay of religious _feeling_ in many men of high character may be accounted for in the same way. The really great man is conscious of the sacrifice which he is making. "It is an accursed evil to a man," Darwin wrote to Hooker, "to become so absorbed in any subject as I am in mine." The common-place man is _not_ conscious of it: he obtains his heart's desire, if he works hard enough, and God sends leanness withal into his soul.] [Footnote 406: The metaphysical problem about the reality of time in relation to evolution is so closely bound up with speculative Mysticism, that I have been obliged to state my own opinion upon it. It is, of course, one of the vexed questions of philosophy at the present time; and I could not afford the space, even if I had the requisite knowledge and ability, to argue it. The best discussion of it that I know is in M'Taggart's _Studies in Hegelian Dialectic_, pp. 159-202. Cf. note on p. 23.] APPENDICES APPENDIX A Definitions Of "Mysticism" And "Mystical Theology" The following definitions are given only as specimens. The list might be made much longer by quoting from other Roman Catholic theologians, but their definitions for the most part agree closely enough with those which I have transcribed from Corderius, John a Jesu Maria, and Gerson. 1. _Corderius_. "Theologia mystica est sapientia experimentalis, Dei affectiva, divinitus infusa, quæ mentem ab omni inordinatione puram per actus supernaturales fidei spei et caritatis cum Deo intime coniungit.... Mystica theologia, si vim nominis attendas, designat quandam sacram et arcanam de Deo divinisque rebus notitiam." 2. _John a Jesu Maria_. "[Theologia mystica] est cælestis quædam Dei notitia per unionem voluntatis Deo inhærentis elicita vel lumine cælitus immisso producta." 3. _Bonaventura_ (adopted also by Gerson). "Est animi extensio in Deum per amoris desiderium." 4. _Gerson_. "Theologia mystica est motio anagogica in Deum per amorem fervidum et purum. Aliter sic: Theologia mystica est experimentalis cognitio habita de Deo per amoris unitivi complexum. Aliter sic: est sapientia, id est sapida notio habita de Deo, dum ei supremus apex affectivæ potentiæ rationalis per amorem iungitur et unitur." 5. _Scaramelli_. "La theologia mistica esperimentale, secondo il suo atto principale e più proprio, è una notizia pura di Dio che l' anima d'ordinario riceve nella caligine luminosa, o per di meglio nel chiaro oscuro d' un' alta contemplazione, insieme con un amore esperimentale si intimo, che la fa perdere tutta a sè stessa per unirla e transformarla in Dio." 6. _Ribet_. "La théologie mystique, au point de vue subjectif et expérimental, nous semble pouvoir être définie: une attraction surnaturelle et passive de l'âme vers Dieu, provenant d'une illumination et d'un embrasement intérieurs, qui préviennent la réflexion, surpassent l'effort humain, et pouvent avoir sur le corps un retentissement merveilleux et irrésistible.... Au point de vue doctrinal objectif, la mystique peut se définir: la science qui traite des phénomènes surnaturels, qui préparent, accompagnent, et suivent l'attraction passive des âmes vers Dieu et par Dieu, c'est à dire la contemplation divine; qui les coordonne et les justifie par l'autorité de l'Écriture, des docteurs et de la raison; les distingue des phénomènes parallèles dus a l'action de Satan, et des faits analogues purement naturels; enfin, qui trace des règles pratiques pour la conduite des âmes dans ces ascensions sublimes mais périlleuses." 7. _L'Abbé Migne_. "La mystique est la science d'état sur naturel de l'âme humaine manifesté dans le corps et dans l'ordre des choses visibles par des effets également surnaturels." In these scholastic and modern Roman Catholic definitions we may observe (a) that the earlier definitions supplement without contradicting each other, representing different aspects of Mysticism, as an experimental science, as a living sacrifice of the will, as an illumination from above, and as an exercise of ardent devotion; (b) that symbolic or objective Mysticism is not recognised; (c) that the sharp distinction between natural and supernatural, which is set up by the scholastic mystics, carries with it a craving for physical "mystical phenomena" to support the belief in supernatural interventions. These miracles, though not mentioned in the earlier definitions, have come to be considered an integral part of Mysticism, so that Migne and Ribet include them in their definitions; (d) lastly, that those who take this view of "la mystique divine" are constrained to admit by the side of true mystical facts a parallel class of "contrefaçons diaboliques." 8. _Von Hartmann_. "Mysticism is the filling of the consciousness with a content (feeling, thought, desire), by an involuntary emergence of the same out of the unconscious." Von Hartmann's hypostasis of the Unconscious has been often and justly criticised. But his chapter on Mysticism is of great value. He begins by asking, "What is the _Wesen_ of Mysticism?" and shows that it is not quietism (disproved by mystics like Böhme, and by many active reformers), nor ecstasy (which is generally pathological), nor asceticism, nor allegorism, nor fantastic symbolism, nor obscurity of expression, nor religion generally, nor superstition, nor the sum of these things. It is healthy in itself, and has been of high value to individuals and to the race. It prepared for the Gospel of St. John, for the revolt against arid scholasticism in the Middle Ages, for the Reformation, and for modern German philosophy. He shows the mystical element in Hamann, Jacobi, Fichte, and Schelling; and quotes with approval the description of "intellectual intuition" given by the last named. We must not speak of thought as an antithesis to experience, "for thought (including immediate or mystical knowledge) is itself experience." This knowledge is not derived from sense-perception,--the conscious will has nothing to do with it,--"it can only have arisen through inspiration from the Unconscious." He would extend the name of mystic to "eminent art-geniuses who owe their productions to inspirations of genius, and not to the work of their consciousness (e.g. Phidias, Æeschylus, Raphael, Beethoven)", and even to every "truly original" philosopher, for every high thought has been first apprehended by the glance of genius. Moreover, the relation of the individual to the Absolute, an essential theme of philosophy, can _only_ be mystically apprehended. "This feeling is the content of Mysticism [Greek: kat exochên], because it finds its existence _only_ in it." He then shows with great force how religious and philosophical systems have full probative force only for the few who are able to reproduce mystically in themselves their underlying suppositions, the truth of which can only be mystically apprehended. "Hence it is that those systems which rejoice in most adherents are just the poorest of all and most unphilosophical (e.g. materialism and rationalistic Theism)." 9. _Du Prel_. "If the self is not wholly contained in self-consciousness, if man is a being dualised by the threshold of sensibility, then is Mysticism possible; and if the threshold of sensibility is movable, then Mysticism is necessary." "The mystical phenomena of the soul-life are anticipations of the biological process." "Soul is our spirit within the self-consciousness, spirit is the soul beyond the self-consciousness." This definition, with which should be compared the passage from J.P. Ritcher, quoted in Lecture I., assumes that Mysticism may be treated as a branch of experimental psychology. Du Prel attaches great importance to somnambulism and other kindred psychical phenomena, which (he thinks) give us glimpses of the inner world of our _Ego_, in many ways different from our waking consciousness. "As the moon turns to us only half its orb, so our Ego." He distinguishes between the Ego and the subject. The former will perish at death. It arises from the free act of the subject, which enters the time-process as a discipline. "The self-conscious Ego is a projection of the transcendental subject, and resembles it." "We should regard this earthly existence as a transitory phenomenal form in correspondence with our transcendental interest." "Conscience is transcendental nature." (This last sentence suggests thoughts of great interest.) Du Prel shows how Schopenhauer's pessimism may be made the basis of a higher optimism. "The path of biological advance leads to the merging of the Ego in the subject." "The biological aim for the race coincides with the transcendental aim for the individual." "The whole content of Ethics is that the Ego must subserve the Subject." The disillusions of experience show that earthly life has no value for its own sake, and is only a means to an end; it follows that to make pleasure our end is the one fatal mistake in life. These thoughts are mixed with speculations of much less value; for I cannot agree with Du Prel that we shall learn much about higher and deeper modes of life by studying abnormal and pathological states of the consciousness. 10. _Goethe_. "Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings." 11. _Noack_. "Mysticism is formless speculation." Noack's definition is, perhaps, not very happily phrased, for the essence of Mysticism is not speculation but intuition; and when it begins to speculate, it is obliged at once to take to itself "forms." Even the ultimate goal of the _via negativa_ is apprehended as "a kind of form of formlessness." Goethe's definition regards Mysticism as a system of religion or philosophy, and from this point of view describes it accurately. 12. _Ewald_. "Mystical theology begins by maintaining that man is fallen away from God, and craves to be again united with Him." 13. _Canon Overton_. "That we bear the image of God is the starting-point, one might almost say the postulate, of all Mysticism. The complete union of the soul with God is the goal of all Mysticism." 14. _Pfleiderer_. "Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the unity of the self with God; it is nothing, therefore, but the fundamental feeling of religion, the religious life at its very heart and centre. But what makes the mystical a special tendency inside religion, is the endeavour to fix the immediateness of the life in God as such, as abstracted from all intervening helps and channels whatever, and find a permanent abode in the abstract inwardness of the life of pious feeling. In this God-intoxication, in which self and the world are alike forgotten, the subject knows himself to be in possession of the highest and fullest truth; but this truth is only possessed in the quite undeveloped, simple, and bare form of monotonous feeling; what truth the subject possesses is not filled up by any determination in which the simple unity might unfold itself, and it lacks therefore the clearness of knowledge, which is only attained when thought harmonises differences with unity." 15. _Professor A. Seth_. "Mysticism is a phase of thought, or rather, perhaps, of feeling, which from its very nature is hardly susceptible of exact definition. It appears in connexion with the endeavour of the human mind to grasp the Divine essence or the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the highest. The first is the philosophic side of Mysticism; the second, its religious side. The thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and indwelling Power, in whom all things are one. Hence the speculative utterances of Mysticism are always more or less pantheistic in character. On the practical side, Mysticism maintains the possibility of direct intercourse with this Being of beings. God ceases to be an object, and becomes an experience." This carefully-worded statement of the essence of Mysticism is followed by a hostile criticism. Professor Seth considers quietism the true conclusion from the mystic's premisses. "It is characteristic of Mysticism, that it does not distinguish between what is metaphorical and what is susceptible of a literal interpretation. Hence it is prone to treat a relation of ethical harmony as if it were one of substantial identity or chemical fusion; and, taking the sensuous language of religious feeling literally, it bids the individual aim at nothing less than an interpenetration of essence. And as this goal is unattainable while reason and the consciousness of self remain, the mystic begins to consider these as impediments to be thrown aside.... Hence Mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire, a union in which the consciousness of self has disappeared, and in which, therefore, subject and object are one." To this, I think, the mystic might answer: "I know well that interpenetration and absorption are words which belong to the category of space, and are only metaphors or symbols of the relation of the soul to God; but separateness, impenetrability, and isolation, which you affirm of the _ego_, belong to the same category, and are no whit less metaphorical. The question is, which of the two sets of words best expresses the relation of the ransomed soul to its Redeemer? In my opinion, your phrase 'ethical harmony' is altogether inadequate, while the New Testament expressions, 'membership,' 'union,' 'indwelling,' are as adequate as words can be." The rest of the criticism is directed against the "negative road," which I have no wish to defend, since I cannot admit that it follows logically from the first principles of Mysticism. 16. _Récéjac_. "Mysticism is the tendency to approach the Absolute morally, and by means of symbols." Récéjac's very interesting _Essai sur les Fondements de la Connaissance mystique_ has the great merit of emphasising the symbolic character of all mystical phenomena, and of putting all such experiences in their true place, as neither hallucinations nor invasions of the natural order, but symbols of a higher reality. "Les apparitions et autres phénomènes mystiques n'existent que dans l'esprit du voyant, et ne perdent rien pour cela de leur prix ni de leur vérité.... Et alors n'y a-t-il pas au fond des symboles autant _d'être_ que sous les phénomènes? Bien plus encore: car l'être phénoménal, le réel, se pose dans la conscience par un enchaînement de faits tellement successif que nous ne tenons jamais 'le même'; tandis que sous les symboles, si nous tenons quelque chose, c'est l'identique et le permanent." Récéjac also insists with great force that the motive power of Mysticism is neither curiosity nor self-interest, but love: the intrusion of alien motives is at once fatal to it. "Its logic consists in having confidence in the rationality of the moral consciousness and its desires." This agrees with what I have said--that Reason is, or should be, the logic of our entire personality, and that if Reason is so defined, it does not come into conflict with Mysticism. Récéjac also has much to say upon Free Will and Determinism. He says that Mysticism is an alliance between the Practical Reason (which he identifies with "la Liberté") and Imagination. "Determinism is the opposite, not of 'Liberty,' but of 'indifference.' Liberty, as Fouillée says, is only a higher form of Determinism." "The modern idea of liberty, and the mystical conception of Divine will, may be reconciled in the same way as inspiration and reason, on condition that both are discovered in the same fact interior to us, and that, far from being opposed to each other, they are fused and distinguished together _dans quelque implicite réellement présent a la conscience_." Récéjac throughout appeals to Kant instead of to Hegel as his chief philosophical authority, in this differing from the majority of those who are in sympathy with Mysticism. 17. _Bonchitté_. "Mysticism consists in giving to the spontaneity of the intelligence a larger part than to the other faculties." 18. _Charles Kingsley_. "The great Mysticism is the belief which is becoming every day stronger with me, that all symmetrical natural objects are types of some spiritual truth or existence. When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp, amounts to indescribable awe sometimes. Everything seems to be full of God's reflex, if we could but see it. Oh, how I have prayed to have the mystery unfolded, at least hereafter! To see, if but for a moment, the whole harmony of the great system! To hear once the music which the whole universe makes as it performs His bidding! Oh, that heaven! The thought of the first glance of creation from thence, when we know even as we are known. And He, the glorious, the beautiful, the incarnate Ideal shall be justified in all His doings, and in all, and through all, and over all.... All day, glimpses from the other world, floating motes from that inner transcendental life, have been floating across me.... Have you not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to your mental vision, except at a few hallowed moments? That in everyday life the mind, looking at itself, sees only the brute intellect, grinding and working, not the Divine particle, which is life and immortality, and on which the Spirit of God most probably works, as being most cognate to Deity" (_Life_, vol. i. p. 55). Again he says: "This earth is the next greatest fact to that of God's existence." Kingsley's review of Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_ shows that he retained his sympathy with Mysticism at a later period of his life. It would be impossible to find any consistent idealistic philosophy in Kingsley's writings; but the sentences above quoted are interesting as a profession of faith in Mysticism of the _objective_ type. 19. _R.L. Nettleship_. "The cure for a wrong Mysticism is to realise the facts, not particular facts or aspects of facts, but the whole fact: true Mysticism is the consciousness that everything that we experience is an element, and only an element, in fact; i.e. that in being what it is, it is symbolic of something more." The _obiter dicta_ on Mysticism in Nettleship's _Remains_ are of great value. 20. _Lasson_. "The essence of Mysticism is the assertion of an intuition which transcends the temporal categories of the understanding, relying on speculative reason. Rationalism cannot conduct us to the essence of things; we therefore need intellectual vision. But Mysticism is not content with symbolic knowledge, and aspires to see the Absolute by pure spiritual apprehension.... There is a contradiction in regarding God as the immanent Essence of all things, and yet as an abstraction transcending all things. But it is inevitable. Pure immanence is unthinkable, if we are to maintain distinctions in things.... Strict 'immanence' doctrine tends towards the monopsychism of Averroes.... Mysticism is often associated with pantheism, but the religious character of Mysticism views everything from the standpoint of teleology, while pantheism generally stops at causality.... Mysticism, again, is often allied with rationalism, but their ground-principles are different, for rationalism is deistic, and rests on this earth, being based on the understanding [as opposed to the higher faculty, the reason].... Nothing can be more perverse than to accuse Mysticism of _vagueness_. Its danger is rather an overvaluing of reason and knowledge.... Mysticism is only religious so long as it remembers that we can here only see through a glass darkly; when it tries to represent the eternal _adequately_, it falls into a new and dangerous retranslation of thought into images, or into bare negation.... Religion is a relation of person to person, a life, which in its form is an analogy to the earthly, while its content is pure relation to the eternal. Dogmatic is the skeleton, Mysticism the life-blood, of the Christian body.... Since the Reformation, philosophy has taken over most of the work which the speculative mystics performed in the Middle Ages" (_Essay on the Essence and Value of Mysticism_). 21. _Nordau_. "The word Mysticism describes a state of mind in which the subject imagines that he perceives or divines unknown and inexplicable relations among phenomena, discerns in things hints at mysteries, and regards them as symbols by which a dark power seeks to unveil, or at least to indicate, all sorts of marvels.... It is always connected with strong emotional excitement.... Nearly all our perceptions, ideas, and conceptions are connected more or less closely through the association of ideas. But to make the association of ideas fulfil its function, one more thing must be added--_attention_, which is the faculty to suppress one part of the memory-images and maintain another part." We must select the strongest and most direct images, those directly connected with the afferent nerves; "this Ribot calls adaptation of the whole organism to a predominant idea.... Attention presupposes strength of will. Unrestricted play of association, the result of an exhausted or degenerate brain, gives rise to Mysticism. Since the mystic cannot express his cloudy thoughts in ordinary language, he loves mutually exclusive expressions. Mysticism blurs outlines, and makes the transparent opaque." The Germans have two words for what we call Mysticism--_Mystik_ and _Mysticismus_, the latter being generally dyslogistic. The long chapter in Nordau's _Degeneration_, entitled "Mysticism," treats it throughout as a morbid state. It will be observed that the last sentence quoted flatly contradicts one of the statements copied from Lasson's essay. But Nordau is not attacking religious Mysticism, so much as that unwholesome development of symbolic "science, falsely so called," which has usurped the name in modern France. Those who are interested in Mysticism should certainly study the pathological symptoms which counterfeit mystical states, and from this point of view the essay in _Degeneration_ is valuable. The observations of Nordau and other alienists must lead us to suspect very strongly the following kinds of symbolical representation, whether the symbols are borrowed from the external world, or created by the imagination:--(a) All those which include images of a sexual character. It is unnecessary to illustrate this. The visions of monks and nuns are often, as we might expect, unconsciously tinged with a morbid element of this kind. (b) Those which depend on mere verbal resemblances or other fortuitous correspondences. Nordau shows that the diseased brain is very ready to follow these false trains of association. (c) Those which are connected with the sense of smell, which seems to be morbidly developed in this kind of degeneracy. (d) Those which in any way minister to pride or self-sufficiency. 22. _Harnack_. "Mysticism is rationalism applied to a sphere above reason." I have criticised this definition in my first Lecture, and have suggested that the words "rationalism" and "reason" ought to be transposed. Elsewhere Harnack says that the distinctions between "Scholastic, Roman, German, Catholic, Evangelical, and Pantheistic Mysticism" are at best superficial, and in particular that it is a mistake to contrast "Scholasticism and Mysticism" as opposing forces in the Middle Ages. "Mysticism," he proceeds, "is Catholic piety in general, so far as this piety is not merely ecclesiastical obedience, that is, _fides implicita_. The Reformation element which is ascribed to it lies simply in this, that Mysticism, when developed in a particular direction, is led to discern the inherent responsibility of the soul, of which no authority can again deprive it." The conflicts between Mysticism and Church authority, he thinks, in no way militate against _both_ being Catholic ideals, just as asceticism and world-supremacy are both Catholic ideals, though contradictory. The German mystics he disparages. "I give no extracts from their writings," he says, "because I do not wish even to seem to countenance the error that they expressed anything that one cannot read in Origen, Plotinus, the Areopagite, Augustine, Erigena, Bernard, and Thomas, or that they represented religious progress." "It will never be possible to make Mysticism Protestant without flying in the face of history and Catholicism." "A mystic who does not become a Catholic is a dilettante." Before considering these statements, I will quote from another attack upon Mysticism by a writer whose general views are very similar to those of Harnack. 23. _Herrmann_ (_Verkehr des Christen mit Gott_). "The most conspicuous features of the Roman Catholic rule of life are obedience to the laws of cultus and of doctrine on the one side, and Neoplatonic Mysticism on the other.... The essence of Mysticism lies in this: when the influence of God upon the soul is sought and found solely in an inward experience of the individual; when certain excitements of the emotions are taken, with no further question, as evidence that the soul is possessed by God: when at the same time nothing external to the soul is consciously and clearly perceived and firmly grasped; when no thoughts that elevate the spiritual life are aroused by the positive contents of an idea that rules the soul,--then that is the piety of Mysticism.... Mysticism is not that which is common to all religion, but a particular species of religion, namely a piety which feels that which is historical in the positive religion to be burdensome, and so rejects it." These extracts from Harnack and Herrmann represent the attitude towards Mysticism of the Ritschlian school in Germany, of which Kaftan is another well-known exponent. They are neo-Kantians, whose religion is an austere moralism, and who seem to regard Christianity as a primitive Puritanism, spoiled by the Greeks, who brought into it their intellectualism and their sacramental mysteries. True Christianity, they say, is faith in the historic Christ. "In the human Jesus," says Herrmann, "we have met with a fact, the content of which is incomparably richer than that of any feelings which arise within ourselves,--a fact, moreover, which makes us so certain of God that, our reason and conscience being judges, our conviction is only confirmed that we are in communion with Him." "The mystic's experience of God is a delusion. If the Christian has learnt how Christ alone has lifted him above all that he had even been before, he cannot believe that another man might reach the same end by simply turning inward upon himself." "The piety of the mystic is such that at the highest point to which it leads Christ must vanish from the soul along with all else that is external." This curious view of Christianity quite fails to explain how "our reason and conscience" can detect the "incomparable richness" of a revelation altogether unlike "the feelings which arise within ourselves." It entirely ignores the Pauline and Johannine doctrine of the mystical union, according to which Christ is _not_ "external" to the redeemed soul, and most assuredly can never "vanish" from it. Instead of the "Lo I am with you alway" of our blessed Lord, we are referred to "history"--that is, primarily, the four Gospels confirmed by "a fifth," "the united testimony of the first Christian community" (Harnack, _Christianity and History_). We are presented with a Christianity without knowledge (Gnosis), without discipline, without sacraments, resting partly on a narrative which these very historical critics tear in pieces, each in his own fashion, and partly on a categorical imperative which is really the voice of "irreligious moralism," as Pfleiderer calls it. The words are justified by such a sentence as this from Herrmann: "Religious faith in God is, rightly understood, just the medium by which the universal law becomes individualised for the particular man in his particular place in the world's life, so as to enable him to recognise its absoluteness as the ground of his self-certainty, and the ideal drawn in it as his own personal end." Thus the school which has shown the greatest animus against Mysticism unconsciously approaches very near to the atheism of Feuerbach. Indeed, what worse atheism can there be, than such disbelief in the rationality of our highest thoughts as is expressed in this sentence: "Metaphysics is an impassioned endeavour to obtain recognition for thoughts, the contents of which have no other title to be recognised than their value for us"? As if faith in God had any other meaning than a confidence that what is of "value for us" is the eternally and universally good and true! Herrmann's attitude towards reason can only escape atheism by accepting in preference the crudest dualism, "behind which" (to quote Pfleiderer again) lies concealed simply "the scepticism of a disintegrating Nominalism." 24. _Victor Cousin_. "Mysticism is the pretension to know God without intermediary, and, so to speak, face to face. For Mysticism, whatever is between God and us hides Him from us." "Mysticism consists in substituting direct inspiration for indirect, ecstasy for reason, rapture for philosophy." 25. _R.A. Vaughan_. "Mysticism is that form of error which mistakes for a Divine manifestation the operations of a merely human faculty." This poor definition is the only one (except "Mysticism is the romance of religion") to be found in _Hours with the Mystics_, the solitary work in English which attempts to give a history of Christian Mysticism. The book has several conspicuous merits. The range of the author's reading is remarkable, and he has a wonderful gift of illustration. But he was not content to trust to the interest of the subject to make his book popular, and tried to attract readers by placing it in a most incongruous setting. There is something almost offensive in telling the story of men like Tauler, Suso, and Juan of the Cross, in the form of smart conversations at a house-party, and the jokes cracked at the expense of the benighted "mystics" are not always in the best taste. Vaughan does not take his subject quite seriously enough. There is an irritating air of superiority in all his discussions of the lives and doctrines of the mystics, and his hatred and contempt for the Roman Church often warp his judgment. His own philosophical standpoint is by no means clear, and this makes his treatment of speculative Mysticism less satisfactory than the more popular parts of the book. It is also a pity that he has neglected the English representatives of Mysticism; they are quite as interesting in their way as Madame Guyon, whose story he tells at disproportionate length. At the same time, I wish to acknowledge considerable obligations to Vaughan, whose early death probably deprived us of even better work than the book which made his reputation. 26. _James Hinton_. "Mysticism is an assertion of a means of knowing that must not be tried by ordinary rules of evidence--the claiming authority for our own impressions." Another poor and question-begging definition, on the same lines as the last. APPENDIX B The Greek Mysteries And Christian Mysticism The connexion between the Greek Mysteries and Christian Mysticism is marked not only by the name which the world has agreed to give to that type of religion (though it must be said that [Greek: mystêria] is not the commonest name for the Mysteries--[Greek: orgia, teletai, telê] are all, I think, more frequent), but by the evident desire on the part of such founders of mystical Christianity as Clement and Dionysius the Areopagite, to emphasise the resemblance. It is not without a purpose that these writers, and other Platonising theologians from the third to the fifth century, transfer to the faith and practice of the Church almost every term which was associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries and others like them. For instance, the sacraments are regularly [Greek: mystêria]; baptism is [Greek: mystikon loutron] (Gregory of Nyssa); unction, [Greek: chrisma mystikon] (Athanasius); the elements, [Greek: mystis edôdê] (Gregory Naz.); and participation in them is [Greek: mystikê metalêpsis]. Baptism, again, is "initiation" [Greek: myêsis]; a baptized person is [Greek: memyêmenos], [Greek: mystês] or [Greek: symmystês] (Gregory Ny. and Chrysostom), an unbaptized person is [Greek: amyêtos]. The celebrant is [Greek: mystêriôn lanthanontôn mystagôgos] (Gregory Ny.); the administration is [Greek: paradosis], as at Eleusis. The sacraments are also [Greek: teletê] or [Greek: telê], regular Mystery-words; as are [Greek: teleiôsis, teleiousthai, teleiopoios], which are used in the same connexion. Secret formulas (the notion of secret formulas itself comes from the Mysteries) were [Greek: aporrêta]. (Whether the words [Greek: phôtismos] and [Greek: sphragis] in their sacramental meaning come from the Mysteries seems doubtful, in spite of Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 295.) Nor is the language of the Mysteries applied only to the sacraments. Clement calls purgative discipline [Greek: ta katharsia], and [Greek: ta mikra mystêria], and the highest stage in the spiritual life [Greek: epopteia]. He also uses such language as the following: "O truly sacred mysteries! O stainless light! My way is lighted with torches, and I survey the heavens and God! I am become holy while I am being initiated. The Lord is my hierophant," etc. (_Protr._ xii. 120). Dionysius, as I have shown in a note on Lecture III., uses the Mystery words frequently, and gives to the orders of the Christian ministry the names which distinguished the officiating priests at the Mysteries. The aim of these writers was to prove that the Church offers a mysteriosophy which includes all the good elements of the old Mysteries without their corruptions. The alliance between a Mystery-religion and speculative Mysticism within the Church was at this time as close as that between the Neoplatonic philosophy and the revived pagan Mystery cults. But when we try to determine the amount of direct _influence_ exercised by the later paganism on Christian usages and thought, we are baffled both by the loss of documents, and by the extreme difficulty of tracing the pedigree of religious ideas and customs. I shall here content myself with calling attention to certain features which were common to the Greek Mysteries and to Alexandrian Christianity, and which may perhaps claim to be in part a legacy of the old religion to the new. My object is not at all to throw discredit upon modes of thought which may have been unfamiliar to Palestinian Jews. A doctrine or custom is not necessarily un-Christian because it is "Greek" or "pagan." I know of no stranger perversity than for men who rest the whole weight of their religion upon "history," to suppose that our Lord meant to raise an universal religion on a purely Jewish basis. The Greek Mysteries were perhaps survivals of an old-world ritual, based on a primitive kind of Nature-Mysticism. The "public Mysteries," of which the festival at Eleusis was the most important, were so called because the State admitted strangers by initiation to what was originally a national cult. (There were also private Mysteries, conducted for profit by itinerant priests [Greek: agyrtai] from the East, who as a class bore no good reputation.) The main features of the ritual at Eleusis are known. The festival began at Athens, where the _mystæ_ collected, and, after a fast of several days, were "driven" to the sea, or to two salt lakes on the road to Eleusis, for a purifying bath. This kind of baptism washed away the stains of their former sins, the worst of which they were obliged to confess before being admitted to the Mysteries. Then, after sacrifices had been offered, the company went in procession to Eleusis, where Mystery-plays were performed in a great hall, large enough to hold thousands of people, and the votaries were allowed to handle certain sacred relics. A sacramental meal, in which a mixture of mint, barley-meal, and water was administered to the initiated, was an integral part of the festival. The most secret part of the ceremonies was reserved for the [Greek: epoptai] who had passed through the ordinary initiation in a previous year. It probably culminated in the solemn exhibition of a corn-ear, the symbol of Demeter. The obligation of silence was imposed not so much because there were any secrets to reveal, but that the holiest sacraments of the Greek religion might not be profaned by being brought into contact with common life. This feeling was strengthened by the belief that _words_ are more than conventional symbols of things. A sacred formula must not be taken in vain, or divulged to persons who might misuse it. The evidence is strong that the Mysteries had a real spiritualising and moralising influence on large numbers of those who were initiated, and that this influence was increasing under the early empire. The ceremonies may have been trivial, and even at times ludicrous; but the discovery had been made that the performance of solemn acts of devotion in common, after ascetical preparation, and with the aid of an impressive ritual, is one of the strongest incentives to piety. Diodorus is not alone in saying (he is speaking of the Samothracian Mysteries) that "those who have taken part in them are said to become more pious, more upright, and in every way better than their former selves." The chief motive force which led to the increased importance of Mystery-religion in the first centuries of our era, was the desire for "salvation" ([Greek: sôtêria]), which both with pagans and Christians was very closely connected with the hope of everlasting life. Happiness after death was the great promise held out in the Mysteries. The initiated were secure of blessedness in the next world, while the uninitiated must expect "to lie in darkness and mire after their death" (cf. Plato, _Phædrus_, 69). How was this "salvation" attained or conferred? We find that several conflicting views were held, which it is impossible to keep rigidly separate, since the human mind at one time inclines to one of them, at another time to another. (a) Salvation is imparted by _revelation_. This makes it to depend upon _knowledge_; but this knowledge was in the Mysteries conveyed by the spectacle or drama, not by any intellectual process. Plutarch (_de Defect. Orac._ 22) says that those who had been initiated could produce no demonstration or proof of the beliefs which they had acquired. And Synesius quotes Aristotle as saying that the initiated do not _learn_ anything, but rather receive impressions ([Greek: ou mathein ti dein alla pathein]). The old notion that monotheism was taught as a secret dogma rests on no evidence, and is very unlikely. There was a good deal of [Greek: theokrasia], as the ancients called it, and some departures from the current theogonies, but such doctrine as there was, was much nearer to pantheism than to monotheism. Certain truths about nature and the facts of life were communicated in the "greatest mysteries," according to Clement, and Cicero says the same thing. And sometimes the [Greek: gnôsis sôtêrias] includes knowledge about the whence and whither of man ([Greek: tines esmen kai ti gegonamen], Clem. _Exc. ex Theod._ 78). Some of the mystical formulæ were no doubt susceptible of deep and edifying interpretations, especially in the direction of an elevated nature-worship. (b) Salvation was regarded, as in the Oriental religions, as emancipation from the fetters of human existence. Doctrines of this kind were taught especially in the Orphic Mysteries, where it was a secret doctrine ([Greek: aporrêtos logos], Plat. _Phædr._ 62) that "we men are here in a kind of prison," or in a tomb ([Greek: sêma tines to sôma einai tês psychês, ôs tethammenês en tô paronti], Plat. _Crat._ 400). They also believed in transmigration of souls, and in a [Greek: kuklos tês geneseôs] (rota fati et generationis). The "Orphic life," or rules of conduct enjoined upon these mystics, comprised asceticism, and, in particular, abstinence from flesh; and laid great stress on "following of God" [Greek: epesthai] or [Greek: akolouthein tô theô] as the goal of moral endeavour. This cult, however, was tinged with Thracian barbarism; its heaven was a kind of Valhalla ([Greek: methê aiônios], Plat. _Rep._ ii. 363). Very similar was the rule of life prescribed by the Pythagorean brotherhood, who were also vegetarians, and advocates of virginity. Their system of purgation, followed by initiation, liberated men "from the grievous woeful circle" ([Greek: kyklou d'exeptan Barypentheos argaleoio] on a tombstone), and entitled them "to a happy life with the gods." (For the conception of salvation as deification, see Appendix C.) Whether these sects taught that our separate individuality must be merged is uncertain; but among the Gnostics, who had much in common with the Orphic _mystæ_, the formula, "I am thou, and thou art I," was common (_Pistis Sophia_; formulæ of the Marcosians; also in an invocation of Hermes: [Greek: to son onoma emon kai to emon son. egô gar eimi to eidôlon son]. Rohde, _Psyche_, vol. ii. p. 61). A foretaste of this deliverance was given by initiation, which conducts the mystic to _ecstasy_, an [Greek: oligochronios mania] (Galen), in which "animus ita solutus est et vacuus ut ei plane nihil sit cum corpore" (Cic. _De Divin._ i. I. 113); which was otherwise conceived as [Greek: enthousiasmos] ([Greek: enthousiôsês kai ouketi ousês en eautê dianoias], Philo). (c) The imperishable Divine nature is infused by mechanical means. Sacraments and the like have a magical or miraculous potency. The Homeric hymn to Demeter insists only on _ritual_ purity as the condition of salvation, and we hear that people trusted to the mystic baptism to wash out all their previous sins. Similarly the baptism of blood, the _taurobolium_, was supposed to secure eternal happiness, at any rate if death occurred within twenty years after the ceremony; when that interval had elapsed, it was common to renew the rite. (We find on inscriptions such phrases as "arcanis perfusionibus in æternum renatus.") So mechanical was the operation of the Mysteries supposed to be, that rites were performed for the dead (Plat. _Rep._ 364. St. Paul seems to refer to a similar custom in 1 Cor. xv. 29), and infants were appointed "priests," and thoroughly initiated, that they might be clean from their "original sin." Among the Gnostics, a favourite phrase was that initiation releases men "from the fetters of fate and necessity"; the gods of the intelligible world ([Greek: theoi noêtoi]) with whom we hold communion in the Mysteries being above "fate." (d) Salvation consists of moral regeneration. The efficacy of initiation without moral reformation naturally appeared doubtful to serious thinkers. Diogenes is reported to have asked, "What say you? Will Patæcion the thief be happier in the next world than Epaminondas, because he has been initiated?" And Philo says, "It often happens that good men are not initiated, but that robbers, and murderers, and lewd women are, if they pay money to the initiators and hierophants." Ovid protests against the immoral doctrine of mechanical purgation with more than his usual earnestness (_Fasti_, ii. 35):-- "Omne nefas omnemque mali purgamina causam Credebant nostri tollere posse senes. Græcia principium moris fuit; ilia nocentes Impia lustratos ponere facta putat. A! nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua!" Such passages show that abuses existed, but also that it was felt to be a scandal if the initiated person failed to exhibit any moral improvement. These different conceptions of the office of the Mysteries cannot, as I have said, be separated historically. They all reappear in the history of the Christian sacraments. The main features of the Mystery-system which passed into Catholicism are the notions of secrecy, of symbolism, of mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace, and, above all, of the three stages in the spiritual life, ascetic purification, illumination, and [Greek: epopteia] as the crown. The secrecy observed about creeds and liturgical forms had not much to do with the development of Mysticism, except by associating sacredness with obscurity (cf. Strabo, x. 467, [Greek: hê krypsis hê mystikê semnopoiei to theion, mimoumenê tên physin autou ekpheugousan tên aisthêsin]), a tendency which also showed itself in the love of symbolism. This certainly had a great influence, both in the form of allegorism (cf. Clem. _Strom_, i. 1. 15, [Greek: esti de ha kai ainixetai moi hê graphê; peirasetai de kai ganthanousa eipein kai epikryptomenê ekphênai kai deixai siôpôsa]), which Philo calls "the method of the Greek Mysteries," and in the various kinds of Nature-Mysticism. The great value of the Mysteries lay in the facilities which they offered for free symbolical interpretation. The idea of mystical union by means of a common meal was, as we have seen, familiar to the Greeks. For instance, Plutarch says (_Non fosse suav. vivi sec. Epic._ 21), "It is not the wine or the cookery that delights us at these feasts, but good hope, and the belief that God is present with us, and that He accepts our service graciously." There have always been two ideas of sacrifice, alike in savage and civilised cults--the mystical, in which it is a _communion_, the victim who is slain and eaten being himself the god, or a symbol of the god; and the commercial, in which something valuable is offered to the god in the hope of receiving some benefit in exchange. The Mysteries certainly encouraged the idea of communion, and made it easier for the Christian rite to gather up into itself all the religious elements which can be contained in a sacrament of this kind. But the scheme of ascent from [Greek: katharsis] to [Greek: myêsis], and from [Greek: myêsis] to [Greek: epopteia], is the great contribution of the Mysteries to Christian Mysticism. Purification began, as we have seen, with confession of sin; it proceeded by means of fasting (with which was combined [Greek: agneia apo synousias]) and meditation, till the second stage, that of illumination, was reached. The majority were content with the partial illumination which belonged to this stage, just as in books of Roman Catholic divinity "mystical theology" is a summit of perfection to which "all are not called." The elect advance, after a year's interval at least, to the full contemplation ([Greek: epopteia]). This highest truth was conveyed in various ways--by visible symbols dramatically displayed, by solemn words of mysterious import; by explanations of enigmas and allegories and dark speeches (cf. Orig. _Cels._ vii. 10), and perhaps by "visions and revelations." It is plain that this is one of the cases in which Christianity conquered Hellenism by borrowing from it all its best elements; and I do not see that a Christian need feel any reluctance to make this admission. APPENDIX C The Doctrine Of Deification The conception of salvation as the acquisition by man of Divine attributes is common to many forms of religious thought. It was widely diffused in the Roman Empire at the time of the Christian revelation, and was steadily growing in importance during the first centuries of our era. The Orphic Mysteries had long taught the doctrine. On tombstones erected by members of the Orphic brotherhoods we find such inscriptions as these: "Happy and blessed one! Thou shalt be a god instead of a mortal" ([Greek: olbie kai makariste theos d' esê anti brotoio]); "Thou art a god instead of a wretched man" ([Greek: theos ei eleeinou ex anthrôpou]). It has indeed been said that "deification was the idea of salvation taught in the Mysteries" (Harnack). To modern ears the word "deification" sounds not only strange, but arrogant and shocking. The Western consciousness has always tended to emphasise the distinctness of individuality, and has been suspicious of anything that looks like juggling with the rights of persons, human or Divine. This is especially true of thought in the Latin countries. _Deus_ has never been a fluid concept like [Greek: theos]. St. Augustine no doubt gives us the current Alexandrian philosophy in a Latin dress; but this part of his Platonism never became acclimatised in the Latin-speaking countries. The Teutonic genius is in this matter more in sympathy with the Greek; but we are Westerns, while the later "Greeks" were half Orientals, and there is much in their habits of thought which is strange and unintelligible to us. Take, for instance, the apotheosis of the emperors. This was a genuinely Eastern mode of homage, which to the true European remained either profane or ridiculous. But Vespasian's last joke, "_Voe! puto Deus fio!_" would not sound comic in Greek. The associations of the word [Greek: theos] were not sufficiently venerable to make the idea of deification ([Greek: theopoiêsis]) grotesque. We find, as we should expect, that this vulgarisation of the word affected even Christians in the Greek-speaking countries. Not only were the "barbarous people" of Galatia and Malta ready to find "theophanies" in the visits of apostles, or any other strangers who seemed to have unusual powers, but the philosophers (except the "godless Epicureans") agreed in calling the highest faculty of the soul Divine, and in speaking of "the God who dwells within us." There is a remarkable passage of Origen (quoted by Harnack) which shows how elastic the word [Greek: theos] was in the current dialect of the educated. "In another sense God is said to be an immortal, rational, moral Being. In this sense every gentle ([Greek: asteia]) soul is God. But God is otherwise defined as the self-existing immortal Being. In this sense the souls that are enclosed in wise men are not gods." Clement, too, speaks of the soul as "training itself to be God." Even more remarkable than such language (of which many other examples might be given) is the frequently recurring accusation that bishops, teachers, martyrs, philosophers, etc., are venerated with Divine or semi-Divine honours. These charges are brought by Christians against pagans, by pagans against Christians, and by rival Christians against each other. Even the Epicureans habitually spoke of their founder Epicurus as "a god." If we try to analyse the concept of [Greek: theos], thus loosely and widely used, we find that the prominent idea was that exemption from the doom of death was the prerogative of a Divine Being (cf. 1 Tim. vi. 16, "Who _only_ hath immortality"), and that therefore the gift of immortality is itself a deification. This notion is distinctly adopted by several Christian writers. Theophilus says (_ad Autol._ ii. 27) "that man, by keeping the commandments of God, may receive from him immortality as a reward ([Greek: misthon]), _and become God._" And Clement (_Strom._ v. 10. 63) says, "To be imperishable ([Greek: to mê phtheiresthai]) is to share in Divinity." To the same effect Hippolytus (_Philos._ x. 34) says, "Thy body shall be immortal and incorruptible as well as thy soul. For _thou hast become God_. All the things that follow upon the Divine nature God has promised to supply to thee, for _thou wast deified in being born to immortality_." With regard to later times, Harnack says that "after Theophilus, Irenæus, Hippolytus, and Origen, the idea of deification is found in all the Fathers of the ancient Church, and that in a primary position. We have it in Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Apollinaris, Ephraem Syrus, Epiphanius, and others, as also in Cyril, Sophronius, and late Greek and Russian theologians. In proof of it, Ps. lxxxii. 6 ('I said, Ye are gods') is very often quoted." He quotes from Athanasius, "He became man that we might be deified"; and from Pseudo-Hippolytus, "If, then, man has become immortal, he will be God." This notion grew within the Church as chiliastic and apocalyptic Christianity faded away. A favourite phrase was that the Incarnation, etc., "abolished death," and brought mankind into a state of "incorruption" ([Greek: aphtharsia]) This transformation of human nature, which is also spoken of as [Greek: theopoiêsis] is the highest work of the Logos. Athanasius makes it clear that what he contemplates is no pantheistic merging of the personality in the Deity, but rather a renovation after the original type. But the process of deification may be conceived of in two ways: (a) as essentialisation, (b) as substitution. The former may perhaps be called the more philosophical conception, the latter the more religious. The former lays stress on the high calling of man, and his potential greatness as the image of God; the latter, on his present misery and alienation, and his need of redemption. The former was the teaching of the Neoplatonic philosophy, in which the human mind was the throne of the Godhead; the latter was the doctrine of the Mysteries, in which salvation was conceived of realistically as something imparted or infused. The notion that salvation or deification consists in realising our true nature, was supported by the favourite doctrine that like only can know like. "If the soul were not essentially Godlike ([Greek: theoeidês]), it could never know God." This doctrine might seem to lead to the heretical conclusion that man is [Greek: omoousios tô Patri] in the same sense as Christ. This conclusion, however, was strongly repudiated both by Clement and Origen. The former (_Strom._ xvi. 74) says that men are _not_ [Greek: meros theou kai tô theô omoousioi]; and Origen (_in Joh._ xiii. 25) says it is very impious to assert that we are [Greek: omoousioi] with "the unbegotten nature." But for those who thought of Christ mainly as the Divine Logos or universal Reason, the line was not very easy to draw. Methodius says that every believer must, through participation in Christ, be born as a Christ,--a view which, if pressed logically (as it ought not to be), implies either that our nature is at bottom identical with that of Christ, or that the life of Christ is substituted for our own. The difficulty as to whether the human soul is, strictly speaking, "divinæ particula auræ," is met by Proclus in the ingenious and interesting passage quoted p. 34; "There are," he says, "three sorts of _wholes_, (1) in which the whole is anterior to the parts, (2) in which the whole is composed of the parts, (3) which knits into one stuff the parts and the whole ([Greek: hê tois holois ta merê sunyphainousa])." This is also the doctrine of Plotinus, and of Augustine. God is not split up among His creatures, nor are they essential to Him in the same way as He is to them. Erigena's doctrine of deification is expressed (not very clearly) in the following sentence (_De Div. Nat._ iii. 9): "Est igitur participatio divinæ essentiæ assumptio. Assumptio vero eius divinæ sapientiæ fusio quæ est omnium substantia et essentia, et quæcumque in eis naturaliter intelliguntur." According to Eckhart, the _Wesen_ of God transforms the soul into itself by means of the "spark" or "apex of the soul" (equivalent to Plotinus' [Greek: kentron psychês], _Enn._ vi. 9. 8), which is "so akin to God that it is one with God, and not merely united to Him." The history of this doctrine of the spark, and of the closely connected word _synteresis_, is interesting. The word "spark" occurs in this connexion as early as Tatian, who says (_Or._ 13): "In the beginning the spirit was a constant companion of the soul, but forsook it because the soul would not follow it; yet it retained, as it were, a spark of its power," etc. See also Tertullian, _De Anima_, 41. The curious word _synteresis_ (often misspelt _sinderesis_), which plays a considerable part in mediæval mystical treatises, occurs first in Jerome (on _Ezech._ i.): "Quartamque ponunt quam Græci vocant [Greek: syntêrêsin], quæ scintilla conscientiæ in Cain quoque pectore non exstinguitur, et qua victi voluptatibus vel furore nos peccare sentimus.... In Scripturis [eam] interdum vocari legimus Spiritum." Cf. Rom. viii. 26; 2 Cor. ii. 11. Then we find it in Alexander of Hales, and in Bonaventura, who (_Itinerare_, c. I) defines it as "apex mentis seu scintilla"; and more precisely (_Breviloquium, Pars_ 2, c. 11): "Benignissimus Deus quadruplex contulit ei adiutorium, scilicet duplex naturæ et duplex gratiæ. Duplicem enim indidit rectitudinem ipsi naturæ, videlicet unam ad recte iudicandum, et hæc est rectitudo conscientiæ, aliam ad recte volendum, et hæc est synteresis, cuius est remurmurare contra malum et stimulare ad bonum." Hermann of Fritslar speaks of it as a power or faculty in the soul, wherein God works immediately, "without means and without intermission." Ruysbroek defines it as the natural will towards good implanted in us all, but weakened by sin. Giseler says: "This spark was created with the soul in all men, and is a clear light in them, and strives in every way against sin, and impels steadily to virtue, and presses ever back to the source from which it sprang." It has, says Lasson, a double meaning in mystical theology, (a) the ground of the soul; (b) the highest ethical faculty. In Thomas Aquinas it is distinguished from "intellectus principiorum," the former being the highest activity of the moral sense, the latter of the intellect. In Gerson, "synteresis" is the highest of the affective faculties, the organ of which is the intelligence (an emanation from the highest intelligence, which is God Himself), and the activity of which is contemplation. Speaking generally, the earlier scholastic mystics regard it as a remnant of the sinless state before the fall, while for Eckhart and his school it is the core of the soul. There is another expression which must be considered in connexion with the mediæval doctrine of deification. This is the _intellectus agens_, or [Greek: nous poiêtikos], which began its long history in Aristotle (_De Anima_, iii. 5). Aristotle there distinguishes two forms of Reason, which are related to each other as form and matter. Reason _becomes_ all things, for the matter of anything is potentially the whole class to which it belongs; but Reason also _makes_ all things, that is to say, it communicates to things those categories by which they become objects of thought. This higher Reason is separate and impassible ([Greek: chôristos kai amigês kai apathês]); it is eternal and immortal; while the passive reason perishes with the body. The creative Reason is immanent both in the human mind and in the external world; and thus only is it possible for the mind to know things. Unfortunately, Aristotle says very little more about his [Greek: nous poiêtikos], and does not explain how the two Reasons are related to each other, thereby leaving the problem for his successors to work out. The most fruitful attempt to form a consistent theory, on an idealistic basis, out of the ambiguous and perhaps irreconcilable statements in the _De Anima_, was made by Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A.D.), who taught that the Active Reason "is not a part or faculty of our soul, but comes to us from without"--it is, in fact, identified with the Spirit of God working in us. Whether Aristotle would have accepted this interpretation of his theory may be doubted; but the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias was translated into Arabic, and this view of the Active Reason became the basis of the philosophy of Averroes. Averroes teaches that it is possible for the passive reason to unite itself with the Active Reason, and that this union may be attained or prepared for by ascetic purification and study. But he denies that the passive reason is perishable, not wishing entirely to depersonalise man. Herein he follows, he says, Themistius, whose views he tries to combine with those of Alexander. Avicenna introduces a celestial hierarchy, in which the higher intelligences shed their light upon the lower, till they reach the Active Reason, which lies nearest to man, "a quo, ut ipse dicit, effluunt species intelligibiles in animas nostras" (Aquinas). The doctrine of "monopsychism" was, of course, condemned by the Church. Aquinas makes both the Active and Passive Reason parts of the human soul. Eckhart, as I have said in the fourth Lecture, at one period of his teaching expressly identifies the "intellectus agens" with the "spark," in reference to which he says that "here God's ground is my ground, and my ground God's ground." This doctrine of the Divinity of the ground of the soul is very like the Cabbalistic doctrine of the Neschamah, and the Neoplatonic doctrine of [Greek: Nous] (cf. Stöckl, vol. ii. p. 1007). Eckhart was condemned for saying, "aliquid est in anima quod est increatum et increabile; si tota anima esset talis, esset increata et increabilis. Hoc est intellectus." Eckhart certainly says explicitly that "as fire turns all that it touches into itself, so the birth of the Son of God in the soul turns us into God, so that God no longer knows anything in us but His Son." Man thus becomes "filius naturalis Dei," instead of only "filius adoptivus." We have seen that Eckhart, towards the end of his life, inclined more and more to separate the spark, the organ of Divine contemplation, from the reason. This is, of course, an approximation to the _other_ view of deification--that of substitution or miraculous infusion from _without_, unless we see in it a tendency to divorce the personality from the reason. Ruysbroek states his doctrine of the Divine spark very clearly: "The unity of our spirit in God exists in two ways, essentially and actively. The essential existence of the soul, _quæ secundum æternam ideam in Deo nos sumus, itemque quam in nobis habemus, medii ac discriminis expers est_. Spiritus Deum in nuda natura essentialiter possidet, et spiritum Deus. Vivit namque in Deo et Deus in ipso; et _secundum supremam sui partem_ Dei claritatem suscipere absque medio idoneus est; quin etiam per æterni exemplaris sui claritudinem _essentialiter ac personaliter in ipso lucentis, secundum supremam vivacitatis suæ portionem, in divinam sese demittit ac demergit essentiam_, ibidemque perseveranter secundum ideam manendo æternam suam possidet beatitudinem; rursusque cum creaturis omnibus per æternam Verbi generationem inde emanans, in esse suo creato constituitur." The "natural union," though it is the first cause of all holiness and blessedness, does not make us holy and blessed, being common to good and bad alike. "Similitude" to God is the work of grace, "quæ lux quædam deiformis est." We cannot lose the "unitas," but we can lose the "similitudo quæ est gratia." The highest part of the soul is capable of receiving a perfect and immediate impression of the Divine essence; by this "apex mentis" we may "sink into the Divine essence, and by a new (continuous) creation return to our created being according to the idea of God." The question whether the "ground of the soul" is created or not is obviously a form of the question which we are now discussing. Giseler, as I have said, holds that it was created with the soul. Sterngassen says: "That which God has in eternity in uncreated wise, that has the soul in time in created wise." But the author of the _Treatise on Love_, which belongs to this period, speaks of the spark as "the Active Reason, _which is God_." And again, "This is the _Uncreated_ in the soul of which Master Eckhart speaks." Suso seems to imply that he believed the ground of the soul to be uncreated, an emanation of the Divine nature; and Tauler uses similar language. Ruysbroek, in the last chapter of the _Spiritual Nuptials_, says that contemplative men "see that they are _the same simple ground as to their uncreated nature_, and are one with the same light by which they see, and which they see." The later German mystics taught that the Divine essence is the material substratum of the world, the creative will of God having, so to speak, _alienated_ for the purpose a portion of His own essence. If, then, the created form is broken through, God Himself becomes the ground of the soul. Even Augustine countenances some such notion when he says, "From a good man, or from a good angel, take away 'man' or 'angel,' and you find God." But one of the chief differences between the older and later Mysticism is that the former regarded union with God as achieved through the faculties of the soul, the latter as inherent in its essence. The doctrine of _immanence_, more and more emphasised, tended to encourage the belief that the Divine element in the soul is not merely something potential, something which the faculties may acquire, but is immanent and basal. Tauler mentions both views, and prefers the latter. Some hesitation may be traced in the _Theologia Germanica_ on this point (p. 109, "Golden Treasury" edition): "The true light is that eternal Light which is God; _or else_ it is a created light, but yet Divine, which is called grace." Our Cambridge Platonists naturally revived this Platonic doctrine of deification, much to the dissatisfaction of some of their contemporaries. Tuckney speaks of their teaching as "a kind of moral divinity minted only with a little tincture of Christ added. Nay, _a Platonic faith unites to God!_" Notwithstanding such protests, the Platonists persisted that all true happiness consists in a participation of God; and that "we cannot enjoy God by any external conjunction with Him." The question was naturally raised, "If man by putting on Christ's life can get nothing more than he has already, what good will it do him?" The answer in the _Theologia Germanica_ is as follows: "This life is not chosen in order to serve any end, or to get anything by it, but for love of its nobleness, and because God loveth and esteemeth it so greatly." It is plain that any view which regards man as essentially Divine has to face great difficulties when it comes to deal with theodicy. The other view of deification, that of a _substitution_ of the Divine Will, or Life, or Spirit, for the human, cannot in history be sharply distinguished from the theories which have just been mentioned. But the idea of substitution is naturally most congenial to those who feel strongly "the corruption of man's heart," and the need of deliverance, not only from our ghostly enemies, but from the tyranny of self. Such men feel that there must be a _real_ change, affecting the very depths of our personality. Righteousness must be imparted, not merely imputed. And there is a death to be died as well as a life to be lived. The old man must die before the new man, which is "not I but Christ," can be born in us. The "birth of God (or Christ) in the soul" is a favourite doctrine of the later German mystics. Passages from the fourteenth century writers have been quoted in my fourth and fifth Lectures. The following from Giseler may be added: "God will be born, not in the Reason, not in the Will, but in the most inward part of the essence, and all the faculties of the soul become aware thereof. Thereby the soul passes into mere passivity, and lets God work." They all insist on an immediate, substantial, personal indwelling, which is beyond what Aquinas and the Schoolmen taught. The Lutheran Church condemns those who teach that only the gifts of God, and not God Himself, dwell in the believer; and the English Platonists, as we have seen, insist that "an infant Christ" is really born in the soul. The German mystics are equally emphatic about the annihilation of the old man, which is the condition of this indwelling Divine life. In quietistic (Nominalist) Mysticism the usual phrase was that the will (or, better, "self-will") must be utterly destroyed, so that the Divine Will may take its place. But Crashaw's "leave nothing of myself in me," represents the aspiration of the later Catholic Mysticism generally. St. Juan of the Cross says, "The soul must lose entirely its human knowledge and human feelings, in order to receive Divine knowledge and Divine feelings"; it will then live "as it were outside itself," in a state "more proper to the future than to the present life." It is easy to see how dangerous such teaching may be to weak heads. A typical example, at a much earlier date, is that of Mechthild of Hackeborn (about 1240). It was she who said, "My soul swims in the Godhead like a fish in water!" and who believed that, in answer to her prayers, God had so united Himself with her that she saw with His eyes, and heard with His ears, and spoke with His mouth. Many similar examples might be found among the mediæval mystics. Between the two ideas of essentialisation and of substitution comes that of gradual _transformation_, which, again, cannot in history be separated from the other two. It has the obvious advantage of not regarding deification as an _opus operatum_, but as a process, as a hope rather than a fact. A favourite maxim with mystics who thought thus, was that "love changes the lover into the beloved." Louis of Granada often recurs to this thought. The best mystics rightly see in the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ the best safeguard against the extravagances to which the notion of deification easily leads. Particularly instructive here are the warnings which are repeated again and again in the _Theologia Germanica_. "The false light dreameth itself to be God, and taketh to itself what belongeth to God as God is in eternity without the creature. Now, God in eternity is without contradiction, suffering, and grief, and nothing can hurt or vex Him. But with God when He is made man it is otherwise." "Therefore the false light thinketh and declareth itself to be above all works, words, customs, laws, and order, and above that life which Christ led in the body which He possessed in His holy human nature. So likewise it professeth to remain unmoved by any of the creature's works; whether they be good or evil, against God or not, is all alike to it; and it keepeth itself apart from all things, like God in eternity; and all that belongeth to God and to no creature it taketh to itself, and vainly dreameth that this belongeth to it." "It doth not set up to be Christ, but the eternal God. And this is because Christ's life is distasteful and burdensome to nature, therefore it will have nothing to do with it; but to be God in eternity and not man, or to be Christ as He was after His resurrection, is all easy and pleasant and comfortable to nature, and so it holdeth it to be best." These three views of the manner in which we may hope to become "partakers of the Divine nature," are all aspects of the truth. If we believe that we were made in the image of God, then in becoming like Him we are realising our true idea, and entering upon the heritage which is ours already by the will of God. On the other hand, if we believe that we have fallen very far from original righteousness, and have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, then we must believe in a deliverance from _outside_, an acquisition of a righteousness not our own, which is either imparted or imputed to us. And, thirdly, if we are to hope for a real change in our relations to God, there must be a real change _in_ our personality,--a progressive transmutation, which without breach of continuity will bring us to be something different from what we were. The three views are not mutually exclusive. As Vatke says, "The influence of Divine grace does not differ from the immanent development of the deepest Divine germ of life in man, only that it here stands over-against man regarded as a finite and separate being--as something external to himself. If the Divine image is the true nature of man, and if it only possesses reality in virtue of its identity with its type or with the Logos, then there can be no true self-determination in man which is not at the same time a self-determination of the type in its image." We cannot draw a sharp line between the operations of our own personality and those of God in us. Personality escapes from all attempts to limit and define it. It is a concept which stretches into the infinite, and therefore can only be represented to thought symbolically. The personality must not be identified with the "spark," the "Active Reason," or whatever we like to call the highest part of our nature. Nor must we identify it with the changing _Moi_ (as Fénelon calls it). The personality, as I have said in Lecture I. (p. 33), is both the end--the ideal self, and the changing _Moi_, and yet neither. If either thesis is held divorced from its antithesis, the thought ceases to be mystical. The two ideals of self-assertion and self-sacrifice are both true and right, and both, separately, unattainable. They are opposites which are really necessary to each other. I have quoted from Vatke's attempt to reconcile grace and free-will: another extract from a writer of the same school may perhaps be helpful. "In the growth of our experience," says Green, "an animal organism, which has its history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness. What we call our mental history is not a history of this consciousness, which in itself can have no history, but a history of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle. 'Our consciousness' may mean either of two things: either a function of the animal organism, which is being made, gradually and with interruptions, a vehicle of the eternal consciousness; or that eternal consciousness itself, as making the animal organism its vehicle and subject to certain limitations in so doing, but retaining its essential characteristic as independent of time, as the determinant of becoming, which has not and does not itself become. The consciousness which varies from moment to moment ... is consciousness in the former sense. It consists in what may properly be called phenomena.... The latter consciousness ... constitutes our knowledge" (_Prolegomena to Ethics_, pp. 72, 73). Analogous is our _moral_ history. But no Christian can believe that our life, mental or moral, is or ever can be _necessary_ to God in the same sense in which He is necessary to our existence. For practical religion, the symbol which we shall find most helpful is that of a progressive transformation of our nature after the pattern of God revealed in Christ; a process which has as its end a real union with God, though this end is, from the nature of things, unrealisable in time. It is, as I have said in the body of the Lectures, a _progessus ad infinitum_, the consummation of which we are nevertheless entitled to claim as already ours in a transcendental sense, in virtue of the eternal purpose of God made known to us in Christ. APPENDIX D The Mystical Interpretation Of The Song Of Solomon The headings to the chapters in the Authorised Version give a sort of authority to the "mystical" interpretation of Solomon's Song, a poem which was no doubt intended by its author to be simply a romance of true love. According to our translators, the Lover of the story is meant for Christ, and the Maiden for the Church. But the tendency of Catholic Mysticism has been to make the individual soul the bride of Christ, and to treat the Song of Solomon as symbolic of "spiritual nuptials" between Him and the individual "contemplative." It is this latter notion, the growth of which I wish to trace. Erotic Mysticism is no part of Platonism. That "sensuous love of the unseen" (as Pater calls it), which the Platonist often seems to aim at, has more of admiration and less of tenderness than the emotion which we have now to consider. The notion of a spiritual marriage between God and the soul seems to have come from the Greek Mysteries, through the Alexandrian Jews and Gnostics. Representations of "marriages of gods" were common at the Mysteries, especially at those of the least reputable kind (cf. Lucian, _Alexander_, 38). In other instances the ceremony of initiation was made to resemble a marriage, and the [Greek: mystês] was greeted with the words [Greek: chaire, nymphie]. And among the Jews of the first century there existed a system of Mysteries, probably copied from Eleusis. They had their greater and their lesser Mysteries, and we hear that among their secret doctrines was "marriage with God." In Philo we find strange and fantastic speculations on this subject. For instance, he argues that as the Bible does not mention Abraham, Jacob, and Moses as [Greek: gnôrizontas tas gynaikas], we are meant to believe that their children were not born naturally. But he allegorises the women of the Pentateuch in such a way ([Greek: logô men eisi gynaikes, ergô de aretai]) that it is difficult to say what he wishes us to believe in a literal sense. The Valentinian Gnostics seem to have talked much of "spiritual marriage," and it was from them that Origen got the idea of elaborating the conception. But, curiously enough, it is Tertullian who first argues that the body as well as the soul is the bride of Christ. "If the soul is the bride," he says, "the flesh is the dowry" (_de Resurr._ 63). Origen, however, really began the mischief in his homilies and commentary on the Song of Solomon. The prologue of the commentary in Rufinus commences as follows: "Epithalamium libellus hic, id est nuptiale carmen, dramatis in modum mihi videtur a Salomone conscriptus, quem cecinit instar nubentis sponsæ, et erga sponsum suum qui est sermo Dei cælesti amore flagrantis. Adamavit enim eum _sive anima_, quæ ad imaginem eius facta est, sive ecclesia." Harnack says that Gregory of Nyssa exhibits the conception in its purest and most attractive form in the East, and adds, "We can point to very few Greek Fathers in whom the figure does not occur." (There is a learned note on the subject by Louis de Leon, which corroborates this statement of Harnack. He refers to Chrysostom, Theodoret, Irenæus, Hilary, Cyprian, Augustine, Tertullian, Ignatius, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril, Leo, Photius, and Theophylact as calling Christ the bridegroom of souls.) In the West, we find it in Ambrose, less prominently in Augustine and Jerome. Dionysius seizes on the phrase of Ignatius, "My love has been crucified," to justify erotic imagery in devotional writing. Bernard's homilies on the Song of Solomon gave a great impetus to this mode of symbolism; but even he says that the Church and not the individual is the bride of Christ. There is no doubt that the enforced celibacy and virginity of the monks and nuns led them, consciously or unconsciously, to transfer to the human person of Christ (and to a much slighter extent, to the Virgin Mary) a measure of those feelings which could find no vent in their external lives. We can trace this, in a wholesome and innocuous form, in the visions of Juliana of Norwich. Quotations from Ruysbroek's _Spiritual Nuptials_, and from Suso, bearing on the same point, are given in the body of the Lectures. Good specimens of devotional poetry of this type might be selected from Crashaw and Quarles. (A few specimens are included in Palgrave's _Golden Treasury of Sacred Song_.) Fénelon's language on the subject is not quite so pleasing; it breathes more of sentimentality than of reverence. The contemplative, he says, desires "une simple présence de Dieu purement amoureuse," and speaks to Christ always "comme l'épouse à l'époux." The Sufis or Mohammedan mystics use erotic language very freely, and appear, like true Asiatics, to have attempted to give a sacramental or symbolic character to the indulgence of their passions. From this degradation the mystics of the cloister were happily free; but a morbid element is painfully prominent in the records of many mediæval saints, whose experiences are classified by Ribet. He enumerates--(1) "Divine touches," which Scaramelli defines as "real but purely spiritual sensations, by which the soul feels the intimate presence of God, and tastes Him with great delight"; (2) "The wound of love," of which one of his authorities says, "hæc poena tam suavis est quod nulla sit in hac vita delectatio quæ magis satisfaciat." It is to this experience that Cant. ii. 5 refers: "Fulcite me floribus, stipate me malis, quia amore langueo." Sometimes the wound is not purely spiritual: St. Teresa, as was shown by a post-mortem examination, had undergone a miraculous "transverberation of the heart": "et pourtant elle survécut près de vingt ans à cette blessure mortelle"! (3) Catherine of Siena was betrothed to Christ with a ring, which remained always on her fingers, though visible to herself alone. Lastly, in the revelations of St. Gertrude we read: "Feria tertia Paschæ dum communicatura desideraret a Domino ut per idem sacramentum vivificum renovare dignaretur in anima eius matrimonium spirituale quod ipsi in spiritu erat desponsata per fidem et religionem, necnon per virginalis pudicitiæ integritatem, Dominus blanda serenitate respondit: hoc, inquiens, indubitanter faciam. Sic inclinatus ad eam blandissimo affectu eam ad se stringens osculum prædulce animæ eius infixit," etc. The employment of erotic imagery to express the individual relation between Christ and the soul is always dangerous; but this objection does not apply to the statement that "the Church is the bride of Christ." Even in the Old Testament we find the chosen people so spoken of (cf. Isa. liv. 5; Jer. iii. 14). Professor Cheyne thinks that the Canticles were interpreted in this sense, and that this is why the book gained admission into the Canon. In the New Testament, St. Paul uses the symbol of marriage in Rom. vii. 1-4; 1 Cor. xi. 3; Eph. v. 23-33. On the last passage Canon Gore says: "The love of Christ--the removal of obstacles to His love by atoning sacrifice--the act of spiritual purification--the gradual sanctification--the consummated union in glory; these are the moments of the Divine process of redemption, viewed from the side of Christ, which St. Paul specifies." This use of the "sacrament" of marriage (as a symbol of the mystical union between Christ and the Church), which alone has the sanction of the New Testament, is one which, we hope, the Church will always treasure. The more personal relation also exists, and the fervent devotion which it elicits must not be condemned; though we are forced to remember that in our mysteriously constituted minds the highest and lowest emotions lie very near together, and that those who have chosen a life of detachment from earthly ties must be especially on their guard against the "occasional revenges" which the lower nature, when thwarted, is always plotting against the higher. 
3283	----	The Upanishads Translated and Commentated by Swami Paramananda From the Original Sanskrit Text This volume is reverently dedicated to all seekers of truth and lovers of wisdom Preface The translator's idea of rendering the Upanishads into clear simple English, accessible to Occidental readers, had its origin in a visit paid to a Boston friend in 1909. The gentleman, then battling with a fatal malady, took from his library shelf a translation of the Upanishads and, opening it, expressed deep regret that the obscure and unfamiliar form shut from him what he felt to be profound and vital teaching. The desire to unlock the closed doors of this ancient treasure house, awakened at that time, led to a series of classes on the Upanishads at The Vedanta Centre of Boston during its early days in St. Botolph Street. The translation and commentary then given were transcribed and, after studious revision, were published in the Centre's monthly magazine, "The Message of the East," in 1913 and 1914.. Still further revision has brought it to its present form. So far as was consistent with a faithful rendering of the Sanskrit text, the Swami throughout his translation has sought to eliminate all that might seem obscure and confusing to the modern mind. While retaining in remarkable measure the rhythm and archaic force of the lines, he has tried not to sacrifice directness and simplicity of style. Where he has been obliged to use the Sanskrit term for lack of an exact English equivalent, he has invariably interpreted it by a familiar English word in brackets; and everything has been done to remove the sense of strangeness in order that the Occidental reader may not feel himself an alien in the new regions of thought opened to him. Even more has the Swami striven to keep the letter subordinate to the spirit. Any Scripture is only secondarily an historical document. To treat it as an object of mere intellectual curiosity is to cheat the world of its deeper message. If mankind is to derive the highest benefit from a study of it, its appeal must be primarily to the spiritual consciousness; and one of the salient merits of the present translation lies in this, that the translator approaches his task not only with the grave concern of the careful scholar, but also with the profound reverence and fervor of the true devotee. Editor Boston, March, 1919 Contents Introduction Isa-Upanishad Katha-Upanishad Kena-Upanishad Introduction The Upanishads represent the loftiest heights of ancient Indo-Aryan thought and culture. They form the wisdom portion or Gnana-Kanda of the Vedas, as contrasted with the Karma-Kanda or sacrificial portion. In each of the four great Vedas--known as Rik, Yajur, Sama and Atharva--there is a large portion which deals predominantly with rituals and ceremonials, and which has for its aim to show man how by the path of right action he may prepare himself for higher attainment. Following this in each Veda is another portion called the Upanishad, which deals wholly with the essentials of philosophic discrimination and ultimate spiritual vision. For this reason the Upanishads are known as the Vedanta, that is, the end or final goal of wisdom (Veda, wisdom; anta, end). The name Upanishad has been variously interpreted. Many claim that it is a compound Sanskrit word Upa-ni-shad, signifying "sitting at the feet or in the presence of a teacher"; while according to other authorities it means "to shatter" or "to destroy" the fetters of ignorance. Whatever may have been the technical reason for selecting this name, it was chosen undoubtedly to give a picture of aspiring seekers "approaching" some wise Seer in the seclusion of an Himalayan forest, in order to learn of him the profoundest truths regarding the cosmic universe and God. Because these teachings were usually given in the stillness of some distant retreat, where the noises of the world could not disturb the tranquillity of the contemplative life, they are known also as Aranyakas, Forest Books. Another reason for this name may be found in the fact that they were intended especially for the Vanaprasthas (those who, having fulfilled all their duties in the world, had retired to the forest to devote themselves to spiritual study). The form which the teaching naturally assumed was that of dialogue, a form later adopted by Plato and other Greek philosophers. As nothing was written and all instruction was transmitted orally, the Upanishads are called Srutis, "what is heard." The term was also used in the sense of revealed, the Upanishads being regarded as direct revelations of God; while the Smritis, minor Scriptures "recorded through memory," were traditional works of purely human origin. It is a significant fact that nowhere in the Upanishads is mention made of any author or recorder. No date for the origin of the Upanishads can be fixed, because the written text does not limit their antiquity. The word Sruti makes that clear to us. The teaching probably existed ages before it was set down in any written form. The text itself bears evidence of this, because not infrequently in a dialogue between teacher and disciple the teacher quotes from earlier Scriptures now unknown to us. As Professor Max Müller states in his lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy: "One feels certain that behind all these lightning-flashes of religious and philosophic thought there is a distant past, a dark background of which we shall never know the beginning." Some scholars place the Vedic period as far back as 4000 or 5000 B.C.; others from 2000 to 1400 B.C. But even the most conservative admit that it antedates, by several centuries at least, the Buddhistic period which begins in the sixth century B.C. The value of the Upanishads, however, does not rest upon their antiquity, but upon the vital message they contain for all times and all peoples. There is nothing peculiarly racial or local in them. The ennobling lessons of these Scriptures are as practical for the modern world as they were for the Indo-Aryans of the earliest Vedic age. Their teachings are summed up in two Maha-Vakyam or "great sayings":--Tat twam asi (That thou art) and Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman). This oneness of Soul and God lies at the very root of all Vedic thought, and it is this dominant ideal of the unity of all life and the oneness of Truth which makes the study of the Upanishads especially beneficial at the present moment. One of the most eminent of European Orientalists writes: "If we fix our attention upon it (this fundamental dogma of the Vedanta system) in its philosophical simplicity as the identity of God and the Soul, the Brahman and the Atman, it will be found to possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upanishads, their time and country; nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for the whole race of mankind. Whatever new and unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may strike out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken and from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a general solution is reached of the great riddle . . . the key can only be found where alone the secret of nature lies open to us from within, that is to say, in our innermost self. It was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the Upanishads, to their immortal honor, found it...." The first introduction of the Upanishads to the Western world was through a translation into Persian made in the seventeenth century. More than a century later the distinguished French scholar, Anquetil Duperron, brought a copy of the manuscript from Persia to France and translated it into French and Latin. Publishing only the Latin text. Despite the distortions which must have resulted from transmission through two alien languages, the light of the thought still shone with such brightness that it drew from Schopenhauer the fervent words: "How entirely does the Oupnekhat (Upanishad) breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one, who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul! From every sentence deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit." Again he says: "The access to (the Vedas) by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries." This testimony is borne out by the thoughtful American scholar, Thoreau, who writes: "What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary which describes a loftier course through a purer stratum free from particulars, simple, universal." The first English translation was made by a learned Hindu, Raja Ram Mohun Roy (1775-1833). Since that time there have been various European translations--French, German, Italian and English. But a mere translation, however accurate and sympathetic, is not sufficient to make the Upanishads accessible to the Occidental mind. Professor Max Müller after a lifetime of arduous labor in this field frankly confesses: "Modern words are round, ancient words are square, and we may as well hope to solve the quadrature of the circle, as to express adequately the ancient thought of the Vedas in modern English." Without a commentary it is practically impossible to understand either the spirit or the meaning of the Upanishads. They were never designed as popular Scriptures. They grew up essentially as text books of God-knowledge and Self-knowledge, and like all text books they need interpretation. Being transmitted orally from teacher to disciple, the style was necessarily extremely condensed and in the form of aphorisms. The language also was often metaphorical and obscure. Yet if one has the perseverance to penetrate beneath these mere surface difficulties, one is repaid a hundredfold; for these ancient Sacred Books contain the most precious gems of spiritual thought. Every Upanishad begins with a Peace Chant (Shanti-patha) to create the proper atmosphere of purity and serenity. To study about God the whole nature must be prepared, so unitedly and with loving hearts teacher and disciples prayed to the Supreme Being for His grace and protection. It is not possible to comprehend the subtle problems of life unless the thought is tranquil and the energy concentrated. Until our mind is withdrawn from the varied distractions and agitations of worldly affairs, we cannot enter into the spirit of higher religious study. No study is of avail so long as our inner being is not attuned. We must hold a peaceful attitude towards all living things; and if it is lacking, we must strive fervently to cultivate it through suggestion by chanting or repeating some holy text. The same lesson is taught by Jesus the Christ when He says: "If thou bring thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Bearing this lofty ideal of peace in our minds, let us try to make our hearts free from prejudice, doubt and intolerance, so that from these sacred writings we may draw in abundance inspiration, love and wisdom. Paramananda Isa-Upanishad This Upanishad desires its title from the opening words Isa-vasya, "God-covered." The use of Isa (Lord)--a more personal name of the Supreme Being than Brahman, Atman or Self, the names usually found in the Upanishads--constitutes one of its peculiarities. It forms the closing chapter of the Yajur-Veda, known as Shukla (White). Oneness of the Soul and God, and the value of both faith and works as means of ultimate attainment are the leading themes of this Upanishad. The general teaching of the Upanishads is that works alone, even the highest, can bring only temporary happiness and must inevitably bind a man unless through them he gains knowledge of his real Self. To help him acquire this knowledge is the aim of this and all Upanishads. Isa-Upanishad Peace Chant OM! That (the Invisible-Absolute) is whole; whole is this (the visible phenomenal); from the Invisible Whole comes forth the visible whole. Though the visible whole has come out from that Invisible Whole, yet the Whole remains unaltered. OM! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! The indefinite term "That" is used in the Upanishads to designate the Invisible-Absolute, because no word or name can fully define It. A finite object, like a table or a tree, can be defined; but God, who is infinite and unbounded, cannot be expressed by finite language. Therefore the Rishis or Divine Seers, desirous not to limit the Unlimited, chose the indefinite term "That" to designate the Absolute. In the light of true wisdom the phenomenal and the Absolute are inseparable. All existence is in the Absolute; and whatever exists, must exist in It; hence all manifestation is merely a modification of the One Supreme Whole, and neither increases nor diminishes It. The Whole therefore remains unaltered. I All this, whatsoever exists in the universe, should be covered by the Lord. Having renounced (the unreal), enjoy (the Real). Do not covet the wealth of any man. We cover all things with the Lord by perceiving the Divine Presence everywhere. When the consciousness is firmly fixed in God, the conception of diversity naturally drops away; because the One Cosmic Existence shines through all things. As we gain the light of wisdom, we cease to cling to the unrealities of this world and we find all our joy in the realm of Reality. The word "enjoy" is also interpreted by the great commentator Sankaracharya as "protect," because knowledge of our true Self is the greatest protector and sustainer. If we do not have this knowledge, we cannot be happy; because nothing on this external plane of phenomena is permanent or dependable. He who is rich in the knowledge of the Self does not covet external power or possession. II If one should desire to live in this world a hundred years, one should live performing Karma (righteous deeds). Thus thou mayest live; there is no other way. By doing this, Karma (the fruits of thy actions) will not defile thee. If a man still clings to long life and earthly possessions, and is therefore unable to follow the path of Self-knowledge (Gnana-Nishta) as prescribed in the first Mantram (text), then he may follow the path of right action (Karma-Nishta). Karma here means actions performed without selfish motive, for the sake of the Lord alone. When a man performs actions clinging blindly to his lower desires, then his actions bind him to the plane of ignorance or the plane of birth and death; but when the same actions are performed with surrender to God, they purify and liberate him. III After leaving their bodies, they who have killed the Self go to the worlds of the Asuras, covered with blinding ignorance. The idea of rising to bright regions as a reward for well-doers, and of falling into realms of darkness as a punishment for evil-doers is common to all great religions. But Vedanta claims that this condition of heaven and hell is only temporary; because our actions, being finite, can produce only a finite result. What does it mean "to kill the Self?" How can the immortal Soul ever be destroyed? It cannot be destroyed, it can only be obscured. Those who hold themselves under the sway of ignorance, who serve the flesh and neglect the Atman or the real Self, are not able to perceive the effulgent and indestructible nature of their Soul; hence they fall into the realm where the Soul light does not shine. Here the Upanishad shows that the only hell is absence of knowledge. As long as man is overpowered by the darkness of ignorance, he is the slave of Nature and must accept whatever comes as the fruit of his thoughts and deeds. When he strays into the path of unreality, the Sages declare that he destroys himself; because he who clings to the perishable body and regards it as his true Self must experience death many times. IV That One, though motionless, is swifter than the mind. The senses can never overtake It, for It ever goes before. Though immovable, It travels faster than those who run. By It the all-pervading air sustains all living beings. This verse explains the character of the Atman or Self. A finite object can be taken from one place and put in another, but it can only occupy one space at a time. The Atman, however, is present everywhere; hence, though one may run with the greatest swiftness to overtake It, already It is there before him. Even the all-pervading air must be supported by this Self, since It is infinite; and as nothing can live without breathing air, all living things must draw their life from the Cosmic Self. V It moves and It moves not. It is far and also It is near. It is within and also It is without all this. It is near to those who have the power to understand It, for It dwells in the heart of every one; but It seems far to those whose mind is covered by the clouds of sensuality and self-delusion. It is within, because It is the innermost Soul of all creatures; and It is without as the essence of the whole external universe, infilling it like the all-pervading ether. VI He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, he never turns away from It (the Self). VII He who perceives all beings as the Self for him how can there be delusion or grief, when he sees this oneness (everywhere)? He who perceives the Self everywhere never shrinks from anything, because through his higher consciousness he feels united with all life. When a man sees God in all beings and all beings in God, and also God dwelling in his own Soul, how can he hate any living thing? Grief and delusion rest upon a belief in diversity, which leads to competition and all forms of selfishness. With the realization of oneness, the sense of diversity vanishes and the cause of misery is removed. VIII He (the Self) is all-encircling, resplendent, bodiless, spotless, without sinews, pure, untouched by sin, all-seeing, all-knowing, transcendent, self-existent; He has disposed all things duly for eternal years. This text defines the real nature of the Self. When our mind is cleansed from the dross of matter, then alone can we behold the vast, radiant, subtle, ever-pure and spotless Self, the true basis of our existence. IX They enter into blind darkness who worship Avidya (ignorance and delusion); they fall, as it were, into greater darkness who worship Vidya (knowledge). X By Vidya one end is attained; by Avidya, another. Thus we have heard from the wise men who taught this. XI He who knows at the same time both Vidya and Avidya, crosses over death by Avidya and attains immortality through Vidya. Those who follow or "worship" the path of selfishness and pleasure (Avidya), without knowing anything higher, necessarily fall into darkness; but those who worship or cherish Vidya (knowledge) for mere intellectual pride and satisfaction, fall into greater darkness, because the opportunity which they misuse is greater. In the subsequent verses Vidya and Avidya are used in something the same sense as "faith" and "works" in the Christian Bible; neither alone can lead to the ultimate goal, but when taken together they carry one to the Highest. Work done with unselfish motive purifies the mind and enables man to perceive his undying nature. From this he gains inevitably a knowledge of God, because the Soul and God are one and inseparable; and when he knows himself to be one with the Supreme and Indestructible Whole, he realizes his immortality. XII They fall into blind darkness who worship the Unmanifested and they fall into greater darkness who worship the manifested. XIII By the worship of the Unmanifested one end is attained; by the worship of the manifested, another. Thus we have heard from the wise men who taught us this. XIV He who knows at the same time both the Unmanifested (the cause of manifestation) and the destructible or manifested, he crosses over death through knowledge of the destructible and attains immortality through knowledge of the First Cause (Unmanifested). This particular Upanishad deals chiefly with the Invisible Cause and the visible manifestation, and the whole trend of its teaching is to show that they are one and the same, one being the outcome of the other hence no perfect knowledge is possible without simultaneous comprehension of both. The wise men declare that he who worships in a one-sided way, whether the visible or the invisible, does not reach the highest goal. Only he who has a co-ordinated understanding of both the visible and the invisible, of matter and spirit, of activity and that which is behind activity, conquers Nature and thus overcomes death. By work, by making the mind steady and by following the prescribed rules given in the Scriptures, a man gains wisdom. By the light of that wisdom he is able to perceive the Invisible Cause in all visible forms. Therefore the wise man sees Him in every manifested form. They who have a true conception of God are never separated from Him. They exist in Him and He in them. XV The face of Truth is hidden by a golden disk. O Pushan (Effulgent Being)! Uncover (Thy face) that I, the worshipper of Truth, may behold Thee. XVI O Pushan! O Sun, sole traveller of the heavens, controller of all, son of Prajapati, withdraw Thy rays and gather up Thy burning effulgence. Now through Thy Grace I behold Thy blessed and glorious form. The Purusha (Effulgent Being) who dwells within Thee, I am He. Here the sun, who is the giver of all light, is used as the symbol of the Infinite, giver of all wisdom. The seeker after Truth prays to the Effulgent One to control His dazzling rays, that his eyes, no longer blinded by them, may behold the Truth. Having perceived It, he proclaims: "Now I see that that Effulgent Being and I are one and the same, and my delusion is destroyed." By the light of Truth he is able to discriminate between the real and the unreal, and the knowledge thus gained convinces him that he is one with the Supreme; that there is no difference between himself and the Supreme Truth; or as Christ said, "I and my Father are one." XVII May my life-breath go to the all-pervading and immortal Prana, and let this body be burned to ashes. Om! O mind, remember thy deeds! O mind, remember, remember thy deeds! Remember! Seek not fleeting results as the reward of thy actions, O mind! Strive only for the Imperishable. This Mantram or text is often chanted at the hour of death to remind one of the perishable nature of the body and the eternal nature of the Soul. When the clear vision of the distinction between the mortal body and the immortal Soul dawns in the heart, then all craving for physical pleasure or material possession drops away; and one can say, let the body be burned to ashes that the Soul may attain its freedom; for death is nothing more than the casting-off of a worn-out garment. XVIII O Agni (Bright Being)! Lead us to blessedness by the good path. O Lord! Thou knowest all our deeds, remove all evil and delusion from us. To Thee we offer our prostrations and supplications again and again. Here ends this Upanishad This Upanishad is called Isa-Vasya-Upanishad, that which gives Brahma-Vidya or knowledge of the All-pervading Deity. The dominant thought running through it is that we cannot enjoy life or realize true happiness unless we consciously "cover" all with the Omnipresent Lord. If we are not fully conscious of that which sustains our life, how can we live wisely and perform our duties? Whatever we see, movable or immovable, good or bad, it is all "That." We must not divide our conception of the universe; for in dividing it, we have only fragmentary knowledge and we thus limit ourselves. He who sees all beings in his Self and his Self in all beings, he never suffers; because when he sees all creatures within his true Self, then jealousy, grief and hatred vanish. He alone can love. That AH-pervading One is self- effulgent, birthless, deathless, pure, untainted by sin and sorrow. Knowing this, he becomes free from the bondage of matter and transcends death. Transcending death means realizing the difference between body and Soul and identifying oneself with the Soul. When we actually behold the undecaying Soul within us and realize our true nature, we no longer identify ourself with the body which dies and we do not die with the body. Self-knowledge has always been the theme of the Sages; and the Upanishads deal especially with the knowledge of the Self and also with the knowledge of God, because there is no difference between the Self and God. They are one and the same. That which comes out of the Infinite Whole must also be infinite; hence the Self is infinite. That is the ocean, we are the drops. So long as the drop remains separate from the ocean, it is small and weak; but when it is one with the ocean, then it has all the strength of the ocean. Similarly, so long as man believes himself to be separate from the Whole, he is helpless; but when he identifies himself with It, then he transcends all weakness and partakes of Its omnipotent qualities. Katha-Upanishad The Katha-Upanishad is probably the most widely known of all the Upanishads. It was early translated into Persian and through this rendering first made its way into Europe. Later Raja Ram Mohun Roy brought out an English version. It has since appeared in various languages; and English, German and French writers are all agreed in pronouncing it one of the most perfect expressions of the religion and philosophy of the Vedas. Sir Edwin Arnold popularized it by his metrical rendering under the name of "The Secret of Death," and Ralph Waldo Emerson gives its story in brief at the close of his essay on "Immortality." There is no consensus of opinion regarding the place of this Upanishad in Vedic literature. Some authorities declare it to belong to the Yajur-Veda, others to the Sama-Veda, while a large number put it down as a part of the Atharva-Veda. The story is first suggested in the Rig-Veda; it is told more definitely in the Yajur-Veda; and in the Katha-Upanishad it appears fully elaborated and interwoven with the loftiest Vedic teaching. There is nothing however, to indicate the special place of this final version, nor has any meaning been found for the name Katha. The text presents a dialogue between an aspiring disciple, Nachiketas, and the Ruler of Death regarding the great Hereafter. Katha-Upanishad Peace Chant May He (the Supreme Being) protect us both, teacher and taught. May He be pleased with us. May we acquire strength. May our study bring us illumination. May there be no enmity among us. OM! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! Part First I Vahasrava, being desirous of heavenly rewards (at the Viswajit sacrifice), made a gift of all that he possessed. He had a son by the name of Nachiketas. II When the offerings were being distributed, faith (Shraddha) entered (the heart of) Nachiketas, who, though young, yet resected: III These cows have drunk water, eaten grass and given milk for the last time, and their senses have lost all vigour. He who gives these undoubtedly goes to joyless realms. In India the idea of sacrifice has always been to give freely for the joy of giving, without asking anything in return; and the whole purpose and merit of the sacrifice is lost, if the giver entertains the least thought of name, fame or individual benefit. The special Viswajit sacrifice which Vajasrava was making required of him to give away all that he possessed. When, however, the gifts were brought forward to be offered, his son Nachiketas, although probably a lad about twelve years of age, observed how worthless were the animals which his father was offering. His heart at once became filled with Shraddha. There is no one English word which can convey the meaning of this Sanskrit term. It is more than mere faith. It also implies self-reliance, an independent sense of right and wrong, and the courage of one's own conviction. As a boy of tender age, Nachiketas had no right to question his father's action; yet, impelled by the sudden awakening of his higher nature, he could not but reflect: "By merely giving these useless cows, my father cannot gain any merit. If he has vowed to give all his possessions, then he must also give me. Otherwise his sacrifice will not be complete and fruitful." Therefore, anxious for his father's welfare, he approached him gently and reverently. IV He said to his father: Dear father, to whom wilt thou give me? He said it a second time, then a third time. The father replied: I shall give thee unto Death. Nachiketas, being a dutiful son and eager to atone for his father's inadequate sacrifice, tried to remind him thus indirectly that he had not fulfilled his promise to give away all his possessions, since he had not yet offered his own son, who would be a worthier gift than useless cattle. His father, conscious that he was not making a true sacrifice, tried to ignore the boy's questions; but irritated by his persistence, he at last impatiently made answer: "I give thee to Yama, the Lord of Death." The fact that anger could so quickly rise in his heart proved that he had not the proper attitude of a sacrificer, who must always be tranquil, uplifted and free from egoism. V Nachiketas thought: Among many (of my father's pupils) I stand first; among many (others) I stand in the middle (but never last). What will be accomplished for my father by my going this day to Yama? It was not conceit which led Nachiketas to consider his own standing and importance. He was weighing his value as a son and pupil in order to be able to judge whether or not he had merit enough to prove a worthy gift. Although he realized that his father's harsh reply was only the expression of a momentary outburst of anger; yet he believed that greater harm might befall his father, if his word was not kept. Therefore he sought to strengthen his father's resolution by reminding him of the transitory condition of life. He said: VI Look back to those who lived before and look to those who live now. Like grain the mortal decays and like grain again springs up (is reborn). All things perish, Truth alone remains. Why then fear to sacrifice me also; Thus Nachiketas convinced his father that he should remain true to his word and send him to Yama, the Ruler of Death. Then Nachiketas went to the abode of Death, but Yama was absent and the boy waited without food or drink for three days. On Yama's return one of his household said to him: VII Like fire a Brahmana guest enters into houses. That fire is quenched by an offering. (Therefore) O Vaivaswata, bring water. VIII The foolish man in whose house a Brahmana guest remains without food, all his hopes and expectations, all the merit gained by his association with the holy, by his good words and deeds, all his sons and cattle, are destroyed. According to the ancient Vedic ideal a guest is the representative of God and should be received with due reverence and honor. Especially is this the case with a Brahmana or a Sannyasin whose life is wholly consecrated to God. Any one who fails to give proper care to a holy guest brings misfortune on himself and his household. When Yama returned, therefore, one of the members of his household anxiously informed him of Nachiketas' presence and begged him to bring water to wash his feet, this being always the first service to an arriving guest. IX Yama said: O Brahmana! Revered guest! My salutations to thee. As thou hast remained three nights in my house without food, therefore choose three boons, O Brahmana. X Nachiketas said: May Gautama, my father, be free from anxious thought (about me). May he lose all anger (towards me) and be pacified in heart. May he know and welcome me when I am sent back by thee. This, O Death, is the first of the three boons I choose. XI Yama replied: Through my will Auddalaki Aruni (thy father) will know thee, and be again towards thee as before. He will sleep in peace at night. He will be free from wrath when he sees thee released from the mouth of death. XII Nachiketas said: In the realm of heaven there is no fear, thou (Death) art not there; nor is there fear of old age. Having crossed beyond both hunger and thirst and being above grief, (they) rejoice in heaven. XIII Thou knowest, O Death, the fire-sacrifice that leads to heaven. Tell this to me, who am full of Shraddha (faith and yearning). They who live in the realm of heaven enjoy freedom from death. This I beg as my second boon. XIV Yama replied: I know well that fire which leads to the realm of heaven. I shall tell it to thee. Listen to me. Know, O Nachiketas, that this is the means of attaining endless worlds and their support. It is hidden in the heart of all beings. XV Yama then told him that fire-sacrifice, the beginning of all the worlds; what bricks, how many and how laid for the altar. Nachiketas repeated all as it was told to him. Then Death, being pleased with him, again said: XVI The great-soured Yama, being well pleased, said to him (Nachiketas): I give thee now another boon. This fire (sacrifice) shall be named after thee. Take also this garland of many colours. XVII He who performs this Nachiketa fire-sacrifice three times, being united with the three (mother, father and teacher), and who fulfills the three-fold duty (study of the Vedas, sacrifice and alms-giving) crosses over birth and death. Knowing this worshipful shining fire, born of Brahman, and realizing Him, he attains eternal peace. XVIII He who knows the three-fold Nachiketa fire and performs the Nachiketa fire-sacrifice with three-fold knowledge, having cast off the fetters of death and being beyond grief, he rejoices in the realm of heaven. XIX O Nachiketas, this is thy fire that leads to heaven, which thou hast chosen as thy second boon. People will call this fire after thy name. Ask the third boon, Nachiketas. Fire is regarded as "the foundation of all the worlds," because it is the revealer of creation. If there were no fire or light, no manifested form would be visible. We read in the Semitic Scriptures, "In the beginning the Lord said, 'Let there be light."' Therefore, that which stands in the external universe as one of the purest symbols of the Divine, also dwells in subtle form in the heart of every living being as the vital energy, the life-force or cause of existence. Yama now tells Nachiketas how, by performing sacrifice with the three-fold knowledge, he may transcend grief and death and reach heaven. The three-fold knowledge referred to is regarding the preparation of the altar and fire. Nachiketas being eager to learn, listened with wholehearted attention and was able to repeat all that was told him. This so pleased Yama that he granted him the extra boon of naming the fire-sacrifice after him and gave him a garland set with precious stones. Verses XVI-XVIII are regarded by many as an interpolation, which would account for certain obscurities and repetitions in them. XX Nachiketas said: There is this doubt regarding what becomes of a man after death. Some say he exists, others that he does not exist. This knowledge I desire, being instructed by thee. Of the boons this is the third boon. XXI Yama replied: Even the Devas (Bright Ones) of old doubted regarding this. It is not easy to know; subtle indeed is this subject. O Nachiketas, choose another boon. Do not press me. Ask not this boon of me. XXII Nachiketas said: O Death, thou sayest that even the Devas had doubts about this, and that it is not easy to know. Another teacher like unto thee is not to be found. Therefore no other boon can be equal to this one. XXIII Yama said: Ask for sons and grandsons who shall live a hundred years, many cattle, elephants, gold and horses. Ask for lands of vast extent and live thyself as many autumns as thou desirest. XXIV If thou thinkest of any other boon equal to this, ask for wealth and long life; be ruler over the wide earth. O Nachiketas, I shall make thee enjoyer of all desires. XXV Whatsoever objects of desire are difficult to obtain in the realm of mortals, ask them all as thou desirest; these lovely maidens with their chariots and musical instruments, such as are not obtainable by mortals--be served by these whom I give to thee. O Nachiketas, do not ask regarding death. The third boon asked by Nachiketas concerning the great Hereafter was one which could be granted only to those who were freed from all mortal desires and limitations, therefore Yama first tested Nachiketas to see whether he was ready to receive such knowledge. "Do not press me regarding this secret," he said. "Even wise men cannot understand it and thou art a mere lad. Take, rather, long life, wealth, whatever will give thee happiness on the mortal plane." But the boy proved his strength and worthiness by remaining firm in his resolution to know the great secret of life and death. XXVI Nachiketas said: O Death, these are fleeting; they weaken the vigour of all the senses in man. Even the longest life is short. Keep thou thy chariots, dance and music. XXVII Man cannot be satisfied by wealth. Shall we possess wealth when we see thee (Death)? Shall we continue to live as long as thou rulest? Therefore that boon alone is to be chosen by me. XXVIII What man dwelling on the decaying mortal plane, having approached the undecaying immortal one, and having reflected upon the nature of enjoyment through beauty and sense pleasure, would delight in long life? XXIX O Death, that regarding which there is doubt, of the great Hereafter, tell us. Nachiketas asks for no other boon than that which penetrates this hidden secret. Part Second I Yama said: The good is one thing and the pleasant another. These two, having different ends, bind a man. It is well with him who chooses the good. He who chooses the pleasant misses the true end. II The good and the pleasant approach man; the wise examines both and discriminates between them; the wise prefers the good to the pleasant, but the foolish man chooses the pleasant through love of bodily pleasure. III O Nachiketas after wise reflection thou hast renounced the pleasant and all pleasing forms. Thou hast not accepted this garland of great value for which many mortals perish. IV Wide apart are these two,--ignorance and what is known as wisdom, leading in opposite directions. I believe Nachiketas to be one who longs for wisdom, since many tempting objects have not turned thee aside. With this second part, the Ruler of Death begins his instructions regarding the great Hereafter. There are two paths,--one leading Godward, the other leading to worldly pleasure. He who follows one inevitably goes away from the other; because, like light and darkness they conflict. One leads to the imperishable spiritual realm; the other to the perishable physical realm. Both confront a man at every step of life. The discerning man distinguishing between the two, chooses the Real and Eternal, and he alone attains the highest, while the ignorant man, preferring that which brings him immediate and tangible results, misses the true purpose of his existence. Although Yama put before Nachiketas many temptations to test his sincerity and earnestness, he judging them at their real value, refused them all, saying "I have come from the mortal realm, shall I ask for what is mortal? I desire only that which is eternal." Then Death said to him: "I now see that thou art a sincere desirer of Truth. I offered thee vast wealth, long life and every form of pleasure which tempts and deludes men; but thou hast proved thy worthiness by rejecting them all." V Fools dwelling in ignorance, yet imagining themselves wise and learned, go round and round in crooked ways, like the blind led by the blind. VI The Hereafter never rises before the thoughtless child (the ignorant), deluded by the glamour of wealth. "This world alone is, there is none other": thinking thus, he falls under my sway again and again. There are many in the world, who, puffed up with intellectual conceit, believe that they are capable of guiding others. But although they may possess a certain amount of worldly wisdom, they are devoid of deeper understanding; therefore all that they say merely increases doubt and confusion in the minds of those who hear them. Hence they are likened to blind men leading the blind. The Hereafter does not shine before those who are lacking in the power of discrimination and are easily carried away therefore by the charm of fleeting objects. As children are tempted by toys, so they are tempted by pleasure, power, name and fame. To them these seem the only realities. Being thus attached to perishable things, they come many times under the dominion of death. There is one part of us which must die; there is another part which never dies. When a man can identify himself with his undying nature, which is one with God, then he overcomes death. VII He about whom many are not even able to hear, whom many cannot comprehend even after hearing: wonderful is the teacher, wonderful is he who can receive when taught by an able teacher. Throughout the Vedic Scriptures it is declared that no one can impart spiritual knowledge unless he has realization. What is meant by realization? It means knowledge based on direct perception. In India often the best teachers have no learning, but their character is so shining that every one learns merely by coming in contact with them. In one of the Scriptures we read: Under a banyan tree sat a youthful teacher and beside him an aged disciple. The mind of the disciple was full of doubts and questions, but although the teacher continued silent, gradually every doubt vanished from the disciple's mind. This signifies that the conveying of spiritual teaching does not depend upon words only. It is the life, the illumination, which counts. Such God-enlightened men, however, cannot easily be found; but even with such a teacher, the knowledge of the Self cannot be gained unless the heart of the disciple is open and ready for the Truth. Hence Yama says both teacher and taught must be wonderful. VIII When taught by a man of inferior understanding, this Atman cannot be truly known, even though frequently thought upon. There is no way (to know It) unless it is taught by another (an illumined teacher), for it is subtler than the subtle and beyond argument. IX O Dearest, this Atman cannot be attained by argument; It is truly known only when taught by another (a wise teacher). O Nachiketas, thou hast attained It. Thou art fixed in Truth. May we ever, find a questioner like thee. Knowledge of the Atman or Self cannot be attained when it is taught by those who themselves lack in real understanding of It; and who therefore, having no definite conviction of their own, differ among themselves as to its nature and existence. Only he who has been able to perceive the Self directly, through the unfoldment of his higher nature, can proclaim what It actually is; and his words alone carry weight and bring illumination. It is too subtle to be reached by argument. This secret regarding the Hereafter cannot be known through reasoning or mere intellectual gymnastics. It is to be attained only in a state of consciousness which transcends the boundary line of reason. X I know that (earthly) treasure is transitory, for the eternal can never be attained by things which are non-eternal. Hence the Nachiketa fire (sacrifice) has been performed by me with perishable things and yet I have attained the eternal. XI O Nachiketas, thou hast seen the fulfillment of all desires, the basis of the universe, the endless fruit of sacrificial rites, the other shore where there is no fear, that which is praiseworthy, the great and wide support; yet, being wise, thou hast rejected all with firm resolve. The teacher, saying that the imperishable cannot be attained by the perishable, shows that no amount of observance of rituals and ceremonies can earn the imperishable and eternal. Although the Nachiketa fire-sacrifice may bring results which seem eternal to mortals because of their long duration, yet they too must come to an end; therefore this sacrifice cannot lead to the final goal. Yama praises Nachiketas because, when all heavenly and earthly pleasures, as well as knowledge of all realms and their enjoyments were offered him, yet he cast them aside and remained firm in his desire for Truth alone. XII The wise, who by means of the highest meditation on the Self knows the Ancient One, difficult to perceive, seated in the innermost recess, hidden in the cave of the heart, dwelling in the depth of inner being, (he who knows that One) as God, is liberated from the fetters of joy and sorrow. XIII A mortal, having heard and fully grasped this, and having realized through discrimination the subtle Self, rejoices, because he has obtained that which is the source of all joy. I think the abode (of Truth) is open to Nachiketas. The Scriptures give three stages in all spiritual attainment. The aspirant must first hear about the Truth from an enlightened teacher; next he must reflect upon what he has heard; then by constant practice of discrimination and meditation he realizes it; and with realization comes the fulfilment of every desire, because it unites him with the source of all. Having beheld this, a man learns that all sense pleasures are but fragmentary reflections of that one supreme joy, which can be found in the true Self alone. Yama assures Nachiketas that there is no doubt of his realizing the Truth, because he has shown the highest discrimination as well as fixity of purpose. XIV Nachiketas said: That which thou seest, which is neither virtue nor vice, neither cause nor effect, neither past nor future (but beyond these), tell me That. XV Yama replied: That goal which all the Vedas glorify, which all austerities proclaim, desiring which (people) practice Brahmacharya (a life of continence and service), that goal I tell thee briefly--it is Aum. What name can man give to God? How can the Infinite be bound by any finite word? All that language can express must be finite, since it is itself finite. Yet it is very difficult for mortals to think or speak of anything without calling it by a definite name. Knowing this, the Sages gave to the Supreme the name A-U-M which stands as the root of all language. The first letter "A" is the mother-sound, being the natural sound uttered by every creature when the throat is opened, and no sound can be made without opening the throat. The last letter "M," spoken by closing the lips, terminates all articulation. As one carries the sound from the throat to the lips, it passes through the sound "U." These three sounds therefore cover the whole field of possible articulate sound. Their combination is called the Akshara or the imperishable word, the Sound-Brahman or the Word God, because it is the most universal name which can be given to the Supreme. Hence it must be the word which was "in the beginning" and corresponds to the Logos of Christian theology. It is because of the all-embracing significance of this name that it is used so universally in the Vedic Scriptures to designate the Absolute. XVI This Word is indeed Brahman. This Word is indeed the Supreme. He who knows this Word obtains whatever he desires. XVII This is the best Support, This is the highest Support; he who knows this Support is glorified in the world of Brahman. This sacred Word is the highest symbol of the Absolute. He who through meditating on It grasps Its full significance, realizes the glory of God and at once has all his desires satisfied, because God is the fulfilment of all desires. XVIII This Self is never born, nor does It die. It did not spring from anything, nor did anything spring from It. This Ancient One is unborn, eternal, everlasting. It is not slain even though the body is slain. XIX If the slayer thinks that he slays, or if the slain thinks that he is slain, both of these know not. For It neither slays nor is It slain. XX The Self is subtler than the subtle, greater than the great; It dwells in the heart of each living being. He who is free from desire and free from grief, with mind and senses tranquil, beholds the glory of the Atman. Although this Atman dwells in the heart of every living being, yet It is not perceived by ordinary mortals because of Its subtlety. It cannot be perceived by the senses; a finer spiritual sight is required. The heart must be pure and freed from every unworthy selfish desire; the thought must be indrawn from all external objects; mind and body must be under control; when the whole being thus becomes calm and serene, then it is possible to perceive that effulgent Atman. It is subtler than the subtle, because It is the invisible essence of every thing; and It is greater than the great because It is the boundless, sustaining power of the whole universe; that upon which all existence rests. XXI Though sitting, It travels far; though lying, It goes everywhere. Who else save me is fit to know that God, who is (both) joyful and joyless? The Self is all-pervading, hence It is that which sits still and that which travels, that which is active and that which is inactive. It is both stationary and moving, and It is the basis of all forms of existence; therefore whatever exists in the universe, whether joy or joylessness, pleasure or pain, must spring from It. Who is better able to know God than I myself, since He resides in my heart and is the very essence of my being? Such should be the attitude of one who is seeking. XXII The wise who know the Self, bodiless, seated within perishable bodies, great and all- pervading, grieve not. Then a wise man through the practice of discrimination has seen clearly the distinction between body and Soul, he knows that his true Self is not the body, though It dwells in the body. Thus realizing the indestructible, all-pervading nature of his real Self, he surmounts all fear of death or loss, and is not moved even by the greatest sorrow. XXIII This Self cannot be attained by study of the Scriptures, nor by intellectual perception, nor by frequent hearing (of It); He whom the Self chooses, by him alone is It attained. To him the Self reveals Its true nature. We may imagine that by much study we can find out God; but merely hearing about a thing and gaining an intellectual comprehension of it does not mean attaining true knowledge of it. Knowledge only comes through direct perception, and direct perception of God is possible for those alone who are pure in heart and spiritually awakened. Although He is alike to all beings and His mercy is on all, yet the impure and worldy-minded do not get the blessing, because they do not know how to open their hearts to it. He who longs for God, him the Lord chooses; because to him alone can He reveal His true nature. XXIV He who has not turned away from evil conduct, whose senses are uncontrolled, who is not tranquil, whose mind is not at rest, he can never attain this Atman even by knowledge. Yama having first described what the Atman is, now tells us how to attain It. A man must try to subdue his lower nature and gain control over the body and senses. He must conquer the impure selfish desires which now disturb the serenity of his mind, that it may grow calm and peaceful. In other words, he must live the life and develop all spiritual qualities in order to perceive the Atman. XXV Who then can know where is this mighty Self? He (that Self) to whom the Brahmanas and Kshatriyas are but food and death itself a condiment. This text proclaims the glory and majesty of the Supreme. The Brahmanas stand for spiritual strength, the Kshatriyas for physical strength, yet both are overpowered by His mightiness. Life and death alike are food for Him. As the light of the great sun swallows up all the lesser lights of the universe, similarly all worlds are lost in the effulgence of the Eternal Omnipresent Being. Part Third I There are two who enjoy the fruits of their good deeds in the world, having entered into the cave of the heart, seated (there) on the highest summit. The knowers of Brahman call them shadow and light. So also (they are called) by householders who perform five fire- sacrifices or three Nachiketa fire-sacrifices. Here the two signify the Higher Self and the lower self, dwelling in the innermost cave of the heart. The Seers of Truth, as well as householders who follow the path of rituals and outer forms with the hope of enjoying the fruits of their good deeds, both proclaim that the Higher Self is like a light and the lower self like a shadow. When the Truth shines clearly in the heart of the knower, then he surmounts the apparent duality of his nature and becomes convinced that there is but One, and that all outer manifestations are nothing but reflections or projections of that One. II May we be able to learn that Nachiketa fire-sacrifice, which is a bridge for those who perform sacrifice. May we also know the One, who is the highest imperishable Brahman for those who desire to cross over to the other shore which is beyond fear. The significance of this text is May we acquire the knowledge of Brahman, the Supreme, in both manifested and unmanifested form. He is manifested as the Lord of sacrifice for those who follow the path of ritual. He is the unmanifested, eternal, universal Supreme Being for those who follow the path of wisdom. The "other shore," being the realm of immortality, is said to be beyond fear; because disease, death, and all that which mortals fear, cease to exist there. It is believed by many that these two opening verses were a later interpolation. III Know the Atman (Self) as the lord of the chariot, and the body as the chariot. Know also the intellect to be the driver and mind the reins. IV The senses are called the horses; the sense objects are the roads; when the Atman is united with body, senses and mind, then the wise call Him the enjoyer. In the third chapter Yama defines what part of our being dies and what part is deathless, what is mortal and what is immortal. But the Atman, the Higher Self, is so entirely beyond human conception that it is impossible to give a direct definition of It. Only through similies can some idea of It be conveyed. That is the reason why all the great Teachers of the world have so often taught in the form of parables. So here the Ruler of Death represents the Self as the lord of this chariot of the body. The intellect or discriminative faculty is the driver, who controls these wild horses of the senses by holding firmly the reins of the mind. The roads over which these horses travel are made up of all the external objects which attract or repel the senses:--the sense of smelling follows the path of sweet odours, the sense of seeing the way of beautiful sights. Thus each sense, unless restrained by the discriminative faculty, seeks to go out towards its special objects. When the Self is joined with body, mind and senses, It is called the intelligent enjoyer; because It is the one who wills, feels, perceives and does everything. V He who is without discrimination and whose mind is always uncontrolled, his senses are unmanageable, like the vicious horses of a driver. VI But he who is full of discrimination and whose mind is always controlled, his senses are manageable, like the good horses of a driver. The man whose intellect is not discriminative and who fails to distinguish right from wrong, the real from the unreal, is carried away by his sense passions and desires, just as a driver is carried away by vicious horses over which he has lost control. But he who clearly distinguishes what is good from what is merely pleasant, and controls all his out-going forces from running after apparent momentary pleasures, his senses obey and serve him as good horses obey their driver. VII He who does not possess discrimination, whose mind is uncontrolled and always impure, he does not reach that goal, but falls again into Samsara (realm of birth and death). VIII But he who possesses right discrimination, whose mind is under control and always pure, he reaches that goal, from which he is not born again. IX The man who has a discriminative intellect for the driver, and a controlled mind for the reins, reaches the end of the journey, the highest place of Vishnu (the All-pervading and Unchangeable One). A driver must possess first a thorough knowledge of the road; next he must understand how to handle the reins and control his horses. Then will he drive safely to his destination. Similarly in this journey of life, our mind and senses must be wholly under the control of our higher discriminative faculty; for only when all our forces work in unison can we hope to reach the goal--the abode of Absolute Truth. X Beyond the senses are the objects, beyond the objects is the mind, beyond the mind is the intellect, beyond the intellect is the great Atman. XI Beyond the great Atman is the Unmanifested; beyond the Unmanifested is the Purusha (the Cosmic Soul); beyond the Purusha there is nothing. That is the end, that is the final goal. In these two verses the Teacher shows the process of discrimination, by which one attains knowledge of the subtle Self. Beginning with the sense-organs, he leads up to the less and less gross, until he reaches that which is subtlest of all, the true Self of man. The senses are dependent on sense-objects, because without these the senses would have no utility. Superior to sense-objects is the mind, because unless these objects affect the mind, they cannot influence the senses. Over the mind the determinative faculty exercises power; this determinative faculty is governed by the individual Self; beyond this Self is the undifferentiated creative energy known as Avyaktam; and above this is the Purusha or Supreme Self. Than this there is nothing higher. That is the goal, the Highest Abode of Peace and Bliss. XII This Atman (Self), hidden in all beings, does not shine forth; but It is seen by subtle seers through keen and subtle understanding. If It dwells in all living beings, why do we not see It? Because the ordinary man's vision is too dull and distracted. It is visible to those alone whose intellect has been purified by constant thought on the Supreme, and whose sight therefore has become refined and sharpened. This keenness of vision comes only when all our forces have been made one-pointed through steadfast practice of concentration and meditation. XIII A wise man should control speech by mind, mind by intellect, intellect by the great Atman, and that by the Peaceful One (the Paramatman or Supreme Self). Here Yama gives the practical method to be followed if one wishes to realize the Supreme. The word "speech" stands for all the senses. First, therefore, a man must control his outgoing senses by the mind. Then the mind must be brought under the control of the discriminative faculty; that is, it must be withdrawn from all sense-objects and cease to waste its energies on nonessential things. The discriminative faculty in turn must be controlled by the higher individual intelligence and this must be governed wholly by the Supreme Intelligence. XIV Arise! Awake! Having reached the Great Ones (illumined Teachers), gain understanding. The path is as sharp as a razor, impassable and difficult to travel, so the wise declare. This is the eternal call of the wise: Awake from the slumber of ignorance! Arise and seek out those who know the Truth, because only those who have direct vision of Truth are capable of teaching It. Invoke their blessing with a humble spirit and seek to be instructed by them. The path is very difficult to tread. No thoughtless or lethargic person can safely travel on it. One must be strong, wakeful and persevering. XV Knowing That which is soundless, touchless, formless, undecaying; also tasteless, odorless, and eternal; beginningless, endless and immutable; beyond the Unmanifested: (knowing That) man escapes from the mouth of death. The Ruler of Death defines here the innermost essence of our being. Because of its extreme subtlety, it cannot be heard or felt or smelled or tasted like any ordinary object. It never dies. It has no beginning or end. It is unchangeable. Realizing this Supreme Reality, man escapes from death and attains everlasting life. Thus the Teacher has gradually led Nachiketas to a point where he can reveal to him the secret of death. The boy had thought that there was a place where he could stay and become immortal. But Yama shows him that immortality is a state of consciousness and is not gained so long as man clings to name and form, or to perishable objects. What dies? Form. Therefore the formful man dies; but not that which dwells within. Although inconceivably subtle, the Sages have always made an effort through similies and analogies to give some idea of this inner Self or the God within. They have described It as beyond mind and speech; too subtle for ordinary perception, but not beyond the range of purified vision. XVI The intelligent man, who has heard and repeated the ancient story of Nachiketas, told by the Ruler of Death, is glorified in the world of Brahman. XVII He who with devotion recites this highest secret of immortality before an assembly of Brahmanas (pious men) or at the time of Shraddha (funeral ceremonies), gains everlasting reward, he gains everlasting reward. Part Fourth I The Self-existent created the senses out-going; for this reason man sees the external, but not the inner Atman (Self). Some wise man, however, desiring immortality, with eyes turned away (from the external) sees the Atman within. In the last chapter the Ruler of Death instructed Nachiketas regarding the nature and glory of the Self. Now he shows the reason why the Self is not seen by the majority. It is because man's mind is constantly drawn outward through the channels of his senses, and this prevents his seeing the inner Self (Pratyagatman); but now and then a seeker, wiser than others, goes within and attains the vision of the undying Self. II Children (the ignorant) pursue external pleasures; (thus) they fall into the wide- spread snare of death. But the wise, knowing the nature of immortality, do not seek the permanent among fleeting things. Those who are devoid of discrimination and fail to distinguish between real and unreal, the fleeting and the permanent, set their hearts on the changeable things of this world; hence they entangle themselves in the net of insatiable desire, which leads inevitably to disappointment and suffering. To such, death must seem a reality because they identify themselves with that which is born and which dies. But the wise, who see deeper into the nature of things, are no longer deluded by the charm of the phenomenal world and do not seek for permanent happiness among its passing enjoyments. III That by which one knows form, taste, smell, sound, touch and sense enjoyments, by That also one knows whatever remains (to be known). This verily is That (which thou hast asked to know). IV That by which a mortal perceives, both in dream and in waking, by knowing that great all-pervading Atman the wise man grieves no more. In these verses the teacher tries to make plain that all knowledge, as well as all sense perception, in every state of consciousness--sleeping, dreaming or waking--is possible only because the Self exists. There can be no knowledge or perception independent of the Self. Wise men, aware of this, identify themselves with their Higher Self and thus transcend the realm of grief. V He who knows this Atman, the honey-eater (perceiver and enjoyer of objects), ever near, as the lord of the past and future, fears no more. This verily is That. VI He who sees Him seated in the five elements, born of Tapas (fire of Brahman), born before water; who, having entered the cave of the heart, abides therein --this verily is That. This verse indicates that He, the Great Self, is the cause of all created objects. According to the Vedas, His first manifestation was Brahma, the Personal God or Creator, born of the fire of wisdom. He existed before the evolution of the five elements-- earth, water, fire, air and ether; hence He was "born before water." He is the Self dwelling in the hearts of all creatures. VII He who knows Aditi, who rises with Prana (the Life Principle), existent in all the Devas; who, having entered into the heart, abides there; and who was born from the elements--this verily is That. This verse is somewhat obscure and seems like an interpolated amplification of the preceding verse. VIII The all-seeing fire which exists hidden in the two sticks, as the foetus is well-guarded in the womb by the mother, (that fire) is to be worshipped day after day by wakeful seekers (after wisdom), as well as by sacrificers. This verily is That. Fire is called all-seeing because its light makes everything visible. In Vedic sacrifices the altar fire was always kindled by rubbing together two sticks of a special kind of wood called Arani. Because fire was regarded as one of the most perfect symbols of Divine wisdom, it was to be worshipped by all seekers after Truth, whether they followed the path of meditation or the path of rituals. IX From whence the sun rises, and whither it goes at setting, upon That all the Devas depend. No one goes beyond That. This verily is That. X What is here (in the visible world), that is there (in the invisible); he who sees difference (between visible and invisible) goes from death to death. XI By mind alone this is to be realized. There is no difference whatever (between visible and invisible). He who sees difference here (between these) goes from death to death. In the sight of true wisdom, there is no difference between the creator and the created. Even physical science has come to recognize that cause and effect are but two aspects of one manifestation of energy. He who fails to see this, being engrossed in the visible only, goes from death to death; because he clings to external forms which are perishable. Only the essence which dwells within is unchangeable and imperishable. This knowledge of the oneness of visible and invisible, however, cannot be acquired through sense-perception. It can only be attained by the purified mind. XII The Purusha (Self), of the size of a thumb, resides in the middle of the body as the lord of the past and the future, (he who knows Him) fears no more. This verily is That. The seat of the Purusha is said to be the heart, hence It "resides in the middle of the body." Although It is limitless and all-pervading, yet in relation to Its abiding-place It is represented as limited in extension, "the size of a thumb." This refers really to the heart, which in shape may be likened to a thumb. Its light is everywhere, yet we see it focused in a lamp and believe it to be there only; similarly, although the life-current flows everywhere in the body, the heart is regarded as peculiarly its seat. XIII That Purusha, of the size of a thumb, is like a light without smoke, lord of the past and the future. He is the same today and tomorrow. This verily is That. In this verse the teacher defines the effulgent nature of the Soul, whose light is pure like a flame without smoke. He also answers the question put by Nachiketas as to what happens after death, by declaring that no real change takes place, because the Soul is ever the same. XIV As rain water, (falling) on the mountain top, runs down over the rocks on all sides; similarly, he who sees difference (between visible forms) runs after them in various directions. XV O Gautama (Nachiketas), as pure water poured into pure water becomes one, so also is it with the Self of an illumined Knower (he becomes one with the Supreme). Part Fifth I The city of the Unborn, whose knowledge is unchanging, has eleven gates. Thinking on Him, man grieves no more; and being freed (from ignorance), he attains liberation. This verily is That. This human body is called a city with eleven gates, where the eternal unborn Spirit dwells. These gates are the two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, the mouth, the navel, the two lower apertures, and the imperceptible opening at the top of the head. The Self or Atman holds the position of ruler in this city; and being above the modifications of birth, death and all human imperfections, It is not affected by the changes of the physical organism. As the intelligent man through constant thought and meditation realizes the splendour of this Supreme Spirit, he becomes free from that part of his nature which grieves and suffers, and thus he attains liberation. II He is the sun dwelling in the bright heaven; He is the air dwelling in space; He is the fire burning on the altar; He is the guest dwelling in the house. He dwells in man. He dwells in those greater than man. He dwells in sacrifice. He dwells in the ether. He is (all that is) born in water, (all that) is born in earth, (all that) is born in sacrifice, (all that) is born on mountains. He is the True and the Great. III He it is who sends the (in-coming) Prana (life-breath) upward and throws the (out-going) breath downward. Him all the senses worship, the adorable Atman, seated in the centre (the heart). IV When this Atman, which is seated in the body, goes out (from the body), what remains then? This verily is That. V No mortal lives by the in-coming breath (Prana) or by the out-going breath (Apana), but he lives by another on which these two depend. VI O Gautama (Nachiketas), I shall declare unto thee the secret of the eternal Brahman and what happens to the Self after death. VII Some Jivas (individual Souls) enter wombs to be embodied; others go into immovable forms, according to their deeds and knowledge. This text shows the application of the law of cause and effect to all forms of life. The thoughts and actions of the present life determine the future birth and environment. VIII The Being who remains awake while all sleep, who grants all desires, That is pure, That is Brahman, That alone is said to be immortal. On That all the worlds rest. None goes beyond That. This verily is That. IX As fire, though one, having entered the world, becomes various according to what it burns, so does the Atman (Self) within all living beings, though one, become various according to what it enters. It also exists outside. X As air, though one, having entered the world, becomes various according to what it enters, so does the Atman within all living beings, though one, become various according to what it enters. It also exists outside. By using these similies of fire and air, the teacher tries to show Nachiketas the subtle quality of the great Self, who, although one and formless like air and fire, yet assumes different shapes according to the form in which It dwells. But, being all-pervading and unlimited, It cannot be confined to these forms; therefore it is said that It also exists outside all forms. XI As the sun, the eye of the whole world, is not defiled by external impurities seen by the eyes, thus the one inner Self of all living beings is not defiled by the misery of the world, being outside it. The sun is called the eye of the world because it reveals all objects. As the sun may shine on the most impure object, yet remain uncontaminated by it, so the Divine Self within is not touched by the impurity or suffering of the physical form in which it dwells, the Self being beyond all bodily limitations. XII There is one ruler, the Self of all living beings, who makes the one form manifold; the wise who perceive Him seated within their Self, to them belongs eternal bliss, not to others. XIII Eternal among the changing, consciousness of the conscious, who, though one, fulfils the desires of many: the wise who perceive Him seated within their Self, to them belongs eternal peace, not to others. XIV They (the wise) perceive that indescribable highest bliss, saying, This is That. How am I to know It? Does It shine (by Its own light) or does It shine (by reflected light)? XV The sun does not shine there, nor the moon, nor the stars; nor do these lightnings shine there, much less this fire. When He shines, everything shines after Him; by His light all is lighted. Part Sixth I This ancient Aswattha tree has its root above and branches below. That is pure, That is Brahman, That alone is called the Immortal. All the worlds rest in That. None goes beyond That. This verily is That. This verse indicates the origin of the tree of creation (the Samsara-Vriksha), which is rooted above in Brahman, the Supreme, and sends its branches downward into the phenomenal world. Heat and cold, pleasure and pain, birth and death, and all the shifting conditions of the mortal realm--these are the branches; but the origin of the tree, the Brahman, is eternally pure, unchanging, free and deathless. From the highest angelic form to the minutest atom, all created things have their origin in Him. He is the foundation of the universe. There is nothing beyond Him. II Whatever there is in the universe is evolved from Prana and vibrates in Prana. That is a mighty terror, like an upraised thunderbolt. They who know That become immortal. III From fear of Him the fire burns, from fear of Him the sun shines. From fear of Him Indra and Vayu and Death, the fifth, speed forth. Just as the body cannot live or act without the Soul, similarly nothing in the created world can exist independent of Brahman, who is the basis of all existence. His position is like that of a king whom all must obey; hence it is said that the gods of sun, moon, wind, rain, do His bidding. He is likened to an upraised thunderbolt, because of the impartial and inevitable nature of His law, which all powers, great or small, must obey absolutely. IV If a man is not able to know Him before the dissolution of the body, then he becomes embodied again in the created worlds. As soon as a man acquires knowledge of the Supreme, he is liberated; but if he fails to attain such knowledge before his Soul is separated from the body, then he must take other bodies and return again and again to this realm of birth and death, until through varied experience he realizes the nature of the Supreme and his relation to Him. V As in a mirror, so is He seen within oneself; as in a dream, so (is He seen) in the world of the fathers (departed spirits); as in water, so (is He seen) in the world of Gandharvas (the angelic realm). As light and shadow, so (is He seen) in the world of Brahma (the Creator). When by means of a purified understanding one beholds God within, the image is distinct as in a polished mirror; but one cannot have clear vision of the Supreme by attaining to the various realms known as heavens, where one reaps the fruit of his good deeds. It is only by developing one's highest consciousness here in this life that perfect God-vision can be attained. VI Knowing that the senses are distinct (from the Atman) and their rising and setting separate (from the Atman), a wise man grieves no more. A wise man never confounds the Atman, which is birthless and deathless, with that which has beginning and end. Therefore, when he sees his senses and his physical organism waxing and waning, he knows that his real Self within can never be affected by these outer changes, so he remains unmoved. VII Higher than the senses is the mind, higher than the mind is the intellect, higher than the intellect is the great Atman, higher than the Atman is the Unmanifested. VIII Beyond the Unmanifested is the all-pervading and imperceptible Being (Purusha). By knowing Him, the mortal is liberated and attains immortality. This division of the individual into senses, mind, intellect, self-consciousness, undifferentiated creative energy and the Absolute Self is explained in the commentary of verse XI, Part Third. IX His form is not to be seen. No one can see Him with the eye. He is perceived by the heart, by the intellect and by the mind. They who know this become immortal. The Supreme, being formless, cannot be discerned by the senses, hence all knowledge of Him must be acquired by the subtler faculties of heart, intellect and mind, which are developed only through the purifying practice of meditation. X When the five organs of perception become still, together with the mind, and the intellect ceases to be active: that is called the highest state. The teacher now shows Nachiketas the process by which the transcendental vision can be attained. he out-going senses,--seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting; the restless mind and the intellect: all must be indrawn and quieted. The state of equilibrium thus attained is called the highest state, because all the forces of one's being become united and focused; and this inevitably leads to supersensuous vision. XI This firm holding back of the senses is what is known as Yoga. Then one should become watchful, for Yoga comes and goes. Yoga literally means to join or to unite the lower self with the Higher Self, the object with the subject, the worshipper with God. In order to gain this union, however, one must first disunite oneself from all that scatters the physical, mental and intellectual forces; so the outgoing perceptions must be detached from the external world and indrawn. When this is accomplished through constant practice of concentration and meditation, the union takes place of its own accord. But it may be lost again, unless one is watchful. XII He cannot be attained by speech, by mind, or by the eye. How can That be realized except by him who says "He is"? XIII He should be realized as "He is" and also as the reality of both (visible and invisible). He who knows Him as "He is," to him alone His real nature is revealed. This supersensuous vision cannot be gained through man's ordinary faculties. By mind, eye, or speech the manifested attributes of the Divine can be apprehended; but only one who has acquired the supersensuous sight can directly perceive God's existence and declare definitely that "He is," that He alone exists in both the visible and the invisible world. XIV When all desires dwelling in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahman here. XV When all the ties of the heart are cut asunder here, then the mortal becomes immortal. Such is the teaching. XVI There are a hundred and one nerves of the heart. One of them penetrates the centre of the head. Going upward through it, one attains immortality. The other (hundred nerve-courses) lead, in departing, to different worlds. The nervous system of the body provides the channels through which the mind travels; the direction in which it moves is determined by its desires and tendencies. When the mind becomes pure and desireless, it takes the upward course and at the time of departing passes out through the imperceptible opening at the crown of the head; but as long as it remains full of desires, its course is downward towards the realms where those desires can be satisfied. XVII The Purusha, the inner Self, of the size of a thumb, is ever seated in the heart of all living beings. With perseverance man should draw Him out from his body as one draws the inner stalk from a blade of grass. One should know Him as pure and deathless, as pure and deathless. As has been explained in Part Fourth, verse XII, the inner Self, although unlimited, is described as "the size of a thumb" because of its abiding-place in the heart, often likened to a lotus-bud which is similar to a thumb in size and shape. Through the process of steadfast discrimination, one should learn to differentiate the Soul from the body, just as one separates the pith from a reed. XVIII Thus Nachiketas, having acquired this wisdom taught by the Ruler of Death, together with all the rules of Yoga, became free from impurity and death and attained Brahman (the Supreme). So also will it be with another who likewise knows the nature of the Self. PEACE CHANT May He (the Supreme Being) protect us both. May He be pleased with us. May we acquire strength. May our study bring us illumination. May there be no enmity among us. OM! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! Here ends this Upanishad Kena-Upanishad Like the Isavasya, this Upanishad derives its name from the opening word of the text, Kena-ishitam, "by whom directed." It is also known as the Talavakara-Upanishad because of its place as a chapter in the Talavakara-Brahmana of the Sama-Veda. Among the Upanishads it is one of the most analytical and metaphysical, its purpose being to lead the mind from the gross to the subtle, from effect to cause. By a series of profound questions and answers, it seeks to locate the source of man's being; and to expand his self-consciousness until it has become identical with God-Consciousness. KENA-UPANISHAD Peace Chant May my limbs, speech, Prana (life-force), sight, hearing, strength and all my senses, gain in vigor. All is the Brahman (Supreme Lord) of the Upanishads. May I never deny the Brahman. May the Brahman never deny me. May there be no denial of the Brahman. May there be no separation from the Brahman. May all the virtues declared in the sacred Upanishads be manifest in me, who am devoted to the Atman (Higher Self). May they be manifest in me. OM! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! Part First I By whom commanded and directed does the mind go towards its objects? Commanded by whom does the life-force, the first (cause), move? At whose will do men utter speech? What power directs the eye and the ear? Thus the disciple approached the Master and inquired concerning the cause of life and human activity. Having a sincere longing for Truth he desired to know who really sees and hears, who actuates the apparent physical man. He perceived all about him the phenomenal world, the existence of which he could prove by his senses; but he sought to know the invisible causal world, of which he was now only vaguely conscious. Is mind all-pervading and all-powerful, or is it impelled by some other force, he asked. Who sends forth the vital energy, without which nothing can exist? The teacher replies: II It is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the life of the life, the eye of the eye. The wise, freed (from the senses and from mortal desires), after leaving this world, become immortal. An ordinary man hears, sees, thinks, but he is satisfied to know only as much as can be known through the senses; he does not analyze and try to find that which stands behind the ear or eye or mind. He is completely identified with his external nature. His conception does not go beyond the little circle of his bodily life, which concerns the outer man only. He has no consciousness of that which enables his senses and organs to perform their tasks. There is a vast difference between the manifested form and That which is manifested through the form. When we know That, we shall not die with the body. One who clings to the senses and to things that are ephemeral, must die many deaths, but that man who knows the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, having severed himself from his physical nature, becomes immortal. Immortality is attained when man transcends his apparent nature and finds that subtle, eternal and inexhaustible essence which is within him. III There the eye does not go, nor speech, nor mind. We do not know That; we do not understand how It can be taught. It is distinct from the known and also It is beyond the unknown. Thus we have heard from the ancient (teachers) who told us about It. These physical eyes are unable to perceive that subtle essence. Nor can it be expressed by finite language or known by finite intelligence, because it is infinite. Our conception of knowing finite things is to know their name and form; but knowledge of God must be distinct from such knowledge. This is why some declare God to be unknown and unknowable; because He is far more than eye or mind or speech can perceive, comprehend or express. The Upanishad does not say that He cannot be known. He is unknowable to man's finite nature. How can a finite mortal apprehend the Infinite Whole? But He can be known by man's God-like nature. IV That which speech does not illumine, but which illumines speech: know that alone to be the Brahman (the Supreme Being), not this which people worship here. V That which cannot be thought by mind, but by which, they say, mind is able to think: know that alone to be the Brahman, not this which people worship here. VI That which is not seen by the eye, but by which the eye is able to see: know that alone to be the Brahman, not this which people worship here. VII That which cannot be heard by the ear, but by which the ear is able to hear: know that alone to be Brahman, not this which people worship here. VIII That which none breathes with the breath, but by which breath is in-breathed: know that alone to be the Brahman, not this which people worship here. Ordinarily we know three states of consciousness only,--waking, dreaming and sleeping. There is, however, a fourth state, the superconscious, which transcends these. In the first three states the mind is not clear enough to save us from error; but in the fourth state it gains such purity of vision that it can perceive the Divine. If God could be known by the limited mind and senses, then God-knowledge would be like any other knowledge and spiritual science like any physical science. He can be known, however, by the purified mind only. Therefore to know God, man must purify himself. The mind described in the Upanishads is the superconscious mind. According to the Vedic Sages the mind in its ordinary state is only another sense organ. This mind is limited, but when it becomes illumined by the light of the Cosmic Intelligence, or the "mind of the mind," then it is able to apprehend the First Cause or That which stands behind all external activities. Part Second I If thou thinkest "I know It well," then it is certain that thou knowest but little of the Brahman (Absolute Truth), or in what form He (resideth) in the Devas (minor aspects of Deity). Therefore I think that what thou thinkest to be known is still to be sought after. Having given the definition of the real Self or Brahman, by which mortals are able to see, hear, feel and think, the teacher was afraid that the disciple, after merely hearing about It, might conclude that he knew It. So he said to him: "You have heard about It, but that is not enough. You must experience It. Mere intellectual recognition will not give you true knowledge of It. Neither can It be taught to you. The teacher can only show the way. You must find It for yourself." Knowledge means union between subject and object. To gain this union one must practice, theory cannot help us. The previous chapter has shown that the knowledge of Brahman is beyond sense-perception: "There the eye does not go, nor speech, nor mind." "That is distinct from known and also It is beyond the unknown." Therefore it was necessary for the teacher to remind the disciple that knowledge based on sense-perception or intellectual apprehension should not be confounded with supersensuous knowledge. Although the disciple had listened to the teacher with unquestioning mind and was intellectually convinced of the truth of his words, it was now necessary for him to prove by his own experience what he had heard. Guided by the teacher, he sought within himself through meditation the meaning of Brahman; and having gained a new vision, he approached the teacher once more. II The disciple said: I do not think I know It well, nor do I think that I do not know It. He among us who knows It truly, knows (what is meant by) "I know" and also what is meant by "I know It not." This appears to be contradictory, but it is not. In the previous chapter we learned that Brahman is "distinct from the known" and "beyond the unknown." The disciple, realizing this, says: "So far as mortal conception is concerned, I do not think I know, because I understand that It is beyond mind and speech; yet from the higher point of view, I cannot say that I do not know; for the very fact that I exist, that I can seek It, shows that I know; for It is the source of my being. I do not know, however, in the sense of knowing the whole Infinite Ocean of existence." The word knowledge is used ordinarily to signify acquaintance with phenomena only, but man must transcend this relative knowledge before he can have a clear conception of God. One who wishes to attain Soul-consciousness must rise above matter. The observation of material science being confined to the sense plane, it ignores what is beyond. Therefore it must always be limited and subject to change. It discovered atoms, then it went further and discovered electrons, and when it had found the one, it had to drop the other; so this kind of knowledge can never lead to the ultimate knowledge of the Infinite, because it is exclusive and not inclusive. Spiritual science is not merely a question of mind and brain, it depends on the awakening of our latent higher consciousness. III He who thinks he knows It not, knows It. He who thinks he knows It, knows It not. The true knowers think they can never know It (because of Its infinitude), while the ignorant think they know It. By this text the teacher confirms the idea that Brahman is unthinkable, because unconditioned. Therefore he says: He who considers It beyond thought, beyond sense-perception, beyond mind and speech, he alone has a true understanding of Brahman. They who judge a living being from his external form and sense faculties, know him not; because the real Self of man is not manifested in his seeing, hearing, speaking. His real Self is that within by which he hears and speaks and sees. In the same way he knows not Brahman who thinks he knows It by name and form. The arrogant and foolish man thinks he knows everything; but the true knower is humble. He says: "How can I know Thee, who art Infinite and beyond mind and speech?" In the last portion of the text, the teacher draws an impressive contrast between the attitude of the wise man who knows, but thinks he does not know; and that of the ignorant who does not know, but thinks he knows. IV It (Brahman) is known, when It is known in every state of consciousness. (Through such knowledge) one attains immortality. By attaining this Self, man gains strength; and by Self-knowledge immortality is attained. We have learned from the previous text that the Brahman is unknown to those whose knowledge is limited to sense experience; but He is not unknown to those whose purified intelligence perceives Him as the basis of all states of consciousness and the essence of all things. By this higher knowledge a man attains immortality, because he knows that although his body may decay and die, the subtle essence of his being remains untouched. Such an one also acquires unlimited strength, because he identifies himself with the ultimate Source. The strength which comes from one's own muscle and brain or from one's individual power must be limited and mortal and therefore cannot lift one beyond death; but through the strength which Atma-gnana or Self-knowledge gives, immortality is reached. Whenever knowledge is based on direct perception of this undying essence, one transcends all fear of death and becomes immortal. V If one knows It here, that is Truth; if one knows It not here, then great is his loss. The wise seeing the same Self in all beings, being liberated from this world, become immortal. Part Third I The Brahman once won a victory for the Devas. Through that victory of the Brahman, the Devas became elated. They thought, "This victory is ours. This glory is ours." Brahman here does not mean a personal Deity. There is a Brahma, the first person of the Hindu Trinity; but Brahman is the Absolute, the One without a second, the essence of all. There are different names and forms which represent certain personal aspects of Divinity, such as Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Transformer; but no one of these can fully represent the Whole. Brahman is the vast ocean of being, on which rise numberless ripples and waves of manifestation. From the smallest atomic form to a Deva or an angel, all spring from that limitless ocean of Brahman, the inexhaustible Source of life. No manifested form of life can be independent of its source, just as no wave, however mighty, can be independent of the ocean. Nothing moves without that Power. He is the only Doer. But the Devas thought: "This victory is ours, this glory is ours." II The Brahman perceived this and appeared before them. They did not know what mysterious form it was. III They said to Fire: "O Jataveda (All-knowing)! Find out what mysterious spirit this is." He said: "Yes." IV He ran towards it and He (Brahman) said to him: "Who art thou?" "I am Agni, I am Jataveda," he (the Fire-god) replied. V Brahman asked: "What power resides in thee?" Agni replied: "I can burn up all whatsoever exists on earth." VI Brahman placed a straw before him and said: "Burn this." He (Agni) rushed towards it with all speed, but was not able to burn it. So he returned from there and said (to the Devas): "I was not able to find out what this great mystery is." VII Then they said to Vayu (the Air-god): "Vayu! Find out what this mystery is." He said: "Yes." VIII He ran towards it and He (Brahman) said to him: "Who art thou?" "I am Vayu, I am Matarisva (traveller of Heaven)," he (Vayu) said. IX Then the Brahman said: "What power is in thee?" Vayu replied: "I can blow away all whatsoever exists on earth." X Brahman placed a straw before him and said: "Blow this away." He (Vayu) rushed towards it with all speed, but was not able to blow it away. So he returned from there and said (to the Devas): "I was not able to find out what this great mystery is." XI Then they said to Indra: "O Maghavan (Worshipful One)! Find out what this mystery is." He said: "Yes"; and ran towards it, but it disappeared before him. XII Then he saw in that very space a woman beautifully adorned, Uma of golden hue, daughter of Haimavat (Himalaya). He asked: "What is this great mystery?" Here we see how the Absolute assumes concrete form to give knowledge of Himself to the earnest seeker. Brahman, the impenetrable mystery, disappeared and in His place appeared a personal form to represent Him. This is a subtle way of showing the difference between the Absolute and the personal aspects of Deity. The Absolute is declared to be unknowable and unthinkable, but He assumes deified personal aspects to make Himself known to His devotees. Thus Uma, daughter of the Himalaya, represents that personal aspect as the offspring of the Infinite Being; while the Himalaya stands as the symbol of the Eternal, Unchangeable One. Part fourth I She (Uma) said: "It is Brahman. It is through the victory of Brahman that ye are victorious." Then from her words, he (Indra) knew that it (that mysterious form) was Brahman. Uma replied to Indra, "It is to Brahman that you owe your victory. It is through His power that you live and act. He is the agent and you are all only instruments in His hands. Therefore your idea that 'This victory is ours, this glory is ours,' is based on ignorance." At once Indra saw their mistake. The Devas, being puffed up with vanity, had thought they themselves had achieved the victory, whereas it was Brahman; for not even a blade of grass can move without His command. II Therefore these Devas,--Agni, Vayu and Indra--excel other Devas, because they came nearer to Brahman. It was they who first knew this spirit as Brahman. III Therefore Indra excels all other Devas, because he came nearest to Brahman, and because he first (before all others) knew this spirit as Brahman. Agni, Vayu and Indra were superior to the other Devas because they gained a closer vision; and they were able to do this because they were purer; while Indra stands as the head of the Devas, because he realized the Truth directly, he reached Brahman. The significance of this is that whoever comes in direct touch with Brahman or the Supreme is glorified. IV Thus the teaching of Brahman is here illustrated in regard to the Devas. He dashed like lightning, and appeared and disappeared just as the eye winks. The teaching as regards the Devas was that Brahman is the only Doer. He had appeared before them in a mysterious form; but the whole of the unfathomable Brahman could not be seen in any definite form; so at the moment of vanishing, He manifested more of His immeasurable glory and fleetness of action by a sudden dazzling flash of light. V Next (the teaching) is regarding Adhyatman (the embodied Soul). The mind seems to approach Him (Brahman). By this mind (the seeker) again and again remembers and thinks about Brahman. Only by the mind can the seeker after knowledge approach Brahman, whose nature in glory and speed has been described as like unto a flash of lightning. Mind alone can picture the indescribable Brahman; and mind alone, being swift in its nature, can follow Him. It is through the help of this mind that we can think and meditate on Brahman; and when by constant thought of Him the mind becomes purified, then like a polished mirror it can reflect His Divine Glory. VI That Brahman is called Tadvanam (object of adoration). He is to be worshipped by the name Tadvanam. He who knows Brahman thus, is loved by all beings. Brahman is the object of adoration and the goal of all beings. For this reason he should be worshipped and meditated upon as Tadvanam. Whoever knows Him in this aspect becomes one with Him, and serves as a clear channel through which the blessings of Brahman flow out to others. The knower of God partakes of all His lovable qualities and is therefore loved by all true devotees. VII The disciple asked: O Master, teach me the Upanishad. (The teacher replied:) The Upanishad has been taught thee. We have certainly taught thee the Upanishad about Brahman. VIII The Upanishad is based on tapas (practice of the control of body, mind and senses), dama (subjugation of the senses), karma (right performance of prescribed actions). The Vedas are its limbs. Truth is its support. IX He who knows this (wisdom of the Upanishad), having been cleansed of all sin, becomes established in the blissful, eternal and highest abode of Brahman, in the highest abode of Brahman. Here ends this Upanishad. This Upanishad is called Kena, because it begins with the inquiry: "By whom" (Kena) willed or directed does the mind go towards its object? From whom comes life? What enables man to speak, to hear and see? And the teacher in reply gives him the definition of Brahman, the Source and Basis of existence. The spirit of the Upanishads is always to show that no matter where we look or what we see or feel in the visible world, it all proceeds from one Source. The prevailing note of all Vedic teaching is this: One tremendous Whole becoming the world, and again the world merging in that Whole. It also strives in various ways to define that Source, knowing which all else is known and without which no knowledge can be well established. So here the teacher replies: That which is the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, that is the inexhaustible river of being which flows on eternally; while bubbles of creation rise on the surface, live for a time, then burst. The teacher, however, warns the disciple that this eye, ear, mind, can never perceive It; for It is that which illumines speech and mind, which enables eye and ear and all sense-faculties to perform their tasks. "It is distinct from the known and also It is beyond the unknown." He who thinks he knows It, knows It not; because It is never known by those who believe that It can be grasped by the intellect or by the senses; but It can be known by him who knows It as the basis of all consciousness. The knower of Truth says, "I know It not," because he realizes the unbounded, infinite nature of the Supreme. "Thou art this (the visible), Thou art That (the invisible), and Thou art all that is beyond," he declares. The ordinary idea of knowledge is that which is based on sense preceptions; but the knowledge of an illumined Sage is not confined to his senses. He has all the knowledge that comes from the senses and all that comes from Spirit. The special purpose of this Upanishad is to give us the knowledge of the Real, that we may not come under the dominion of the ego by identifying ourselves with our body, mind and senses. Mortals become mortals because they fall under the sway of ego and depend on their own limited physical and mental strength. The lesson of the parable of the Devas and Brahman is that there is no real power, no real doer except God. He is the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear; and eyes, ears, and all our faculties have no power independent of Him. When we thus realize Him as the underlying Reality of our being, we transcend death and become immortal. OM! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! 
33742	----	DIALOGUES ON THE SUPERSENSUAL LIFE BY JACOB BEHMEN EDITED BY BERNARD HOLLAND METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON 1901 _Desiderare est Mereri_ PREFACE The Works of Jacob Behmen, the "Teutonic Theosopher," translated into English, were first printed in England in the seventeenth century, between 1644 and 1662. In the following century a complete edition in four large volumes was produced by some of the disciples of William Law. This edition, completed in the year 1781, was compiled in part from the older English edition, and in part from later fragmentary translations by Law and others. It is not easily accessible to the general reader, and, moreover, the greater part of Behmen's Works could not be recommended save to those who had the time and power to plunge into that deep sea in search of the many noble pearls which it contains. Behmen's language and way of thought are remote and strange, and in reading his thought one has often to pass it through a process of intellectual translation. This is chiefly true of his earlier work, the "Aurora" or "Morning Redness." But among those works which he wrote during the last five years of his life there are some written in a thought-language less difficult to be understood, yet containing the essential teaching of this humble Master of Divine Science. From these I have selected some which may, in a small volume, be useful. It seemed that for this purpose it would be best to take the "Dialogues of the Supersensual Life," including as one of them the beautiful, really separate, Dialogue, called in the Complete Works, "The way from darkness to true illumination." In the case of neither of these works is the translation used that of the seventeenth century. The first three dialogues are a translation made by William Law, one of the greatest masters of the English language, and found in MS. after his death. This translation from the original German is not exactly literal, but rather a liberal version, or paraphrase, the thought of Behmen being expanded and elucidated, though in nowise departed from. The dialogue called "The way from darkness to true illumination" was taken by the eighteenth century editors from a book containing translations of certain smaller treatises of Behmen then lately printed at Bristol and made, as they say, "in a style better adapted to the taste and more accommodated to the apprehension of modern readers." I do not know who was the translator, but the work seems to be excellently well done. It will be well to say a few words first as to the life, then as to the leading ideas of Jacob Behmen. This name is more correctly written Jacob Boehme, but I prefer to retain the more easily pronounced spelling of Behmen, adopted by the Editors of both the complete English editions. Jacob Behmen's outward life was simplicity itself. He was born in the year 1575 at Alt Seidenberg, a village among pastoral hills, near Görlitz in Lusatia, a son of poor peasants. As a boy he watched the herds in the fields, and was then apprenticed to a shoemaker, being not enough robust for rural work. One day, when the master and his wife were out, and he was alone in the house, a stranger entered the shop and asked for a pair of shoes. Jacob had no authority to conclude a bargain and asked a high price for the shoes in the hope that the stranger would not buy. But the man paid the price, and when he had gone out into the street, called out "Jacob, come forth." Jacob obeyed the call, and now the stranger looked at him with a kindly, earnest, deep, soul-piercing gaze, and said, "Jacob, thou art as yet but little, but the time will come when thou shalt be great, and become another man, and the world shall marvel at thee. Therefore be pious, fear God, and reverence his Word; especially read diligently the Holy Scriptures, where thou hast comfort and instruction; for thou must endure much misery and poverty, and suffer persecution. But be courageous and persevere, for God loves, and is gracious unto thee." So saying, the stranger clasped his hand, and disappeared. After this Jacob became even more pensive and serious, and would admonish the other journeymen on the work-bench when they spoke lightly of sacred things. His master disliked this and dismissed him, saying that he would have no "house-prophet" to bring trouble into his house. Thus Jacob was forced to go forth into the world as a travelling journeyman, and, as he wandered about in that time of fierce religious discord, the world appeared to him to be a "Babel." He was himself afflicted by troubles and doubts, but clave to prayer and to Scripture, and especially to the words in Luke xi.; "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." And once, when he was again engaged for a time by a master, he was lifted into a state of blessed peace, a Sabbath of the Soul, that lasted for seven days, during which he was, as it were, inwardly surrounded by a Divine Light. "The triumph that was then in my soul I can neither tell nor describe. I can only liken it to a resurrection from the dead." Jacob returned in 1594 to Görlitz, became a master shoemaker in 1599, married a tradesman's daughter, and had four children. In the year 1600 "sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendour that he fell into a deep inward ecstasy and it seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles and deepest foundations of things. He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of things; the very herbs and grass, and that Nature harmonised with what he had inwardly seen. He said nothing about this to any one, but praised and thanked God in silence. He continued in the honest practice of his craft, was attentive to his domestic affairs, and was on terms of goodwill with all men."[A] At the age of thirty-five, in the year 1610, Jacob Behmen suddenly perceived that all which he had seen in a fragmentary way was forming itself into a coherent whole, and felt a "fire-like" impulse, a yearning to write it down, as a "Memorial," not for publication, but lest he should forget it himself. He wrote it early in the morning before work, and late in the evening after work. This was his "Morning Redness" or "Aurora." A nobleman of the country, called Carl von Endern, happened to see the MS. at the shoemaker's house, was struck by it, and had some copies made. One of these fell into the hands of the Lutheran Clergyman of Görlitz, Pastor Primarius Gregorius Richter, who thenceforth became a bitter opponent of Behmen. He assailed him in sermons, in language of savage invective, as a heretic of the most dangerous kind, until Jacob was summoned before the Magistrates, and forbidden to write anything in future. He was told that as a shoemaker he must confine himself to his own trade. But the affair, as is usually the case, had an effect the reverse of that intended by persecutors. It made him known to various persons more learned than himself who were interested in the subject, and from his converse with them he learned a better style, and some Latin technical terms, which he afterwards found useful for expressing his thoughts. Jacob obeyed for some years the magisterial command to write nothing, but it was very grievous to him, and he often reflected with dismay on the parable of the talents and how "that one talent which 'tis death to hide" was lodged with him useless. At length he would keep silence no more. He says himself: "I had resolved to do nothing in future, but to be quiet before God in obedience, and to let the devil, with all his host, sweep over me. But it was with me as when a seed is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm and rough weather against all reason. For in winter time all is dead, and reason says: 'It is all over with it.' But the precious seed within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and, amid disgrace and ridicule, it has blossomed forth into a lily." Between the year 1619 and his death in 1624, at the age of forty-nine, he poured forth his stored up thoughts, writing a number of Works, including those in the present volume, which were among his very latest. He had the more time to write because his shoemaking business had fallen off, by reason, perhaps, of the question as to his orthodoxy, but some friends supplied him with the necessaries of life. He was now exposed to fresh attacks from Gregorius Richter and was forced this time to go into exile. At this period he went to the Electoral Court at Dresden where the Prince was curious about him, and a conference took place between him and John Gerhard and other eminent theologians. At the close of this Dr Gerhard said: "I would not take the whole world and help to condemn this man." And his colleague Meissner said, "My good brother, neither would I. Who knows what stands behind this man? How can we judge what we have not understood? May God convert this man if he is in error. He is a man of marvellously high mental gifts who at present can neither be condemned nor approved." Soon afterwards, while Jacob was staying at the house of one of his noble friends in Silesia he fell into a fever. At his own request he was carried back to Görlitz, and there awaited his end. On Sunday, November 21st 1624, in the early hours he called his son Tobias and asked him if he did not hear that sweet melodious music. As Tobias heard nothing, Jacob asked him to set wide the door so that he might the better hear it; then he asked what was the hour, and when he was told that it had just struck two he said, "My time is not yet; three hours hence is my time." After some silence he exclaimed, "Oh thou strong God of Sabaoth, deliver me according to thy Will," and immediately afterwards "Thou Crucified Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me and take me to thyself into thy Kingdom." At six in the morning he suddenly bade them farewell with a smile, and said, "Now I go hence into Paradise," and yielded up his Spirit. Frankenberg writes of him: "His bodily appearance was somewhat mean; he was small of stature, had a low forehead but prominent temples, a rather aquiline nose, a scanty beard, grey eyes, sparkling into heavenly blue, a feeble but genial voice. He was modest in his bearing, unassuming in conversation, lowly in conduct, patient in suffering, and gentle-hearted." As the shoemaker of Görlitz had in his life-time some disciples among highly educated men, so has he always had a few since his departure from this life. Men so diversely situated as the non-juror William Law in England; St Martin, the "philosophe inconnu" of the French Revolution; the sincere Catholic, Franz Baader, in Germany; Martensen, the Protestant Bishop in Denmark, have found in him their Teacher. The selections contained in the present book belong rather to the practical or ethical side of Jacob Behmen's teaching than to his Cosmogony, or _Vision_, as one may best call it, of the nature of all things. I think that any old cottager, who had read nothing but his Bible, but had lived his life, would well understand the general teaching of most that is contained in these Dialogues, and would find all Behmen's words most beautiful and comforting. It is not, therefore, necessary for the present purpose to attempt fully to set forth the whole Vision of Behmen, nor, in any case would it be within my power to do so. But it may be of service to those readers who are not acquainted with the writings of Behmen or of his disciples, if I here say something as to his general teaching with regard to the nature of the soul of man and its relation to that which is not itself, but like to itself. The Soul, in the doctrine of Behmen, is a Being which has a will or desire, and is aided by a mirror of understanding or imagination. Will or Desire is of the very essence of the Soul, inseparable from its existence. He says: "Where Desire is there is also Essence or Being." The Soul is subject to the diverse attractions of the Centre of Divine Life and Light, and of the Spirit of the World. Enlightened by its understanding it has the free power to turn its will towards, and unite itself to, this or that. "Choose well, thy choice is brief and yet endless." The Soul is a magic Fire derived out of, or from, God the Father's Essence, _lumen de lumine_, and imprisoned in darkness. It is an intense and incessant Desire after the Light; it longs to return to the Light-centre, whence it originally came, that is, to the "heart of God." Thus longing, it is a "Fire of Anguish," until it becomes a "Fire of Love." It is a fire of anguish, so long as it is shut up in its dark self. It is a fire of love when it pierces through and escapes from its dark self-prison and burns freely and softly in union with the Divine Love. God then comes as a Light, a soft purifying Fire into the Soul, and changes all the wanting, hungering, empty, restless, self-tormenting properties of the Natural Life into a sweetness of rest and peace. This is called in Scripture the "new birth." Thus the same thing--the same Fire,--is a cause of torment or of joy according to the conditions under which it is. Man, who is a microcosm of the whole Universe, is a mingling of light and darkness. His anguish comes from his Soul's imprisonment in darkness (as a mere raging fire) and continues until it can break forth and unite itself with _that_ whence it came and to which it belongs. Behmen says "The Eternal Darkness of the Soul is Hell, viz.: an aching source of anguish, which is called the Anger of God, but the Eternal Light in the Soul is the Kingdom of Heaven, where the fiery anguish of darkness is turned into joy. For the _same_ nature of anguish, which, in the Darkness, is a cause of sadness, is, in the Light, a cause of the outward and stirring joy.... The Fire is painful and consuming, but the Light is yielding, friendly, powerful and delightful, a sweet and amiable Joy." Pure delight, with no trace of doubt or fear, hope or regret, is the sign of the presence of Love or Light. So again Behmen says: "The Fire in the Light is a fire of Love, but the Fire in the Darkness is a fire of Anguish, and is painful, irksome, and full of contrariety." The end to which all things tend is the final separation of light from darkness; the "last day" means this; but the present world is a perpetual mixture of light and darkness, good and evil, joy and anguish. So, the Cross of Jesus is at once the highest embodiment of Love and Hate. It is remarkable that in this doctrine of light and darkness Behmen was nearly followed by one who had not, I suppose, ever heard of him, reading as he did little of anything but the Bible, who worked on the Scriptures with his own powerful and earnest insight, the Christian hero, Charles Gordon. In his little book called "Reflections in Palestine" written in that one year, 1883, of unbroken repose from action spent in the Holy Land, just before his final service at Khartoom, Gordon dwells upon the repetition, as he calls it, _both in the individual soul, and in the world's history_ of four processes constantly recurring,--a state of darkness, a light breaking forth through darkness, a division of light from darkness or gathering together of light, a re-dispersion of light into darkness, and then a renewal of the four processes, ever upon an ascending level of good, directed towards the final elimination of all light from the darkness. Fire must have fuel, something on which to feed. It must feed or perish. But the magic Fire-spirit, the Soul, cannot perish because it is an eternal Essence. Therefore it must either feed; or _hunger_. It desires spiritual essence or "virtue" to allay its raging hunger. But, during the space that it is embodied in this nature, it can feed _either_ on the Divine Spirit, or upon the Spirit of this World. "Hence," says Behmen, "we may understand the cause of that infinite variety which is in the Wills and Actions of Men." For of whatsoever the Soul eateth, and wherewith its Fire-life becometh kindled; "according to that the Soul's life is led and governed." You become like to that which you eat. If the Soul breaks forth out of its Nature-self and enters into "God's Love-fire," it eats of the Divine Essence (the substance or flesh of Christ) and it is to this that Jesus Christ referred when he spoke of feeding upon his body, and when he spoke of the true bread from heaven "which giveth life to the World" (John vi. 33), of which he that eateth shall "live for ever" (John vi. 58), or the "living water," whereof whosoever drinketh "shall never thirst," but it shall be to him "a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John iv. 13, 14). This feeding is in no way metaphorical but as real and actual as physical feeding. Behmen says, "The Essence of that Life eateth the Flesh of Christ and drinketh His Blood.... Now if the Soul eat of this sweet, holy and heavenly food, then it kindleth itself with the great Love in the name and power of Jesus, whence its fire of anguish becometh a great triumph of joy and glory."[B] Behmen held that man lives at once in three worlds, firstly in the outward visible elementary world of space and time (where man "_is_ the Time and _in_ the Time;") secondly, the "Eternal Dark World, Hell, the centre of Eternal Nature, whence is _generated_ the Soul-fire, that source of anguish, and thirdly, in the Eternal Light World, Heaven--the Divine habitation." The same processes of feeding and life take place in the three Worlds, so that physical feeding is a kind of outside sheath of spiritual feeding. If the Soul accustoms itself to feed in this life upon the heavenly food (that _panem de coelo omne delectamentum in se habentem_) it gradually itself becomes of quite heavenly substance, purged from darkness, and, when the natural life falls off at death, stands in heaven, where indeed it already is. But, if the Soul feeds upon the Spirit and Things of this World, then, when by reason of death, it can no longer feed upon them, it is left in the condition of mere "aching Desire," or eternal unsatisfied Hunger, working in a void, in perpetual anguish. Thus Heaven and Hell are not places, but conditions of the Soul. So Milton, who had no doubt studied the translation of Behmen made in his own time, writes: "The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." They are in this life everywhere commingled, but when this life falls away, the Soul remains in that of the two states into which it has in this life brought itself. The Soul, after death, remains _either_ as a satisfied Desire, that is, a Desire no longer but a Joy, _or_ as an aching Desire. The Persian says:-- Heaven is the vision of fulfilled Desire And Hell the shadow of a Soul on fire. Behmen says, Heaven _is_ fulfilled desire; Hell _is_ a Soul on fire, no mere vision or shadow. Heaven and Hell are within us, since our souls are portions of the universe of things, in every part of which Heaven and Hell are commingled. The gates of Heaven within us were shut in Adam, but the Power of God, Christ in Jesus, broke open by his passion "the closed gates of Paradise," that is, the gates of our "inward heavenly humanity," and now the wayfarer can, if he will, pass through. We do not spiritually live by a reasoning process, or acceptance of doctrines by the understanding, but by the action of the Desire in feeding upon the Spirit of Love, a process of laying hold, drawing in, and assimilating. True prayer is like feeding, or still more, perhaps, like the unconscious drawing in of the air: it should be as constant. By it is introduced the heavenly life from without to nourish the like heavenly life contained in the seed within. If a man thus rightly feeds, then, in him, the hellish life and passions, portions of the powers of darkness, "our creatures" as Behmen says, will be killed by starvation, wanting their appropriate food. On the other hand, a man can feed these also from without with their appropriate food by misdirected desire, thereby starving the heavenly life in the Soul. Thus the essence of Behmen's teaching as to the Soul incarnate in Man and revealed by his body, is that it is an eternal Being, and that it is a source of joy or anguish according as it is, or is not, purified or tranquillised by communion with the Centre of Light, or the Fountain of Life. He does not contemplate, as some Eastern teachers perhaps do, the annihilation of the Will of the Soul by a kind of higher spiritual suicide; its existence is to him the very condition of good no less than of evil; he contemplates its liberation from the dark, contracted, self-prison, its purification, and entrance into the full heaven-life. This magical soul-fire, like visible fire, can rage and destroy, or it can serve as the means and ground of all good. Here is the foundation both of good and evil, in man as in all things. To understand this better, one must consider the cosmic teaching lying behind the rich profusion of images, often inconsistent and clashing, in which Jacob Behmen embodies his Vision. Man has fallen into Nature. But Nature itself, apart from and unfilled by the Divine Light, is a self-torment, a mere Want, a Desire, a Hunger. The true distinction between God and Nature is that God is an Universal All, while Nature is an Universal Want, viz: to be filled by God. Physical attraction is nothing but the outer sheath of this universal desire. Nature filled by God is Heaven or fulfilled Desire.[C] Without God it is Hell, mere Desire. Heaven is the Presence of God: Hell his Absence. It is as true to say that Heaven is in God, as to say that God is in Heaven. Apart from the existence of God there could be neither Presence nor Absence, neither Heaven nor Hell. If the Soul of Man were wholly divided and separated from the Divine Life, it would, as a part of Nature, be a mere hungering, restless, conscious Desire. In so far as it is so separated it partakes of this pain. For "through all the Universe of Things nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but because it is not governed by Love, or because its Nature has not reached or attained the full birth of the Spirit of Love. For when that is done, every hunger is satisfied, and all complaining, murmuring, accusing, resenting, revenging and striving are as totally suppressed and overcome as coldness, thickness and horror of darkness are suppressed and overcome by the breaking forth of the light. If you ask why the Spirit of Love cannot be displeased, cannot be disappointed, cannot complain, accuse, resent or murmur, it is because the Spirit of Love desires nothing but itself, it is its own Good, for Love is God, and he that dwelleth in God dwelleth in Love."[D] Behmen's idea of the "fallen Angels" is that they are entirely and hopelessly divided from the Life of God. They are mere embodied, hopeless, self-tormenting Desires. They have fallen into the hell within themselves, they _cannot but_ be hating, bitter, envious, proud, wrathful, restless; and therefore tormentors of others. They have lost that which man, however far astray, always possesses, the faculty of return or regeneration through submission to and union with God. The spark of the Life and Spirit of God which is in Men is not in the fallen Angels. Let us hope that Beings so utterly lost do not exist. God is outside of Nature and yet in a sense inside also, because there is a divine life or virtue in Nature which, longing to re-unite itself with its source, is a cause of anguish while divided, and of joy when united. So, in the outer world, the seed buried in earth contains a power kindred to the virtue of the sun. It is this which breaks forth from the seed, forces itself up through the dark, imprisoning, and yet nourishing and necessary earth, and at last, if it can win its way through obstacles, cheerfully expands in the light of the sun and feeds upon his warmth. That, in man's inner nature, which answers to this power or life in the seed, is called by Behmen the Life or Spirit of Jesus Christ. Egoism or _Ihood_, the old contracting, narrowing cell, is destroyed as this expansive and expanding force grows and breaks forth. Behmen says: "As the Sun in the visible world ruleth over Evil and Good, and, with its light and power, and all whatsoever itself is, is present everywhere, and penetrates into every Being, and wholly giveth itself to every Being, and yet ever remaineth whole, and nothing of its being goeth away therewith. Thus also it is to be understood concerning Christ's person and office which ruleth in the inward spiritual world, and penetrateth into the faithful man's soul, spirit and heart. As the Sun worketh through a herb, so that the herb becometh filled with the virtue of the Sun, and, as it were, so converted by the Sun that it becometh wholly of the nature of the Sun, so Christ ruleth in the resigned will or Soul and Body, over all evil inclinations and generateth the man to be a new heavenly creature." The same teaching is finely set forth in a passage of William Law.[E] He says: "Man has a spark of the Light and Spirit of God, as a supernatural gift of God given into the birth of his Soul to bring forth by degrees a new birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. This holy spark of the Divine Nature within him has a natural, strong, and almost infinite tendency or reaching after that eternal Light and Spirit of God, from whence it came forth. It came forth from God, it came _out_ of God, it partaketh of the Divine Nature, and therefore it is always in a state of tendency and return to God. All this is called the breathing, the moving, the quickening of the Holy Spirit within us, which are so many operations of this spark of life tending towards God. On the other hand the Deity as considered in itself, and without the Soul of man, has an infinite unchangeable tendency of love and desire towards the Soul of man, to unite and communicate its own riches and glories to it, just as the Spirit of the air _without_ Man unites and communicates its riches and virtues to the Spirit of the air that is _within_ Man. This love or desire of God toward the soul of Man is so great that he gave his only-begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, to take the human nature upon him, in its fallen state, that by this mysterious union of God and Man, all the enemies of the Soul of Man might be overcome, and every human creature might have a power of being born again according to that Image of God in which he was first created. The gospel is the history of this Love of God to Man. _Inwardly_ he has a seed of the Divine Life given into the birth of his Soul, a seed that has all the riches of eternity in it, and is always wanting to come to the birth in him, and be alive in God. _Outwardly_ he has Jesus Christ, who as a Sun of Righteousness, is always casting forth his enlivening beams on this inward seed, to kindle and call it forth to the birth, doing that to this Seed of Heaven in Man, which the sun in the firmament is always doing to the vegetable seeds in the earth. "Consider this matter in the following similitude. A grain of wheat has the air and light of this world enclosed or incorporated in it. This is the mystery of its life, this is its power of growing, by this it has a strong continual tendency of uniting again with that ocean of light and air from whence it came forth. On the other hand that great ocean of light and air, having its own offspring hidden in the heart of the grain has a perpetual strong tendency to unite and communicate with it again. From this _desire of union on both sides_, the vegetable life arises and all the virtues and powers contained in it. But let it be well observed that this desire on both sides cannot have its effect till the husk and gross part of the grain falls into a state of corruption and death; till this begins, the mystery of life hidden in it cannot come forth." The sun only acts by stirring up in each thing, and calling into activity, its own imprisoned, dormant, heat or life. Save by the same nature-process, working in an inner sphere, there cannot come to pass the flower and fruit of the Soul. The Sun, true emblem of the Redeeming Spirit, helps each vital force to break forth from its state of death--even though, like the grains of wheat found in Egyptian graves and then new-planted, it has been immured there thousands of years--and to enter into its highest possible state of life. Indeed, in this school of wisdom, the natural visible light, of which the Sun is the dispensing medium to our solar system, and other suns to other circles of planets, is actually an outer manifestation of the inner supernatural light, and warmth, not a mere emblem at all. We speak more truly than we know, when we speak of a "heavenly day." All Nature is a series of "out-births" of the Deity. "The outward world," says Behmen, "is sprung out of the inward spiritual world, viz., out of Light and Darkness." And his English interpreter says: "Whatever is delightful and ravishing, sublime and glorious in spirits, minds, or bodies, either in heaven, or on earth, is from the power of the Supernatural Light opening its endless wonders in them. Hell has no misery, horror or distraction, but because it has no communication with the supernatural Light. And did not the supernatural Light stream forth its blessings into this world, through the materiality of the Sun, all outward Nature would be full of the horror of Hell." And elsewhere, "There is no meekness, benevolence or goodness in Angel, Man, _or any other Creature_, but where Light is the Lord of its life. Life itself begins no sooner, rises no higher, has no other glory, than as the Light begins it, and leads it on. Sounds have no softness, flowers and germs no sweetness, plants and fruits have no growth, but as the Mystery of Light opens itself in them."[F] And so Behmen himself says: "There is nothing that is created or born in Nature but it also manifests its internal form externally; for the internal continually labours or works itself forth to manifestation. We know in the power and form of this World, how the only Essence has manifested itself with the external birth in the desire of the similitude; how it has manifested itself in so many forms and shapes, which we see and know in the stars and elements, likewise in the living creatures, and also in the trees and herbs." Thus there is a real communion between all beauty, sweetness, and glory, within and without the Soul of man. It is this truth, not of the analogy between the essential life of Man and Nature, but of the unity in all things, that is now opening itself out in many ways. Wordsworth, a true seer, has given to it its highest expression in English Poetry. Modern science all tends to confirmation of this unity. God, then, must become Man, there must be a birth of the Life of God in the Soul, in order that the Soul may live its highest life. Only in this way can the wild properties of Nature be subordinated and turned to their proper use, their restless hunger pacified. Goodness and happiness can be expected from nothing else but from the Divine Life united to and dwelling in the Nature Life. It is the "ingrafted Word" of St James' Epistle. The plant cannot but grow towards the sun. If it is too deep in earth, or prevented by a strong soil, or withered by dryness, so that it cannot attain to its end, the fault is not with it. But, in the spiritual inner world (in which the plant dwells not) the Soul of man has this freedom--that it can consciously turn towards God, whose Spirit and Life will then come forth to meet it, or can turn towards the Things of this World. Upon this freedom of choice is founded Behmen's moral teaching. The Soul is like a woman (and all nations have testified in their languages and parables to their sense of this) who can freely choose to submit and surrender her body to this Lover, or to that. When she has chosen her free power ends. As she has chosen, so her life-faculty will be fertilised by good or evil; so will be the new life that arises within her, and so will be her future joy or sorrow. In a deep sense, the desire of the spark of Life in the Soul to return to its Original Source is part of the longing desire of the universal Life for its own heart or centre. Of this longing the universal attraction, striving against resistance, towards an universal centre, proved to govern the phenomenal or physical world, is but the outer sheath and visible working. It has been said that Sir Isaac Newton (who was a diligent reader of Behmen's Works) "ploughed with Jacob Behmen's heifer." There is in truth but one Religion, that founded upon the eternal, immutable, universal processes of the actual Nature of things, and of this Christianity, rightly apprehended, is the supreme Revelation. This will be seen better by all as the Religion unfolds itself. Rightly speaking there is no such thing as _supernatural_ religion; there is but one Religion, that of Nature. It is the work of visible religion to teach by signs and parables, embodying the mystery in symbols, and clothing it with adoration. Jacob Behmen's mode of expression is all his own, and there is much in the fabric of his thought which men of our time, if they take a superficial view, would not find it easy to accept. The doctrine of Evolution now profoundly influences every corner of the field of thought. We now incline to think rather of the rise of Man out of Nature than of his fall into it, though, perhaps, there can no more be a rise without a precedent fall, than there can be a return without a precedent out-going. Evolution may be the time-form of Attraction. But all this affects the outside form, not the essence of the doctrine. Behmen is concerned with the real nature of things, apart from time and space, with their apparent, but so misleading, facts. He appeals to each Soul's knowledge of itself, and, on the principle that _all is in everything_, draws from the nature of Man, that little Universe (and we can no otherwise learn things as they are in themselves), his teaching as to Universal Nature. "In Man (he says) lies all whatsoever the Sun shines upon, or Heaven contains, as also Hell and all the Deeps." His Iliad is the struggle between light and darkness, life and death, expansion and contraction, the centripetal and centrifugal force, heat and cold, love and hatred, peace and wrath, humility and pride, self-sacrifice and self-seeking, joy and anguish, repose and restlessness, in the whole of Nature and in the Soul of Man. Does not every man, who has lived his full life, know the truth and reality of all this? It is known more especially and actually by those ardent and adventurous spirits who have sailed in far seas of thought or action, not merely coasting along the shores of tradition, authority and established rule. Sinners know some things more vividly than those who ever and easily have been good. Only the man who has been sick knows the difference between sickness and health. The prodigal who had wandered in a far country and had lived as he would, understood the meaning of peace and love better than the brother who had always stayed at home. These wanderers, if they return in time, know best, taught by the heart-rending lessons of experience, the difference between the Heaven and Hell within them; the Hell of wrath, self-torment, fear, anxiety, envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty, sensual passion, longing to domineer, and the Heaven of love, benevolence, meekness, humility, compassion, peace, joy, long-suffering. They know that Heaven and Hell can alike be revealed in the Soul. From youth they have felt something in them striving, often feebly enough, against passionate desires for wealth, honour, success, and for mastery over the minds, affections, and bodies of others. Behind all this turmoil and ever unsatisfied anguish of seeking that which satisfies not, they have been aware of a diviner life slowly growing towards heaven, ever and again thwarted and driven back by the renewed assaults of the Spirit of the World, yet never quite destroyed. At the moments of fiercest fight against rebel passions they have felt the divine assisting strength flow into them, if only they powerfully invoked it, turning towards its source as a babe towards its mother's breast. They have heard the "Peace be still" amid the wildest spiritual storms. They know that if they have been saved, it is not by their own strength nor by reasoning, but by this power from without. They know the impotence, in action, of the merely reflective or spectator faculty. In this sense of the word "reason," they would agree with him who wrote "Your Heart is the best and greatest gift of God to you; it is the highest, greatest, strongest, and noblest Power of your Nature; it forms your whole Life, be it what it will; all Evil and all Good comes from it; your Heart alone has the key of Life and Death; it does all that it will; Reason is but its plaything; and whether in Time or Eternity, can only be a mere Beholder of the wonders of happiness, or forms of misery, which the right or wrong working of the Heart is entered into."[G] William Law remarks that Jesus Christ, though he had all wisdom, yet gives but a small number of doctrines to mankind "whilst every moral teacher writes volumes upon every single virtue." It is, he adds, because our Lord "knew what they know not, that our whole malady lies in this, that the Will of our Mind is turned into this World, and that nothing can relieve us, or set us right, but the _turning_ of the Will of our Mind and the Desire of our Hearts to God. And hence it is that he calls us to nothing but a total denial of ourselves and the Life of this World and to faith in him as the Worker of a new birth and life in us." On this one root of the whole matter Jacob Behmen insisted, expressing one truth in a thousand ways and through images, which to him are not images but the same process working in other spheres. His whole practical, moral teaching enforces the right direction of Desire. _Mali mores sunt mali amores_, said one who also truly _saw_; the profound Augustine. The hunger of the Soul must be turned to the source of eternal joy. All that is good and beautiful in nature or in the heart of man flows from that fountain. Desire _is_ everything in Nature; _does_ everything. Heaven is Nature filled with divine Life attracted by Desire. FOOTNOTES: [A] From the Danish Bishop Martensen's book "Jacob Boehme"; an excellent study well translated from Danish into English by Mr T. Rhys Evans, (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1885). An account of Behmen's life is given in the preface to the first volume of the last century English edition of the Works. [B] It should be noted that Jacob Behmen held strongly to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the actual bread and wine as a "permissive medium" of the real feeding, in order that there may be "a visible sign of what is done in the inward ground." But he says "We should not _depend_ on this means or medium _alone_, and think that Christ's Flesh and Blood is _only_ and alone participated in this use of bread and wine, as Reason in this present time miserably erreth therein. No, that is not so. Faith, when it hungereth after God's love and grace, always eateth and drinketh of Christ's Flesh and Blood. Christ hath not bound himself to bread and wine _alone_, but hath bound himself to the _faith_, that he will be in men." Works, vol. iv. p. 208. Charles Gordon took the same view of the visible "eating," as being a great assistance to the spiritual feeding, but not indispensable to it. (Gordon's "Letters to his Sister.") [C] Dante's "ricchezza senza brama." [D] Law's Works, vol. viii., p. 177. [E] Works, vol. vii., p. 65, ed. 1765. [F] Law's Works, vol. viii., p. 189. [G] Law's Works, vol. vii., p. 162. PRELIMINARY NOTE Before entering upon the Dialogues I have thought it well to insert some sentences taken from a treatise of Behmen's called "Regeneration," together with some taken from another treatise of his on "Christ's Testament" because they show well the spirit in which he thought and wrote. The freedom of thought and expression which he claims is, happily, far more readily accorded now than it was in his own day. I have only one thing to add. In the eighteenth century English translation of Behmen's Works, all the substantives, as was then the frequent custom, are printed with capital letters. There is a philosophic basis for this practice, because a substantive is an attempt to denote a "thing in itself" and is therefore of greater weight than an adjective, which only expresses qualities which we attribute to it. To Behmen's Works this mode of printing seems especially appropriate. In our now too literary language, many words have become so trite and carelessly used that they have almost ceased to have reference to real existing things. But Behmen never uses words in this merely literary way, being indeed in nowise a man of letters. It might have been said of him, as indeed his enemies did at the time say, that which was said by the Jews of our Lord, "How knoweth this man letters having never learned?" When he speaks of the "_glory_" of God, he means something as real as if he spoke of the "_leaves_ on that tree," and so with all his words. I was therefore somewhat inclined, in order to mark this, to adhere altogether to the old custom in this case, and though I have not done so, fearing it might annoy the eye of the unaccustomed reader, I have preserved the capital letters in many cases, where it is especially desirable to dwell on the expression of real existences by the words. It is of course an illogical compromise between two customs. The title "Supersensual Life" is not altogether a good one, but it is that which is used in former editions of Behmen. The idea is rather of Life behind, than above, the life of sense. _Sentences Selected from Jacob Behmen's Treatises "Regeneration" and "Christ's Testaments"_ 1 A true Christian, who is born anew of the Spirit of Christ, is in the simplicity of Christ, and hath no strife or contention with any man about religion. 2 The Christendom that is in Babel striveth about the manner how men ought to serve God and glorify him; also, how they are to know him, and what he is in his Essence and Will. And they preach positively that whosoever is not one and the same with them in every particular of knowledge and opinion, is no Christian, but a heretic. 3 But a Christian is of no sect. He can dwell in the midst of sects, and appear in their services, without being attached or bound to any. He hath but one knowledge, and that is, Christ in him. He seeketh but one way, which is the desire always to do and teach that which is right; and he putteth all his knowing and willing into the Life of Christ. He sigheth and wisheth continually that the Will of God might be done in him, and that his Kingdom might be manifested in him. His faith is a desire after God and Goodness, which he wrappeth up in a sure hope, trusting to the words of the promise, and liveth and dieth therein; though as to the _true man_, he never dieth. 4 For Christ saith: _Whosoever believeth in me shall never die, but hath pierced through from death to life_; and, _Rivers of living water shall flow from him_, viz. good doctrine and works. 5 Therefore I say that whosoever fighteth and contendeth about the Letter, is all Babel. The Letters of the Word proceed from, and stand all in, one Root, which is the Spirit of God; as the various flowers stand all in the earth, and grow about one another. They fight not with each other about their difference of colour, smell, and taste, but suffer the earth, the sun, the rain, the wind, the heat, and cold, to do with them as they please; and yet every one of them groweth in its own peculiar essence and property. 6 Even so it is with the Children of God; they have various gifts and degrees of knowledge, yet all form one Spirit. They all rejoice at the great Wonders of God, and give thanks to the Most High in his Wisdom. Why then should they contend about him in _Whom they live and have their being_, and of whose substance they themselves are? 7 It is the greatest folly that is in Babel for people to strive about religion, so that they contend vehemently about opinions of their own forging, viz. about the Letter. When the Kingdom of God consisteth of no Opinion, but in Power and Love. 8 As Christ said to his disciples, and left it with them at the last, saying: _Love one another as I have loved you: for thereby men shall know that ye are My disciples_. If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience. Laws are for the wicked, who will not enhance love and righteousness; they are, and must be, compelled by laws. 9 We all have but one Order, Law, or Ordinance, which is to stand still to the Lord of all Beings, and resign our wills up to him, and suffer his Spirit to play what music he will. And thus we give to him again as his own fruits that which he worketh and manifesteth in us. 10 Now if we did not contend about our different fruits, gifts, kinds, and degrees of knowledge, but did acknowledge them in one another, like Children of the Spirit of God, what could condemn us? For the Kingdom of God consisteth not in our knowing and supposing, but in Power. 11 If we did not know half so much, and were more like children, and had but a brotherly mind and goodwill towards one another, and lived like children of one mother, and as branches of one tree, taking our Sap all from one Root, we should be far more holy than we are. 12 Knowledge serves only to this end, viz., to know that we have lost the Divine Power in Adam, and are now become inclined to sin; that we have evil properties in us, and that doing evil pleaseth not God; so that with our knowledge we learn to do right. Now if we have the Power of God in us, and desire with all our hearts to act and to live aright, then our knowledge is but our sport, or matter of pleasure, wherein we rejoice. 13 For true knowledge is the manifestation of the Spirit of God through the Eternal Wisdom. He knoweth what he will in his children; he sheweth his wisdom and wonders by his children, as the earth putteth forth her various flowers. 14 Now if we dwell with one another, like humble children, in the Spirit of Christ, are rejoicing at the gift or knowledge of another, who would judge or condemn us? Who judgeth or condemneth the birds in the woods that praise the Lord of all Beings with various voices, every one in its own essence? Doth the Spirit of God reprove them for not bringing their voices into one harmony? Doth not the melody of them all proceed from his Power, and do they not sport before him? 15 Those men therefore that strive and wrangle about the knowledge and will of God, and despise one another on that account, are more foolish than the birds in the woods, and the wild beasts that have no true understanding. They are more unprofitable in the sight of the holy God than the flowers of the field, which stand still in quiet submission to the Spirit of God, and suffer him to manifest the Divine Wisdom and Power through them. 16 All Christian Religion consisteth wholly on this, to learn _to know ourselves_; whence we came, and what we are; how we are gone forth from the Unity into dissension, wickedness, and unrighteousness; how we have awakened and stirred up these evils in us; and how we may be delivered from them again, and recover our original blessedness. 17 _First_; How we were in the Unity, when we were the Children of God in Adam before he fell. _Secondly_; How we are now in dissension and disunion, in strife and contrariety. _Thirdly_; Whither we go when we pass out of this corruptible condition; whither with the unnatural, and whither with the natural part. And _lastly_; How we came forth from disunion and vanity, and enter into that one Tree, Christ in us, out of which we all sprung in Adam. In these four points all the necessary knowledge of a Christian consisteth. 18 So that we need not strive about any thing; we have no cause of contention with each other. Let every one only exercise himself in learning how he may enter again into the Love of God and his Brother. 19 The written Word is but an instrument whereby the Spirit leadeth us to itself within us. That Word which will teach must be living in the literal Word. The Spirit of God must be in the literal sound, or else none is a Teacher of God, but a mere Teacher of the Letter, a knower of the history, and not of the Spirit of God in Christ. 20 All that men will serve God with must be done in Faith, viz. in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that maketh the work perfect, and acceptable in the sight of God. All that a man undertaketh and doeth in Faith, he doth in the Spirit of God, which Spirit of God doth co-operate in the work, and then it is acceptable to God. For he hath done it himself, and his Power and Virtue is in it. It is holy. 21 Strife and misunderstanding concerning Christ's Person, Office, and Being, or Substance, as also concerning his Testaments which he left behind him, wherein he worketh at present, ariseth from the deflected creaturely Reason, which runneth on only in an Image-like opinion, and reacheth not the ground of this mystery, and yet will be a mistress of all things or beings, and will judge all things. It doth but lose itself in such Image-likeness, and breaketh itself off from its Centre, and disperseth the thoughts, and runneth on in the multiplicity, whereby its ground is confused and the mind is disquieted, and knoweth not itself. 22 No Life can stand in certainty, except it continue in its Centre, out of which it is sprung. 23 When the Soul that is sprung from God's Word and Will is entered into its own desire to will of itself, it will run in mere uncertainty till it return to its Original again. 24 Seeing that human life is an outflowing of the Divine Power, Understanding and Skill, the same ought to continue in its Original, or else it loseth the Divine Knowledge, Power and Skill, and with self-speculation bringeth itself into centres of its own, and strange imaging, wherewith its Original becometh darkened and strange. Therefore say I, that this is the only cause that men dispute about God, his Word, Essence or Being, and Will, that the understanding of man hath broken itself off from its Original, and now runneth on in mere self-will, thoughts and images in its own lust to selfishness, wherein there is no true knowledge, nor can be, till the Life returneth to its Original, viz. into the Divine Outflowing and Will. 25 If this be done, then God's Will speaketh forth the Divine Power and Wonders again through the human willing. In which Divine Speaking, the Life may know and comprehend God's Will, and frame itself therein. Then there is true Divine Knowledge and Understanding in man's skill, when his skill is continually renewed with Divine Power. 26 As Christ hath taught us when he said, _Unless ye be converted and become as a Child, ye shall not come into the Kingdom of God_. That is, that the Life turn itself again unto God out of whom it is proceeded, and forsake all its own imaging and lust, and so come to the Divine Vision again. 27 All disputation concerning God's Being or Essence or Will is performed in the images of the senses or thoughts without God. For if any liveth in God, and willeth with God, what needeth he dispute about God, who, or what God is? That he disputeth about it is a sign that he hath never felt it at all in his mind or senses, and it is not given to him that God is in him, and willeth in him what he will. It is a certain sign that he exalts his own meaning and image above others, and desireth dominion. 28 Men should friendly confer together, and offer one another their gifts and knowledge in love, and try things one with another, and hold that which is best, and not so stand in their own opinion as if they could not err. It lyeth in no man's person that men should suppose that the Divine Understanding must come only from such and such. For the Scripture says, _Try all things and hold that which is good_, 1 Thess. v. 21. 29 The touchstone to true knowledge is first, the Corner-stone, Christ; that men should see whether a thing enter out of love into love, or whether alone purely the love of God be sought and desired; whether it be done out of humility or pride; Secondly, whether it be according to the Holy Scripture; Thirdly, is it according to the human heart and soul, wherein the Book of the Life of God is incorporated, and may very well be read by the Children of God? Here the true mind hath its touchstone in itself, and can distinguish all things. If it be so that the Holy Ghost dwell in the ground of the mind, that man hath touchstone enough; that will lead him into all truth. 30 All strife concerning Christ's testaments cometh hence that men do not understand that Heaven wherein Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. They understand not that he is in this World, and that the World standeth in Heaven, and Heaven in the World, and are in one another, as Day and Night. 1 COR. ii. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. _We speak the hidden mystical wisdom of God; which God ordained before the world into our glory; which none of the Princes of this World knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. But, as it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God. Now we have received, not the Spirit of the World, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which men's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the Natural Man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth, or discerneth all things._ OF THE SUPERSENSUAL LIFE IN DIALOGUES BETWEEN A SCHOLAR OR DISCIPLE AND HIS MASTER DIALOGUE I The Disciple said to his Master: Sir, how may I come to the Supersensual Life, so that I may see God, and may hear God speak? The Master answered and said: Son, when thou canst throw thyself into THAT, where no Creature dwelleth, though it be but for a moment, then thou hearest what God speaketh? DISCIPLE Is that where no Creature dwelleth near at hand, or is it afar off? MASTER It is _in thee_. And if thou canst, my Son, for a while but cease from all thy thinking and willing, then thou shalt hear the unspeakable words of God. DISCIPLE How can I hear him speak, when I stand still from thinking and willing? MASTER When thou standest still from the thinking of Self, and the willing of Self. When both thy intellect and will are quiet, and passive to the expressions of the Eternal Word and Spirit; and when thy soul is winged up and above that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imagination being locked up by holy abstraction, then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing and Speaking will be revealed in thee, and so God heareth and seeth through thee, being now the organ of _his_ Spirit, and so God speaketh in _thee_, and whispereth to thy Spirit, and thy Spirit heareth his voice. Blessed art thou therefore if thou canst stand still from self-thinking and self-willing, and canst stop the wheel of thy imagination and senses; forasmuch as hereby thou mayest arrive at length to see the great Salvation of God, being made capable of all manner of divine sensations and heavenly communications. Since it is nought indeed but thine own hearing and willing that do hinder thee, so that thou dost not see and hear God. DISCIPLE But wherewith shall I hear and see God, forasmuch as he is above Nature and Creature? MASTER Son, when thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before Nature and Creature; thou art that which God then was; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature. Then thou hearest and seest even that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before ever thine own willing or thine own seeing began. DISCIPLE What now hinders or keeps me back, so that I cannot come to _that_, wherewith God is to be seen and heard? MASTER Nothing truly but thine own willing, hearing, and seeing do keep thee back from it, and do hinder thee from coming to this supersensual state. And it is because thou strivest so against that, out of which thou thyself art descended and derived, that thou thus breakest thyself off, with thine own willing, from God's willing, and with thine own seeing from God's seeing. In as much as in thine own seeing thou dost see in thine own willing only, and with thine own understanding thou dost understand but in and according to thine own willing, as the same stands divided from the Divine Will. This thy willing, moreover, stops thy hearing, and maketh thee deaf towards God, through thy own thinking upon terrestrial things, and thy attending to that which is without thee, and so it brings thee to a ground where thou art laid hold on and captivated in Nature. And having brought thee hither, it overshadows thee with that which thou willest, it binds thee with thine own chains, and it keeps thee in thine own dark prison which thou makest for thyself, so that thou canst not go out thence, or come to that state which is Supernatural and Supersensual. DISCIPLE But being I am in Nature, and thus bound as with my own chains, and by my own natural will, pray be so kind, Sir, as to tell me, how I may come _through_ Nature into the Supersensual and Supernatural Ground, without the destroying of Nature? MASTER Three things are requisite in order to this. The first is, Thou must resign up thy Will to God, and must sink thyself down to the dust in his mercy. The second is, Thou must hate thy own Will, and forbear from doing that to which thy own Will doth drive thee. The third is, Thou must bow thy soul under the Cross, heartily submitting thyself to it, that thou mayst be able to bear the temptations of Nature and Creature. And if thou dost this, know that God will speak unto thee, and will bring thy resigned Will into Himself, in the supernatural ground, and then thou shalt hear, my son, what the Lord speaketh in thee. DISCIPLE This is a hard saying, Master, for I must forsake the World and my life too, if I should do thus. MASTER Be not discouraged hereat. If thou forsakest the World, then thou comest unto that out of which the World is made, and if thou losest thy life, then thy life is in that for whose sake thou forsakest it. Thy life is in God, from whence it came into the body, and as thou comest to have thine own power faint and weak and dying, the power of God will then work in thee and through thee. DISCIPLE Nevertheless, as God hath created man in and for the natural life, to rule over all creatures on earth, and to be a lord over all things in this world, it seems not to be at all unreasonable that God should therefore possess this world and the things therein for his own. MASTER If thou rulest over all creatures but outwardly there cannot be much in that. But if thou hast a mind to possess all things, and to be a lord indeed over all things in this world, there is quite another method to be taken by thee. DISCIPLE Pray, how is that? And what method must I take, whereby to arrive at this sovereignty? MASTER Thou must learn to distinguish between the Thing, and that which is only an image thereof; between that sovereignty which is substantial and in the inward ground of Nature, and that which is imaginary and in outward form of semblance; between that which is properly angelical and that which is no more than bestial. If thou rulest over the creatures externally only and not from the right internal ground of thy inward nature, then thy will and ruling is in a bestial kind or matter, and thine at best is but a sort of imaginary and transitory government, being void of that which is substantial and permanent, that which only thou art to desire and press after. Thus by thy outward lording it over the creatures it is most easy for thee to lose the substance and the reality, whilst thou hast naught remaining but the image and shadow only of thy first and original lordship wherein thou art made capable to be again invested, if thou art but wise, and takest thy investiture from the Supreme Lord in the right course and matter. Whereas by thy willing and ruling them in a bestial manner, thou bringest also thy desire into a bestial essence, by which means thou becomest infected and captivated therein, and gettest therewith a bestial nature and condition of life. But if thou shalt have put off the bestial nature, and left the imaginary life, and quitted the low-imaged condition of it, then art thou come into the super-imaginariness and into the intellectual life, which is a state of living above images, figures and shadows. And so thou rulest over all creatures, being re-united with thy Original, in that very ground or source, out of which they were and are created, and thenceforth nothing on earth can hurt thee. For thou art like All Things, and nothing is unlike thee. DISCIPLE O loving Master, pray teach me how I may come the shortest way to be like unto _All Things_. MASTER With all my heart. Do but think on the words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he said: "Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." There is no shorter way than this, nor can a better way be found. Verily, Jesus saith unto thee, Unless thou turn and become as a child, hanging upon him for all things, thou shalt not see the Kingdom of God. This do and nothing shall hurt thee; for thou shalt be at friendship with all the things that are, as thou dependest upon the author and fountain of them, and becomest like him, by such dependence, and by the Union of thy Will with his Will. But mark what I have further to say, and be not thou startled at it, though it may seem hard for thee at first to conceive. If thou wilt be like All Things thou must forsake all things; thou must not extend thy will to possess that for thine own, or as thine own, which is _Something_, whatever that Something be. For as soon as ever thou takest _Something_ into thy desire, and receivest it into thee for thine own, or in propriety, then this very Something (of what nature soever it is) is the _same_ with thyself; and this worketh with thee in thy will, and thou art thence bound to protect it, and take care of it, even as of thy own being. But if thou dost receive _no thing_ into thy desire then thou art free from all things, and rulest over all things at once, as a Prince of God. For thou hast received nothing for thine own, and art nothing to all things, and all things are as nothing unto thee. Thou art as a child, which understands not what a thing is; and though thou dost perhaps understand it, yet thou understandest it without mixing with it, and without it sensibly affecting or touching thy perception, even in that matter wherein God doth rule and see all things, he comprehending All, and yet nothing comprehending him. DISCIPLE Ah! how shall I arrive at this heavenly understanding, at this pure and naked knowledge, which is abstracted from the senses, at this light above Nature and Creature, and at this participation of the Divine Wisdom which oversees all things, and governs through all intellectual beings? For, alas, I am touched every moment by the things which are about me, and overshadowed by the clouds and perfumes which rise up out of the earth. I desire, therefore, to be taught, if possible, how I may attain such a state and condition as that no creature may be able to touch me to hurt me; and how my mind, being purged from sensible objects and things, may be prepared for the entrance and habitation of the Divine Wisdom in me. MASTER Thou desirest that I would teach thee how thou art to attain it; and I will direct thee to our Master, from whom I have been taught it, that thou mayest learn it thyself from him, who alone teacheth the heart. Hear thou him. Wouldst thou arrive at this; wouldst thou remain untouched by sensibles; wouldst thou behold light in the very Light of God, and see all things thereby; then consider the words of Christ, who is the Light and who is the Truth. O consider now his words, who said, _Without me ye can do nothing_ (John xix. 5) and defer not to apply thyself unto him, who is the strength of thy salvation, and the _power_ of thy life; and _with whom thou canst do all things_, by the faith which he waketh in thee. But unless thou wholly givest thyself up to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and resignest thy Will wholly to him, and desirest nothing and willest nothing without him, thou shalt never come to such a rest as no creature can disturb. Think what thou pleasest, and be never so much delighted in the activity of thine own reason, thou shalt find that, in thine own power and without such a total surrender to God and to the life of God, thou canst never arrive at such a rest as this, or the true Quiet of the Soul, wherein no creature can molest thee, or even so much as touch thee. Which when thou shalt, with Grace, have attained to, then with thy Body thou art in the World, as in the properties of outward Nature; and, with thy Reason, under the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; but with thy _Will_ thou walkest in heaven, and art at the end from whence all creatures are proceeded forth, and _to_ which they return again. And then thou canst in this End, which is the same with the _Beginning_, behold all things outwardly with _reason_ and liberally with the _mind_; and so mayest thou rule in all things and over all things, with Christ; unto whom all power is given both in heaven and on earth. DISCIPLE O, Master, the creatures which live in me do withhold me, so that I cannot so wholly yield and give up myself as I willingly would. What am I to do in this case? MASTER Let not this trouble thee. Doth thy Will go forth from the creatures? Then the creatures are forsaken in thee. They are in the world, and thy body, which is in the world, is with the creatures. But spiritually thou walkest with God, and conversest in heaven; being in thy mind redeemed from earth, and separated from creatures, to live the life of God. And if thy Will thus leaveth the creatures, and goeth forth from them, even as the spirit goeth forth from the body at death; then are the creatures dead in it, and do live only in the body in the world. Since if thy Will do not bring itself into them, they cannot bring themselves into it, neither can they by any means touch the soul. And hence St Paul saith, _Our conversation is in heaven; and also, Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you_. So, then, true Christians are the very temples of the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in them; that is, the Holy Ghost dwelleth in the Will, and the Creature dwelleth in the Body. DISCIPLE If now the Holy Spirit doth dwell in the Will of the Mind, how ought I to keep myself so that he depart not from me again. MASTER Mark, my son, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: _If ye abide in my words_, then my words abide in you. If thou abidest with thy Will in the Words of Christ; then his Word and Spirit abideth in thee, and all shall be done for thee that thou canst ask of him. But if thy Will goeth into the creature, then thou hast broken off thyself thereby from him. And then thou canst not any otherwise keep thyself but by abiding continually with that resigned humility, and by entering into a constant course of penitence, wherein thou wilt always be grieved at thine own creaturely Will, and that creatures do still live in thee, that is, in thy bodily appetite. If thou dost thus, thou standest in a daily dying from the creatures, and in a daily ascending into heaven in thy will, which will is also the Will of thy Heavenly Father. DISCIPLE O my loving Master, pray teach me how I may come to such a constant course of holy penitence, and to such a daily dying from all creaturely objects, for how can I abide continually in repentance? MASTER When thou leavest that which loveth thee, and lovest that which hateth thee; then thou mayest continually abide in repentance. DISCIPLE What is it that I must thus leave? MASTER All things that love and entertain thee, because thy Will loves and entertains them. All things that please and feed thee, because thy Will feeds and cherishes them. All creatures in flesh and blood; in a word, all visibles and sensibles, by which either the imaginative or sensitive appetite in men are delighted and refreshed. These the Will of thy mind, or thy supreme part, must leave and forsake, and must even account them all its enemies. This is the leaving of what loves thee. And the loving of what hates thee is the embracing the reproach of the World. Thou must learn then to love the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and for his sake to be pleased with the reproach of the World which hates thee and derides thee; and let this be thy daily exercise of penitence to be crucified to the World, and the World to thee. And so thou shalt have continual cause to hate thyself _in the Creature_, and to seek the eternal rest which is _in Christ_. To which rest thou having thus attained, thy Will may therein safely rest and repose itself, according as thy Lord Christ hath said: In me ye may have rest, but in the World ye shall have anxiety: In me ye may have peace, but in the World ye shall have tribulation. DISCIPLE How now shall I be able to subsist in this anxiety and tribulation arising from the World so as not to lose the eternal peace, or not to enter into this rest? And how may I recover myself in such a temptation as this is, by not sinking under the World, but rising above it by a life which is truly heavenly and supersensual? MASTER If thou dost once every hour throw thyself by faith beyond all creatures, beyond and above all sensual perception and apprehension, yea, above discourse and reasoning into the abyssal mercy of God, into the sufferings of our Lord, and into the fellowship of his interceding, and yieldest thyself fully and absolutely thereinto; then thou shalt receive power from above to rule over Death and the Devil and to subdue Hell and the World unto thee. And then thou mayest subsist in all temptations, and be the brighter for them. DISCIPLE Blessed is the man that arriveth to such a state as this. But, alas, poor man that I am, how is this possible as to me? And what, O my Master, would become of me, if I should ever attain with my mind to that where no creature is? Must I not cry out, _I am undone_? MASTER Son, why art thou so dispirited? Be of good heart still; for thou mayest certainly yet attain to it. Do but believe, and all things are made possible to thee. If it were that thy Will, O thou of so little courage, could break off itself for an hour, or even but for a half hour, from all creatures, and plunge itself into that where no creature is, or can be; presently it would be penetrated and clothed upon with the supreme splendour of the Divine Glory, would taste in itself the most sweet Love of Jesus, the sweetness whereof no tongue can express, and would find in itself the unspeakable words of our Lord concerning his great mercy. Thy spirit would then feel in itself the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ to be very pleasing to it; and would thereupon love the Cross more than the honours and goods of the World. DISCIPLE This for the Soul would be exceeding well indeed. But what would then become of the Body, seeing that it must of necessity live in _Creature_? MASTER The body would by this means be put into the imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ and of his body. It would stand in the communion of that most blessed Body, which is the true temple of the Deity, and in the participation of all its gracious effects, virtues, and influences. It would live in the Creature, not of choice, but only as it is made subject to vanity, and in the World, as it is placed therein by the ordination of the Creator, for its cultivation and higher advancement, and as groaning to be delivered out of it in God's time and manner, for its perfection and resuscitation in eternal liberty and glory, like unto the glorified body of our Lord and his risen Saints. DISCIPLE But the body, being in its present constitution, so made subject to vanity, and living in a vain image and creaturely shadows according to the life of the undergraduated creatures or brutes, whose breath goeth downward to the earth; I am still very much afraid thereof, lest it should continue to depress the mind which is lifted up to God, by hanging as a dead weight thereto; and go on to abuse and perplex the same, as formerly, with dreams and trifles, by letting in the objects from without, in order to draw me down into the World and the hurry thereof; whereas I would fain maintain by conversation in Heaven even while I am living in the World. What, therefore, must I do with this body, that I may be able to keep up so desirable a conversation, and not to be under subjection to it any longer? MASTER There is no other way for thee that I know but to present the body whereof thou complainest (which is the beast to be sacrificed) _a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God_. And this shall be thy rational service whereby this thy body will be put, as thou desirest, into the imitation of Jesus Christ, who said his Kingdom was not of this World. Be not thou then _conformed_ to it, but be _transformed_ by the renewing of thy mind; which renewed mind is to have dominion over the body, that so thou mayest prove, both in body and mind, what is the perfect Will of God, and accordingly perform the same with and by his grace operating in thee. Whereupon the body, or the _animal life_ would, being thus offered up, begin to die, both from without and from within. From _without_, that is, from the vanity and evil customs and fashions of the World; it would be an utter change to all the parts thereof, and to all the pageantry, pride, ambition, and haughtiness therein. From _within_ it would die as to all the lusts and appetites of the flesh, and would get a mind and will wholly new for its government and management; being now made subject to the Spirit, which would continually be directed to God. And thus thy very body is become the temple of God and of his Spirit, in imitation of thy Lord's Body. DISCIPLE But the World would hate it and despise it for so doing, seeing it must hereby contradict the World, and must live and act quite otherwise than the World doth. This is most certain. And how can this be taken? MASTER It would not take that as any harm done to it, but would rather rejoice that it is become worthy to be like unto the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, being transformed from that of the World. And it would be most willing to bear that cross after our Lord, merely that our Lord might bestow upon it the influence of his sweet and precious love. DISCIPLE I do not doubt but in some this may be even so. Nevertheless, for my own part, I am in a strait between two, not feeling yet enough of that blessed influence upon me. Oh how willingly should my body bear _that_, could _this_ be safely depended upon by me! Wherefore pardon me, loving Sir, in this one thing, if my impatience doth still further demand, "What would become of it, if the anger of God from within, and the wicked World also from without, should at once assault it, as the same really happened to our Lord Christ?" MASTER Be that unto it, even as unto our Lord Christ, when he was reproached, reviled and crucified by the World, and when the anger of God so fiercely assaulted him for our sake. Now what did he under this most terrible assault both from without and within? Why; he commended his soul into the hands of his Father, and so departed from the anguish of this World into the eternal joy. Do thou likewise, and his death shall be thy life. DISCIPLE Be it unto me as unto the Lord Christ, and unto my body as unto his, which into his hands I have commended, and for the sake of his name do offer up, according to his revealed Will. Nevertheless I am desirous to know what would become of my body in its pressing forth from the anguish of this miserable World into the power of the Heavenly Kingdom. MASTER It would get forth from the reproach and contradiction of the World by a conformity to the passion of Jesus Christ; and from the sorrows and pains in the flesh, which are only the effects of some sensible impression of things without, by a quiet introversion of the spirit and secret communion with the Deity manifesting itself for that end. It would penetrate into itself; it would sink into the great love of God; it would be sustained and refreshed by the most sweet name _Jesus_, and it would see and find within itself a new world springing forth, as through the anger of God, into the joy and love eternal. And then should a man wrap his soul in this, even in the great Love of God, and clothe himself therewith as with a garment; and should account thence all things alike; because in the Creature he finds nothing that can give him, without God, the least satisfaction, and because also nothing of harm can touch him more while he remains in this Love. For this Love is indeed stronger than all things, and makes a man invulnerable both from within and without, by taking out the sting and poison of the Creature, and destroying the power of death. And whether the body be in hell or on earth, all is alike to him; for whether it be there or here, his mind is still in the greatest Love of God; which is no less than to say that he is in heaven. DISCIPLE But how would a man's body be maintained in the World; or how would he be able to maintain those who are his, if he should by such a conversation incur the displeasure of all the World? MASTER Such a man gets greater favours than the world is able to bestow upon him: he hath God for his friend; he hath all the Angels for his friends. In all dangers and necessities these protect and relieve him; so that he need fear no manner of evil; no creature can hurt him. God is his helper, and that is sufficient. Also God is his blessing in everything. And though sometimes it may seem as if God would not bless him, yet is this but for a trial to him, and for the attraction of the Divine Love, to the end he may more fervently pray to God, and commit all his ways unto him. DISCIPLE He loses, however, by this all his good friends, and there will be none to help him in his necessity. MASTER Nay, but he gets the hearts of all his good friends into his possession, and loses none but his enemies, who before loved his vanity and wickedness. DISCIPLE How is it that he can get his good friends into his possession? MASTER He gets the very hearts and souls of all those that belong to our Lord Jesus to be his brethren, and the members of his own very life. For all the children of God are but ONE in Christ, which one is Christ _in All_. And therefore he gets them all to be his fellow-members in the Body of Christ, whence they have all the same heavenly goods in common and all live in one and the same Love of God, as the branches of a tree in one and the same root, and spring all from one and the same source of life in them. So that he can have no want of spiritual friends and relations, who are all rooted with him together in the Love which is from above, who are all of the same blood and kindred in Christ Jesus; and who are cherished all by the same quickening sap and spirit diffusing itself through them universally from the one true Vine, which is the tree of life and love. These are friends worth having; and though here they may be unknown to him, will abide his friends beyond doubt to all eternity. But neither can he want even outward natural friends, as our Lord Christ, when on earth, did not want such also. For though, indeed, the High-Priests and Potentates of the World could not have a love to him, because they belonged not to him, neither stood in any kind of relation to him, as being not of this world, yet those loved him who were capable of his love, and receptive of his words. So, in like manner, those who love truth and righteousness will love that man, and will associate themselves unto him, yea, though they may perhaps be outwardly at some distance or seeming disagreement, from the situation of their worldly affairs, or from other reasons, yet in their hearts they cannot but cleave to him. For though they be not actually incorporated into one body with him, yet they cannot resist being of one mind with him, and being united in affliction, for the great regard they bear to the truth, which shines forth in his words and in his life. By this they are made either his declared or his secret friends; and he doth so get their hearts that they will be delighted above all things in his company, for the sake thereof, and will court his friendship and will come unto him by stealth, if openly they dare not, for the benefit of his conversation and advice; even as Nicodemus did to Christ, who came to him by night, and in his heart loved Jesus for the truth's sake, though outwardly he feared the World. And thus thou shalt have many friends that are not known to thee; and some known to thee, who may not appear so before the World. DISCIPLE Nevertheless it is very grievous to be generally despised of the World, and to be trampled upon by men as the very offscouring thereof. MASTER That which now seems so hard and heavy to thee, thou wilt yet hereafter be most in love with. DISCIPLE How can it ever be that I should love that which hates me? MASTER Though thou lovest the Earthly Wisdom now, yet when thou shalt be clothed upon with the Heavenly Wisdom, then wilt thou see that all the wisdom of the World is folly; and wilt see also that the World hates not so much thee, as thine enemy, which is this mortal life. And when thou thyself shalt come to hate the will thereof, by means of a habitual separation of thy mind from the World, then thou also wilt begin to love that despising of the mortal life, and the reproach of the World for Christ's sake. And so shalt thou be able to stand under every temptation, and to hold out to the end by the means hereof in a course of life above the World and above sense. In this course thou wilt hate thyself, and thou wilt also love thyself, I say, love thyself, and that even more than thou ever didst yet. DISCIPLE But how can these two subsist together, that a person should both _love_ and _hate_ himself? MASTER _In loving thyself_, thou lovest not thyself _as thine own_, but thou lovest the divine ground in thee, as given thee from the Love of God. By which, and in which, thou lovest the Divine Wisdom, the Divine Goodness, the Divine Beauty; thou lovest also by it God's works of wonders; and in this ground thou lovest also thy brethren. But _in hating thyself_, thou hatest only that which is _thine own_, and wherein the Evil sticks close to thee. And this thou dost, that so thou mayest wholly destroy that which thou callest _thine_, as when thou sayest I or MYSELF do this, or do that. All which is wrong and a downright mistake in thee; for nothing canst thou properly call _thine_ but the evil Self, neither canst thou do anything of thyself that is to be accounted of. This _Self_ therefore thou must labour wholly to destroy in thee, that so thou mayest become a ground wholly divine. There can be no _selfishness_ in love; they are opposite to each other. Love, that is, Divine Love (of which only we are now discoursing), hates all Egoity, hates all that which we call I, or IHOOD, hates all such restrictions and confinements, even all that springs from a contracted spirit, or this evil _Self-hood_, because it is an hateful and deadly thing. And it is impossible that these two should stand together, or subsist in one person; the one driving out the other by a necessity of nature. For _Love_ possesses Heaven, and dwells in itself, which is dwelling in Heaven; but that which is called I, this vile self-hood, possesses the world and worldly things; and dwells also in itself, which is dwelling _in Hell_, because this is the very root of Hell itself. And, therefore, as Heaven rules the World, and as Eternity rules Time, even so ought Love to rule the natural temporal Life; for no other method is there, neither can there be of attaining to that Life which is supernatural and eternal, and which thou so much desirest to be led into. DISCIPLE Loving Master, I am well content that this Love should rule in me over the natural Life, that so I may attain to that which is supernatural and supersensual; but, pray tell me now, why must Love and Hatred, friend and foe, thus be together? Would not Love alone be better? Wherefore, I say, are Love and Trouble thus joined? MASTER If Love dwelt not in Trouble, it could have nothing to love. But its substance which it loves, namely the poor soul, being in trouble and pain, it hath thence cause to love this its own substance and to deliver it from pain, that so itself may by it be again beloved. Neither could any one know what Love is, if there were no Hatred; or what friendship is, if there were no foe to contend with. Or, in one word, if Love had not something which it might love, and manifest the virtue and power of love in working out deliverance to the Beloved from all pain and trouble. DISCIPLE Pray what is the virtue, the power, the height, and the greatness of Love? MASTER The virtue of Love is NOTHING and ALL, or that _Nothing visible_ out of which All Things proceed. Its power is through All Things; its height is as high as God; its greatness is as great as God. Its virtue is the principle of all principles; its power supports the Heavens and upholds the Earth; its height is higher than the highest Heavens, and its greatness is even greater than the very Manifestation of the Godhead in the glorious light of the Divine Essence, as being infinitely capable of greater and greater manifestations in all Eternity. What can I say more? Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it _is in a certain sense_ greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God. Love being the highest principle is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth. Love, being the greatest Majesty, is the Power of all Powers, from whence they severally operate. And it is the Holy Magical Root, a Ghostly Power from whence all the wonders of God have been wrought by the hands of his elect servants, in all their generations successively, Whosoever finds it, finds _Nothing and All Things_. DISCIPLE Dear Master, pray tell me how I may understand this? MASTER First, then, in that I said, its _virtue is Nothing, or that Nothing_ which is the beginning of All Things, thou must understand it thus; When thou art gone forth wholly from the Creature, and from that which is visible; and art become Nothing to all that is Nature and Creature, then thou art in that Eternal One, which is God himself; and then thou shalt perceive and feel within thee the highest virtue of Love. But in that I said, Its power is through All Things, this is that which thou perceivest and findest in thy own soul and body experimentally, whenever this great Love is enkindled within thee; seeing that it will burn more than the fire can do, as it did in the Prophets of old, and afterwards in the Apostles, when God conversed with them bodily, and when his Spirit descended upon them in the Oratory of Zion. Thou shalt then see also in all the works of God, how Love hath poured forth itself into all things, and penetrated all things, and is the most inward and most outward ground in all things. Inwardly in the virtue and power of every thing, and outwardly in the figure and form thereof. And in that I said, _Its height is as high as God_; thou mayest understand this in thyself: forasmuch as it brings thee to be as high as God himself is, by being united to God; as may be seen by our beloved Lord Jesus Christ in our humanity. Which humanity Love hath brought up into the highest throne, above all angelical principalities and powers, into the very Power of the Deity itself. But in that I also said, _Its greatness is as great as God_, thou art hereby to understand that there is a certain greatness and latitude of heart in Love, which is unexpressible, for it enlarges the soul as wide as the whole Creation of God. And this shall be truly experienced by thee, beyond all words, when the throne of Love shall be set up in thy heart. Moreover in that I said, _Its virtue is the principle of all principles_; hereby it is given thee to understand that Love is the principal cause of all created beings, both spiritual and corporeal, by virtue whereof the second causes do move and act occasionally, according to certain Eternal Laws, from the beginning implanted in the very constitution of things thus originated. This virtue which is in Love is the very life and energy of all the principles of Nature, superior and inferior. It reaches to all Worlds, and to all manner of beings in them contained, they being the workmanship of Divine Love, and is the _first mover_ and _first moveable_, both in heaven above, and in the earth beneath, and in the water under the earth. And hence there is given to it the name of the _Lucid Aleph_ or _Alpha_; by which is expressed the beginning of the _Alphabet of Nature_, and of the Book of Creation and Providence or the _Divine Archetypal Book_, in which is the Light of Wisdom and the source of all lights and forms. And in that I said, _Its power supports the Heavens_; by this thou wilt come to understand that as the Heavens, visible and invisible, are originated from this great principle, so are they likewise necessarily sustained by it; and that therefore if this should be but never so little withdrawn, all the lights, glories, beauties and forms of the heavenly worlds would presently sink into darkness and chaos. And whereas I further said _that it upholds the Earth_; this will appear to thee no less evident than the former, and thou shalt perceive it in thyself by daily and hourly experience; forasmuch as the Earth _without it_, even thy _own earth_ also (that is, thy body) would certainly be without form and void. By the power thereof the Earth hath been thus long upheld, notwithstanding a foreign usurped power introduced by the folly of sin. And should this but once fail or recede there could be no longer either vegetation or animation upon it; yea, the very pillars of it being overthrown quite, and the band of union, which is that of attraction or magnetism, called the centripetal power, being broken and dissolved, all must thence run into the utmost disorder, and falling away as into shivers, would be dispersed as loose dust before the wind. But in that I said, _Its height is higher than the highest Heavens_; this thou mayest also understand within thyself. For shouldest thou ascend in spirit through all the orders of Angels and heavenly Powers, yet the Power of Love still is undeniably superior to them all. And as the Throne of God, who sits upon the Heaven of Heavens, is higher than the highest of them, even so must Love also be, which fills them all, and comprehends them all. And whereas I said of the _Greatness of Love that it is greater than the very Manifestation of Godhead in the light of the Divine Essence_; that is also true. For Love enters even into that where the Godhead is not manifested in this glorious light, and where God may be said not to dwell. And entering thereinto, Love begins to manifest to the soul the light of the Godhead; and thus is the darkness broken through, and the wonders of the new creation successively manifested. Thus shalt thou be brought to understand really and fundamentally what is the virtue and the power of Love, and what the height and greatness thereof is; how that is indeed the _virtue of all virtues_, though it be invisible, and as a _Nothing_ in appearance, inasmuch as it is the worker of all things, and a powerful _vital energy_ passing through all virtues and powers natural and supernatural, and the _power of all powers_, nothing being able to let or obstruct the _Omnipotence_ of Love, or to resist its invincible penetrating might, which passes through the whole Creation of God, inspecting and governing all things. And in that I said; _It is higher than the highest and greater than the greatest_; thou mayst hereby perceive as in a glimpse the supreme height and greatness of _Omnipotent Love_ which infinitely transcends all that human sense and reason can reach to. The highest Archangel and greatest Powers of Heaven, are in comparison of it, but as dwarfs. Nothing can be conceived higher and greater in God himself, by the very highest and greatest of his creatures. There is such infinity in it as comprehends and surpasses all the divine attributes. But in that it was also said, _Its greatness is greater than God_; that likewise is very true in the sense wherein it was spoken. For Love can there enter where God dwelleth not, since the most high God dwelleth not in darkness, but in the Light, the hellish darkness being put under his feet. Thus, for instance, when our beloved Lord Jesus Christ was in Hell, Hell was not the mansion of God or of Christ, Hell sees not God, neither was it with God, nor could it be at all with him; Hell stood in the darkness and anxiety of Nature, and no light of the Divine Majesty did there enter; God was not there, for he is not in the darkness nor in the anguish; but Love was there; and Love destroyed Death and conquered Hell. So also when thou art in anguish or trouble, which is _hell within_, God is not the anguish or trouble, neither is he in the anguish or trouble; but his Love is there, and brings thee out of the anguish and trouble into God, leading thee into the light and joy of his presence. When God hides himself in thee, Love is still there, and makes him manifest in thee. Such is the inconceivable greatness and largeness of Love, which will hence appear to thee as great as God _above Nature_ and greater than God _in Nature_, or as considered in his manifestative glory. Lastly, whereas I said, _Whosoever finds it finds Nothing and all Things_; that is also certain and true. But how finds he _Nothing_? Why, I will tell thee how. He that findeth it findeth a supernatural, supersensual Abyss, which hath no ground or Byss to stand on, and where there is no place to dwell in; and he findeth also nothing is like unto it and therefore it may fitly be compared to _Nothing_, for it is deeper than any _Thing_, and is as Nothing with respect to All Things, forasmuch as it is not comprehensible by any of them. And because it is Nothing respectively, it is therefore free from All Things, and is that only Good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is, there being Nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by. But in that I lastly said; _Whosoever finds it finds All Things_; there is nothing can be more true than this assertion. It hath been the Beginning of All Things; and it ruleth All Things. It is also the End of All Things; and will thence comprehend All Things within its circle. All Things are from it, and in it, and by it. If thou findest it thou comest into that ground from whence All Things are proceeded, and wherein they subsist; and thou art in it a King over all the works of God. Here the Disciple was exceedingly ravished with what his Master had so wonderfully and surprisingly declared, and returned his most hearty and humble thanks for that light which he had been an instrument of conveying to him. But being desirous to hear further concerning these high matters, and to know somewhat more particularly, he requested him that he would give him leave to wait on him the next day again; and that he would then be pleased to show him _how_ and _where_ he might find this which was so much beyond all price and value, and whereabout the seat and abode of it might be in human nature, with the entire process of the discovery and bringing it forth to light. The Master said to him: This then we will discourse about at our next conference, as God shall reveal the same to us by his Spirit, which is a searcher of All Things. And if thou dost remember well what I answered thee in the beginning, thou shalt soon come thereby to understand that hidden mystical wisdom of God; which none of the wise men of the world know; and where the Mine thereof is to be found in thee shall be given thee from above to discern. Be silent therefore in thy spirit, and watch unto prayer; that, when we meet again to-morrow in the love of Christ, thy mind may be disposed for finding that noble Pearl, which to the World appears _Nothing_, but to the Children of Wisdom is _All Things_. DIALOGUE II The Disciple being very earnest to be more fully instructed how he might arrive at the supersensual life, and how, having found all things, he might come to be a king over all God's works, came again to his Master next morning, having watched the night in prayer, that he might be disposed to receive and apprehend the instructions that should be given him by a divine irradiation upon his mind. And the Disciple, after a little space of silence, bowed himself, and thus brake forth. DISCIPLE O my Master, my Master! I have now endeavoured to recollect my soul in the presence of God, and to cast myself into the Deep where no creature doth nor can dwell; that I might hear the voice of my Lord speaking in me, and be initiated into that high life whereof I heard yesterday such great and amazing things. But alas I neither hear nor see as I should. There is still such a partition wall in me which beats back the heavenly sounds in their passage, and obstructs the entrance of that light whereby alone divine objects are discoverable, as till this be gone I can have but small hopes, yea, even none at all, of arriving at those glorious attainments which you pressed me to, or of entering into _that where no creature dwells_, and which you call _Nothing_ and _All Things_. Wherefore be so kind as to inform me what is required on my part, that this partition which hinders may be broken or removed. MASTER This partition is the creaturely will in thee, and this can be broken by nothing but the Grace of self-denial, which is the entrance into the true following of Christ, and totally removed by nothing but a perfect conformity with the Divine Will. DISCIPLE But how shall I be able to _break_ this creaturely will which is in me, and is at enmity with the Divine Will? Or what shall I do to follow Christ in so difficult a path, and not to faint in a continual course of self-denial or resignation to the Will of God. MASTER This is not to be done by thyself; but by the light and grace of God received into thy soul, which will, if thou gainsay not, break the darkness that is in thee, and melt down thy old will, which worketh in the darkness and corruption of Nature, and bring it into the obedience of Christ, whereby the partition of the creaturely self is removed from betwixt God and thee. DISCIPLE I know that I cannot do it of myself. But I would fain learn how I must receive this Divine Light and Grace into me, which is to do it for me, if I hinder it not my own self. What is then required of me in order to admit this Breaker of the partition, and to promote the attainment of the ends of such admission? MASTER There is nothing more required of thee at first than not to resist this grace, which is manifested in thee; and nothing in the whole process of the work, but to be obedient and passive to the Light of God shining through the darkness of thy creaturely being, which comprehendeth it not, as reaching no higher than the _Light of Nature_. DISCIPLE But is it not for me to attain, if I can, both the Light of God, and the Light of the outward Nature too, and to make use of them both for the ordering of my life wisely and prudently? MASTER It is right so to do. And it is indeed a treasure above all earthly treasures to be possessed of the Light of God and Nature operating in their spheres, and to have both the Eye of Time and Eternity at once open together, and yet not to interfere with each other. DISCIPLE This is a great satisfaction to me to hear; having been very uneasy about it for some time. But how this can be without interfering with each other, there is the difficulty. Wherefore fain would I know, if it were lawful, the boundaries of the one and the other, and how both the Divine and the Natural Light may in their several spheres respectively act and operate for the Manifestation of the Mysteries of God and Nature, and for the conduct of my outward and inward life? MASTER That each of these may be preserved distinctly in their several spheres, without confounding Things Heavenly and Things Earthly, or breaking the golden Chain of Wisdom, it will be necessary, my child, in the first place to wait for and attend the Supernatural and Divine Light, as this superior Light appointed to govern the day, rising in the true East, which is the Centre of Paradise, and the great Light breaking forth as out of the darkness within thee, through a pillar of fire and thunder-clouds, and thereby reflecting also upon the inferior Light of Nature a sort of image of itself, whereby only it can be kept in its due subordination; that which is _below_ being made subservient to that which is _above_, and that which is _without_ to that which is _within_. Thus there will be no danger of interfering, but all will go right, and everything abide in its proper sphere. DISCIPLE Therefore without Reason or the Light of Nature be sanctified in my soul, and illuminated by this superior Light, as from the central East of the holy Light-World, by the Eternal and Intellectual Sun, I perceive there will always be some confusion, and I shall never be able to manage aright either what concerneth Time or Eternity. But I must always be at a loss, or break the links of Wisdom's Chain. MASTER It is even so as thou hast said. All is confusion if thou hast no more than the dim Light of Nature, or unsanctified and unregenerated Reason to guide thee by, and if only the Eye of Time be opened in thee, which cannot pierce beyond its own limit. Wherefore seek the Fountain of Light, waiting in the deep ground of thy soul for the rising there of the Sun of Righteousness, whereby the Light of Nature in thee, with the properties thereof, will be made to shine seven times brighter than ordinary. For it shall receive the stamp, image and impression of the Supersensual and Supernatural, so that the sensual and rational life will hence be brought into the most perfect order and harmony. DISCIPLE But how am I to wait for the rising of this glorious Sun, and how am I to seek in the Centre this Fountain of Light, which may enlighten me throughout and bring my properties into perfect harmony? I am in Nature, as I said before, and which way shall I pass through Nature, and the light thereof, so that I may come into the Supernatural and Supersensual ground whence this true light, which is the Light of Minds, doth arise; and this without the destruction of my nature, or quenching the Light of it, which is my reason? MASTER Cease but from thine own activity, steadfastly fixing thine Eye upon _one Point_, and with a strong purpose relying upon the promised Grace of God in Christ, to bring thee out of thy Darkness into his marvellous Light. For this end gather in all thy thoughts, and by faith press into the Centre, laying hold upon the Word of God, which is infallible, and which hath called thee. Be thou then obedient to this call, and be silent before the Lord, sitting alone with him in thy inmost and most hidden cell, thy mind being centrally united in itself, and attending his Will in the patience of hope. So shall thy Light break forth as the Morning, and after the redness thereof is passed, the Sun himself which thou waitest for, shall arise unto thee, and under his most healing wings thou shalt greatly rejoice; ascending and descending in his bright and salutiferous beams. Behold this is the true Supersensual Ground of Life. DISCIPLE I believe it indeed to be even so. But will not this destroy Nature? Will not the Light of Nature in me be extinguished by this greater Light? Or, must not the outward Life hence perish, with the earthly body which I carry? MASTER By no means at all. It is true, the evil Nature will be destroyed by it; but by the destruction thereof you can be no loser, but very much a gainer. The Eternal Bond of Nature is the same afterward as before; and the properties are the same. So that Nature hereby is only advanced and meliorated, and the Light thereof, or human Reason, by being kept within its due bounds, and regulated by a superior Light, is only made useful. DISCIPLE Pray, therefore, let me know how this inferior Light ought to be used by me; how it is to be kept within its due bounds; and after what manner the superior Light doth regulate it and ennoble it. MASTER Know then, my beloved son, that if thou wilt keep the Light of Nature within its own proper bounds, and make use thereof in just subordination to the Light of God, thou must consider that there are in thy soul two _Wills_, an _inferior_ Will, which is for driving thee to Things without and below; and a _superior_ Will, which is for drawing thee to Things within and above. These two Wills are now set together, as it were back to back, and in a direct contrariety to each other; but in the beginning it was not so. For this contraposition of the soul in these two is no more than the effect of the Fallen State; since before that they were placed one under the other, that is, the _superior_ Will _above_, as the Lord, and the inferior _below_, as the subject. And thus it ought to have continued. Thou must also further consider that, answering to these two Wills, there are likewise two Eyes in the soul, whereby they are severally directed, forasmuch as these Eyes are not united in one single view, but look quite contrary ways at once. They are in a like manner set one against the other, without a common medium to join them. And hence, so long as this double-sightedness doth remain, it is impossible there should be any agreement in the determination of this or that Will. This is very plain. And it showeth the necessity that this malady, arising from the disunion of the rays of vision, be some way remedied and redressed, in order to a true discernment in the mind. Both these eyes therefore must be made to unite by a concentration of rays, there being nothing more dangerous than for the mind to abide thus in the Duplicity and not to seek to arrive at the Unity. Thou perceivest, I know, that thou hast two Wills in thee, one set against the other, the superior and the inferior, and that thou hast always two Eyes within, one against the other, whereof the one Eye may be called the Right Eye, and the other the Left Eye. Thou perceivest too, doubtless, that it is according to the Right Eye that the wheel of the superior Will is moved; and that it is according to the motion of the Left Eye that the contrary wheel in the lower is turned about. DISCIPLE I perceive this, Sir, to be very true; and this it is which causeth a continual combat in me, and createth in me greater anxiety than I am able to express. Nor am I unacquainted with the disease of my own soul, which you have so clearly declared. Alas! I perceive and lament this malady, which so miserably disturbeth my sight; whence I feel such irregular and convulsive motions drawing me on this side and that side. The Spirit seeth not as the Flesh seeth, neither doth, nor can, the Flesh see as the Spirit seeth. Hence the Spirit willeth against the Flesh; and the Flesh willeth against the Spirit in me. This hath been my hard case. And how shall it be remedied? O how may I arrive at the Unity of Will, and how come into the Unity of Vision? MASTER Mark now what I say. The Right Eye looketh forward in thee into Eternity. The Left Eye looketh backward in thee into Time. If thou now sufferest thyself to be always looking into Nature, and the Things of Time, it will be impossible for thee ever to arrive at the Unity, which thou wishest for. Remember this, and be upon thy watch. Give not thy mind leave to enter into nor to fill itself with that which is without thee; neither look thou backward upon thyself; but quit thyself, and look forward to Christ. Let not thy Left Eye deceive thee by making continually one representation after another, and stirring up thereby an earnest longing in the self-propriety; but let thy right eye command this left, and attract it to thee. Yea it is better to pluck it quite out and to cast it from thee, than to suffer it to proceed forth without restraint into Nature, and to follow its own lusts. However there is for this no necessity, since both eyes may become very useful, if ordered aright, and both the Divine and Natural Light may in the soul subsist together, and be of mutual service to each other. But never shalt thou arrive at the Unity of Vision or Uniformity of Will, but by entering fully into the Will of our Saviour Christ, and therein bringing the Eye of Time into the Eye of Eternity, and then descending by means of these united through the Light of God into the Light of Nature. DISCIPLE So then if I can but enter into the Will of my Lord, and abide therein, I am safe, and may both attain to the Light of God in the Spirit of my soul and see with the Eye of God, that is, the Eye of Eternity in the Eternal Ground of my Will; and may also at the same time enjoy the Light of this World nevertheless, not degrading but adorning the Light of Nature, and beholding as with the Eye of Eternity things Eternal, so with the Eye of Nature, things Natural, and both contemplating therein the Wonders of God, and sustaining also thereby the life of my outward vehicle or body. MASTER It is very right. Thou hast well understood, and thou desirest now to enter into the Will of God, and to abide therein as in the Supersensual Ground of Light and Life, where thou mayst in his Light behold both Time and Eternity, and bring all the wonders created of God for the exterior into the interior life, and so eternally rejoice in them to the glory of Christ; the partition of thy Creaturely Will being broken down and the Eye of thy Spirit simplified in and through the Eye of God manifesting itself in the Centre of thy Life. Let this be so now, for it is God's Will. DISCIPLE But it is very hard to be always looking forwards into Eternity, and consequently to attain to the single eye, and simplicity of Divine Vision. The entrance of a soul naked into the Will of God, shutting out all imaginations and desires, and breaking down the strong partition which you mention, is indeed somehow very terrible and shocking to human nature in its present state. O what shall I do, that I may reach this which I so much long for? MASTER My Son, let not the Eye of Nature with the Will of the Wonders depart from that Eye which is introverted into the Divine Liberty, and into the Eternal Light of the Holy Majesty. But let it draw to thee by union with that heavenly internal Eye those wonders which are externally wrought out and manifested in visible Nature. For while thou art in the world, and hast an honest employment, thou art certainly by the Order of Providence obliged to labour in it, and to finish the work given thee, according to thy best ability, without repining in the least; seeking out and manifesting for God's glory the Wonders of Nature and Art. Since let the Nature be what it will it is all the Work and Art of God. And let the Art also be what it will, it is still God's Work and his Art, rather than any art or cunning of man. And all both in Art and Nature serveth but abundantly to manifest the wonderful Works of God, that he for all and in all may be glorified. Yea, all serveth, if thou knowest rightly how to use them, only to recollect thee more inwards, and to draw thy Spirit into that majestic Light wherein the original patterns and forms of things visible are to be seen. Keep, therefore, in the Centre, and stir not from the Presence of God revealed within thy Soul; let the world and the devil make never so great a noise and bustle to draw thee out, mind them not; they cannot hurt thee. It is permitted to the Eye of thy Reason to seek food, and to thy hands by their labour to get food for the terrestrial body. But then this Eye ought not with its desire to enter into the food prepared, which would be covetousness; but must in resignation simply bring it before the Eye of God in thy Spirit, and then thou must seek to place it close to this very Eye, without letting it go. Mark this lesson well. Let the hands or the head be at labour, thy Heart ought nevertheless to rest in God. God is a Spirit; dwell in the Spirit; work in the Spirit; pray in the Spirit; and do every thing in the Spirit; for remember thou also art a Spirit, and thereby created in the Image of God. Therefore see thou attract not in thy desire _Matter_ unto thee, but as much as possible abstract thyself from all Matter whatever; and so, standing in the Centre, present thyself as a naked Spirit before God, in simplicity and purity; and be sure thy Spirit draw in nothing but Spirit. Thou wilt yet be greatly enticed to draw Matter, and to gather that which the World calls _substance_; thereby to have somewhat visible to trust to. But by no means consent to the Tempter, nor yield to the lustings of thy Flesh against the Spirit. For in so doing thou wilt infallibly obscure the Divine Light in thee; thy Spirit will stick in the dark Covetous Root, and from the fiery Source of thy soul will it blaze out in pride and anger; thy Will shall be chained in Earthliness, and shall sink through the Anguish into Darkness and Materiality; and never shalt thou be able to reach the still Liberty, or to stand before the Majesty of God. It will be all darkness to thee, as much Matter as is drawn in by the Desire of thy Will. It will darken God's Majesty to thee, and will close the seeing Eye, by hiding from thee the light of his beloved countenance. This the Serpent longeth to do, but in vain, except thou permittest thy _Imagination_, upon his suggestion, to receive in the alluring Matter; else he can never get in. Behold then, if thou desirest to see God's Light in thy Soul, and be divinely illuminated and conducted, this is the short way that thou art to take; not to let the Eye of thy Spirit enter into Matter, or fill itself with any Thing whatever, either in Heaven or Earth, but to let it enter by a _naked faith_ into the Light of the Majesty; and so receive by _pure love_ the Light of God, and attract the Divine Power into itself, putting on the Divine Body, and growing up in it to the full maturity of the Humanity of Christ. DISCIPLE As I said before, so I say again, this is very hard. I conceive indeed well enough that my Spirit ought to be free from the contagion of Matter, and wholly empty, that it may admit into it the Spirit of God. Also, that this Spirit will not enter, but where the Will entereth into _Nothing_, and resigneth itself up in the _nakedness of faith_, and in the _purity of love_, to its conduct, feeding magically upon the Word of God, and clothing itself thereby with a _Divine Substantiality_. But, alas, how hard it is for the Will to sink into nothing, to attract nothing, to imagine nothing. MASTER Let it be granted that it is so. Is it not surely worth thy while, and all that thou canst ever do? DISCIPLE It is so, I must needs confess. MASTER But perhaps it may not be so hard as at first it appeareth to be; make but the trial and be in earnest. What is there required of thee but to stand still and see the salvation of thy God? And couldst thou desire anything less? Where is the hardship in this? Thou hast nothing to care for, nothing to desire in this life, nothing to imagine or attract. Thou needest only cast thy care upon God, who careth for thee, and leave him to dispose of thee according to his good will and pleasure, even as if thou hadst no will at all in thee. For he knoweth what is best; and if thou canst but trust him, he will most certainly do better for thee, than if thou wert left to thine own choice. DISCIPLE This I most firmly believe. MASTER If thou believest, then go and do accordingly. _All_ is in the _Will_, as I have shown thee. When the Will imagineth after _Somewhat_, then entereth it into that somewhat, and this somewhat taketh the Will into itself, and overcloudeth it, so as it can have no Light, but must dwell in Darkness, unless it return back out of that somewhat into _Nothing_. But when the Will imagineth or hasteth after nothing, then it entereth into _Nothing_, where it receiveth the Will of God into itself, and so dwelleth in Light, and worketh all its works in it. DISCIPLE I am now satisfied that the main cause of any one's spiritual blindness, is his letting his Will into Somewhat, or into that which he hath wrought, of what nature soever it be, good or evil, and his setting his heart or affections upon the work of his own hand or brain, and that when the earthly body perisheth, then the Soul must be imprisoned in that very thing which it shall have received and let in; and if the Light of God be not in it, being deprived of the Light of this World, it cannot but be found in a dark prison. MASTER This is a very precious Gate of Knowledge; I am glad thou takest it into such consideration. The understanding of the whole Scripture is contained in it; and all that hath been written from the beginning of the World to this day may be found therein, by him that having entered with his Will into Nothing, hath there found All Things, by finding God, from Whom, and to Whom, and in Whom are All Things. By this means thou shalt come to hear and see God; and after this earthly life is ended to see with the Eye of Eternity all the Wonders of God and of Nature, and more particularly those which shall be wrought by thee in the flesh, or all that the Spirit of God shall have given thee to labour out for thyself and thy neighbour, or all that the Eye of Reason enlightened from above, may at any time have manifested to thee. Delay not therefore to enter in by this Gate, which if thou seest in the Spirit, as some highly favoured souls have seen it, thou seest in the Supersensual Ground _all that God is and can do_; thou seest also therewith, as one hath said who was taken thereinto, _through Heaven, Hell, and Earth; and through the Essence of all Essences_. Whosoever findeth it, hath found all that he can desire. Here is the Virtue and Power of the Love of God displayed. Here is the Height and Depth, here is the Breadth and Length thereof manifested, as ever the capacity of thy soul can contain. By this thou shalt come into that Ground out of which all Things are originated, and in which they subsist; and in it thou shalt reign over all God's Works, as a Prince of God. DISCIPLE Pray tell me, dear Master, where dwelleth it _in Man_? MASTER Where Man dwelleth not: there hath it its seat in Man. DISCIPLE Where is that in a Man, when Man dwelleth not in himself? MASTER It is the resigned Ground of a Soul to which nothing cleaveth. DISCIPLE Where is the Ground in any Soul, to which there will nothing stick? Or where is that which abideth and dwelleth not in something? MASTER It is the Centre of Rest and Motion in the resigned Will of a truly contrite Spirit, which is Crucified to the World. This Centre of the Will is impenetrable consequently to the World, the Devil, and Hell. Nothing in all the World can enter into it, or adhere to it, because the Will is dead with Christ unto the World, but quickened with him in the Centre thereof, after his blessed Image. Here it is where Man dwelleth not, and where no Self abideth or can abide. DISCIPLE O where is this naked Ground of the Soul void of all Self? And how shall I come at the hidden Centre, where God dwelleth, and not Man? Tell me plainly, loving Sir, where it is, and how it is to be found of me, and entered into? MASTER There where the Soul hath slain its own Will, and willeth no more any Thing as from itself, but only as God willeth, and as his Spirit moveth upon the Soul shall this appear. Where the Love of Self is banished there dwelleth the Love of God. For so much of the Soul's own Will as is dead unto itself even so much room hath the Will of God, which is his Love, taken up in that Soul. The reason whereof is this: Where its own Will did before sit, there is now nothing; and where nothing is, there it is that the Love of God worketh alone. DISCIPLE But how shall I comprehend it? MASTER If thou goest about to comprehend it, then it will fly away from thee; but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly up to it, then it will abide with thee, and become the Life of thy Life, and be natural to thee. DISCIPLE And how can this be without dying, or the whole destruction of my Will? MASTER Upon this entire surrender and yielding up of thy Will, the Love of God in thee becometh the Life of thy Nature; it killeth thee not, but quickeneth thee, who art now dead to thyself in thine own Will, according to its proper Life, even the Life of God. And then thou livest, yet not to thy own Will, but thou livest to its Will; for as much as thy Will is henceforth become its Will. So then it is no longer thy Will, but the Will of God; no longer the Love of thyself, but the Love of God, which moveth and operateth in thee; and then, thou being thus comprehended in it, thou art dead indeed as to thyself, but art alive unto God. So being dead thou livest, or rather God liveth in thee by his Spirit; and his Love is made to thee Life from the Dead. Never couldst thou with all thy seeking have apprehended it, but it hath apprehended thee. Much less couldst thou have comprehended it, but it hath comprehended thee; and so the Treasure of Treasures is found. DISCIPLE How is it that so few Souls do find it, when yet all would be glad enough to have it? MASTER They all seek it in _somewhat_, and so they find it not. For where there is Somewhat for the Soul to adhere to, there the Soul findeth _that somewhat only_, and taketh up its rest therein, until she seeth that it is to be found in Nothing, and goeth out of the Somewhat into Nothing, even into that Nothing out of which all Things may be made. The Soul here saith "_I have nothing_, for I am utterly stripped and naked of every Thing; _I can do nothing_, for I have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; _I am nothing_, for all that I am is no more than an Image of Being, and only God is to me I AM; and so, sitting down in my own Nothingness, I give glory to the Eternal Being, and _will nothing_ of myself, that so God may _will all_ in me, being unto me my God and All Things." Herein now it is that so very few find this most precious treasure in the Soul, though every one would so fain have it; and might also have it, were it not for this Somewhat in every one that letteth. DISCIPLE But if the Love should proffer itself to a Soul, could not that Soul find it, nor lay hold of it, without going for it into Nothing? MASTER No verily. Men seek and find not, because they seek it not in the naked Ground where it lieth; but in something or other where it never will be, nor can be. They seek it in their _own Will_, and they find it not. They seek it in their _Self-Desire_, and they meet not with it. They look for it in an _Image_, or in an _Opinion_, or in _Affection_, or a natural _Devotion_ and _Fervour_, and they lose the substance by thus hunting after a shadow. They search for it in something sensible or imaginary, in somewhat which they may have a more peculiar natural inclination for, and adhesion to; and so they miss of what they seek, for want of diving into the Supernatural and Supersensual Ground, where the Treasure is hid. Now, should the Love graciously condescend to proffer itself to such as these, and even to present itself evidently before the Eye of their Spirit, yet could it find no place at all in them, neither could it be held by them, or remain with them. DISCIPLE Why not, if the Love should be willing and ready to offer itself, and to stay with them? MASTER Because the _Imaginariness_ which is in their own Will hath set itself up in the place thereof. And so this Imaginariness would have the Love in it, but the Love fleeth away, for it is its prison. The Love may offer itself; but it cannot abide where the _Self-Desire_ attracteth or imagineth. That Will which attracteth Nothing, and to which Nothing adhereth, is only capable of receiving it; for it dwelleth only in Nothing, as I said, and therefore they find it not. DISCIPLE If it dwell only in Nothing, what is now the office of it in Nothing? MASTER The office of the Love here is to penetrate incessantly into Something; and if it penetrate into, and find a place in Something which is standing still and at rest, then its business is to take possession thereof. And when it hath there taken possession, then it rejoiceth therein with its flaming Love-fire, even as the sun doth in the visible world. And then the office of it is without intermission to enkindle a fire in this Something which may burn it up; and then with the flames thereof exceedingly to enflame itself, and raise the heat of the Love-fire by it, even seven degrees higher. DISCIPLE O, loving Master, how shall I understand this? MASTER If it but once kindle a fire within thee, my son, thou shalt then certainly feel how it consumeth all that which it toucheth, thou shalt feel it in the burning up thyself, and swiftly devouring all _Egoity_ or that which thou callest _I and Me_, as standing in a separate Root, and divided from the Deity, the Fountain of thy Being. And when this enkindling is made in thee, then the Love doth so exceedingly rejoice in thy fire, as thou wouldest not for all the world be out of it; yea, wouldst rather suffer thyself to be killed, than to enter into _thy something_ again. This fire must now grow hotter and hotter, till it shall have perfected its office with respect to thee. Its flame also will be so very great that it will never leave thee, though it should even cost thee thy temporal life, but it would go with thee with its sweet loving fire into death; and if thou wentest also into Hell, it would break Hell in pieces also for thy sake. Nothing is more certain than this, for it is stronger than Death and Hell. DISCIPLE Enough, my dearest Master, I can no longer endure that any Thing should divert me from it. But how shall I find the nearest way to it? MASTER Where the way is hardest, there go thou; and what the World casteth away, that take thou up. What the World doth, that do thou not; but in all things walk thou contrary to the World. So thou comest the nearest way to that which thou art seeking. DISCIPLE If I should in all things walk contrary to other people, I must needs be in a very unquiet and sad state, and the World would not fail to account me for a madman. MASTER I bid thee not, Child, to do harm to anyone, thereby to create to thyself any misery or unquietness. This is not what I mean by walking contrary in everything to the World. But because the World, as the World, loveth all deceit and vanity, and walketh in false and treacherous ways, thence, if thou hast a mind to act a clean contrary part to the ways thereof, without any exception or reserve whatsoever, walk thou only in the right way, which is called the _Way of Light_, as that of the World is properly the _Way of Darkness_. For the right way, even the Path of Light, is contrary to all the ways of the World. But whereas thou art afraid of creating to thyself hereby trouble and inquietude, that indeed will be so according to the flesh. In the world thou must have trouble, and thy flesh will not fail to be unquiet, and to give thee occasion of continual repentance. Nevertheless in this very _anxiety of soul_ arising from the world or the flesh, the Love doth most willingly enkindle itself, and its cheering and conquering fire is but made to blaze forth with greater strength for the destruction of that evil. And whereas thou dost also say, that the World will for this esteem thee mad; it is true the World will be apt enough to censure thee for a madman in walking contrary to it, and thou art not to be surprised if the children thereof laugh at thee, calling thee silly Fool. For the Way to the Love of God is Folly to the World, but is Wisdom to the Children of God. Hence, whenever the World perceiveth this holy Fire of Love in God's Children, it concludeth immediately that they are turned fools, and are beside themselves. But to the Children of God that which is despised of the World is the greatest Treasure, yea, so great a Treasure is it as no life can express, nor tongue so much as name what this enflaming, all-conquering Love of God is. It is brighter than the Sun; it is sweeter than anything that is called sweet; it is stronger than all strength; it is more nutrimental than food; more cheering to the heart than wine, and more pleasant than all the joy and pleasantness of this world. Whosoever obtaineth it is richer than any Monarch on earth; and he who getteth it, is nobler than any Emperor can be, and more potent and absolute than all Power and Authority. DIALOGUE III BETWEEN JUNIUS, A SCHOLAR, AND THEOPHORUS, HIS MASTER, CONCERNING HEAVEN AND HELL The Scholar asked his Master "Whither goeth the Soul when the Body dieth?" His Master answered him: There is no necessity for it to go any whither. How not, said the inquisitive Junius, must not the Soul leave the body at death and go either to Heaven or Hell? It needs no going forth, replied the venerable Theophorus. Only the outward Mortal Life with the body shall separate themselves from the Soul. The Soul hath Heaven and Hell within itself before, according as it is written. _The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, neither shall they say Lo here! or Lo there! For behold the Kingdom of God is within you._ And which soever of the two, that is, either Heaven or Hell, is manifested in it, in that the Soul standeth. Here Junius said to his Master: This is hard to understand. Doth it not enter into Heaven or Hell, as a man entereth into a house; or as one goeth through a hole or casement into an unknown place; so goeth it not into another world? The Master spoke and said: No, there is verily no such kind of entering in; forasmuch as Heaven and Hell are every where, being universally co-extended. How is that possible? said the Scholar. What, can Heaven and Hell be here present, where we are now sitting? And if one of them might, can you ever make me believe that ever both should be here together? Then spoke the Master in this manner: I have said that Heaven is everywhere present and it is true. For God is in Heaven; and God is everywhere. I have said also that Hell must be in like manner everywhere. For the _Wicked One_, who is the Devil, is in Hell, and the whole World, as the Apostle hath taught us, lyeth in the _Wicked One_, or the _Evil One_; which is as much as to say, not only that the Devil is in the World, but that the World is in the Devil; and if in the Devil, then in Hell too, because he is there. So Hell therefore is everywhere, as well as Heaven; which is the thing that was to be proved. The Scholar, startled hereat, said: Pray make me to understand this. To whom the Master: Understand then what Heaven is. It is but the _turning in of the Will to the Love of God_. Wheresoever thou findest God manifesting himself in Love, there thou findest Heaven, without travelling for it so much as one foot. And by this understand also what Hell is and where it is. I say unto thee it is but the _turning in of the Will into the wrath of God_. Wheresoever the Anger of God doth more or less manifest itself, there certainly is more or less of Hell, in whatsoever place it be. So that it is but the turning in of thy will either into his Love, or into his Anger; and thou art accordingly either in Heaven or in Hell. Mark it well. And this now cometh to pass in this present life, whereof St Paul speaking saith, _Our conversation is in Heaven_. And the Lord Christ saith also, _My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them the Eternal Life, and none shall pluck them out of my hand_. Observe, he saith not, I _will give_ them, after this life is ended, but I _give_ them, that is, now in the time of this life. And what else is this gift of Christ to his followers, but an Eternity of Life, which for certain can be no where but in Heaven. Yea, moreover, none shall be able to pluck them out of Heaven, because it is he who holdeth them there, and they are in his hand which nothing can resist. All therefore doth consist in the turning in, or entering of the Will into Heaven, by hearing the the voice of Christ, and both _knowing_ him, and _following_ him. And so on the contrary it is also. Understandest thou this? His Scholar said to him: I think, in part, I do. But how cometh this entering of the Will into Heaven to pass? The Master answered him: This then will I endeavour to satisfy thee in; but thou must be very attentive to what I shall say unto thee. Know then, my son, that when the Ground of the Will yieldeth itself up to God, then it sinketh out of its own Self, and out of and beyond all ground and place, that is or can be imagined, into a certain unknown Deep, where God only is manifest, and where he only worketh and willeth. And then it becometh nothing to itself, as to its own working and willing, and so God worketh and willeth in it. And God dwells in this designed Will, by which the Soul is sanctified, and so fitted to come into Divine Rest. Now, in this case, when the body breaketh, the Soul is so thoroughly penetrated all over with the Divine Light, even as a glowing hot iron is by the fire, by which being penetrated throughout, it loseth its darkness, and becomes bright and shining. Now this is the _hand of Christ_, where God's Love thoroughly inhabits the Soul, and is in it a shining Light, and a new glorious Life. And then the Soul is in Heaven, and is a Temple of the Holy Ghost, and is itself the very Heaven of God, wherein he dwelleth. Lo, this is the entering of the Will into Heaven; and thus it cometh to pass. Be pleased, Sir, to proceed, said the Scholar, and let me know how it fareth on the other side. The Master said: The godly Soul, you see, is in the _hand of Christ_, that is in Heaven, as he himself hath told us, and in what manner this cometh to be so, you have also heard. But the ungodly Soul is not willing in this life-time to come into the Divine Resignation of its Will, or to enter into the Will of God; but goeth on still in its own lust and desire, in vanity and falsehood, and so entereth into the Will of the Devil. It receiveth, thereupon, into itself nothing but wickedness; nothing but lying, pride, covetousness, envy and wrath; and thereunto it giveth up its Will and whole Desire. This is the Vanity of the Will; and this same Vanity or vain shadow must also in like manner be manifested in the Soul, which hath yielded itself up also to be its servant; and must work therein even as the Love of God worketh in the regenerated Will; and penetrate it all over, as fire doth iron. And it is not possible for this Soul to come into the Rest of God, because God's Anger is manifested in it, and worketh in it. Now when a body is parted from the Soul, then beginneth the Eternal Melancholy and Despair, because it now findeth that it is become altogether Vanity, even a Vanity most vexatious to itself, and a distracting Fury, and a self-tormenting Abomination. Now it perceiveth itself disappointed of every Thing which it had before fancied, and blind, and naked, and wounded, and hungry, and thirsty, without the least prospect of ever being relieved, or obtaining so much as one drop of the water of Eternal Life. And it feeleth itself to be its own vile executioner and tormentor; and is affrighted at its own ugly dark form, and fain would flee from itself if it could, but it cannot, being fast bound with the chains of the Dark Nature, whereinto it had sunk itself when in the flesh. And so, not having learned or accustomed itself to sink down into the Divine Grace, and being also strongly possessed with the Idea of God, as an angry and jealous God, the poor Soul is both afraid and ashamed to bring its Will into God, by which deliverance might possibly come to it. The Soul is afraid to do it, as fearing to be consumed by so doing, under the apprehension of the Deity as a mere devouring Fire. The Soul is also _ashamed_ to do it, as being confounded at its own nakedness and monstrosity, and therefore would, if it were possible, hide itself from the Majesty of God, and cover its abominable form from his most holy eye, though by casting itself still deeper into the Darkness. Therefore it _will not_ enter into God, nay, it _cannot_ enter with its false Will; yea, though it should strive to enter, yet can it not enter into the Love, because of the Will which hath reigned in it. For such a Soul is thereby captivated in the Wrath, yea, is itself but _mere Wrath_, having by its false Desire, which it had awakened in itself, comprehended and shut itself up therewith, and so transformed itself into the nature and property thereof. And since also the Light of God doth not shine in it, nor the Love of God enclose it, the Soul is moreover a _great Darkness_, and is withal an anxious Fire-source, carrying about an Hell in itself, and not being able to discern the least glimpse of the Light of God, or to feel the least spark of his Love. Thus it dwelleth in itself as in Hell, and needeth no entering into Hell at all, or being carried thither, for in what place soever it may be, so long as it is in itself, it is in the Hell. And though it should travel far and cast itself many hundred thousand leagues from its present place, to be out of Hell; yet still would it remain in its hellish source and darkness. If this be so, how then cometh it, said the Scholar to Theophorus, that an Heavenly Soul doth not in the time of this life perfectly perceive the Heavenly Light and Joy, and the Soul which is without God in the World, doth not also here feel Hell, as well as hereafter? Why should they not both be perceived and felt as well in this life as in the next, seeing that both of them are in Man, and one of them as you have shewed, worketh in every man? To whom Theophorus presently returned this answer: The Kingdom of Heaven is in the Saints operative and manifestative of itself by _Faith_. They who carry God within them, and live by his Spirit, find the Kingdom of God in their Faith, and they feel the Love of God in their Faith, by which the Will hath given up itself unto God, and is made Godlike. All is transacted within them _by Faith_, which is to them the evidence of the Eternal Invisibles, and a great manifestation in their Spirit of this Divine Kingdom, which is within them. But their natural life is nevertheless encompassed with flesh and blood; and this standing in a contrariety thereto, and being placed through the Fall in the principle of God's Anger, and environed about with the World, which by no means can be reconciled to Faith, these faithful Souls cannot but be very much exposed to attacks from this World, wherein they are sojourners; neither can they be insensible of their being thus encompassed about with flesh and blood, and with the World's vain lust, which ceaseth not continually to penetrate the outward mortal life, and to tempt them manifold ways, even as it did Christ. Whence the World on one side and the Devil on the other, not without the curse of God's Anger in flesh and blood, do thoroughly sift and penetrate the Life, whereby it cometh to pass that the Soul is often in anxiety when these three are all set upon it together, and when Hell thus assaulteth the Life, and would manifest itself in the Soul. But the Soul hereupon sinketh down into the hope of the Grace of God, and standeth like a beautiful Rose in the midst of Thorns, until the Kingdom of this World shall fall from it in the death of the body. And then the Soul first becometh truly manifest in the Love of God, and of his Kingdom, which is the Kingdom of Love; having henceforth nothing more to hinder it. But during this life she must walk with Christ in this world, and then Christ delivereth her out of her own Hell, by penetrating her with his Love throughout, and standing by her in Hell, and even changing her Hell into Heaven. But in that thou sayest, Why do not the Souls which are without God feel Hell in this World? I answer; They bear it about with them in their wicked consciences, but they know it not; because the World hath put out their eyes, and its deadly cup hath cast them likewise into a sleep, a most fatal sleep. Notwithstanding which it must be owned that the Wicked do frequently feel Hell within them during the time of this mortal life, though they may not apprehend that it is Hell, because of the earthly vanity which cleaveth to them from without, and the sensible pleasures and amusements wherewith they are intoxicated. And moreover it is to be noted that the outward Life in every such one hath yet the Light of the outward Nature, which ruleth in this Life, and so the Pain of Hell cannot, so long as that hath the rule, be revealed. But when the body dyeth or breaketh away, so as the Soul cannot any longer enjoy such temporal pleasure and delight, nor the Light of this outward World, which is wholly thereupon extinguished as to it, then the Soul stands in an eternal hunger and thirst after such vanities as it was here in love withal, but yet can reach nothing but that false Will, which it had impressed in itself while in the body; and wherein it had abounded to its great loss. And now whereas it had too much of its Will in this life, and yet was not contented therewith, it hath, after the separation by death, as little of it; which createth in it an everlasting thirst after that which it can henceforth never obtain more, and causeth it to be in a perpetual anxious lust after Vanity, according to its former impression, and in a continual rage of hunger after those sorts of wickedness and lewdness whereinto it was immersed, being in the flesh. Fain would it do more evil still, but that it hath not either wherein or wherewith to effect the same, and therefore it doth perform this only _in itself_. All is not literally transacted, as if it were outward; and so the ungodly is tormented by those Furies which are in his own mind, and begotten upon himself by himself. For he is verily become his own Devil and Tormentor; and that by which he sinned here, when the Shadow of this World is passed away, abideth still with him in the impression, and is made his prison and his Hell. But this hellish hunger and thirst cannot be fully manifested in the Soul, till the Body, which ministered to the Soul that it lusted after, and with which the Soul was so bewitched, as to doat thereupon, and pursue all its cravings, be stripped off from it. I perceive then, said _Junius_ to his Master, that the Soul, having played the wanton with the Body in all voluptuousness, and served the lusts thereof during this life, retaineth still the very same inclinations and affections which it had before, then when it hath no opportunity or capacity to satisfy them longer; and that when this cannot be, there is then Hell opened in that Soul, which had been shut up in it before by means of the outward Life in the Body, and of the Light of this World. Do I rightly understand? _Theophorus_ said: It is very rightly understood by you. Go on. On the other hand (said he) I clearly perceive by what I have heard, that Heaven cannot but be in a loving Soul which is possessed of God, and hath subdued thereby the Body to the obedience of the Spirit in all things, and perfectly immersed itself into the Will and Love of God. And when the Body dyeth, and the Soul is hence redeemed from the Earth, it is now evident to me that the Life of God, which was hidden in it, will display itself gloriously, and Heaven consequently be then manifested. But, notwithstanding, if there be not a local Heaven besides and a local Hell, I am still at a loss where to place no small part of the Creation, if not the greatest. For where must all the intellectual inhabitants of it abide? In their own Principle, answered the Master, whether it be of Light or of Darkness. For every created intellectual Being remaineth in its deeds and essences, in its wonders and properties, in its life and image; and therein it beholdeth and feeleth God, as who is everywhere, whether it be in the Love or in the Wrath. If it be in the Love of God, then beholdeth it God accordingly, and feeleth him as he is, Love. But if it hath captivated itself in the Wrath of God, then it cannot behold God otherwise than in the Wrathful Nature, nor perceive him otherwise than as an incensed and vindictive Spirit. All places are alike to it, if it be in God's Love; and, if it be not there, every place is Hell alike. What Place can bound a Thought? Or what needeth any understanding Spirit to be kept here or there, in order to its happiness or misery? Verily, wheresoever it is, it is in the Abyssal World, where there is neither end nor limit. And whither, I pray, should it go? since though it should go a thousand miles off, or a thousand times ten thousand miles, and this ten thousand times over beyond the bounds of the Universe, and into the imagining spaces above the stars, yet it were then still in the very same point from whence it went out. For God is the _Place_ of Spirit, if it may be lawful to attribute to him such a name to the which Body hath a relation. And in God there is no limit; both near and far off is here all one; and be it in his Love, or be it in his Anger, the abyssal Will of the Spirit is altogether unconfined. It is swift as thought, passing through all things; it is magical, and nothing corporeal or from without can let it; it dwelleth in its wonders, and they are its house. Thus it is with every Intellectual, whether of the Order of Angels or of human Souls, and you need not fear but there will be room enough for them all, be they ever so many; and such also as shall best suit them, even according to their election and determination, and which may thence very well be called the "_own place_" of each. At which said the Scholar, I remember, indeed, that it is written concerning the great traitor, that he went after death to his _own place_. The Master said: The same is true of every Soul, when it departeth this mortal life. And it is true in like manner of every Angel and Spirit whatsoever, which is necessarily determined by its own choice. As God is everywhere, so also the Angels are everywhere; but each one in its own Principle, and in its own Property or (if you had rather) in its _own Place_. The same Essence of God, which is as a Place to Spirits, is confessed to be everywhere, but the appropriation or participation hereof is different to everyone, according as each hath attracted it magically in the earnestness of Will. The same Divine Essence which is with the Angels of God above, is with us also below. And the same Divine Nature which is with us is likewise with them; but after different manners and in different degrees communicated and participated. And what I have said here of the Divine, is no less to be considered by you in the participation of the Diabolical Essence and Nature, which is the Power of Darkness, as to the manifold modes, degrees, and appropriations thereof in the false Will. In this World there is strife between them, but when this World hath reached in anyone the Limit, then the Principle catcheth that which is its own, and so the Soul receiveth companions accordingly, that is, either Angels or Devils. To whom the Scholar again: Heaven and Hell then being in us at strife in the time of this life, and God himself being also thus near to us, where can Angels and Devils dwell? And the Master answered him thus: Where thou dost not dwell as to thy _Self-hood_ and to thine _own Will_, there the holy Angels dwell with thee, and every where all over round about thee. Remember this well. On the contrary, where thou dwellest as to thyself, or in Self-seeking, and Self-will, there to be sure the Devils will be with thee, and will take up their abode with thee, and dwell all over thee, and round about thee everywhere, which God in his mercy prevent. I understand not this, said the Scholar, so perfectly well as I could wish. Be pleased to make it a little more plain to me. The Master then spake: Mark well what I am going to say. Where the Will of God in anything willeth, there is God manifested. And in this very manifestation of God the Angels do dwell. But where God in any Creature willeth not with the Will of that Creature, there God is not manifested to it, neither can he be; but dwelleth in himself, without the co-operation thereof, and subjection to him in humility. There God is an unmanifested God to the Creature. So the Angels dwell not with such an one; for wherever they dwell, there is the Glory of God; and they make his Glory. What then dwelleth in such a Creature as this? God dwelleth not therein; the Angels dwell not therein; God willeth not therein; the Angels also will not therein. The case is evidently this; in that Soul or Creature its own will is without God's Will; and there the Devil dwelleth; and with him all that is without God, and without Christ. This is the truth; lay it to heart. The _Scholar_ said: It is possible I may ask several impertinent questions; but I beseech you, good Sir, to have patience with me, and to pity my ignorance, if I ask what may appear to you perhaps ridiculous, or may not be at all fit for me to expect an answer to. For I have several questions still to propound to you; but I am ashamed of my own thoughts in this matter. The _Master_ said: Be plain with me, and propose whatever is upon your mind; yea, be not ashamed even to appear ridiculous, so that by querying you may but become wiser. The _Scholar_ thanked his Master for this liberty and said: How far then are Heaven and Hell asunder? To whom he answered thus: As far as Day and Night; or as far as Something and Nothing. They are in one another and yet they are at the greater distance one from the other. Nay, the one of them is as nothing to the other; and yet notwithstanding they cause joy and grief to one another. Heaven is throughout the whole World, and it is also without the World over all, even everywhere that is, or that can be even so much as imagined. It filleth all, it is within all, it is without all, it encompasseth all; without division, without place; working by a Divine Manifestation, and flowing forth universally, but not going in the least out of itself. For only in itself it worketh and is revealed, being one and undivided in all. It appeareth only through the Manifestation of God; and never but in itself only. And in that Being which cometh into it, or in that wherein it is manifested; there also it is that God is manifested. Because Heaven is nothing else but a Manifestation or Revelation of the Eternal One, wherein all the working and willing is in quiet love. So in like manner Hell also is through the whole World, and dwelleth and worketh but in itself, and in that wherein the Foundation of Hell is manifested, namely, in Self-hood and in the False Will. The visible World hath both in it; and there is no place but Heaven and Hell may be found or revealed in it. Now Man as to his temporal life is only of the visible World; and therefore during the time of his life he seeth not the spiritual World. For the Outward World with its substance is a cover to the Spiritual World, even as the Body is to the Soul. But when the outward Man dyeth, then the Spiritual World is manifested to the Soul, which hath now its covering taken away. And it is manifested either in the Eternal Light with the holy Angels, or in the Eternal Darkness, with the Devils. The _Scholar_ further queried: What is an Angel, or an human Soul, that they can be thus manifested either in God's Love or Anger, either in Light or Darkness? To whom Theophorus answered: They come from one and the self-same Original. They are little branches of the Divine Wisdom, of the Divine Will, sprung from the Divine Word, and made objects of the Divine Love. They are out of the Ground of Eternity; whence Light and Darkness do spring; Darkness which consisteth in the receiving of Self-Desire; and Light which consisteth in willing the same thing with God. For the conformity of the Will with God's Will is Heaven; and wheresoever there is this willing with God, there the Love of God is undoubtedly in the working, and his Light will not fail to manifest itself. But in the Self-attraction of the Soul's desire, or in the reception of Self into the willing of any Spirit, angelical or human, the Will of God worketh with difficulty, and is to that Soul and Spirit nought but Darkness; out of which, notwithstanding, the Light may be manifested. And this Darkness is the Hell of that Spirit wherein it is. For _Heaven_ and _Hell_ are nought else but a _Manifestation of the Divine Will either in Light or Darkness, according to the Properties of the Spiritual World_. SCHOLAR What then is the Body of Man? MASTER It is the visible World, an Image and Quintessence, or Compound of all that the World is; and the visible World is a manifestation of the inward spiritual World, come out of the Eternal Light, and out of the Eternal Darkness, out of the spiritual compaction or connection; and it is also an Image or Figure of Eternity, whereby Eternity hath made itself visible; where Self-Will and resigned Will, viz., Evil and Good, work one with the other. Such a substance is the outward Man. For God created Man out of the outward World, and breathed into him the inward spiritual World for a Soul and an intelligent Life, and therefore in the things of the outward World, Man can receive and work Evil and Good. SCHOLAR What shall be after this World, when all things perish and come to an end? MASTER The material substance only ceaseth; viz., the four Elements, the Sun, Moon and Stars. And then the inward world will be wholly visible and manifest. But whatsoever hath been wrought by the Will or Spirit of Man in this World's time, whether evil or good shall there separate itself in a spiritual matter, either into the Eternal Light or into the Eternal Darkness. For that which is born from each Will penetrateth and passeth again into that which is like itself. And there the Darkness is called Hell, and is an eternal forgetting of all Good, and the Light is called the Kingdom of God, and is an eternal joy in and to the Saints, who continually glorify and praise God, for having delivered them from the torment of evil. The last Judgment is a kindling of the Fire both of God's Love and Anger, in which the matter of every substance perisheth, and each Fire shall attract into itself its own, that is, the substance which is like itself. Thus God's Fire of Love will draw into itself what is wrought in the Anger of God in Darkness, and consume the false substance; and then there will remain only the painful, aching Will in its own proper nature, image, and figure. SCHOLAR With what matter and form shall the human Body rise? MASTER It is sown a natural gross and elementary Body; yet in this gross Body there is a subtle Power and Virtue. As in the Earth also there is a subtle good Virtue, which is like the Sun, and is one and the same with the Sun, which also did in the beginning of time spring and proceed out of the Divine Power and Virtue, whence all the good Virtue of the Body is likewise derived. This good Virtue of the mortal Body shall come again and live for ever in a kind of transparent crystalline material property, in spiritual flesh and blood; as shall return also the good Virtue of the Earth, for the Earth, likewise shall become crystalline, and the Divine Light shine in everything that hath a being, essence, or substance. And as the gross Earth shall perish and never return, so also the gross flesh of Man shall perish and not live for ever. But all Things must appear before the Judgment, and in the Judgment be separated by the Fire; yea, both the Earth, and also the ashes of the human Body. For when God shall once move the spiritual World, every Spirit shall attract its spiritual substance to itself. A good Spirit and Soul shall draw to itself its own substance, and an evil one its evil substance. SCHOLAR Shall we not rise again with our visible bodies, and live in them for ever? MASTER When the visible world perisheth, then all that hath come out of it, and hath been external, shall perish with it. There shall remain of the World only the crystalline Nature and Form, and of Man also only the spiritual Earth, for Man shall be then wholly like the crystalline World, which as yet is hidden. SCHOLAR Shall all then have eternal joy and glorification alike? MASTER St Paul saith: In the Resurrection one shall differ from another in glory, as do the Sun, Moon and Stars. Therefore know that the Blessed shall indeed all enjoy the divine working in and upon them, but their virtue and illumination or glory shall be very different according as they have endured in this life with different measures and degrees of power and virtue in their painful workings. SCHOLAR How shall all people and nations be brought to judgment? MASTER The Eternal Word of God, out of which every creaturely spiritual Life hath proceeded will move itself at that hour, according to Love and Anger, in every Life which is come out of the Eternity, and will draw every Creature before the Judgment of Christ, to be sentenced by this motion of the Word. The Life will then be manifested in all its works, and every Soul shall see and feel its judgment and sentence in itself. For the Judgment is, indeed, immediately at the departure of the Body manifested in and to every Soul. And the last Judgment is but a return of the spiritual Body, and a separation of the World, when the Evil shall be separated from the Good, in the substance of the World, and of the human Body, and everything enter into its eternal receptacle. And thus it is a manifestation of the Mystery of God in every substance and life. SCHOLAR How will the sentence be pronounced? MASTER Here consider the words of Christ. He will say to those on his right hand; _Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me. I was sick and ye visited me, in prison and ye came unto me._ _Then shall they answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or in prison, and ministered thus unto thee?_ Then shall the King answer and say unto them; _Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me._ And unto the wicked on his left hand he will say; _Depart from me, ye Cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his Angels. For I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, and in prison, and ye ministered not unto me._ And they shall also answer him and say; _When did we see thee thus and ministered not unto thee?_ And he will answer them, _Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have not done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it not to me._ _And these shall depart into everlasting punishment, but the Righteous into Life Eternal._ SCHOLAR Loving Master, pray tell me why Christ saith, _What you have done to the least of these you have done to me; and what you have not done to them, neither have you done it to me_? And how doth a Man this _so_, as that he doth it to Christ himself? MASTER Christ dwelleth really and essentially in the faith of those that wholly yield up themselves to him, and giveth them his Flesh for food and his Blood for drink; and thus possesseth the ground of their faith, according to the interior or inward Man. And a Christian is called a Branch of the Vine Christ, and a Christian, because Christ dwelleth spiritually in him; therefore, whatsoever good any shall do to such a Christian in his bodily necessities, it is done to Christ himself, who dwelleth in him. For such a Christian is not his own, but is wholly resigned to Christ, and become his peculiar possession, and consequently the good deed is done to Christ _himself_. Therefore also whosoever shall withhold their help from such a needy Christian, and forbear to serve him in his necessity, they thrust Christ away from themselves, and despise him in his members. When a poor person that belongeth thus to Christ asketh anything of thee, and thou deniest it him in his necessity, thou deniest it to Christ himself. And whatsoever hurt any shall do to such a Christian, they do it to Christ himself. When any mock, scorn, revile, reject, or thrust away such an one they do all that to Christ, but he that receiveth him, giveth him meat, and drink, or apparel, and assisteth him in his necessities, doth it likewise to Christ, and to a fellow-member of his own Body. Nay he doth it to himself if it be a Christian; for we are all one in Christ, as a tree and its branches are. SCHOLAR How then will those subsist in the day of the last Judgment, who afflict and vex the poor and distressed, and deprive them of their very sweat, necessitating and constraining them by force to submit to their wills, and trampling upon them as their footstools, only that they themselves may live in pomp and power, and spend the fruits of this poor people's sweat and labour in voluptuousness, pride, and vanity? MASTER Christ suffereth in the persecution of his members. Therefore all the wrong that such hard executors do to the poor wretches under their control is done to Christ himself; and falleth under his severe sentence and judgment. And besides that by such oppression of the Poor they draw them off from Christ, and make them seek unlawful ways to fill their bellies. Nay, they work for and with the Devil himself, doing the very same thing which he doth: who, without intermission opposeth the Kingdom of Christ, which consisteth only in Love. All these oppressors, if they do not turn with their whole hearts unto Christ, and minister to or serve him, must go into Hell-fire, which is fed and kept alive by nothing else but such mere Self, which they have exercised over the Poor here. SCHOLAR But how will it fare with those who in this time do so fiercely contend about the kingdom of Christ, and slander, revile and persecute one another for their religion? MASTER All such have not yet known Christ; and they are but as a type or figure of Heaven and Hell, striving for each other for the victory. All rising, swelling pride, which contendeth about opinions, is an image of Self. And whosoever hath not faith and humility, nor liveth in the Spirit of Christ, which is Love, is only armed with the Anger of God, and helpeth forward the victory of the imaginary Self, that is, the Kingdom of Darkness, and the Anger of God. For at the day of Judgment all Self shall be given to the Darkness as shall also all the unprofitable contentions of men; in which they seek not after Love, but merely after their imaginary Self. All such things belong to the Judgment, which will separate the false from the true; and then all images or opinions shall cease, and all the Children of God shall dwell for ever in the Love of Christ, and _that_ in them. For in Heaven all serve God their Creator in humble love. SCHOLAR Wherefore then doth God suffer such strife and contention to be in this time? MASTER The Life itself standeth in strife, that it may be made manifest, sensible, and palpable, and that the wisdom may be made separable and known. The Strife also constituteth the Eternal Joy of the victory. For there will arise great praise and thanksgiving in the Saints from the experimental sense and knowledge that Christ in them hath overcome Darkness, and all the Self of Nature, and that they are at length totally delivered from the Strife, at which they shall rejoice eternally. And therefore God suffereth all Souls to stand in a free-will, that the Eternal Dominion both of Love and Anger, of Light and of Darkness, may be made manifest and known; and that every Life might cause and find its own sentence in itself. For that which is now a strife and pain to the Saints in their wretched warfare here, shall in the end be turned into great joy to them; and that which hath been a joy and pleasure to ungodly persons in this world, shall afterwards be turned into eternal torment and shame to them. Therefore the joy of the Saints must arise to them out of death, as the light ariseth out of a candle by the destruction and consumption of it in its fire, that so the Life may be freed from the painfulness of Nature, and possess another World. And as the Light hath quite another property than the Fire has, for it giveth and yieldeth itself forth; whereas the Fire draweth in and consumeth itself, so the holy Life of Meekness springeth forth through the Death of Self-will, and then God's Will of Love only ruleth, and doth all in all. For thus the Eternal One hath attained Feeling and Separability, and brought itself forth again with the feeling, through Death, in great Joyfulness, that there might be an Eternal Delight in the Infinite Unity, and an Eternal Cause of Joy; and therefore that which was before Painfulness, must now be the Ground and Cause of this motion or stirring to the Manifestation of all Things. And herein lyeth the Mystery of the hidden Wisdom of God. _Every one that asketh receiveth, every one that seeketh findeth, and to every one that knocketh it shall be opened. The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all. Amen._ DIALOGUE IV THE WAY FROM DARKNESS TO TRUE ILLUMINATION There was a poor Soul that had wandered out of Paradise, and come into the kingdom of this World; where the Devil met it, and said to it: Whither dost thou go, thou Soul that art half blind? THE SOUL SAID I would see and speculate into the Creatures of the World, which their Creator hath made. THE DEVIL SAID How wilt thou see and speculate into them, when thou canst not know their essence and property? Thou wilt look upon their outside only, as upon a graven image, and canst not know them thoroughly. THE SOUL SAID How may I come to know their essence and property? THE DEVIL SAID Thine eyes would be opened to see them thoroughly, if thou didst but eat of _that_, from whence the Creatures themselves are come to be _good_ and _evil_. Thou wouldst then be as God himself is, and know what the Creature is. THE SOUL SAID I am now a noble and holy Creature: but if I should do so, the Creator hath said that I should die. THE DEVIL SAID No, thou shouldst not die at all; but thy eyes would be opened, and thou wouldst be as God himself, and be Master of Good and Evil. Also, thou wouldst be mighty, powerful and very great, as I am; all the subtlety that is in the Creatures would be made known to thee. THE SOUL SAID If I had the knowledge of Nature and of the Creatures, I would then rule the whole World as I listed. THE DEVIL SAID The whole ground of their knowledge lieth in thee. Do but turn thy Will and Desire from God or Goodness into Nature and the Creatures, and then there will arise in thee a lust to taste; and so thou mayest eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and by that means come to know all things. THE SOUL SAID Well then, I will eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that I may rule all things by my own power, and be of myself a Lord on Earth, and do what I will, even as God himself doth. THE DEVIL SAID I am the Prince of this World; and if thou wouldst rule on earth thou must turn thy lust towards my Image, and desire to be like me, that thou mayst get the cunning, wit, reason, and subtlety that my Image hath. Thus did the Devil present to the Soul the Power that is in the fiery root of the Creature, that is the fiery Wheel of Essence in the form of a Serpent. Upon which, THE SOUL SAID Behold this is the Power which can do all things. What must I do to get it? THE DEVIL SAID If thou dost break thy Will off from God, and bring it into this power and skill, then thy hidden Ground will be manifested in thee, and thou mayest work in the same manner. But thou must eat of that Fruit, wherein each of the four elements in itself ruleth over the other, and is in strife. And then thou wilt be instantly as the fiery Wheel is, and so bring all things into thine own power, and possess them as thine own. THE SOUL DID SO AND WHAT HAPPENED THEREUPON Now when the Soul broke its will off thus from God, and brought it into the fiery Will (which is the Root of Life and Power), there presently arose in it a lust to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and the Soul did eat thereof. Which as soon as it had done, instantly was kindled the fiery Wheel of its Essence, and thereupon all the properties of Nature awoke in the Soul, and exercised each its own desire. First arose the lust of Pride; a desire to be great, mighty, and powerful; to bring all things in subjection to it, and to be Lord itself without control, despising all humility and equality, as esteeming itself the only prudent, witty and cunning one, and accounting everything folly that is not according to its own humour and liking. Secondly, arose the lust of Covetousness, a desire of getting, which would draw all things to itself, into its own possession. For when the lust of Pride had turned away the Will from God, then the Life of the Soul would not trust God any further, but would take care for itself; and therefore brought its desire into the Creatures, viz., into the earth, metals, trees, and other Creatures. Thus the kindled fiery Life became hungry and covetous, when it had broken itself off from the Unity, Love, and Meekness of God, and attracted to itself the four Elements and New Essence, and brought itself into the Condition of the beasts, and so the Life became dark, empty, and wrathful; and the heavenly Virtues and Colours went out, like a candle extinguished. Thirdly, there awoke in this fiery Life the stinging thorny lust of Envy: a hellish poison, and a torment which makes the Life a mere enmity to God and to all Creatures. Which Envy raged furiously in the sting of Covetousness, as a venomous sting doth in the body. Envy cannot endure, but hateth and would hurt or destroy that which Covetousness cannot draw to itself by which hellish passion the Noble Love of the Soul is smothered. Fourthly, there awoke in this fiery Life a torment like fire, viz., Anger; which would murder and remove out of the way all who would not be subject to Pride. Thus the Ground and Foundation of Hell, which is called the Anger of God, was wholly manifested in this Soul. Whereby it lost the fair Paradise of God and the Kingdom of Heaven, and became such a worm as the fiery Serpent was, which the Devil presented to it in his own image and likeness. And so the Soul began to rule on earth in a bestial manner, and did all things according to the Will of the Devil, living in mere Pride, Covetousness, Envy, and Anger, having no longer any true love towards God. But there arose in the stead thereof an evil bestial love of Wantonness and Vanity, and there was no purity left in the heart, for the Soul had forsaken Paradise, and taken the Earth into its possession. Its mind was wholly bent upon cunning knowledge, subtility, and getting together a multitude of earthly things. No righteousness nor virtue remained in it at all; but whatsoever evil and wrong it committed, it covered all cunningly under the cloak of its power and authority by law, and called it by the name of Right and Justice, and accounted it good. THE DEVIL CAME TO THE SOUL Upon this the Devil drew near the Soul, and brought it on from one vice to another, for he had taken it captive in his Essence, and set joy and pleasure before it, therein, saying thus to it: Behold now thou art powerful, mighty, and noble, endeavour to be greater, richer, and more powerful still. Display thy knowledge, wit and subtlety, that every one may fear thee, and stand in awe of thee, and that thou mayst be respected, and get a great name in the World. THE SOUL DID SO The Soul did as the Devil counselled it, and yet knew not that its counsellor was the Devil; but thought it was guided by its own knowledge, wit, and understanding, and that it did very well and right all the while. JESUS CHRIST MET WITH THE SOUL The Soul going on in this course of life, our dear and loving Lord Jesus Christ, Who was come into this World with the Love and Wrath of God, to destroy the works of the Devil, and to execute judgment upon all ungodly deeds, on a time met with it, and spake by a strong power, viz., by his passion and death into it, and destroyed the works of the Devil in it, and discovered to it the way to his Grace, and shone upon it with his mercy, calling it to return and repent, and promising that he would then deliver it from that monstrous deformed shape and image which it had gotten, and bring it into Paradise again. HOW CHRIST BROUGHT IN THE SOUL Now when the Spark of the Love of God, or the Divine Light, was accordingly manifested in the Soul, it presently saw itself with its will and works to be in Hell, in the Wrath of God, and found it was an ugly, misshapen monster in the Divine Presence and the Kingdom of Heaven: at which it was so affrighted, that it fell into the greatest anguish possible, for the Judgment of God was manifested in it. WHAT CHRIST SAID Upon this the Lord Christ spake unto it with the Voice of his Grace, and said: _Repent and forsake Vanity, and thou shalt attain My Grace_. WHAT THE SOUL SAID Then the Soul with its ugly misshapen image went before God and entreated for Grace and the pardon of its sins, and came to be strongly persuaded in itself that the satisfaction and atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ did belong to it. But the evil properties of the Serpent, formed in the Astral Spirit, or Reason, of the outward Man, would not suffer the Will of the Soul to come before God, but brought their lusts and inclinations thereinto. But the poor Soul turned its countenance towards God, and desired Grace from him, even that he would bestow his Love upon it. THE DEVIL CAME TO IT AGAIN But when the Devil saw that the Soul thus prayed to God, and would enter into repentance, he drew near to it, and thrust the inclinations of the earthly properties into its prayers, and disturbed its good thoughts and desires which pressed forwards towards God, and drew them back again to earthly things that they might have no access to him. THE SOUL SIGHED The central Will of the Soul indeed sighed after God, but the thoughts arising in the mind that it should penetrate into him, were distracted, scattered and destroyed, so that they could not reach the Power of God. At which the poor Soul was still more affrighted and began to pray more earnestly. But the Devil with his desire took hold of the kindled, fiery Wheel of Life, and awakened the evil properties, so that evil or false inclinations arose in the Soul, and went into that thing wherein they had taken most pleasure and delight before. The poor Soul would very fain go forward to God with its Will, and therefore used all its endeavours; but its thoughts continually fled away from God into earthly things, and would not go to him. Upon this the Soul sighed and bewailed itself to God; but was as if it were quite forsaken by him, and cast out from its Presence. It could not get so much as one look of Grace, but was in mere anguish, fear and terror, and dreaded every moment that the Wrath and severe Judgment of God would be manifested in it, and that the Devil would take hold of it and have it. And thereupon fell into such great heaviness and sorrow, that it became weary of all the temporal things, which were before its chief joy and happiness. The earthly natural Will indeed desired those things still, but the Soul would willingly leave them altogether, and desired to die to all temporal lust and joy whatsoever, and longed only after its first native country, from whence it originally came. But it found itself to be far from thence in great distress and want, and knew not what to do, yet resolved to enter into itself, and try to pray more earnestly. THE DEVIL'S OPPOSITION But the Devil opposed it, and withheld it so that it could not bring itself into any greater fervency of repentance. He awakened the earthly lusts in its heart, that they might still keep their evil nature and false right therein, and set them at variance with the new-born Will and Desire of the Soul. For they would not die to their own Will and Light, but would still maintain their temporal pleasures, and so kept the poor Soul captive in their evil desires, that it could not stir, though it sighed and longed never so much after the Grace of God. For whensoever it prayed, or offered to press forward towards God, then the lusts of the flesh swallowed up the rays and ejaculations that went forth from it, and brought them away from God into earthly thoughts, that it might not partake of Divine Strength. Which caused the poor Soul to think itself forsaken of God, not knowing that he was so near it, and did thus attract it. Also the Devil tempted the poor Soul, saying to it in the earthly thoughts: "Why dost thou pray? Dost thou think that God knoweth thee or regardeth thee? Consider but what thoughts thou hast in his presence; are they not altogether evil? Thou hast no faith or belief in God at all; how then should he hear thee? He heareth thee not, leave off; why wilt thou needlessly torment and vex thyself! Thou hast time enough to repent at leisure. Wilt thou be mad? Do but look upon the world I pray thee a little; doth it not live in jollity and mirth, yet it will be saved well enough for all that. Hath not Christ paid the ransom and satisfied for all men? Thou needest only persuade and comfort thyself that it is done for thee, and then thou shalt be saved. Thou canst not possibly in this world come to any feeling of God, therefore leave off, and take care for thy body, and look after temporal glory. What dost thou suppose will become of thee, if thou turn to be so stupid and melancholy? Thou wilt be the scorn of everybody, and they will laugh at thy folly; and so thou wilt pass thy days in mere sorrow and heaviness, which is pleasing neither to God nor Nature. I pray thee, look upon the beauty of the World, for God hath so erected and placed thee in it, to be a Lord over all Creatures and to rule them. Gather store of temporal goods beforehand, that thou mayest not be beholden to the World, or stand in need hereafter. And when old age cometh, or that thou growest near thy end, then prepare thyself for repentance. God will save thee, and receive thee into the heavenly mansions there. There is no need of such ado in vexing, bewailing, and stirring up thyself, as thou makest." THE CONDITION OF THE SOUL In these and the like thoughts the Soul was ensnared by the Devil, and brought into the lust of the flesh, and earthly desires; and so bound as it were with fetters and strong chains that it did not know what to do. It looked back a little into the World and the pleasures thereof, but still felt in itself a hunger after Divine Grace, and would rather enter into repentance and favour with God. For the Hand of God had touched and bruised it, and therefore it could rest nowhere; but always sighed in itself after sorrow for the sins it had committed, and would fain be rid of them. Yet could not get true repentance, or even the knowledge of sin, though it had a mighty hunger and longing desire after such penitential sorrow. The Soul being thus heavy and sad, and finding no remedy or rest, began to cast about where it might find a fit place to perform true repentance in, where it might be free from business, cares, and the hinderances of the World; and also by what means it might win the favour of God. And at length purposed to betake itself to some private solitary place, and give over all worldly employments and temporal things, and hoped that by being bountiful and pitiful to the Poor, it should obtain God's mercy. Thus did it devise all kinds of ways to get rest, and to gain the love, favour, and grace of God again. But all would not do; for its worldly business still followed it in the lusts of the flesh, and it was ensnared in the net of the Devil now, as well as before, and could not attain rest. And though for a little while it was somewhat cheered with earthly things, yet presently it fell to be as sad and heavy again as it was before. The truth was it felt the awakened Wrath of God in itself, but knew not how that came to pass, nor what ailed it. For many times great trouble and terror fell upon it, which made it comfortless, sick, and faint with very fear; so mightily did the first bruising it with the ray or influence of the stirring of Grace work upon it. And yet it knew not that Christ was in the Wrath and severe Justice of God and fought therein with that Spirit of Error incorporated in Soul and Body, nor understood that the hunger and desire to turn and repent came from Christ Himself, neither did it know what hindered it that it could not yet attain to Divine Feeling. It knew not that itself was a monster, and did bear the Image of the Serpent. AN ENLIGHTENED AND REGENERATE SOUL MET THE DISTRESSED SOUL By the Providence of God, an enlightened and regenerate Soul met the distressed Soul, and said: What ailest thou, thou distressed Soul, that thou art so restless and troubled! THE DISTRESSED SOUL ANSWERED The Creator hath hid his Countenance from me, so that I cannot come to his Rest; therefore I am thus troubled, and know not what I shall do to get his Loving-kindness again. For great cliffs and rocks lie in my way to his Grace, so that I cannot come to him. Though I sigh and long after him never so much, yet I am kept back, so that I cannot partake of his Power, Virtue, and Strength. THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL SAID Thou bearest the monstrous shape of the Devil, and art clothed therewith; in which, being his own Property or Principle, he hath access or power of entrance into thee, and thereby keepeth thy Will from penetrating into God. For if thy Will might penetrate into God, it would be anointed with the highest Power and Strength of God, in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that unction would break in pieces the monster which thou carriest about thee; and thy first Image of Paradise would revive in the Centre; which would destroy the Devil's Power therein, and thou wouldst become an Angel again. And because the Devil envieth thee this happiness, he holdeth thee captive in his Desire in the lusts of the flesh, from which if thou art not delivered, thou wilt be separated from God, and canst never enter into our Society. THE DISTRESSED SOUL TERRIFIED At this speech the poor distressed Soul was so terrified and amazed, that it could not speak one word more. When it found that it stood in the form and condition of the Serpent which separated it from God, and that the Devil was so nigh it in that condition, who injected evil thoughts into the Will of the Soul, and had so much power over it thereby that it was near damnation and sticking fast in the Abyss or bottomless pit of Hell in the Anger of God, it would have even despaired of Divine Mercy; but that the Power, Virtue and Strength of the first stirring of the Grace of God, which had before bruised the Soul, upheld and preserved it from total despair. But still it wrestled in itself between Hope and Doubt; whatsoever Hope built up, that Doubt threw down again. And thus was it agitated with such continued disquiet, that at last the World and all the glory thereof became loathsome to it, neither would it enjoy worldly pleasures any more; and yet for all this could it not come to Rest. THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL CAME AGAIN, AND SPOKE TO THE TROUBLED SOUL On a time the enlightened Soul came again to this Soul, and finding it still in so great trouble, anguish, and grief, said to it. What dost thou? Wilt thou destroy thyself in thy anguish and sorrow? Why dost thou torment thyself in thy own Power and Will, seeing thy torment increaseth thereby more and more? Yea, if thou shouldst sink thyself down to the bottom of the sea, or fly to the uttermost coasts of the morning, or raise thyself above the stars, yet thou wouldst not be released. For the more thou grievest, tormentest, and troublest thyself, the more painful thy nature will be; and yet thou wilt not be able to come to Rest. For thy Power is quite lost, and as a dry stick burnt to a coal cannot grow green and spring afresh by its own power, nor get sap to flourish again with other trees and plants; so neither canst thou reach the Place of God by thy own power and strength, and transform thyself into that Angelical Image which thou hadst at first. For in respect to God thou art withered and dry, like a dead plant that hath lost its sap and strength, and so art become a dry tormenting Hunger. Thy Properties are like Heat and Cold which continually strive one against the other, and can never unite. THE DISTRESSED SOUL SAID What then shall I do to bud forth again, and recover the first Life, wherein I was at rest before I became an Image? THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL SAID Thou shalt do nothing at all but forsake thy own Will, viz., that which thou callest _I_, or _thyself_. By which means all thy evil properties will grow weak, faint, and ready to die; and then thou wilt sink down again into that One Thing from which thou art originally sprung. For now thou liest captive in the Creatures; but if thy Will forsaketh them, they will die in thee, with their evil inclinations, which at present stay and hinder thee that thou canst not come to God. But if thou takest this course, thy God will meet thee with his infinite Love, which he hath manifested in Christ Jesus in the Humanity, or human Nature. And that will impart sap, life and vigour to thee, whereby thou mayst bud, spring, flourish again, and rejoice in the Living God, as a branch growing on his true Vine. And so thou wilt at length recover the Image of God, and be delivered from that of the Serpent. Then shalt thou come to be my brother and have fellowship with the Angels. THE POOR SOUL SAID How can I forsake my Will, so that the Creatures which lodge therein may die, seeing I must be in the World, and also have need of it as long as I live? THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL SAID Now thou hast worldly power and riches, which thou possesses! as thy own, to do what thou wilt with, and regardest not how thou gettest or invest the same, employing them in the service or indulgence of thy carnal and vain desires. Nay though thou seest the poor and needy wretch who wanteth thy help, and is thy brother, yet thou helpest him not, but layest heavy burdens upon him, by requiring more of him than his abilities will bear, or his necessities afford, and oppressest him, by forcing him to spend his labour and sweat for thee and the gratification of thy voluptuous Will. Thou art moreover proud and exultest over him, and behavest roughly and sternly to him, exalting thyself above him, and making small account of him in respect of thyself. Then that poor oppressed brother of thine cometh, and complaineth with sighs towards God, that he cannot reap the benefit of his labours and pains, but is forced by thee to live in misery. By which sighings and groanings of his he raiseth up the wrath of God in thee, which maketh thy flame and unquietness still the greater. These are the Creatures which thou art in love with, and hast broken thyself off from God for their sakes, and brought thy Love into them or them into thy Love, so that they live therein. Thou nourishest and keepest them by continually receiving them into thy desire, for they live in and by thy receiving them into thy mind, because thou thereby bringest the lust of thy Life into them. They are but unclean and evil births and issues of the Bestial Nature, which yet by thy receiving them in thy Desire, have gotten an Image and formed themselves in thee. And that Image is a beast with four heads. First, _Pride_. Secondly, _Covetousness_. Thirdly, _Envy_. Fourthly, _Anger_. And in these four properties the Foundation of Hell consisteth, which thou earnest in thee and about thee. It is imprinted and engraven in thee, and thou art wholly taken captive thereby. For these properties live in thy Natural Life; and thereby thou art severed from God, neither canst thou ever come to him, unless thou so forsake these evil Creatures that they may die in thee. But since thou desirest me to tell thee how to forsake thy own, perverse creaturely Will, that the Creatures might die, and that yet thou mightest live with them in the World, I must assure thee that there is but one way to do it, which is _narrow_ and _straight_, and will be very hard and irksome to thee in the beginning, but afterwards thou wilt walk in it cheerfully. Thou must seriously consider that in the course of this worldly life thou walkest in the Anger of God and in the Foundation of Hell; and that this is not thy true native country; but that a Christian should and must live in Christ, and in his walking truly follow him; and that he cannot be a Christian unless the Spirit and Power of Christ so live in him that he becometh wholly subject to it. Now seeing the Kingdom of Christ is not of the world, but in Heaven, therefore thou must be always in a continual ascension towards Heaven, if thou wilt follow Christ; though thy body must dwell among the Creatures and use them. The narrow way to which perpetual ascension into Heaven and imitation of Christ is this. Thou must despair of all thy own power and strength, for in and by thy own thou canst not reach the Gates of God, and firmly purpose and resolve wholly to give thyself up to the Mercy of God, and to sink down with thy whole mind and reason into the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ, always desiring to persevere in the same and to die from all thy Creatures therein. Also thou must resolve to watch and guard thy mind, thoughts, and inclinations that they admit no evil into them, neither must thou suffer thyself to be held fast by temporal honour or profit. Thou must resolve likewise to put away from thee all Unrighteousness and whatsoever else may hinder the freedom of thy motion and progress. Thy Will must be wholly pure and fixed in a firm resolution never to return to its old idols any more, but that thou wilt, that very instant leave them, and separate thy mind from them, and enter into the sincere way of truth and righteousness, according to the plain and full doctrine of Christ. And as thou dost thus purpose to forsake the enemies of thine own inward Nature, so thou must also forgive all thy outward enemies and resolve to meet them with thy Love, that there may be left no Creature, Person, or Thing at all able to take hold of thy Will and captivate it; but that it may be sincere and purged from all Creatures. Nay, further, if it should be required, thou must be willing and ready to forsake all thy temporal honour and profit for Christ's sake, and regard nothing that is earthly so as to set thy heart and affections upon it; but esteem thyself in whatsoever state, degree and condition thou art, as to worldly rank and riches, to be but a servant of God, and of thy fellow-Christians; or as a steward in the office wherein thy Lord hath placed thee. All arrogance and self-exaltation must be humbled, brought low, and so annihilated that nothing of thine own or of any other Creature may stay in thy Will to bring the thoughts or imagination to be set upon it. Thou must also firmly impress it on thy mind that thou shalt certainly partake of the promised Grace in the Merit of Jesus Christ, viz., of his outflowing Love, which indeed is already in thee, and which will deliver thee from thy Creatures, and enlighten thy Will, and kindle it with the Flame of Love, whereby thou shalt have victory over the Devil. Not as if thou couldst will or do anything in thy own strength, but only enter into the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and take them to thyself, and with them assault and break in pieces the kingdom of the Devil in thee. Thou must resolve to enter into this way this very hour, and never to depart from it, but willingly to submit thyself to God in all thy endeavours and doings, that he may do with thee what he pleaseth. When thy Will is thus prepared and resolved, it hath then broken through its own Creatures, and is sincere in the Presence of God, and clothed with the Merits of Jesus Christ. It may then freely go to the Father with the Prodigal Son, and fall down in his Presence and pour forth its prayers; and putting forth all its strength in this Divine Work, confess its sins and disobedience; and how far it hath departed from God. This must be done not with bare words, but with all its strength, which indeed amounteth only to a strong purpose and resolution; for the Soul of itself hath no strength or power to effect any good work. Now when thou art thus ready, and thy heavenly Father shall see thee coming and returning to him in such repentance and humility, he will inwardly speak to thee, and say in thee; _Behold, this is my son which I had lost, he was dead and is alive again._ And he will come to meet thee in thy mind with the Grace and Love of Jesus Christ, and embrace thee with the beams of his Love, and kiss thee with his Spirit and Strength, and then thou shalt receive Grace to pour out thy confession before him and to pray powerfully. This indeed is the right place where thou must wrestle in the Light of his Countenance. And if thou standest resolutely here and shrinkest not back, thou shalt see or feel great wonders. For thou shalt find Christ in thee assaulting Hell, and crushing thy Beasts in pieces, and that a great tumult and misery will arise in thee; also thy secret undiscovered sins will then first awake and labour to separate thee from God, and to keep thee back. Thus shalt thou truly find and feel how Death and Life fight one against the other, and shalt understand by what passeth within thyself what Heaven and Hell are. At all which be not moved, but stand firm and shrink not; for at length all thy Creatures will grow faint, weak, and ready to die; and then thy Will shall wax stronger, and be able to subdue and keep down the evil inclinations. So shall thy Will and Mind ascend into Heaven every day, and thy Creatures gradually die away. Thou wilt get a Mind wholly new, and begin to be a new Creature, and, getting rid of the Bestial Deformity, recover the Divine Image. Thus shalt thou be delivered from thy present Anguish, and return to thy original Rest. THE POOR SOUL'S PRACTICE Then the poor Soul began to practise this course with so much earnestness that it conceived it should get the victory presently, but it found that the Gates of Heaven were shut against it in its own strength and power, and it was, as it were, rejected and forsaken by God, and received not so much as one look or glimpse of Grace from him. Upon which it said to itself; _Surely thou hast not sincerely submitted thyself to God. Desire nothing at all of him, but only submit thyself to his judgment and condemnation, that he may kill thy evil inclinations. Sink down into him beyond the Limits of Nature and Creature, and submit thyself to him, that he may do with thee what he will, for thou art not worthy to speak to him._ Accordingly the Soul took a resolution to sink down, and to forsake its own will; and when it had done so there fell upon it presently the greatest repentance that could be for the sins it had committed; and it bewailed bitterly its ugly shape, and was truly and deeply sorry that the evil Creatures did dwell in it. And because of its sorrow it could not speak one word more in the Presence of God, but in this repentance did consider the bitter Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, viz., what great anguish and torment he had suffered for its sake, in order to deliver it out of its anguish, and change it into the Image of God. In which consideration it wholly sank down, and did nothing but complain of its ignorance and negligence, and that it had not been thankful to its Redeemer, nor once considered the great love he had shown to it, but had idly spent its time, and not at all regarded how it might come to partake of his purchased and proffered Grace; but instead thereof had formed in itself the images and figures of earthly things, with the vain lusts and pleasures of the World. Whereby it had gotten such bestial inclinations that now it must lie captive in great misery, and for very shame dared not lift up its eyes to God, Who hid the light of his countenance from it and would not so much as look upon it. And as it was thus sighing and crying it was drawn into the Abyss or Pit of Horror, and laid as it were at the Gates of Hell there to perish. Upon which the poor troubled Soul was, as it were, bereft of sense, and wholly forsaken, so that it in a manner forgot all its doings, and would willingly yield itself to Death, and cease to be a Creature. Accordingly it did yield itself to Death, and desired nothing else but to die and perish in the Death of its Redeemer Jesus Christ, who had suffered such torments and death for its sake. And in this perishing it began to sigh and pray in itself very inwardly to the Divine Goodness, and to sink down into the mere Mercy of God. Upon this there suddenly appeared unto it the Love of God, as a great Light which penetrated through it, and made it exceedingly joyful. It then began to pray aright, and to thank the Most High for such Grace, and to rejoice abundantly that it was delivered from the Death and Anguish of Hell. Now it tasted of the Sweetness of God, and of his promised Truth; and how all the evil Spirits which had harassed it before, and kept it back from the Grace, Love, and inward Presence of God, were forced to depart from it. The wedding of the Lamb was now kept and solemnised, that is, the Noble _Sophia_ espoused or betrothed herself to the Soul, and the Seal-Ring of Christ's victory was impressed into its Essence, and it was received to be a Child and Heir of God again. When this was done the Soul became very joyful, and began to work in this new power, and to celebrate with praise the wonders of God, and thought thenceforth to walk continually in the same Light, Strength, and Joy. But it was soon assaulted: from _without_ by the shame and reproach of the World, and from _within_ by great temptation, so that it began to doubt whether its ground was truly from God, and whether it had really partaken of his Grace. For the accuser Satan went to it, and would fain lead it out of its course, and make it doubtful whether it was the true way, whispering thus to it inwardly; _This happy change in thy Spirit is not from God, but only from thy own imagination._ Also the Divine Light retired in the Soul, and shone but in the inward ground, as fire raked up in embers, so that Reason was perplexed, and thought itself forsaken, and the Soul knew not what had happened to itself, nor whether it had really and truly tasted of the heavenly gift or not. Yet it could not leave off struggling; for the burning Fire of Love was sown in it, which had raised in it a vehement and continual Hunger and Thirst after the Divine Sweetness. So at length it began to pray aright, and to humble itself in the Presence of God, and to examine and try its evil inclinations and thoughts, and to put them away. By which means the Will of Reason was broken, and the evil inclinations inherent in it were killed and extirpated more and more. This process was very severe and painful to the Nature of the Body, for it made it faint and weak as if it had been very sick; and yet it was no natural sickness that it had, but only the melancholy of its earthly Nature, feeling and lamenting the destruction of its evil lusts. Now when the earthly Reason found itself thus forsaken, and the poor Soul saw that it was despised outwardly and derided by the World, because it would walk no longer in the way of Wickedness and Vanity; and also that it was inwardly assaulted by the accuser Satan, who mocked it, and continually set before it the beauty, riches and glory of the World, and called it a fool for not embracing them; it began to think and say thus within itself: _O eternal God, what shall I now do to come to Rest?_ THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL MET IT AGAIN AND SPOKE TO IT While it was in this consideration, the enlightened Soul met with it again, and said: What ailest thou, my Brother, that thou art so heavy and sad! THE DISTRESSED SOUL SAID I have followed thy counsel, and thereby attained a ray or emanation of the Divine Sweetness, but it is gone from me again, and I am now deserted. Moreover I have outwardly very great trials and afflictions in the World, for all my good friends forsake and scorn me; and am also inwardly assaulted with anguish and doubt, and know not what to do. THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL SAID Now I like thee very well; for now our beloved Lord Jesus Christ is performing that Pilgrimage or Process on Earth with thee and in thee, which he did himself when he was in this World, who was continually reviled, despised, and evil spoken of, and had nothing of his own in it; and now thou bearest his mark or badge. But do not wonder at it, or think it strange; for it must be so, in order that thou mayst be tried, refined, and purified. In this Anguish and Distress thou wilt necessarily hunger and cry after deliverance; and by such Hunger and Prayer thou wilt attract Grace to thee both from within and from without. For thou must grow from above and from beneath to be the Image of God again. Just as a young plant is agitated by the wind, and must stand its ground in heat and cold, drawing strength and virtue to it from above and from beneath by that agitation, and must endure many a tempest, and undergo much danger before it can come to be a tree and bring forth much fruit. For through that agitation the virtue of the sun moveth in the plant, whereby its wild properties come to be penetrated and tinctured with the solar virtue, and grow thereby. And this is the time wherein thou must play the part of a valiant soldier in the Spirit of Christ, and co-operate thyself therewith. For now the Eternal Father by his fiery Power begetteth his Son in thee, who changeth the Fire of the Father, namely, the first Principle, or Wrathful Property of the Soul, into the Flame of Love, so that out of Fire and Light (viz. Wrath and Love) there cometh to be one Essence, Being, or Substance, which is the true Temple of God. And now thou shalt bud forth out of the Vine Christ, in the Vineyard of God, and bring forth fruit in thy life, and by assisting and instructing others, show forth thy Love in abundance, as a good tree. For Paradise must then spring up again in thee, through the Wrath of God, and Hell be changed into Heaven in thee. Therefore be not dismayed at the temptations of the Devil, who seeketh and striveth for the Kingdom which he once had in thee, but, having now lost it, must be confounded, and depart from thee. And he covereth thee outwardly with the shame and reproach of the World, that his own shame may not be known, and that thou mayst be hidden to the World. For with thy New Birth or regenerated Nature thou art in the Divine Harmony in Heaven. Be patient, therefore, and wait upon the Lord, and whatsoever shall befall thee, take it all from his hands as intended by him for thy highest good. And so the enlightened Soul departed from it. THE DISTRESSED SOUL'S COURSE The distressed Soul began its course now under the patient Suffering of Christ, and depending solely upon the Strength and Power of God in it, entered into Hope. Thenceforth it grew stronger every day, and its evil inclinations died more and more in it. So that it arrived at length to a high state or degree of Grace; and the Gates of the Divine Revelation and the Kingdom of Heaven were opened to and manifested in it. And thus the Soul, through Repentance, Faith, and Prayer, returned to its true Rest, and became a right and beloved Child of God again; to which may He of his infinite Mercy help us all. Amen. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
36402	----	ON UNION WITH GOD Nihil Obstat. F. THOS. BERGH, O.S.B., CENSOR DEPUTATUS. Imprimatur. EDM. CAN. SURMONT, VICARIUS GENERALIS. WESTMONASTERII, _Die 7 Decembris, 1911_. [_All rights reserved_] _The Angelus Series_ ON UNION WITH GOD BY BLESSED ALBERT THE GREAT, O.P. WITH NOTES BY REV. P. J. BERTHIER, O.P. TRANSLATED BY A BENEDICTINE OF PRINCETHORPE PRIORY _R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD._ PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON AND AT MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, AND GLASGOW PREFACE Surely the most deeply-rooted need of the human soul, its purest aspiration, is for the closest possible union with God. As one turns over the pages of this little work, written by Blessed Albert the Great[1] towards the end of his life, when that great soul had ripened and matured, one feels that here indeed is the ideal of one's hopes. Simply and clearly the great principles are laid down, the way is made plain which leads to the highest spiritual life. It seems as though, while one reads, the mists of earth vanish and the snowy summits appear of the mountains of God. We breathe only the pure atmosphere of prayer, peace, and love, and the one great fact of the universe, the Divine Presence, is felt and realized without effort. But is such a life possible amid the whirl of the twentieth century? To faith and love all things are possible, and our author shows us the loving Father, ever ready to give as much and more than we can ask. The spirit of such a work is ever true; the application may vary with circumstances, but the guidance of the Holy Spirit will never be wanting to those souls who crave for closer union with their Divine Master. This little treatise has been very aptly called the "Metaphysics of the Imitation," and it is in the hope that it may be of use to souls that it has been translated into English. Blessed Albert the Great is too well known for it to be necessary for us to give more than the briefest outline of his life. The eldest son of the Count of Bollstädt, he was born at Lauingen in Swabia in 1205 or 1206, though some historians give it as 1193. As a youth he was sent to the University of Padua, where he had special facilities for the study of the liberal arts. Drawn by the persuasive teaching of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, he joined the Order of St. Dominic in 1223, and after completing his studies, received the Doctor's degree at the University of Paris. His brilliant genius quickly brought him into the most prominent positions. Far-famed for his learning, he attracted scholars from all parts of Europe to Paris, Cologne, Ratisbon, etc., where he successively taught. It was during his years of teaching at Paris and Cologne that he counted among his disciples St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatness of whose future he foretold, and whose lifelong friendship with him then began. In 1254 Albert was elected Provincial of his Order in Germany. In 1260 he was appointed Bishop of Ratisbon, but resigned his see in 1262. He then continued unweariedly until a few years before his death, when his great powers, especially his memory, failed him, but the fervour of his soul remained ever the same. In 1280, at Cologne, he sank, at last worn out by his manifold labours. "Whether we consider him as a theologian or as a philosopher, Albert was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary men of his age; I might say, one of the most wonderful men of genius who appeared in past times" (Jourdain). Very grateful thanks are due to Rev. P. J. Berthier, O.P., for his kind permission to append to this edition a translation of his excellent notes (from the French edition, entitled "De l'Union avec Dieu"). CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. OF THE HIGHEST PERFECTION WHICH MAN CAN ATTAIN UNTO IN THIS LIFE 15 II. HOW A MAN MAY DESPISE ALL THINGS AND CLEAVE TO CHRIST ALONE 19 III. THE LAW OF MAN'S PERFECTION IN THIS LIFE 23 IV. THAT OUR LABOUR MUST BE WITH THE UNDERSTANDING AND NOT WITH THE SENSES 27 V. OF PURITY OF HEART, WHICH IS TO BE SOUGHT ABOVE ALL ELSE 33 VI. THAT A MAN TRULY DEVOUT MUST SEEK GOD IN PURITY OF MIND AND HEART 40 VII. OF THE PRACTICE OF INTERIOR RECOLLECTION 45 VIII. THAT A TRULY DEVOUT MAN SHOULD COMMIT HIMSELF TO GOD IN ALL THAT BEFALLS HIM 52 IX. THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD IS TO BE PREFERRED ABOVE ALL OTHER EXERCISES 57 X. THAT WE SHOULD NOT BE TOO SOLICITOUS FOR ACTUAL AND SENSIBLE DEVOTION, BUT DESIRE RATHER THE UNION OF OUR WILL WITH GOD 65 XI. IN WHAT MANNER WE SHOULD RESIST TEMPTATION AND ENDURE TRIALS 70 XII. THE POWER OF THE LOVE OF GOD 76 XIII. OF THE NATURE AND ADVANTAGES OF PRAYER,--OF INTERIOR RECOLLECTION 82 XIV. THAT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE JUDGED ACCORDING TO THE TESTIMONY OF OUR CONSCIENCE 88 XV. ON THE CONTEMPT OF SELF: HOW IT IS ACQUIRED: ITS PROFIT TO THE SOUL 94 XVI. OF THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD, WHICH WATCHES OVER ALL THINGS 102 "It is good for me to adhere to my God." "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." ON UNION WITH GOD CHAPTER I OF THE HIGHEST PERFECTION WHICH MAN CAN ATTAIN UNTO IN THIS LIFE I have felt moved to write a few last thoughts describing, as far as one may in this waiting-time of our exile and pilgrimage, the entire separation of the soul from all earthly things and its close, unfettered union with God. I have been the more urged to this, because Christian perfection has no other end but charity, which unites us to God.[2] This union of charity is essential for salvation, since it consists in the practice of the precepts and in conformity to the Divine will. Hence it separates us from whatever would war against the essence and habit of charity, such as mortal sin.[3] But religious, the more easily to attain to God, their last end, have gone beyond this, and have bound themselves by vow to evangelical perfection, to that which is voluntary and of counsel.[4] With the help of these vows they cut off all that might impede the fervour of their love or hinder them in their flight to God. They have, therefore, by the vow of their religious profession, renounced all things, whether pertaining to soul or body.[5] God is in truth a Spirit, and "they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth,"[6] that is, with a knowledge and love, an intelligence and will purified from every phantom of earth. Hence it is written: "When thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber"--_i.e._, into the inmost abode of thy heart--and, "having shut the door" of thy senses, with a pure heart, a free conscience and an unfeigned faith, "pray to thy Father" in spirit and in truth, in the "secret" of thy soul.[7] Then only will a man attain to this ideal, when he has despoiled and stripped himself of all else; when, wholly recollected within himself, he has hidden from and forgotten the whole world, that he may abide in silence in the presence of Jesus Christ. There, in solitude of soul, with loving confidence he makes known his desires to God. With all the intensity of his love he pours forth his heart before Him, in sincerity and truth, until he loses himself in God. Then is his heart enlarged, inflamed, and melted in him, yea, even in its inmost depths. CHAPTER II HOW A MAN MAY DESPISE ALL THINGS AND CLEAVE TO CHRIST ALONE Whosoever thou art who longest to enter upon this happy state or seekest to direct thither thy steps, thus it behoveth thee to act. First, close, as it were, thine eyes, and bar the doors of thy senses. Suffer not anything to entangle thy soul, nor permit any care or trouble to penetrate within it. Shake off all earthly things, counting them useless, noxious, and hurtful to thee.[8] When thou hast done this, enter wholly within thyself, and fix thy gaze upon thy wounded Jesus, and upon Him alone. Strive with all thy powers, unwearyingly, to reach God through Himself, that is, through God made Man, that thou mayest attain to the knowledge of His Divinity through the wounds of His Sacred Humanity. In all simplicity and confidence abandon thyself and whatever concerns thee without reserve to God's unfailing Providence, according to the teaching of St. Peter: "Casting all your care upon Him,"[9] Who can do all things. And again it is written: "Be nothing solicitous";[10] "Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee";[11] "It is good for me to adhere to my God";[12] "I set the Lord always in my sight";[13] "I found Him Whom my soul loveth";[14] and "Now all good things came to me"[15] together with Him. This is the hidden and heavenly treasure, the precious pearl, which is to be preferred before all. This it is that we must seek with humble confidence and untiring effort, yet in silence and peace. It must be sought with a brave heart, even though its price be the loss of bodily comfort, of esteem, and of honour. Lacking this, what doth it profit a religious if he "gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?"[16]. Of what value are the religious state, the holiness of our profession, the shaven head, the outward signs of a life of abnegation, if we lack the spirit of humility and truth, in which Christ dwells by faith and love? St. Luke says: "The kingdom of God," that is, Christ, "is within you."[17] CHAPTER III THE LAW OF MAN'S PERFECTION IN THIS LIFE In proportion as the mind is absorbed in the thought and care of the things of this world do we lose the fervour of our devotion, and drift away from the things of Heaven. The greater, on the other hand, our diligence in withdrawing our powers from the memory, love and thought of that which is inferior in order to fix them upon that which is above, the more perfect will be our prayer, the purer our contemplation. The soul cannot give itself perfectly at the same time to two objects as contrary one to another as light to darkness;[18] for he who lives united to God dwells in the light, he who clings to this world lives in darkness. The highest perfection, therefore, of man in this life lies in this: that he is so united to God that his soul with all its powers and faculties becomes recollected in Him and is one spirit with Him.[19] Then it remembers naught save God, nor does it relish or understand anything but Him. Then all its affections, united in the delights of love, repose sweetly in the enjoyment of their Creator. The image of God which is imprinted upon the soul is found in the three powers of the reason, memory, and will. But since these do not perfectly bear the Divine likeness, they have not the same resemblance to God as in the first days of man's creation.[20] God is the "form" of the soul upon which He must impress His own image, as the seal on the wax or the stamp on the object it marks.[21] This can only be fully accomplished when the reason is wholly illuminated according to its capacity, by the knowledge of God, the Sovereign Truth; the will entirely devoted to the love of the Supreme Good; the memory absorbed in the contemplation and enjoyment of eternal felicity, and in the sweet repose of so great a happiness. As the perfect possession of this state constitutes the glory of the Blessed in Heaven, it is clear that in its commencement consists the perfection of this life. CHAPTER IV THAT OUR LABOUR MUST BE WITH THE UNDERSTANDING AND NOT WITH THE SENSES Blessed is he who by continually cleansing his soul from the images and phantoms of earth draws its powers inward, and thence lifts them up to God. At length he in a manner forgets all images, and by a simple and direct act of pure intellect and will contemplates God, Who is absolutely simple. Cast from thee, therefore, all phantoms, images, and forms, and whatsoever is not God,[22] that all thy intercourse with Him may proceed from an understanding, affection, and will, alike purified. This is, in truth, the end of all thy labours, that thou mayest draw nigh unto God and repose in Him within thy soul, solely by thy understanding and by a fervent love, free from entanglement or earthly image. Not by his bodily organs or outward senses does a man attain to this, but by the intelligence and will, which constitute him man.[23] So long as he lingers, trifling with the objects of the imagination and senses, he has not yet passed beyond the limits and instincts of his animal nature, which he possesses in common with the brute beasts. They know and feel through images and by their senses, nor can it be otherwise, for they have no higher powers. Not so is it with man, who, by his intelligence, affections, and will, is created in the image and likeness of God. Hence it is by these powers that he ought, without intermediary, purely and directly to commune with God, be united to Him, and cleave to Him.[24] The Devil does his very utmost to hinder us from this exercise, for he beholds in it a beginning and a foretaste of eternal life, and he is envious of man. Therefore he strives, now by one temptation or passion, now by another, to turn away our thoughts from God. At one time he assails us by arousing in us unnecessary anxiety, foolish cares or troubles, or by drawing us to irregular conversations and vain curiosity. At another he ensnares us by subtle books, by the words of others, by rumours and novelties. Then, again, he has recourse to trials, contradictions, etc. Although these things may sometimes seem but very trifling faults, if faults at all, yet do they greatly hinder our progress in this holy exercise. Therefore, whether great or small, they must be resisted and driven from us as evil and harmful, though they may seem useful and even necessary. It is of great importance that what we have heard, or seen, or done, or said, should not leave their traces or fill our imagination. Neither before nor after, nor at the time, should we foster these memories or allow their images to be formed. For when the mind is free from these thoughts, we are not hindered in our prayer, in meditation, or the psalmody, or in any other of our spiritual exercises, nor do these distractions return to trouble us. Then shouldst thou readily and trustfully commit thyself and all that concerns thee to the unfailing and most sure Providence of God, in silence and peace. He Himself will fight for thee, and will grant thee a liberty and consolation better, nobler, and sweeter than would be possible if thou gavest thyself up day and night to thy fancies, to vain and wandering thoughts, which hold captive the mind, as they toss it hither and thither, wearying soul and body, and wasting uselessly alike thy time and strength.[25] Accept all things, whatsoever their cause, silently and with a tranquil mind, as coming to thee from the fatherly hand of Divine Providence. Free thyself, therefore, from all the impressions of earthly things, in so far as thy state and profession require, so that with a purified mind and sincere affection thou mayest cleave to Him to Whom thou hast so often and so entirely vowed thyself. Let nothing remain which could come between thy soul and God, that so thou mayest be able to pass surely and directly from the wounds of the Sacred Humanity to the brightness of the Divinity. CHAPTER V OF PURITY OF HEART, WHICH IS TO BE SOUGHT ABOVE ALL ELSE Wouldst thou journey by the shortest road, the straight and safe way unto eternal bliss, unto thy true country, to grace and glory? Strive with all thy might to obtain habitual cleanness of heart, purity of mind, quiet of the senses. Gather up thy affections, and with thy whole heart cleave unto God. Withdraw as much as thou canst from thy acquaintance and from all men, and abstain from such affairs as would hinder thy purpose. Seek out with jealous care the place, time, and means most suited to quiet and contemplation, and lovingly embrace silence and solitude. Beware the dangers of which the times are full; fly the agitation of a world never at rest, never still.[26] Let thy chief study be to gain purity, freedom, and peace of heart. Close the doors of thy senses and dwell within, shutting thy heart as diligently as thou canst against the shapes and images of earthly things. Of all the practices of the spiritual life purity of heart stands highest, and rightly, for it is the end and reward of all our labours, and is found only with those who live truly according to the spirit and as good religious. Wherefore thou shouldst employ all thy diligence and skill in order to free thy heart, senses, and affections from whatever could trammel their liberty, or could fetter or ensnare thy soul. Strive earnestly to gather in the wandering affections of thy heart and fix them on the love of the sole and pure Truth, the Sovereign Good; then keep them, as it were, enchained within thee. Fix thy gaze unwaveringly upon God and Divine things; spurn the follies of earth and seek to be wholly transformed in Jesus Christ, yea, even to the heart's core. When thou hast begun to cleanse and purify thy soul of earthly images, and to unify and tranquillize thy heart and mind in God with loving confidence, to the end that thou mayest taste and enjoy in all thy powers the torrents of His good pleasure, and mayest fix thy will and intelligence in Him, then thou wilt no longer need to study and read the Holy Scriptures to learn the love of God and of thy neighbour, for the Holy Spirit Himself will teach thee.[27] Spare no pains, no labour, to purify thy heart and to establish it in unbroken peace. Abide in God in the secret place of thy soul as tranquilly as though there had already risen upon thee the dawn of Eternity, the unending Day of God. Strong in the love of Jesus, go forth from thyself, with a heart pure, a conscience at peace, a faith unfeigned; and in every trial, every event, commit thyself unreservedly to God, having nothing so much at heart as perfect obedience to His will and good pleasure. If thou wouldst arrive thus far, it is needful for thee often to enter within thy soul and to abide therein, disengaging thyself as much as thou canst from all things. Keep the eye of thy soul ever in purity and peace; suffer not the form and images of this world to defile thy mind; preserve thy will from every earthly care, and let every fibre of thy heart be rooted in the love of the Sovereign Good. Thus will thy whole soul, with all its powers, be recollected in God and form but one spirit with Him. It is in this that the highest perfection possible to man here below consists. This union of the spirit and of love, by which a man conforms himself in everything to the supreme and eternal will, enables us to become by grace what God is by His nature.[28] Let us not forget this truth: the moment a man, by the help of God, succeeds in overcoming his own will, that is, in freeing himself from every inordinate affection and care, to cast himself and all his miseries unreservedly into the bosom of God, that moment he becomes so pleasing to God that he receives the gift of grace. Grace brings charity, and charity drives out all fear and hesitation, and fills the soul with confidence and hope. What is more blessed than to cast all our care on Him Who cannot fail? As long as thou leanest upon thyself thou wilt totter. Cast thyself fearlessly into the arms of God. He will embrace thee, He will heal and save thee.[29] If thou wouldst ponder often upon these truths they would bring to thee more happiness than all the riches, delights, honours, of this false world, and would make thee more blessed than all the wisdom and knowledge of this corruptible life, even though thou shouldst surpass all the wise men who have gone before thee. CHAPTER VI THAT A MAN TRULY DEVOUT MUST SEEK GOD IN PURITY OF MIND AND HEART As thou goest forward in this work of ridding thee of every earthly thought and entanglement thou wilt behold thy soul regain her strength and the mastery of her inward senses, and thou wilt begin to taste the sweetness of heavenly things. Learn, therefore, to keep thyself free from the images of outward and material objects, for God loves with a special love the soul that is thus purified. His "delights" are "to be with the children of men,"[30] that is, with those who, set free from earthly affairs and distractions, and at peace from their passions, offer Him simple and pure hearts intent on Him alone. If the memory, imagination, and thoughts still dwell below, it follows of necessity that fresh events, memories of the past, and other things will ensnare and drag thee down. But the Holy Spirit abides not amid such empty thoughts. The true friend of Jesus Christ must be so united by his intelligence and will to the Divine will and goodness that his imagination and passions have no hold over him, and that he troubles not whether men give him love or ridicule, nor heeds what may be done to him. Know well that a truly good will does all and is of more value than all. If the will is good, wholly conformed and united to God, and guided by reason, it matters little that the flesh, the senses, the exterior man are inclined to evil and sluggish in good, or even that a man find himself interiorly lacking in devotion.[31] It suffices that he remains with his whole soul inwardly united to God by faith and a good will. This he will accomplish if, knowing his own imperfection and utter nothingness, he understands that all his happiness is in his Creator. Then does he forsake himself, his own strength and powers, and every creature, and hides himself in complete abandonment in the bosom of God. To God are all his actions simply and purely directed. He seeks nothing outside of God, but knows that of a truth he has found in Him all the good and all the happiness of perfection. Then will he be in some measure transformed in God. He will no longer be able to think, love, understand, remember aught save God and the things of God. He will no longer behold himself or creatures save in God; no love will possess him but the love of God, nor will he remember creatures or even his own being, save in God. Such a knowledge of the truth renders the soul humble, makes her a hard judge towards herself, but merciful to others, while earthly wisdom puffs up the soul with pride and vanity. Behold, this is wise and spiritual doctrine, grounded upon the truth, and leading unto the knowledge and service of God, and to familiarity with Him. If thou desirest to possess Him indeed, thou must of necessity despoil thy heart of earthly affections, not alone for persons, but for every creature, that thou mayest tend to the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with all thy strength, freely, simply, without fear or solicitude, trusting everything in entire confidence to His all-watchful Providence.[32] CHAPTER VII ON THE PRACTICE OF INTERIOR RECOLLECTION The author of the book entitled "De Spiritu et Anima" tells us (chap. xxi.)[33] that to ascend to God means nothing else than to enter into oneself. And, indeed, he who enters into the secret place of his own soul passes beyond himself, and does in very truth ascend to God. Banish, therefore, from thy heart the distractions of earth and turn thine eyes to spiritual joys, that thou mayest learn at last to repose in the light of the contemplation of God. Verily the soul's true life and her repose are to abide in God, held fast by love, and sweetly refreshed by the Divine consolations. But many are the obstacles which hinder us from tasting this rest, and of our own strength we could never attain to it. The reason is evident--the mind is distracted and preoccupied; it cannot enter into itself by the aid of the memory, for it is blinded by phantoms; nor can it enter by the intellect, for it is vitiated by the passions. Even the desire of interior joys and spiritual delights fails to draw it inward. It lies so deeply buried in things sensible and transitory that it cannot return to itself as to the image of God. How needful is it, then, that the soul, lifted upon the wings of reverence and humble confidence, should rise above itself and every creature by entire detachment, and should be able to say within itself: He Whom I seek, love, desire, among all, more than all, and above all, cannot be perceived by the senses or the imagination, for He is above both the senses and the understanding. He cannot be perceived by the senses, yet He is the object of all our desires; He is without shape, but He is supremely worthy of our heart's deepest love. He is beyond compare, and to the pure in heart greatly to be desired. Above all else is He sweet and love-worthy; His goodness and perfection are infinite. When thou shalt understand this, thy soul will enter into the darkness of the spirit, and will advance further and penetrate more deeply into itself.[34] Thou wilt by this means attain more speedily unto the beholding in a dark manner of the Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity, in Christ Jesus, in proportion as thy effort is more inward; and the greater is thy charity, the more precious the fruit thou wilt reap. For the highest, in spiritual things, is ever that which is most interior. Grow not weary, therefore, and rest not from thy efforts until thou hast received some earnest or foretaste of the fulness of joy that awaits thee, and has obtained some first-fruits of the Divine sweetness and delights. Cease not in thy pursuit till thou shalt behold "the God of gods in Sion."[35] In thy spiritual ascent and in thy search after a closer union with God thou must allow thyself no repose, no slipping back, but must go forward till thou hast obtained the object of thy desires. Follow the example of mountain-climbers. If thy desires turn aside after the objects which pass below thou wilt lose thyself in byways and countless distractions. Thy mind will become dissipated and drawn in all directions by its desires. Thy progress will be uncertain, thou wilt not reach thy goal, nor find rest after thy labours. If, on the other hand, the heart and mind, led on by love and desire, withdraw from the distractions of this world, and little by little abandon baser things to become recollected in the one true and unchangeable Good, to dwell there, held fast by the bonds of love, then wilt thou grow strong, and thy recollection will deepen the higher thou risest on the wings of knowledge and desire. They who have attained to this dwell as by habit in the Sovereign Good, and become at last inseparable from it. True life, which is God Himself, becomes their inalienable possession;[36] for ever, free from all fear of the vicissitudes of time and change,[37] they repose in the peaceful enjoyment of this inward happiness, and in sweet communication with God. Their abode is for ever fixed within their own souls, in Christ Jesus, Who is to all who come to Him "the Way, the Truth, and the Life."[38] CHAPTER VIII THAT A TRULY DEVOUT MAN SHOULD COMMIT HIMSELF TO GOD IN ALL THAT BEFALLS HIM From all that has hitherto been said, thou hast understood, if I mistake not, that the more thou separatest thyself from earthly images and created objects, and the closer thy union with God, the nearer wilt thou approach to the state of innocence and perfection. What could be happier, better, sweeter than this? It is, therefore, of supreme importance that thou shouldst preserve thy soul so free from every trace or entanglement of earth that neither the world nor thy friends, neither prosperity nor adversity, things present, past, or future, which concern thyself or others, not even thine own sins above measure, should have power to trouble thee. Think only how thou mayest live, as it were, alone with God, removed from the world, the simple and pure life of the spirit, as though thy soul were already in eternity and separated from thy body. There thou wouldst not busy thyself with earthly things, nor be disquieted by the state of the world, by peace or war, fair skies or foul, or anything here below. But thou wouldst be absorbed and filled by His love. Strive even now in this present life to come forth in a manner from thy body and from every creature. As far as thou canst, fix the eye of thy soul steadfastly, with unobscured gaze, upon the uncreated light. Then will thy soul, purified from the clouds of earth, be like an Angel in a human body, no longer troubled by the flesh, or disturbed by vain thoughts. Arm thyself against temptations, persecutions, injuries, so that in adversity as in prosperity, thou mayest still cleave to God in unbroken peace. When trouble, discouragement, confusion of mind assail thee, do not lose patience or be cast down. Do not betake thee to vocal prayers or other consolations, but endeavour by an act of the will and reason to lift up thy soul and unite it to God, whether thy sensual nature will or no. The devout soul should be so united to God, should so form and preserve her will in conformity to the Divine will, that she is no more occupied or allured by any creature than before it was created, but lives as though there existed but God and herself.[39] She will receive in unvarying peace all that comes to her from the hand of Divine Providence. In all things she will hope in the Lord, without losing patience, peace, or silence. Behold, therefore, of how great value it is in the spiritual life to be detached from all things, that thou mayest be interiorly united to God and conformed to Him. Moreover, there will then be no longer anything to intervene between thy soul and God. Whence could it come? Not from without, for the vow of voluntary poverty has despoiled thee of all earthly goods, that of chastity has taken thy body. Nor could it come from within, for obedience has taken from thee thy very will and soul. There is now nothing left which could come between God and thyself. That thou art a religious, thy profession, thy state, thy habit and tonsure, and the other marks of the religious life declare. See to it whether thou art a religious in truth or only one in name. Consider how thou art fallen and how thou sinnest against the Lord thy God and against His justice if thy deeds do not correspond with thy holy state, if by will or desire thou clingest to the creature rather than to the Creator, or preferrest the creature to the Creator. CHAPTER IX THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD IS TO BE PREFERRED ABOVE ALL OTHER EXERCISES Whatever exists outside of God is the work of His hands. Every creature is, therefore, a blending together of the actual and the possible, and as such is in its nature limited. Born of nothing, it is surrounded by nothingness, and tends to nothingness.[40] Of necessity the creature depends each moment upon God, the supreme Artist, for its existence, preservation, power of action, and all that it possesses. It is utterly unable to accomplish its own work, either for itself or for another, and is impotent as a thing which is not before that which is, the finite before the infinite. It follows, therefore, that our life, thoughts, and works should be in Him, of Him, for Him, and directed to Him, Who by the least sign of His will could produce creatures unspeakably more perfect than any which now exist. It is impossible that there should be in the mind or heart a thought or a love more profitable, more perfect or more blessed than those which rest upon God, the Almighty Creator, of Whom, in Whom, by Whom, towards Whom all tend. He suffices infinitely for Himself and for others, since from all eternity He contains within Himself the perfections of all things. There is nothing within Him which is not Himself. In Him and by Him exist the causes of all transitory things; in Him are the immutable origins of all things that change, whether rational or irrational. All that happens in time has in Him its eternal principle. He fills all; He is in all things by His essence, by which He is more present and more near to them than they are to themselves.[41] In Him all things are united and live eternally.[42] It is true that the weakness of our understanding or our want of experience[43] may oblige us to make use of creatures in our contemplation, yet there is a kind of contemplation which is very fruitful, good, and real, which seems possible to all. Whether he meditates on the creature or the Creator, every man may reach the point at which he finds all his joy in His Creator, God, One in Trinity, and kindles the fire of Divine love in himself or in others, so as to merit eternal life. We should notice here the difference which exists between the contemplation of Christians and that of pagan philosophers. The latter sought only their own perfection, and hence their contemplation affected their intellect only; they desired only to enrich their minds with knowledge. But the contemplation of Saints, which is that of Christians, seeks as its end the love of the God Whom they contemplate. Hence it is not content to find fruit for the intelligence, but penetrates beyond to the will that it may there enkindle love. The Saints desired above all in their contemplation the increase of charity. It is better to know Jesus Christ and possess Him spiritually by grace, than, without grace, to have Him in the body, or even in His essence. The more pure a soul becomes and the deeper her recollection, the clearer will be her inward vision. She now prepares, as it were, a ladder upon which she may ascend to the contemplation of God. This contemplation will set her on fire with love for all that is heavenly, Divine, eternal, and will cause her to despise as utter nothing all that is of time. When we seek to arrive at the knowledge of God by the method of negation, we first remove from our conception of Him all that pertains to the body, the senses, the imagination. Then we reject even that which belongs to the reason, and the idea of being as it is found in creatures.[44] This, according to St. Denis, is the best means of attaining to the knowledge of God,[45] as far as it is possible in this world. This is the darkness in which God dwells and into which Moses entered that he might reach the light inaccessible.[46] But we must begin, not with the mind, but with the body. We must observe the accustomed order, and pass from the labour of action to the repose of contemplation, from the moral virtues to those of sublime contemplation.[47] Why, O my soul, dost thou vainly wear thyself out in such multiplicity of things? Thou findest in them but poverty. Seek and love only that perfect good which includes in itself all good, and it will suffice thee. Unhappy art thou if thou knowest and possessest all, and art ignorant of this. If thou knewest at the same time both this good and all other things, this alone would render thee the happier. Therefore St. John has written: "This is eternal life: that they may know thee,"[48] and the Prophet: "I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear."[49] CHAPTER X THAT WE SHOULD NOT BE TOO SOLICITOUS FOR ACTUAL AND SENSIBLE DEVOTION, BUT DESIRE RATHER THE UNION OF OUR WILL WITH GOD Seek not too eagerly after the grace of devotion, sensible sweetness and tears, but let thy chief care be to remain inwardly united to God by good will in the intellectual part of the soul.[50] Of a truth nothing is so pleasing to God as a soul freed from all trace and image of created things. A true religious should be at liberty from every creature that he may be wholly free to devote himself to God alone and cleave to Him. Deny thyself, therefore, that thou mayest follow Christ, thy Lord and God, Who was truly poor, obedient, chaste, humble, and suffering, and Whose life and death were a scandal to many, as the Gospel clearly shows.[51] The soul, when separated from the body, troubles not as to what becomes of the shell it has abandoned--it may be burnt, hanged, spoken evil of; and the soul is not afflicted by these outrages,[52] but thinks only of eternity and of the one thing necessary, of which the Lord speaks in the Gospel.[53] So shouldst thou regard thy body, as though the soul were already freed from it. Set ever before thine eyes the eternal life in God, which awaits thee, and think on that only good of which the Lord said: "One thing is necessary."[54] A great grace will then descend upon thy soul, which will aid thee in acquiring purity of mind and simplicity of heart. And, indeed, this treasure is close at thy doors. Turn from the images and distractions of earth, and quickly shalt thou find it with thee and learn what it is to be united to God without hindrance or impediment. Then wilt thou gain an unshaken constancy, which will strengthen thee to endure all that may befall thee. Thus was it with the martyrs, the Fathers, the elect, and all the blessed. They despised all and thought only of possessing in God eternal security for their souls. Thus armed within and united to God by a good will, they despised all that is of this world, as though their soul had already departed from the body. Learn from them how great is the power of a good will united to God. By that union of the soul with God it becomes, as it were, cut off from the flesh by a spiritual separation, and regards the outward man from afar as something alien to it. Then, whatever may happen inwardly or in the body will be as little regarded as though it had befallen another person or a creature without reason. He who is united to God is but one mind with Him. Out of regard, therefore, for His sovereign honour, never be so bold as to think or imagine in His presence what thou wouldst blush to hear or see before men. Thou oughtest, moreover, to raise all thy thoughts to God alone, and set Him before thine inward gaze, as though He alone existed. So wilt thou experience the sweetness of Divine union and even now make a true beginning of the life to come. CHAPTER XI IN WHAT MANNER WE SHOULD RESIST TEMPTATION AND ENDURE TRIALS He who with his whole heart draws nigh unto God must of necessity be proved by temptation and trial. When the sting of temptation is felt, by no means give thy consent, but bear all with patience, sweetness, humility, and courage. If thou art tempted to blasphemy or any shameful sin, be well assured thou canst do nothing better than to utterly despise and contemn such thoughts. Blasphemy is indeed sinful, scandalous, and abominable, yet be not anxious about such temptations, but rather despise them, and do not let thy conscience be troubled by them. The enemy will most certainly be put to flight if thou wilt thus contemn both him and his suggestions. He is too proud to endure scorn or contempt. The best remedy is, therefore, to trouble no more about these thoughts than we do about the flies which, against our will, dance before our eyes. Let not the servant of Christ thus easily and needlessly lose sight of his Master's presence, nor let him grow impatient, murmur, or complain of these flies; I mean these light temptations, suspicions, sadness, depression, pusillanimity--mere nothings which a good will can put to flight by an elevation of the soul to God. By a good will man makes God his Master, and the holy Angels his guardians and protectors. Good will drives away temptation as the hand brushes away a fly. "Peace," therefore, "to men of good will."[55] In truth no better gift than this can be offered to God. Good will in the soul is the source of all good, the mother of all virtues. He who possesses it, possesses without fear of loss all he needs to live a good life.[56] If thou desirest what is good and art not able to accomplish it, God will reward thee for it as though thou hadst performed it.[57] He has established as an eternal and unchangeable law that merit should lie in the will, and that upon the will should depend our future of Heaven or hell, reward or punishment.[58] Charity itself consists in nothing else but a strong will to serve God, a loving desire to please Him, and a fervent longing to enjoy Him. Forget not, therefore, temptation is not sin, but rather the means of proving virtue. By it man may gain great profit,[59] and this the more inasmuch as "the life of man upon earth is a warfare."[60] CHAPTER XII THE POWER OF THE LOVE OF GOD All that we have hitherto described, all that is necessary for salvation, can find in love alone its highest, completest, most beneficent perfection. Love supplies all that is wanting for our salvation; it contains abundantly every good thing, and lacks not even the presence of the supreme object of our desires. It is by love alone that we turn to God, are transformed into His likeness, and are united to Him, so that we become one spirit with Him, and receive by and from Him all our happiness: here in grace, hereafter in glory. Love can find no rest till she reposes in the full and perfect possession of the Beloved. It is by the path of love, which is charity, that God draws nigh to man, and man to God, but where charity is not found God cannot dwell. If, then, we possess charity we possess God, for "God is charity."[61] There is nothing keener than love, nothing more subtle, nothing more penetrating. Love cannot rest till it has sounded all the depths and learnt the perfections of its Beloved. It desires to be one with Him, and, if it could, would form but one being with the Beloved. It is for this reason that it cannot suffer anything to intervene between it and the object loved, which is God, but springs forward towards Him, and finds no peace till it has overcome every obstacle, and reached even unto the Beloved. Love has the power of uniting and transforming; it transforms the one who loves into him who is loved, and him who is loved into him who loves. Each passes into the other, as far as it is possible. And first consider the intelligence. How completely love transports the loved one into him who loves! With what sweetness and delight the one lives in the memory of the other, and how earnestly the lover tries to know, not superficially but intimately, all that concerns the object of his love, and strives to enter as far as possible into his inner life! Think next of the will, by which also the loved one lives in him who loves. Does he not dwell in him by that tender affection, that sweet and deeply-rooted joy which he feels? On the other hand, the lover lives in the beloved by the sympathy of his desires, by sharing his likes and dislikes, his joys and sorrows, until the two seem to form but one. Since "love is strong as death,"[62] it carries the lover out of himself into the heart of the beloved, and holds him prisoner there. The soul is more truly where it loves than where it gives life, since it exists in the object loved by its own nature, by reason and will; whilst it is in the body it animates only by bestowing on it an existence which it shares with the animal creation.[63] There is, therefore, but one thing which has power to draw us from outward objects into the depths of our own souls, there to form an intimate friendship with Jesus. Nothing but the love of Christ and the desire of His sweetness can lead us thus to feel, to comprehend and experience the presence of His Divinity. The power of love alone is able to lift up the soul from earth to the heights of Heaven, nor is it possible to ascend to eternal beatitude except on the wings of love and desire. Love is the life of the soul, its nuptial garment, its perfection.[64] Upon charity are based the law, the prophets, and the precepts of the Lord.[65] Hence the Apostle wrote to the Romans: "Love is therefore the fulfilling of the law,"[66] and in the first Epistle to Timothy: "The end of the commandment is charity."[67] CHAPTER XIII OF THE NATURE AND ADVANTAGES OF PRAYER--OF INTERIOR RECOLLECTION Of ourselves we are utterly unable to attain to charity or any other good thing. We have naught to offer to the Lord, the Author of all, which was not His already. One thing alone remains to us: that in every occurrence we should turn to Him in prayer, as He Himself taught us by word and example. Let us go to Him as guilty, poor, and miserable, as beggars, weak and needy, as subjects and slaves, yet as His children. Of ourselves we are utterly destitute. What can we do but cast ourselves at His feet in deepest humility, holy fear mingling in our souls with love, peace, and recollection? And while we are fain to draw nigh with all lowliness and modesty, with minds sincere and simple, let our hearts burn with great desires, with ardour and heartfelt longings. And so let us supplicate our God, and lay before Him with entire confidence the perils which menace us on every side. Let us freely, unhesitatingly, and in all simplicity, confide ourselves to Him, and offer Him our whole being, even to the last fibre, for are we not in truth absolutely His? Let us keep nothing for ourselves, and then will be fulfilled in us the saying of Blessed Isaac, one of the Fathers of the Desert, who, speaking of this kind of prayer, said: "We shall be one being with God, and He will be all in all to us, when that perfect charity by which He loved us first has entered into our inmost hearts."[68] This will be accomplished when God alone becomes the object of all our love, our desires, our striving, of all our efforts and thoughts, of all that we behold, speak of, hope for; when that union which exists between the Father and the Son, and between the Son and the Father shall be found also in our mind and soul. Since His love for us is so pure, sincere, and unchanging, ought not we in return to give Him a love constant and uninterrupted? So intimate should be our union with Him that our hopes, thoughts, prayers breathe only God.[69] The truly spiritual man should set before him, as the goal of all his efforts and desires, the possession even in a mortal body, of an image of the happiness to come, and the enjoyment even here below of some foretaste of the delights, the life, and glory of Heaven. This, I say, is the end of all perfection--that the soul may become so purified from every earthly longing, and so raised to spiritual things, that at last the whole life and the desires of the heart form one unbroken prayer. When the soul has thus shaken off the dust of earth and aspires unto her God, to Whom the true religious ever directs his intention, dreading the least separation from Him as a most cruel death; when peace reigns within and she is delivered from the bondage of her passions and cleaves with firmest purpose to the one Sovereign Good, then will be fulfilled in her the words of the Apostle: "Pray without ceasing,"[70] and "in every place, lifting up pure hands, without anger and contention."[71] When once this purity of soul has gained the victory over man's natural inclination for the things of sense, when all earthly longings are quenched and the soul is, as it were, transformed into the likeness of pure spirits or Angels, then all she receives, all she undertakes, all she does, will be a pure and true prayer. Only persevere faithfully in thy efforts and, as I have shown from the beginning, it will become as simple and easy for thee to contemplate God and rejoice in Him in thy recollection as to live a purely natural life. CHAPTER XIV THAT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE JUDGED ACCORDING TO THE TESTIMONY OF OUR CONSCIENCE There is also another practice which will tend greatly to thy progress in spiritual perfection, and will aid thee to gain purity of soul and tranquil rest in God. Whatever men say or think of thee, bring it before the tribunal of thine own conscience. Enter within thyself, and there, turning a deaf ear to all else, set thyself to learn the truth. Then wilt thou see clearly that the praise and honour of men bring thee no profit, but rather loss, if thou knowest that thou art guilty and worthy of condemnation in the sight of truth. And, just as it is useless to be honoured outwardly by men if thy conscience accuse thee within, so in like manner is it no loss to thee if men despise, blame, or persecute thee without, if within thou art innocent and free from reproach or blame. Nay, rather, thou hast then great reason to rejoice in the Lord in patience, silence, and peace. Adversity is powerless to harm where sin has no dominion; and just as there is no evil which goes unpunished, so is there no good without recompense. Seek not with the hypocrites thy reward and crown from men, but rather from the hand of God, not now, but hereafter; not for a passing moment, but for eternity. Thou canst, therefore, do nothing higher nor better in every tribulation or occurrence than enter into the sanctuary of thy soul, and there call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, thy helper in temptation and affliction. There shouldst thou humble thyself, confessing thy sins, and praising thy God and Father, Who both chastises and consoles. There dispose thyself to accept with unruffled peace, readiness, and confidence from the hands of God's unfailing Providence and marvellous wisdom all that is sent thee of prosperity or adversity, whether touching thyself or others. Then wilt thou obtain remission of thy sins;[72] bitterness will be driven from thy soul, sweetness and confidence will penetrate it, grace and mercy will descend upon it. Then a sweet familiarity will draw thee on and strengthen thee, abundant consolation will flow to thee from the bosom of God. Then thou wilt adhere to Him and form an indissoluble union with Him. But beware of imitating hypocrites who, like the Pharisees, try to appear outwardly before men more holy than they know themselves in truth to be. Is it not utter folly to seek or desire human praise and glory for oneself or others, while within we are filled with shameful and grievous sins? Assuredly he who pursues such vanities can hope for no share in the good things of which we spoke just now, but shame will infallibly be his lot. Keep thy worthlessness and thy sins ever before thine eyes, and learn to know thyself that thou mayest grow in humility. Shrink not from being regarded by all the world as filthy mud, vile and abject, on account of thy grievous sins and defects. Esteem thyself among others as dross in the midst of gold, as tares in the wheat, straw among the grain, as a wolf among the sheep, as Satan among the children of God. Neither shouldst thou desire to be respected by others, or preferred to anyone whatsoever. Fly rather with all thy strength of heart and soul from that pestilential poison, the venom of praise, from a reputation founded on boasting and ostentation, lest, as the Prophet says, "The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul."[73] Again, in Isaias, we read: "They that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee, and destroy the way of thy steps."[74] Also the Lord says: "Woe to you when men shall bless you!"[75] CHAPTER XV ON THE CONTEMPT OF SELF: HOW IT IS ACQUIRED: ITS PROFIT TO THE SOUL The more truly a man knows his own misery, the more fully and clearly does he behold the majesty of God. The more vile he is in his own eyes for the sake of God, of truth, and of justice, the more worthy of esteem is he in the eyes of God. Strive earnestly, therefore, to look on thyself as utterly contemptible, to think thyself unworthy of any benefit, to be displeasing in thine own eyes, but pleasing to God. Desire that others should regard thee as vile and mean. Learn not to be troubled in tribulations, afflictions, injuries; not to be incensed against those that inflict them, nor to entertain thoughts of resentment against them. Try, on the contrary, sincerely to believe thyself worthy of all injuries, contempt, ill-treatment and scorn. In truth, he who for God's sake is filled with sorrow and compunction dreads to be honoured and loved by another. He does not refuse to be an object of hatred, or shrink from being trodden under foot and despised as long as he lives, in order that he may practise real humility and cleave in purity of heart to God alone. It does not require exterior labour or bodily health to love God only, to hate oneself more than all, to desire to seem little in the eyes of others: what is needed is rather repose of the senses, the effort of the heart, silence of the mind. It is by labouring with the heart, by the inward aspiration of the soul, that thou wilt learn to forsake the base things of earth and to rise to what is heavenly and Divine. Thus wilt thou become transformed in God, and this the more speedily if, in all sincerity, without condemning or despising thy neighbour, thou desirest to be regarded by all as a reproach and scandal--nay, even to be abhorred as filthy mire, rather than possess the delights of earth, or be honoured and exalted by men, or enjoy any advantage or happiness in this fleeting world. Have no other desire in this perishable life of the body, no other consolation than unceasingly to weep over, regret and detest thy offences and faults. Learn utterly to despise thyself, to annihilate thyself and to appear daily more contemptible in the eyes of others. Strive to become even more unworthy in thine own eyes, in order to please God alone, to love Him only and cling to Him. Concern not thyself with anything except thy Lord Jesus Christ, Who ought to reign alone in thy affections. Have no solicitude or care save for Him Whose power and Providence give movement and being to all things.[76] It is not now the time to rejoice but rather to lament with all the sincerity of thy heart. If thou canst not weep, sorrow at least that thou hast no tears to shed; if thou canst, grieve the more because by the gravity of thy offences and number of thy sins thou art thyself the cause of thy grief. A man under sentence of death does not trouble himself as to the dispositions of his executioners; so he who truly mourns and sheds the tears of repentance, refrains from delight, anger, vainglory, indignation, and every like passion. Citizens and criminals are not lodged in like abodes; so also the life and conduct of those whose faults call for sighs and tears should not resemble those of men who have remained innocent and have nothing to expiate. Were it otherwise, how would the guilty, great though their crimes may have been, differ in their punishment and expiation from the innocent? Iniquity would then be more free than innocence. Renounce all, therefore, contemn all, separate thyself from all, that thou mayest lay deep the foundations of sincere penance. He who truly loves Jesus Christ, and sorrows for Him, who bears Him in his heart and in his body, will have no thought, or care, or solicitude for aught else. Such a one will sincerely mourn over his sins and offences, will long after eternal happiness, will remember the Judgment and will think diligently on his last end in lowly fear. He, then, who wishes to arrive speedily at a blessed impassibility and to reach God, counts that day lost on which he has not been ill-spoken of and despised. What is this impassibility but freedom from the vices and passions, purity of heart, the adornment of virtue? Count thyself as already dead, since thou must needs die some day. And now, but one word more. Let this be the test of thy thoughts, words, and deeds. If they render thee more humble, more recollected in God, more strong, then they are according to God. But if thou findest it otherwise, then fear lest all is not according to God, acceptable to Him, or profitable to thyself. CHAPTER XVI OF THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD, WHICH WATCHES OVER ALL THINGS Wouldst thou draw nigh unto God without let or hindrance, freely and in peace, as we have described? Desirest thou to be united and drawn to Him in a union so close that it will endure in prosperity and adversity, in life and in death? Delay not to commit all things with trustful confidence into the hands of His sure and infallible Providence. Is it not most fitting that thou shouldst trust Him Who gives to all creatures, in the first place, their existence, power, and movement, and, secondly, their species and nature, ordering in all their number, weight, and measure? Just as Art presupposes the operations of Nature, so Nature presupposes the work of God, the Creator, Preserver, Organizer, and Administrator. To Him alone belong infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, essential mercy, justice, truth, and charity, immutable eternity, and immensity. Nothing can exist and act of its own power, but every creature acts of necessity by the power of God, the first moving cause, the first principle and origin of every action, Who acts in every active being. If we consider the ordered harmony of the universe, it is the Providence of God which must arrange all things, even to the smallest details. From the infinitely great to the infinitely small nothing can escape His eternal Providence; nothing has been drawn from His control, either in the acts of free-will, in events we ascribe to chance or fate, or in what has been designed by Him. We may go further: it is as impossible for God to make anything which does not fall within the dominion of His Providence as it is for Him to create anything which is not subject to His action. Divine Providence, therefore, extends over all things, even the thoughts of man. This is the teaching of Holy Scripture, for in the Epistle of St. Peter it is written: "Casting all your care upon Him, for He hath care of you."[77] And, again, the Prophet says: "Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee."[78] Also in Ecclesiasticus we read: "My children, behold the generations of men; and know ye that no one hath hoped in the Lord, and hath been confounded. For who hath continued in His commandment, and hath been forsaken?"[79] And the Lord says: "Be not solicitous, therefore, saying, What shall we eat?"[80] All that thou canst hope for from God, however great it may be, thou shalt without doubt receive, according to the promise in Deuteronomy: "Every place that your foot shall tread upon shall be yours."[81] As much as thou canst desire thou shalt receive, and as far as the foot of thy confidence reaches, so far thou shalt possess. Hence St. Bernard says: "God, the Creator of all things, is so full of mercy and compassion that whatever may be the grace for which we stretch out our hands, we shall not fail to receive it."[82] It is written in St. Mark: "Whatsoever ye shall ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you."[83] The greater and more persistent thy confidence in God, and the more earnestly thou turnest to Him in lowly reverence, the more abundantly and certainly shalt thou receive all thou dost hope and ask. But if, on account of the number and magnitude of his sins, the confidence of any should languish, let him who feels this torpor remember that all is possible to God, that what He wills must infallibly happen, and what He wills not cannot come to pass, and, finally, that it is as easy for Him to forgive and blot out innumerable and heinous sins as to forgive one. On the other hand, it is just as impossible for a sinner to deliver himself from a single sin as it would be for him to raise and cleanse himself from many sins; for, not only are we unable to accomplish this, but of ourselves we cannot even think what is right.[84] All comes to us from God. It is, however, far more dangerous, other things being equal, to be entangled in many sins than to be held only by one. In truth, no evil remains unpunished, and for every mortal sin is due, in strict justice, an infinite punishment, because a mortal sin is committed against God, to Whom belong infinite greatness, dignity, and glory. Moreover, according to the Apostle, "the Lord knoweth who are His,"[85] and it is impossible that one of them should perish, no matter how violently the tempests and waves of error rage, how great the scandal, schisms and persecutions, how grievous the adversities, discords, heresies, tribulations, or temptations of every kind. The number of the elect and the measure of their merit is eternally and unalterably predestined. So true is this that all the good and evil which can happen to them or to others, all prosperity and adversity, serve only to their advantage. Nay more, adversity does but render them more glorious, and proves their fidelity more surely. Delay not, therefore, to commit all things without fear to the Providence of God, by Whose permission all evil of whatever kind happens, and ever for some good end. It could not be except He permitted it; its form and measure are allowed by Him Who can and will by His wisdom turn all to good. Just as it is by His action that all good is wrought, so is it by His permission that all evil happens.[86] But from the evil He draws good, and thus marvellously shows forth His power, wisdom, and clemency by our Lord Jesus Christ. So also He manifests His mercy and His justice, the power of grace, the weakness of nature, and the beauty of the universe. So He shows by the force of contrast the glory of the good, and the malice and punishment of the wicked. In like manner, in the conversion of a sinner we behold contrition, confession, and penance; and, on the other hand, the tenderness of God, His mercy and charity, His glory and His goodness. Yet sin does not always turn to the good of those who commit it; but it is usually the greatest of perils and worst of ills, for it causes the loss of grace and glory. It stains the soul and provokes chastisement and even eternal punishment. From so great an evil may our Lord Jesus vouchsafe to preserve us! Amen. R. AND T. WASHBOURNE, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON. FOOTNOTES: [1] Following the general tradition, we attribute this work to Albert the Great, but not all critics are agreed as to its authenticity. [2] Albert the Great is speaking here in a special manner of religious perfection, although what he says is also true of Christian perfection in general. [3] He speaks here of the obligation laid upon all Christians. [4] Religious bind themselves to observe as a duty that which was only of counsel. To them, therefore, the practice of the counsels becomes an obligation. [5] The vows of religion have as their immediate object the removal of obstacles to perfection, but they do not in themselves constitute perfection. Perfection consists in charity. Albert the Great speaks of only one vow, because in his day the formulas of religious profession mentioned only the vow of obedience, which includes the other two vows. [6] John iv. 24. [7] Matt. vi. 6. [8] When Albert the Great and the other mystics warn us against solicitude with regard to creatures, they refer to that solicitude which is felt for creatures in themselves; they do not mean that we ought not to occupy ourselves with them in any way for God's sake. The great doctor explains his meaning in clear terms later on in this work. [9] 1 Pet. v. 7. [10] Phil. iv. 6. [11] Ps. liv. 23. [12] Ps. lxxii. 28. [13] Ps. xv. 8. [14] Cant. iii. 4. [15] Wis. vii. 11. [16] Matt. xvi. 26. [17] Luke xvii. 21. [18] Albert the Great supposes here that we give ourselves equally to God and to creatures, which would be wrong, and not that creatures are subordinated to God, which would be a virtue. [19] This must be understood to mean that God is the principal and supreme end of all created activities. [20] The perfect image of God in man does not consist merely in the possession of those faculties by which we resemble Him, but rather in performing by faith and love, as far as is in our power, acts like those which He performs, in knowing Him as He knows Himself, in loving Him as He loves Himself. [21] In scholastic theology the term "form" is used of that which gives to anything its accidental or substantial being. God is the "accidental form" of the soul, because in giving it its activity He bestows upon it something of His own activity, by means of sanctifying grace. Yet more truly may it be said that God is also the "form" of the soul in the sense that it is destined by the ordinary workings of Providence to participate by sanctifying grace in the Being of God, enjoying thus a participation real, though created, in the Divine nature. [22] We must avoid these things in so far as they separate us from God, but they may also serve to draw us nearer to Him if we regard them in God and for God. [23] It is by the intelligence and will that man actually attains to this, but the use of the sensitive faculties is presupposed. [24] The sensitive faculties, if used as a means, often help us to draw near to God, but when used as an end, their activity becomes an obstacle. [25] This teaching is the Christian rendering of the axiom formulated by the Philosopher: "Homo sedendo fit sapiens"--"It is in quiet that man gains wisdom." [26] This is especially true for religious. [27] By this is meant that the Holy Scriptures, though always presupposed as the foundation of our belief, of themselves give only an objective knowledge of God, while that which the Holy Ghost gives is experimental. [28] God knows and loves Himself in Himself by His own nature, while we know and love Him in Himself by grace. [29] A very striking feature in the doctrine of this book is that it requires first the perfection of the soul and the faculties, whence proceeds that of our actions. Some modern authors, confining themselves to casuistry, speak almost exclusively of the perfection of actions, a method less logical and less thorough. [30] Prov. viii. 31. [31] The exterior powers of a man are the imagination and passions; the interior his intelligence and will, which sometimes find themselves deprived of all the aids of sensible devotion. [32] In truth, all the designs of God in our regard are full of mercy, and tend especially to our sanctification; the obstacles to these designs come only from our evil passions. [33] The book "De Spiritu et Anima" is of uncertain authorship. It is printed after the works of St. Augustine in Migne's "Patrologia Latina," vol. xl., 779. [34] This darkness is the silence of the imagination, which no longer gains a hearing, and that of the intellect, which is sufficiently enlightened to understand that we can in reality understand nothing of the Divinity in itself, and that the best thing we can do is to remove from our conception of God all those limitations which we observe in creatures. The reason of this is that we can only know God naturally by means of what we see in creatures, and these are always utterly insufficient to give us an adequate idea of the Creator. [35] Ps. lxxxiii. 8. [36] We only lose God, the uncreated Good, by an unlawful attachment to created good; if we are free from this attachment, we tend to Him without effort. [37] The subsequent condemnation, in 1687, of this doctrine, as taught by Molino, could not, of course, be foreseen by Blessed Albertus writing in the thirteenth century. [38] John xiv. 6. [39] And this she does because creatures no longer occupy her, except for God's sake. [40] This is so because, according to true philosophy, the essence of a thing is distinct from its existence. [41] Every actual cause is more intimately present to its accomplished work than the work itself, which it necessarily precedes. [42] John i. 3, 4. [43] We cannot always experience Divine things, and at first we can only compare them to the things which we experience here below. [44] We deny that there is in God anything which is a mere potentiality, or an imperfection. We deny in Him also the process of reasoning which is the special work of the faculty of reason, because this implies the absence of the vision of truth. We deny "being as it is found in creatures," because in creatures it is necessarily limited, and subject to accident. [45] "Nom. Div.," i. [46] Exod. xxxiii. 11; Num. xii. 8; Heb. iii. 2. [47] It would be well to quote St. Thomas, the disciple of Albert the Great, upon this important doctrine: "A thing may be said to belong to the contemplative life in two senses, either as an essential part of it, or as a preliminary disposition. The moral virtues do not belong to the essence of contemplation, whose sole end is the contemplation of truth.... But they belong to it as a necessary predisposition ... because they calm the passions and the tumult of exterior preoccupations, and so facilitate contemplation" ("Sum.," 2, 2{ae}, q. 180, a. 2). This distinction should never be lost sight of in reading the mystic books of the scholastics. [48] John xvii. 3. [49] Ps. xvi. 15. [50] This admirable doctrine condemns a whole mass of insipid, shallow, affected and sensual books and ideas, which have in modern times flooded the world of piety, have banished from souls more wholesome thoughts, and filled them with a questionable and injurious sentimentality. [51] Matt. xi. 6; xiii. 57, etc. [52] This shows an excellent grasp of the meaning of the celebrated maxim "Perinde ac cadaver." [53] Luke x. 42. [54] _Ibid._ [55] Luke ii. 14. [56] Nothing could be more conformable to the teaching of the Gospel than this doctrine. At His birth Jesus bids the Angels sing that peace belongs to men of good will (Luke ii. 14); later He will declare that His meat is to do the will of His Father (John iv. 34); that He seeks not His own will, but the will of Him Who sent Him (John v. 30); that He came down from heaven to accomplish it (John vi. 38); and when face to face with death He will still pray that the Father's will be done, not His (Matt. xxvi. 39; Luke xxii. 42). Over and over again, in the Gospel, do we find Him using the same language. He would have His disciples act in the same manner. It is not the man, He tells us, who repeats the words: "My Father, my Father," who shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of God (Matt. vii. 21; Rom. ii. 13; Jas. i. 22); and in the prayer which He dictates to us He bids us ask for the accomplishment of this will as the means of glorifying God, and of sanctifying our souls (Matt. vi. 10). Finally, He tells us that if we conform ourselves to this sovereign will, we shall be His brethren (Matt. xii. 50; Mark iii. 35). When certain persons, pious or otherwise, confusing sentiment with true love, ask themselves if they love God, or if they will be able to love Him always, we have only to ask them the same question in other words: Are they doing the will of God? can they do it?--_i.e._, can they perform their duty for God's sake? Put thus, the question resolves itself. The reason for such a doctrine is very simple: to love anyone is to wish him well; that, in the case of God, is to desire His beneficent will towards us. Our Lord and Master recalled this principle when He said to His disciples, "You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you" (John xv. 14). [57] We must, in virtue of the same principle, keep a firm hold of the truth, as indisputable as it is frequently forgotten, that we have the merit of the good which we will to carry out and are unable to accomplish, as we have also the demerit of the evil we should have done and could not. [58] "Upon the will depends our future of Heaven or hell," because, given the knowledge of God, the will attaches itself to Him by love, or hates Him with obstinacy. [59] We may notice, in particular, a three-fold benefit: first, temptation calls for conflict, and so strengthens virtue; then it obliges a man to adhere deliberately to that virtue which is assailed by the temptation, and so gain a further perfection; finally, there are necessarily included in both the conflict and the adherence to good numerous virtuous, and therefore meritorious, acts. Thus we may reap advantage from temptation both in our dispositions and our acts. [60] Job vii. 1. [61] 1 John iv. 8. [62] Cant. viii. 6. [63] The author is speaking here of the soul in so far as it is human, and it is as such that it is more where it loves than where it gives life. [64] Without charity there is no perfect virtue, since without it no virtue can lead man to his final end, which is God, although it may lead him to some lower end. It is in this sense that, according to the older theologians, charity is the "form" of the other virtues, since by it the acts of all the other virtues are supernaturalized and directed to their true end--_i.e._, to God. _Cf._ St. Th. "Sum.," 2, 2{ae}, q. 23, aa. 7, 8. [65] Matt. xxii. 40. [66] Rom. xiii. 10. [67] 1 Tim. i. 5. [68] God can only love Himself or creatures for His own sake; if we have this love within our souls we shall be in a certain sense one being with Him. [69] This teaching is based on the definition that prayer is essentially "an elevation of the soul to God." [70] 1 Thess. v. 17. [71] 1 Tim. ii. 8. [72] Remission may be obtained in this way of the fault in the case of venial sins, of the punishment due in all sins. [73] Ps. ix. 24. [74] Isa. iii. 12. [75] Luke vi. 26. [76] St. Thomas explains as follows both the possibility and the correctness of this opinion of ourselves: "A man can, without falsehood, believe and declare himself viler than all others, both on account of the secret faults which he knows to exist within him, and on account of the gifts of God hidden in the souls of others." St. Augustine, in his work "De Virginit.," ch. lii., says: "Believe that others are better than you in the depths of their souls, although outwardly you may appear better than they." In the same way one may truthfully both say and believe that one is altogether useless and unworthy in his own strength. The Apostle says (2 Cor. iii. 5): "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God" ("Sum.," 2, 2{ae}, q. 161, a. 6, 1{m}). [77] 1 Pet. v. 7. [78] Ps. liv. 23. [79] Ecclus. ii. 11, 12. [80] Matt. vi. 31. [81] Deut. xi. 24. [82] _Cf._ Serm. I. in Pent. [83] Mark xi. 24. [84] 2 Cor. iii. 5. [85] 2 Tim. ii. 19. [86] The teaching of Albert the Great on Divine Providence is truly admirable. It is based upon the axiom that the actions of the creature do not depend partly upon itself and partly upon God, but wholly upon itself and wholly upon God (_cf._ St. Thomas "Cont. Gent.," iii. 70). Human causality is not parallel with the Divine, but subordinate to it, as the scholastics teach. This doctrine alone safeguards the action of God and of that of the creature. The doctrine of parallelism derogates from both, and leads to fatalism by attributing to God things which He has not done, and suppressing for man the necessary principle of all good, especially that of liberty. It is the doctrine of subordinated causes also which explains how things decreed by God are determined by the supreme authority, and infallibly come to pass, without prejudice to the freedom of action of secondary causes. All this belongs to the highest theology. Unhappily, certain modern authors have forgotten it. _The Angelus Series_ OF Authorized Translations of Standard Foreign Works, Original Works, and Selections THE FIRST SEVEN VOLUMES ARE =ON KINDNESS.= By Very Rev. J. GUIBERT, S.S. _20,000 Copies sold in France._ =ON CHARACTER.= By Very Rev. J. GUIBERT, S.S. _18,000 Copies sold in France._ =ON THANKSGIVING.= Selected from Father Faber's Works. By the Hon. ALISON STOURTON. =FROM A GARDEN JUNGLE.= By AN UNPAID SECRETARY. =ON PIETY.= By Very Rev. J. GUIBERT, S.S. _13,000 Copies sold in France._ =ON THE EXERCISES OF PIETY.= By Very Rev. J. GUIBERT, S.S. _13,000 Copies sold in France._ =ON UNION WITH GOD.= By Blessed ALBERT THE GREAT, O.P. With notes by Rev. P. J. BERTHIER, O.P. OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION. _Art linen, gilt, with ingrained paper sides, 1s. 3d. net._ _Paste-grain leather, gilt top and back, 2s. 6d. net._ LONDON: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD., PATERNOSTER ROW. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics or underlined are indicated by _italics_. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. Superscripted letters are indicated by {superscript}. 
36912	----	The Orpheus Series No. 1 THE HERO IN MAN BY A. E. [Transcriber's note: "A.E." is a pseudonym of George William Russell] The Orpheus Press, 1910 First Edition (1,000 copies), May, 1909. Second Edition (1,000 copies), September, 1910. PRELUDE. [Greek: _lampadia echontes diadôsousin allêlois_.]--PLATO. We who live in the great cities could not altogether avoid, even if we would, a certain association with the interests of our time. Wherever we go the minds of men are feverishly debating some new political measure or some new scheme for the reconstruction of society. Now, as in olden times, the rumours of an impending war will engulf the subtler interests of men, and unless we are willing to forego all intercourse we find ourselves involved in a hundred sympathies. A friendly group will gather one evening and open their thoughts concerning the experiences of the soul; they will often declare that only these matters are of profound interest, and yet on the morrow the most of them regard the enthusiasms of the mind as far away, unpractical, not of immediate account. But even at noon the stars are above us and because a man in material difficulties cannot evoke the highest experiences that he has known they have not become less real. They pertain to his immortal nature and if in the circumstance of life he loses memory of them it is because he is likewise mortal. In the measure that we develop our interior selves philosophy becomes the most permanent of our interests and it may well be that the whole aim of Man is to acquire an unbroken and ever-broadening realisation of the Supreme Spirit so that in a far-off day he may become the master of all imaginable conditions. He, therefore, who brings us back to our central selves and shows us that however far we may wander it is these high thoughts which are truly the most real--he is of all men our greatest benefactor. Now those who thus care for the spiritual aspect of life are of two kinds,--the intellectual and the imaginative. There are men of keen intellect who comprehend some philosophic system, who will defend it with elaborate reasonings and proclaim themselves its adherents, but the earth at their feet, the stars in the firmament, man himself and their own souls have undergone no transfiguration. Their philosophies are lifeless, for imagination is to the intellect what breath is to the body. Thoughts that never glow with imagination, that are never applied to all that the sense perceives or the mind remembers--thoughts that remain quite abstract, are as empty husks of no value. But there are those who have studied by the light of imagination and these know well that the inner life of thought, of experiment, and of wonder, though it may often be over-clouded, is the only life which can henceforth give them content. They know that it was not when they were most immersed in the affairs of the day but rather when the whole world appeared for a little while to be pulsating with an almost uncontainable splendour, that they were most alive. For the best mood we have ever known, though it be lost for long, is yet the clearest revelation of our true selves, and it is then that we learn most nearly what marvels life may hold. If we read with imagination the Dialogues of Plato we dwell for a while among those ardent Greeks for whom the universe was changed by the words of the poet-philosopher. So too when we read the letter that was written by Plotinus to Flaccus, perhaps the serenest height the human soul has ever attained, we become ourselves the recipients. In either case we feel that we have lived in the presence of a princely soul. It is an inspiration to realise that we are of the one race with these and may look out on the same beauty of earth and heaven. Yet the magic of the mind is not enduring and to dream overlong of a bygone beauty is to make sorrowful the present. What imaginative reader of Plato but has desired with a fruitless ardour that he might in truth have been numbered with those who walked on the daisied lawns of the Academy, might in truth have heard the voice of the hardly human initiate, have seen him face to face, have responded to the influence of his presence? who but would willingly translate his life to another century if he could but hear Plotinus endeavouring to describe in human language an ecstasy which makes of man a god? I know that one may easily injure whatever one most loves by speaking of it in superlative praise to those who as yet remain aloof with interest unaroused, but for me it is hard to refrain from an expression of that admiration, and I would fain say also that affection, which burns up within me when I read the writings of A.E. For they cause me to think of him as one of those rare spirits who bring to men the realisation of their own divinity, who make the spiritual life seem adventurous, attractive, and vivid, so that we go forth into the world with a new interest and a new joy at heart. That, as I have sought to show in the opening of this note, is the greatest of all things that anyone can do. The life of such a man makes beautiful the generation with which it coincides. If we penetrate the human words and inhabit, so far as we are able, the mood which was passing in the soul as it shaped them, we may learn from the reveries that are here reprinted how to the mystic of this material age the world remains equally wonderful and human life equally holy as either seemed in the far-off days when beauty was more greatly desired. For of deeper value at all times than any particular thought is the pervading mood. Perhaps the reader will remember here the following passage by Robert Louis Stevenson:--"Such are the best teachers; a dogma learned is only a new error--the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they communicate." To read the essays that follow, or the three volumes of poetry that A.E. has published, is to recognise one who has endeavoured always to communicate the "best in himself," and the mood which they induce is a mood from which we may see the world once more in its primal beauty, may recover a sense of the long-forgotten but inextinguishable grandeur of the soul. CLIFFORD BAX. _April_, 1909. THE HERO IN MAN. I. There sometimes comes on us a mood of strange reverence for people and things which in less contemplative hours we hold to be unworthy; and in such moments we may set side by side the head of Christ and the head of an outcast, and there is an equal radiance around each, which makes of the darker face a shadow and is itself a shadow around the head of light. We feel a fundamental unity of purpose in their presence here, and would as willingly pay homage to the one who has fallen as to him who has become a master of life. I know that immemorial order decrees that the laurel and the crown be given only to the victor, but in those moments I speak of a profound intuition changes the decree and sets the aureole on both alike. We feel such deep pity for the fallen that there must needs be a justice in it, for these diviner feelings are wise in themselves and do not vaguely arise. They are lights from the Father. A justice lies in uttermost pity and forgiveness, even when we seem to ourselves to be most deeply wronged; or why is it that the awakening of resentment or hate brings such swift contrition? We are ever self-condemned; and the dark thought which went forth in us brooding revenge, when suddenly smitten by the light, withdraws and hides within itself in awful penitence. In asking myself why it is that the meanest are safe from our condemnation when we sit on the true seat of judgment in the heart, it seemed to me that their shield was the sense we have of a nobility hidden in them under the cover of ignoble things; that their present darkness was the result of some too weighty heroic labour undertaken long ago by the human spirit; that it was the consecration of past purpose which played with such a tender light about their ruined lives, and it was more pathetic because this nobleness was all unknown to the fallen and the heroic cause of so much pain was forgotten in life's prison-house. While feeling the service to us of the great ethical ideals which have been formulated by men, I think that the idea of justice intellectually conceived tends to beget a certain hardness of the heart. It is true that men have done wrong--hence their pain: but back of all this there is something infinitely soothing, a light which does not wound, which says no harsh thing, even although the darkest of spirits turns to it in its agony, for the darkest of human spirits has still around him this first glory which shines from a deeper being within, whose history may be told as the legend of the Hero in Man. Among the many immortals with whom ancient myth peopled the spiritual sphere of humanity are some figures which draw to themselves a more profound tenderness than the rest. Not Aphrodite rising in beauty from the faery foam of the first seas, not Apollo with sweetest singing, laughter, and youth, not the wielder of the lightning, could exact the reverence accorded to the lonely Titan chained on the mountain, or to that bowed figure heavy with the burden of the sins of the world; for the brighter divinities had no part in the labour of man, no such intimate relation with the wherefore of his own existence so full of struggle. The more radiant figures are prophecies to him of his destiny, but the Titan and the Christ are a revelation of his more immediate state; their giant sorrows companion his own, and in contemplating them he awakens what is noblest in his own nature; or, in other words, in understanding their divine heroism he understands himself. For this in truth it seems to me to mean: all knowledge is a revelation of the self to the self, and our deepest comprehension of the seemingly apart divine is also our furthest inroad to self-knowledge; Prometheus, Christ, are in every heart; the story of one is the story of all; the Titan and the Crucified are humanity. If, then, we consider them as representing the human spirit and disentangle from the myths their meaning, we shall find that whatever reverence is due to that heroic love which descended from heaven for the redeeming of a lower nature, must be paid to every human being. Christ is incarnate in all humanity. Prometheus is bound for ever within us. They are the same. They are a host, and the divine incarnation was not spoken of one, but of all those who descending into the lower world tried to change it into the divine image and to wrest out of chaos a kingdom for the empire of light. The angels saw below them in chaos a senseless rout blind with elemental passion for ever warring with discordant cries which broke in upon the world of divine beauty; and that the pain might depart, they grew rebellious in the Master's peace, and descending to earth the angelic lights were crucified in men; leaving so radiant worlds, such a light of beauty, for earth's grey twilight filled with tears, that through this elemental life might breathe the starry music brought from Him. If the "Foreseer" be a true name for the Titan, it follows that in the host which he represents was a light which well foreknew all the dark paths of its journey; foreseeing the bitter struggle with a hostile nature, but foreseeing perhaps a gain, a distant glory o'er the hills of sorrow, and that chaos, divine and transformed, with only gentle breathing, lit up by the Christ-soul of the universe. There is a transforming power in the thought itself: we can no longer condemn the fallen, they who laid aside their thrones of ancient power, their spirit ecstasy and beauty, on such a mission. Perhaps those who sank lowest did so to raise a greater burden, and of these most fallen it may in the hour of their resurrection be said, "The last shall be first." So, placing side by side the head of the outcast with the head of Christ, it has this equal beauty--with as bright a glory it sped from the Father in ages past on its redeeming labour. Of his present darkness what shall we say? "He is altogether dead in sin?" Nay, rather with tenderness forbear, and think that the foreseeing spirit has taken its own dread path to mastery; that that which foresaw the sorrow foresaw also beyond it a greater joy and a mightier existence, when it would rise again in a new robe, woven out of the treasure hidden in the deep of its submergence, and shine at last like the stars of the morning triumphant among the Sons of God. II. Our deepest life is when we are alone. We think most truly, love best, when isolated from the outer world in that mystic abyss we call soul. Nothing external can equal the fulness of these moments. We may sit in the blue twilight with a friend, or bend together by the hearth, half whispering, or in a silence populous with loving thoughts mutually understood; then we may feel happy and at peace, but it is only because we are lulled by a semblance to deeper intimacies. When we think of a friend, and the loved one draws nigh, we sometimes feel half-pained, for we touched something in our solitude which the living presence shut out; we seem more apart, and would fain wave them away and cry, "Call me not forth from this; I am no more a spirit if I leave my throne." But these moods, though lit up by intuitions of the true, are too partial, they belong too much to the twilight of the heart, they have too dreamy a temper to serve us well in life. We should wish rather for our thoughts a directness such as belongs to the messengers of the gods, swift, beautiful, flashing presences bent on purposes well understood. What we need is that this interior tenderness shall be elevated into seership, that what in most is only yearning or blind love shall see clearly its way and hope. To this end we have to observe more intently the nature of the interior life. We find, indeed, that it is not a solitude at all, but dense with multitudinous being: instead of being alone we are in the thronged highways of existence. For our guidance when entering here many words of warning have been uttered, laws have been outlined, and beings full of wonder, terror, and beauty described. Yet there is a spirit in us deeper than our intellectual being which I think of as the Hero in man, who feels the nobility of its place in the midst of all this, and who would fain equal the greatness of perception with deeds as great. The weariness and sense of futility which often falls upon the mystic after much thought is due to this, that he has not recognised that he must be worker as well as seer, that here he has duties demanding a more sustained endurance just as the inner life is so much vaster and more intense than the life he has left behind. Now the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly those which it feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an embodied being. What shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the world: how answer the dumb appeal for help we so often divine below eyes that laugh? It is the saddest of all sorrows to think that pity with no hands to heal, that love without a voice to speak, should helplessly heap their pain upon pain while earth shall endure. But there is a truth about sorrow which I think may make it seem not so hopeless. There are fewer barriers than we think: there is, in truth, an inner alliance between the soul who would fain give and the soul who is in need. Nature has well provided that not one golden ray of all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop of the magical elixirs love distils is wasted. Let us consider how this may be. There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in. We weave little stories in our minds, expending love and pity upon the imaginary beings we have created, and I have been led to think that many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the world beings are living just in that way, and we merely reform and live over again in our life the story of another life. Sometimes these faraway intimates assume so vivid a shape, they come so near with their appeal for sympathy that the pictures are unforgettable; and the more I ponder over them the more it seems to me that they often convey the actual need of some soul whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to meet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence. I will supply an instance. I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing, seated on the doorstep of a house. It is an alley in some great city, and there is a gloom of evening and vapour over the sky. I see the child is bending over the path; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and as I ponder, I become aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a house, the mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are large rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse of the corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes through the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart as he shrinks back, his little love-lit house of dreams all rudely shattered. Ah, poor child, building the City Beautiful out of a few cinders, yet nigher, truer in intent than many a stately, gold-rich palace reared by princes, thou wert not forgotten by that mighty spirit who lives through the falling of empires, whose home has been in many a ruined heart. Surely it was to bring comfort to hearts like thine that that most noble of all meditations was ordained by the Buddha. "_He lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to pervade with heart of Love far-reaching, grown great and beyond measure._" That love, though the very fairy breath of life, should by itself and so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those who have felt the sunlight fall from distant friends who think of them; but, to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love, Eros, is a being. It is more than a power of the soul, though it is that also; it has a universal life of its own, and just as the dark heaving waters do not know what jewel lights they reflect with blinding radiance, so the soul, partially absorbing and feeling the ray of Eros within it, does not know that often a part of its nature nearer to the sun of love shines with a brilliant light to other eyes than its own. Many people move unconscious of their own charm, unknowing of the beauty and power they seem to others to impart. It is some past attainment of the soul, a jewel won in some old battle which it may have forgotten, but none the less this gleams on its tiara and the star-flame inspires others to hope and victory. If it is true here that many exert a spiritual influence they are unconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within. Once the soul has attained to any possession like love, or persistent will, or faith, or a power of thought, it comes into spiritual contact with others who are struggling for these very powers. The attainment of any of these means that the soul is able to absorb and radiate some of the diviner elements of being. The soul may or may not be aware of the position it is placed in or its new duties, but yet that Living Light, having found a way into the being of any one person, does not rest there, but sends its rays and extends its influence on and on to illumine the darkness of another nature. So it comes that there are ties which bind us to people other than those whom we meet in our everyday life. I think they are most real ties, most important to understand, for if we let our lamp go out, some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt a steady will, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out once again in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and fold the hands in despair. Often we allow gloom to overcome us and so hinder the bright rays in their passage; but would we do it so often if we thought that perhaps a sadness which besets us, we do not know why, was caused by someone drawing nigh to us for comfort, whom our lethargy might make feel still more his helplessness, while our courage, our faith, might cause "our light to shine in some other heart which as yet has no light of its own"? III. The night was wet: and, as I was moving down the streets, my mind was also journeying on a way of its own, and the things which were bodily present before me were no less with me in my unseen travelling. Every now and then a transfer would take place, and some of the moving shadows in the street would begin walking about in the clear interior light. The children of the city, crouched in the doorways, or racing through the hurrying multitude and flashing lights, began their elfin play again in my heart; and that was because I had heard these tiny outcasts shouting with glee. I wondered if the glitter and shadow of such sordid things were thronged with magnificence and mystery for those who were unaware of a greater light and deeper shade which made up the romance and fascination of my own life. In imagination I narrowed myself to their ignorance, littleness and youth, and seemed for a moment to flit amid great uncomprehended beings and a dim wonderful city of palaces. Then another transfer took place and I was pondering anew, for a face I had seen flickering through the warm wet mist haunted me; it entered into the realm of the interpreter, and I was made aware by the pale cheeks, and by the close-shut lips of pain, and by some inward knowledge, that there the Tree of Life was beginning to grow, and I wondered why it is that it always springs up through a heart in ashes: I wondered also if that which springs up, which in itself is an immortal joy, has knowledge that its shoots are piercing through such anguish; or again, if it was the piercing of the shoots which caused the pain, and if every throb of the beautiful flame darting upward to blossom meant the perishing of some more earthly growth which had kept the heart in shadow. Seeing too how many thoughts spring up from such a simple thing, I questioned whether that which started the impulse had any share in the outcome, and if these musings of mine in any way affected their subject. I then began thinking about those secret ties on which I have speculated before, and in the darkness my heart grew suddenly warm and glowing, for I had chanced upon one of those shining imaginations which are the wealth of those who travel upon the hidden ways. In describing that which comes to us all at once, there is a difficulty in choosing between what is first and what is last to say: but, interpreting as best I can, I seemed to behold the onward movement of a Light, one among many Lights, all living, throbbing, now dim with perturbations, and now again clear, and all subtly woven together, outwardly in some more shadowy shining, and inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it was invisible, I knew to be the Lamp of the World. This Light which I beheld I felt to be a human soul, and these perturbations which dimmed it were its struggles and passionate longings for something, and that was for a more brilliant shining of the light within itself. It was in love with its own beauty, enraptured by its own lucidity; and I saw that as these things were more beloved they grew paler, for this light is the love which the Mighty Mother has in her heart for her children, and she means that it shall go through each one unto all, and whoever restrains it in himself is himself shut out; not that the great heart has ceased in its love for that soul, but that the soul has shut itself off from influx, for every imagination of man is the opening or the closing of a door to the divine world: now he is solitary, cut off, and, seemingly to himself, on the desert and distant verge of things: and then his thought throws open the swift portals; he hears the chant of the seraphs in his heart, and he is made luminous by the lighting of a sudden aureole. This soul which I watched seemed to have learned at last the secret love: for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it followed the departing glory in penitence to the inmost shrine where it ceased altogether; and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of attainment and capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pity arose in the soul for those who, like it were seeking, but still in hope, for they had not come to the vain end of their endeavours. I understood that such pity is the last of the precious essences which make up the elixir of immortality, and when it is poured into the cup it is ready for drinking. And so it was with this soul which grew brilliant with the passage of the eternal light through its new purity of self-oblivion, and joyful in the comprehension of the mystery of the secret love, which, though it has been declared many times by the greatest of teachers among men, is yet never known truly unless the Mighty Mother has herself breathed it in the heart. And now that the soul had divined this secret, the shadowy shining which was woven in bonds of union between it and its fellow-lights grew clearer; and a multitude of these strands were, so it seemed, strengthened and placed in its keeping: along these it was to send the message of the wisdom and the love which were the secret sweetness of its own being. Then a spiritual tragedy began, infinitely more pathetic than the old desolation, because it was brought about by the very nobility of the spirit. This soul, shedding its love like rays of glory, seemed itself the centre of a ring of wounding spears: it sent forth love and the arrowy response came hate-impelled: it whispered peace and was answered by the clash of rebellion: and to all this for defence it could only bare more openly its heart that a profounder love from the Mother Nature might pass through upon the rest. I knew this was what a teacher, who wrote long ago, meant when he said: "Put on the whole armour of God," which is love and endurance, for the truly divine children of the Flame are not armed otherwise: and of those protests, sent up in ignorance or rebellion against the whisper of the wisdom, I saw that some melted in the fierce and tender heat of the heart, and there came in their stead a golden response which made closer the ties, and drew these souls upward to an understanding and to share in the overshadowing nature. And this is part of the plan of the Great Alchemist, whereby the red ruby of the heart is transmuted into the tenderer light of the opal; for the beholding of love made bare acts like the flame of the furnace: and the dissolving passions, through an anguish of remorse, the lightnings of pain, and through an adoring pity, are changed into the image they contemplate, and melt in the ecstasy of self-forgetful love, the spirit which lit the thorn-crowned brows, which perceived only in its last agony the retribution due to its tormentors, and cried out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Now although the love of the few may alleviate the hurt due to the ignorance of the mass, it is not in the power of anyone to withstand for ever this warfare; for by the perpetual wounding of the inner nature it is so wearied that the spirit must withdraw from a tabernacle grown too frail to support the increase of light within and the jarring of the demoniac nature without; and at length comes the call which means, for a while, release, and a deep rest in regions beyond the paradise of lesser souls. So, withdrawn into the Divine Darkness, vanished the Light of my dream. And now it seemed as if this wonderful weft of souls intertwining as one being must come to naught; and all those who through the gloom had nourished a longing for the light would stretch out hands in vain for guidance: but that I did not understand the love of the Mother, and that although few, there is no decaying of her heroic brood; for, as the seer of old caught at the mantle of him who went up in the fiery chariot, so another took up the burden and gathered the shining strands together: and to this sequence of spiritual guides there is no ending. Here I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through the burnished will of the hero, is wrought to highest uses, is in reality everywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the homeliest circumstance of daily life; and there is not lacking, even among the humblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy which follows upon every effort of the divine nature bowing itself down in pity to our shadowy sphere; an understanding in which the nature of the love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice and the pain which is overcome. I recall the instance of an old Irish peasant, who, as he lay in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain in his leg, forgot himself in making drawings, rude yet reverently done, of incidents in the life of the Galilean teacher. One of these which he showed me was a crucifixion, where, amidst much grotesque symbolism, were some tracings which indicated a purely beautiful intuition; the heart of this crucified figure, no less than the brow, was wreathed about with thorns and radiant with light: "For that," said he, "was where he really suffered." When I think of this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his own bodily pain through contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his Master, my memory of him shines with something of the transcendent light he himself perceived; for I feel that some suffering of his own, nobly undergone, had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart in love against the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by unnumbered spears yet burning with undying love. Though much may be learned by observance of the superficial life and actions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life of meditation and imagination that it can be truly realised; for the soul is a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream, and its perfect bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines in another heaven: there it feels what celestial dews descend on it, and what influences draw it up to its divine archetype: here in the shadow of earth root intercoils with root and the finer distinctions of the blossom are not perceived. If we knew also who they really are, who sometimes in silence, and sometimes with the eyes of the world at gaze, take upon them the mantle of teacher, an unutterable awe would prevail: for underneath a bodily presence not in any sense beautiful may burn the glory of some ancient divinity, some hero who has laid aside his sceptre in the enchanted land to rescue old-time comrades fallen into oblivion: or again, if we had the insight of the simple old peasant into the nature of this enduring love, out of the exquisite and poignant emotions kindled would arise the flame of a passionate love which would endure long æons of anguish that it might shield, though but for a little, the kingly hearts who may not shield themselves. But I too, who write, have launched the rebellious spear, or in lethargy have ofttimes gone down the great drift numbering myself among those who not being with must needs be against: therefore I make no appeal; they only may call who stand upon the lofty mountains; but I reveal the thought which arose like a star in my soul with such bright and pathetic meaning, leaving it to you who read to approve and apply it. THE ORPHEUS SERIES, ETC. This series of booklets will be issued in connection with "Orpheus," a Quarterly Magazine of Mystical Art, which may be had for four shillings and sixpence a year. It is hoped that some of the succeeding numbers may also be composed of reprints from the early writings of A. E. The following is a list of the books that A. E. has at present published: VERSE: "The Earth-Breath." John Lane "Homeward Songs by the Way." John Lane "The Divine Vision." Macmillan PROSE: "The Mask of Apollo" (Dream-Stories). Macmillan "Some Irish Essays" (The Tower Press Series, No. I.) Maunsell, Dublin Women's Printing Society, Ltd., Brick Street, Piccadilly 
45315	----	THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL BY WILLIAM BLAKE [Illustration] BOSTON JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY 1906 THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL THE ARGUMENT Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep. Once meek, and in a perilous path The just man kept his course along The Vale of Death. Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heath Sing the honey bees. Then the perilous path was planted, And a river and a spring On every cliff and tomb; And on the bleached bones Red clay brought forth: Till the villain left the paths of ease To walk in perilous paths, and drive The just man into barren climes. Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility; And the just man rages in the wilds Where lions roam. Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep. As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise.--See Isaiah xxxiv. and xxxv. chap. Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is heaven. Evil is hell. THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL All Bibles or sacred codes have been the cause of the following errors:-- 1. That man has two real existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul. 2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following contraries to these are true:-- 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul. For that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3. Energy is Eternal Delight. Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling. And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire. The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is called Messiah. And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host is called the Devil, or Satan, and his children are called Sin and Death. But in the book of Job, Milton's Messiah is called Satan. For this history has been adopted by both parties. It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss. This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or desire that Reason may have ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. Know that after Christ's death he became Jehovah. But in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son a ratio of the five senses, and the Holy Ghost vacuum! _Note._--The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it. A MEMORABLE FANCY As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their proverbs, thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the proverbs of Hell show the nature of infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments. When I came home, on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds hovering on the sides of the rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth:-- "How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?" PROVERBS OF HELL In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. The cut worm forgives the plough. Dip him in the river who loves water. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. He whose face gives no light shall never become a star. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. The busy bee has no time for sorrow. The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure. All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap. Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth. No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. A dead body revenges not injuries. The most sublime act is to set another before you. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. Folly is the cloak of knavery. Shame is Pride's cloak. Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion. The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps. The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of Eternity too great for the eye of man. The fox condemns the trap, not himself. Joys impregnate, sorrows bring forth. Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. The selfish smiling fool and the sullen frowning fool shall be both thought wise that they may be a rod. What is now proved was once only imagined. The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits. The cistern contains, the fountain overflows. One thought fills immensity. Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow. The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion. Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, sleep in the night. He who has suffered you to impose on him knows you. As the plough follows words, so God rewards prayers. The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. Expect poison from the standing water. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Listen to the fool's reproach; it is a kingly title. The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth. The weak in courage is strong in cunning. The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion the horse how he shall take his prey. The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest. If others had not been foolish we should have been so. The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled. When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. Lift up thy head! As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys. To create a little flower is the labour of ages. Damn braces; bless relaxes. The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest. Prayers plough not; praises reap not; joys laugh not; sorrows weep not. The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion. As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. The crow wished everything was black; the owl that everything was white. Exuberance is Beauty. If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning. Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius. Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. Where man is not, nature is barren. Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not to be believed. Enough! or Too much. * * * * * The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects. Thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. A MEMORABLE FANCY The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them, and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition. Isaiah answered: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception: but my senses discovered the infinite in everything; and as I was then persuaded, and remained confirmed, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote." Then I asked: "Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?" He replied: "All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything." Then Ezekiel said: "The philosophy of the East taught the first principles of human perception; some nations held one principle for the origin, and some another. We of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle, and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests and Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours, and to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius. It was this that our great poet King David desired so fervently, and invokes so pathetically, saying by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God that we cursed in His name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled. From these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the Jews. "This," said he, "like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the Jews' code, and worship the Jews' God; and what greater subjection can be?" I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction. After dinner I asked Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his. I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He answered: "The same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian." I then asked Ezekiel why he ate dung, and lay so long on his right and left side. He answered: "The desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite. This the North American tribes practise. And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience, only for the sake of present ease or gratification?" * * * * * The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at [the] tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern. A MEMORABLE FANCY I was in a printing-house in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation. In the first chamber was a dragon-man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave's mouth; within, a number of dragons were hollowing the cave. In the second chamber was a viper folding round the rock and the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver, and precious stones. In the third chamber was an eagle with wings and feathers of air; he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite; around were numbers of eagle-like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs. In the fourth chamber were lions of flaming fire raging around and melting the metals into living fluids. In the fifth chamber were unnamed forms, which cast the metals into the expanse. There they were received by men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books, and were arranged in libraries. * * * * * The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains are in truth the causes of its life and the sources of all activity, but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds, which have power to resist energy, according to the proverb, "The weak in courage is strong in cunning." Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring. To the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence, and fancies that the whole. But the Prolific would cease to be prolific unless the Devourer as a sea received the excess of his delights. Some will say, "Is not God alone the Prolific?" I answer: "God only acts and is in existing beings or men." These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies: whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two. _Note._--Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to separate them, as in the parable of sheep and goats; and He says: "I came not to send peace, but a sword." Messiah, or Satan, or Tempter, was formerly thought to be one of the antediluvians who are our Energies. A MEMORABLE FANCY An Angel came to me and said: "O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible, O dreadful state! Consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all Eternity, to which thou art going in such career." I said: "Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot, and we will contemplate together upon it, and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable." So he took me through a stable, and through a church, and down into the church vault, at the end of which was a mill; through the mill we went, and came to a cave; down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as a nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees, and hung over this immensity; but I said: "If you please, we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether Providence is here also; if you will not, I will." But he answered: "Do not presume, O young man; but as we here remain, behold thy lot, which will soon appear when the darkness passes away." So I remained with him sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep. By degrees we beheld the infinite abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolved vast spiders, crawling after their prey, which flew, or rather swum, in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption; and the air was full of them, and seemed composed of them. These are Devils, and are called powers of the air. I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot. He said: "Between the black and white spiders." But now, from between the black and white spiders, a cloud and fire burst and rolled through the deep, blackening all beneath so that the nether deep grew black as a sea, and rolled with a terrible noise. Beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking East between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones' throw from us appeared and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. At last to the East, distant about three degrees, appeared a fiery crest above the waves; slowly it reared like a ridge of golden rocks, till we discovered two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke; and now we saw it was the head of Leviathan. His forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple, like those on a tiger's forehead; soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just above the raging foam, tinging the black deeps with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence. My friend the Angel climbed up from his station into the mill. I remained alone, and then this appearance was no more; but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing a harper who sung to the harp; and his theme was: "The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." But I arose, and sought for the mill, and there I found my Angel, who, surprised, asked me how I escaped. I answered: "All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight, hearing a harper. But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours?" He laughed at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms, and flew Westerly through the night, till we were elevated above the earth's shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my hand Swedenborg's volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to Saturn. Here I stayed to rest, and then leaped into the void between Saturn and the fixed stars. "Here," said I, "is your lot; in this space, if space it may be called." Soon we saw the stable and the church, and I took him to the altar and opened the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I descended, driving the Angel before me. Soon we saw seven houses of brick. One we entered. In it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and all of that species, chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains. However, I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong, and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with and then devoured by plucking off first one limb and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk; this, after grinning and kissing it with seeming fondness, they devoured too. And here and there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off his own tail. As the stench terribly annoyed us both, we went into the mill; and I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotle's Analytics. So the Angel said: "Thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou oughtest to be ashamed." I answered: "We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics." * * * * * "I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning. "Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; though it is only the contents or index of already published books. "A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceived himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shows the folly of churches, and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net. "Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. "And now hear the reason: he conversed with Angels who are all religious, and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable through his conceited notions. "Thus Swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further. "Have now another plain fact: any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's, and from those of Dante or Shakespeare an infinite number. "But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine." A MEMORABLE FANCY Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel that sat on a cloud, and the Devil uttered these words: "The worship of God is, honouring His gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best. Those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God." The Angel hearing this became almost blue, but mastering himself he grew yellow, and at last white-pink and smiling, and then replied: "Thou idolater, is not God One? and is not He visible in Jesus Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given His sanction to the law of ten commandments? and are not all other men fools, sinners, and nothings?" The Devil answered: "Bray a fool in a mortar with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him. If Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love Him in the greatest degree. Now hear how He has given His sanction to the law of ten commandments. Did He not mock at the Sabbath, and so mock the Sabbath's God? murder those who were murdered because of Him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery, steal the labour of others to support Him? bear false witness when He omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when He prayed for His disciples, and when He bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules." When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel, who stretched out his arms embracing the flame of fire, and he was consumed, and arose as Elijah. _Note._--This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend; we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well. I have also the Bible of Hell, which the world shall have whether they will or no. One law for the lion and ox is Oppression. A SONG OF LIBERTY 1. The Eternal Female groan'd; it was heard over all the earth: 2. Albion's coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint. 3. Shadows of prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon! 4. Golden Spain, burst the barriers of old Rome! 5. Cast thy keys, O Rome, into the deep--down falling, even to eternity down falling; 6. And weep! 7. In her trembling hands she took the new-born terror, howling. 8. On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the Atlantic sea, the new-born fire stood before the starry king. 9. Flagg'd with grey-brow'd snows and thunderous visages, the jealous wings wav'd over the deep. 10. The speary hand burn'd aloft; unbuckled was the shield; forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurl'd the new-born wonder through the starry night. 11. The fire, the fire is falling! 12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance! O Jew, leave counting gold; return to thy oil and wine! O African, black African! (Go, winged thought, widen his forehead.) 13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair shot like the sinking sun into the Western sea. 14. Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away. 15. Down rush'd, beating his wings in vain, the jealous king, his grey-brow'd councillors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among helms and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants, banners, castles, slings, and rocks. 16. Falling, rushing, ruining; buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens. 17. All night beneath the ruins; then their sullen flames, faded, emerge round the gloomy king. 18. With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts through the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commandments, glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay. 19. Where the Son of Fire in his Eastern cloud, while the Morning plumes her golden breast, 20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying: "Empire is no more! and now the lion and wolf shall cease." CHORUS Let the Priests of the Raven of Dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the Sons of Joy. Nor his accepted brethren whom, tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious lechery call that virginity that wishes, but acts not! For everything that lives is holy. 
43611	----	THE TABLES OF THE LAW; & THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI _Five hundred and ten copies printed; type distributed._ _No._ 311 THE TABLES OF THE LAW; & THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD PRESS STRATFORD-UPON-AVON MCMXIV THE TABLES OF THE LAW THE TABLES OF THE LAW I 'Will you permit me, Aherne,' I said, 'to ask you a question, which I have wanted to ask you for years, and have not asked because we have grown nearly strangers? Why did you refuse the berretta, and almost at the last moment? When you and I lived together, you cared neither for wine, women, nor money, and had thoughts for nothing but theology and mysticism.' I had watched through dinner for a moment to put my question, and ventured now, because he had thrown off a little of the reserve and indifference which, ever since his last return from Italy, had taken the place of our once close friendship. He had just questioned me, too, about certain private and almost sacred things, and my frankness had earned, I thought, a like frankness from him. When I began to speak he was lifting to his lips a glass of that old wine which he could choose so well and valued so little; and while I spoke, he set it slowly and meditatively upon the table and held it there, its deep red light dyeing his long delicate fingers. The impression of his face and form, as they were then, is still vivid with me, and is inseparable from another and fanciful impression: the impression of a man holding a flame in his naked hand. He was to me, at that moment, the supreme type of our race, which, when it has risen above, or is sunken below, the formalisms of half-education and the rationalisms of conventional affirmation and denial, turns away, unless my hopes for the world and for the Church have made me blind, from practicable desires and intuitions towards desires so unbounded that no human vessel can contain them, intuitions so immaterial that their sudden and far-off fire leaves heavy darkness about hand and foot. He had the nature, which is half monk, half soldier of fortune, and must needs turn action into dreaming, and dreaming into action; and for such there is no order, no finality, no contentment in this world. When he and I had been students in Paris, we had belonged to a little group which devoted itself to speculations about alchemy and mysticism. More orthodox in most of his beliefs than Michael Robartes, he had surpassed him in a fanciful hatred of all life, and this hatred had found expression in the curious paradox--half borrowed from some fanatical monk, half invented by himself--that the beautiful arts were sent into the world to overthrow nations, and finally life herself, by sowing everywhere unlimited desires, like torches thrown into a burning city. This idea was not at the time, I believe, more than a paradox, a plume of the pride of youth; and it was only after his return to Ireland that he endured the fermentation of belief which is coming upon our people with the reawakening of their imaginative life. Presently he stood up, saying: 'Come, and I will show you, for you at any rate will understand,' and taking candles from the table, he lit the way into the long paved passage that led to his private chapel. We passed between the portraits of the Jesuits and priests--some of no little fame--his family had given to the Church; and engravings and photographs of pictures that had especially moved him; and the few paintings his small fortune, eked out by an almost penurious abstinence from the things most men desire, had enabled him to buy in his travels. The pictures that I knew best, for they had hung there longest, whether reproductions or originals, were of the Sienese School, which he had studied for a long time, claiming that it alone of the schools of the world pictured not the world but what is revealed to saints in their dreams and visions. The Sienese alone among Italians, he would say, could not or would not represent the pride of life, the pleasure in swift movement or sustaining strength, or voluptuous flesh. They were so little interested in these things that there often seemed to be no human body at all under the robe of the saint, but they could represent by a bowed head, or uplifted face, man's reverence before Eternity as no others could, and they were at their happiest when mankind had dwindled to a little group silhouetted upon a golden abyss, as if they saw the world habitually from far off. When I had praised some school that had dipped deeper into life, he would profess to discover a more intense emotion than life knew in those dark outlines. 'Put even Francesca, who felt the supernatural as deeply,' he would say, 'beside the work of Siena, and one finds a faint impurity in his awe, a touch of ghostly terror, where love and humbleness had best been all.' He had often told me of his hope that by filling his mind with those holy pictures he would help himself to attain at last to vision and ecstasy, and of his disappointment at never getting more than dreams of a curious and broken beauty. But of late he had added pictures of a different kind, French symbolistic pictures which he had bought for a few pounds from little-known painters, English and French pictures of the School of the English Pre-Raphaelites; and now he stood for a moment and said, 'I have changed my taste. I am fascinated a little against my will by these faces, where I find the pallor of souls trembling between the excitement of the flesh and the excitement of the spirit, and by landscapes that are created by heightening the obscurity and disorder of nature. These landscapes do not stir the imagination to the energies of sanctity but as to orgiac dancing and prophetic frenzy.' I saw with some resentment new images where the old ones had often made that long gray, dim, empty, echoing passage become to my eyes a vestibule of Eternity. Almost every detail of the chapel, which we entered by a narrow Gothic door, whose threshold had been worn smooth by the secret worshippers of the penal times, was vivid in my memory; for it was in this chapel that I had first, and when but a boy, been moved by the mediævalism which is now, I think, the governing influence in my life. The only thing that seemed new was a square bronze box which stood upon the altar before the six unlighted candles and the ebony crucifix, and was like those made in ancient times of more precious substances to hold the sacred books. Aherne made me sit down on an oak bench, and having bowed very low before the crucifix, took the bronze box from the altar, and sat down beside me with the box upon his knees. 'You will perhaps have forgotten,' he said, 'most of what you have read about Joachim of Flora, for he is little more than a name to even the well read. He was an abbot in Cortale in the twelfth century, and is best known for his prophecy, in a book called _Expositio in Apocalypsin_, that the Kingdom of the Father was passed, the Kingdom of the Son passing, the Kingdom of the Spirit yet to come. The Kingdom of the Spirit was to be a complete triumph of the Spirit, the _spiritualis intelligentia_ he called it, over the dead letter. He had many followers among the more extreme Franciscans, and these were accused of possessing a secret book of his called the _Liber Inducens in Evangelium Æternum_. Again and again groups of visionaries were accused of possessing this terrible book, in which the freedom of the Renaissance lay hidden, until at last Pope Alexander IV. had it found and cast into the flames. I have here the greatest treasure the world contains. I have a copy of that book; and see what great artists have made the robes in which it is wrapped. The greater portion of the book itself is illuminated in the Byzantine style, which so few care for to-day, but which moves me because these tall, emaciated angels and saints seem to have less relation to the world about us than to an abstract pattern of flowing lines that suggest an imagination absorbed in the contemplation of Eternity. Even if you do not care for so formal an art, you cannot help seeing that work where there is so much gold, and of that purple colour which has gold dissolved in it, was valued at a great price in its day. But it was only at the Renaissance the labour was spent upon it which has made it the priceless thing it is. The wooden boards of the cover show by the astrological allegories painted upon them, as by the style of painting itself, some craftsman of the school of Francesco Cossi of Ferrara, but the gold clasps and hinges are known to be the work of Benvenuto Cellini, who made likewise the bronze box and covered it with gods and demons, whose eyes are closed, to signify an absorption in the inner light.' I took the book in my hands and began turning over the gilded, many-coloured pages, holding it close to the candle to discover the texture of the paper. 'Where did you get this amazing book?' I said. 'If genuine, and I cannot judge by this light, you have discovered one of the most precious things in the world.' 'It is certainly genuine,' he replied. 'When the original was destroyed, one copy alone remained, and was in the hands of a lute-player of Florence, and from him it passed to his son, and so from generation to generation until it came to the lute-player who was father to Benvenuto Cellini, and from Benvenuto Cellini to that Cardinal of Ferrara who released him from prison, and from him to a natural son, so from generation to generation, the story of its wandering passing on with it, until it came into the possession of the family of Aretino, and to Giulio Aretino, an artist and worker in metals, and student of the kabalistic heresies of Pico della Mirandola. He spent many nights with me at Rome, discussing philosophy; and at last I won his confidence so perfectly that he showed me this, his greatest treasure; and, finding how much I valued it, and feeling that he himself was growing old and beyond the help of its teaching, he sold it to me for no great sum, considering its great preciousness.' 'What is the doctrine?' I said. 'Some mediæval straw-splitting about the nature of the Trinity, which is only useful to-day to show how many things are unimportant to us, which once shook the world?' 'I could never make you understand,' he said, with a sigh, 'that nothing is unimportant in belief, but even you will admit that this book goes to the heart. Do you see the tables on which the commandments were written in Latin?' I looked to the end of the room, opposite to the altar, and saw that the two marble tablets were gone, and that two large empty tablets of ivory, like large copies of the little tablets we set over our desks, had taken their place. 'It has swept the commandments of the Father away,' he went on, 'and displaced the commandments of the Son by the commandments of the Holy Spirit. The first book is called _Fractura Tabularum_. In the first chapter it mentions the names of the great artists who made them graven things and the likeness of many things, and adored them and served them; and the second the names of the great wits who took the name of the Lord their God in vain; and that long third chapter, set with the emblems of sanctified faces, and having wings upon its borders, is the praise of breakers of the seventh day and wasters of the six days, who yet lived comely and pleasant days. Those two chapters tell of men and women who railed upon their parents, remembering that their god was older than the god of their parents; and that which has the sword of Michael for an emblem commends the kings that wrought secret murder and so won for their people a peace that was _amore somnoque gravata et vestibus versicoloribus_, heavy with love and sleep and many-coloured raiment; and that with the pale star at the closing has the lives of the noble youths who loved the wives of others and were transformed into memories, which have transformed many poorer hearts into sweet flames; and that with the winged head is the history of the robbers who lived upon the sea or in the desert, lives which it compares to the twittering of the string of a bow, _nervi stridentis instar_; and those two last, that are fire and gold, are devoted to the satirists who bore false witness against their neighbours and yet illustrated eternal wrath, and to those that have coveted more than other men the house of God, and all things that are His, which no man has seen and handled, except in madness and in dreams. 'The second book is called _Lex Secreta_, and describes the true inspiration of action, the only Eternal Evangel; and ends with a vision, which he saw among the mountains of La Sila, of his disciples sitting throned in the blue deep of the air, and laughing aloud, with a laughter that was like the rustling of the wings of Time: _C[oe]lis in cæruleis ridentes sedebant discipuli mei super thronos: talis erat risus, qualis temporis pennati susurrus_.' 'I know little of Joachim of Flora,' I said, 'except that Dante set him in Paradise among the great doctors. If he held a heresy so singular, I cannot understand how no rumours of it came to the ears of Dante; and Dante made no peace with the enemies of the Church.' 'Joachim of Flora acknowledged openly the authority of the Church, and even asked that all his published writings, and those to be published by his desire after his death, should be submitted to the censorship of the Pope. He considered that those whose work was to live and not to reveal were children and that the Pope was their Father; but he taught in secret that certain others, and in always increasing numbers, were elected, not to live, but to reveal that hidden substance of God which is colour and music and softness and a sweet odour; and that these have no father but the Holy Spirit. Just as poets and painters and musicians labour at their works, building them with lawless and lawful things alike, so long as they embody the beauty that is beyond the grave, these children of the Holy Spirit labour at their moments with eyes upon the shining substance on which Time has heaped the refuse of creation; for the world only exists to be a tale in the ears of coming generations; and terror and content, birth and death, love and hatred, and the fruit of the Tree, are but instruments for that supreme art which is to win us from life and gather us into eternity like doves into their dove-cots. 'I shall go away in a little while and travel into many lands, that I may know all accidents and destinies, and when I return will write my secret law upon those ivory tablets, just as poets and romance writers have written the principles of their art in prefaces; and when I know what principle of life, discoverable at first by imagination and instinct, I am to express, I will gather my pupils that they may discover their law in the study of my law, as poets and painters discover their own art of expression by the study of some Master. I know nothing certain as yet but this--I am to become completely alive, that is, completely passionate, for beauty is only another name for perfect passion. I shall create a world where the whole lives of men shall be articulated and simplified as if seventy years were but one moment, or as they were the leaping of a fish or the opening of a flower.' He was pacing up and down, and I listened to the fervour of his words and watched the excitement of his gestures with not a little concern. I had been accustomed to welcome the most singular speculations, and had always found them as harmless as the Persian cat who half closes her meditative eyes and stretches out her long claws before my fire. But now I would battle in the interests of orthodoxy, even of the commonplace: and yet could find nothing better to say than: 'It is not necessary to judge everyone by the law, for we have also Christ's commandment of love.' He turned and said, looking at me with shining eyes: 'Jonathan Swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbour as himself.' 'At any rate, you cannot deny that to teach so dangerous a doctrine is to accept a terrible responsibility.' 'Leonardo da Vinci,' he replied, 'has this noble sentence: "The hope and desire of returning home to one's former state is like the moth's desire for the light; and the man who with constant longing awaits each new month and new year, deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming, does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction." How, then, can the pathway which will lead us into the heart of God be other than dangerous? why should you, who are no materialist, cherish the continuity and order of the world as those do who have only the world? You do not value the writers who will express nothing unless their reason understands how it will make what is called the right more easy; why, then, will you deny a like freedom to the supreme art, the art which is the foundation of all arts? Yes, I shall send out of this chapel saints, lovers, rebels and prophets: souls who will surround themselves with peace, as with a nest made with grass; and others over whom I shall weep. The dust shall fall for many years over this little box; and then I shall open it; and the tumults, which are, perhaps, the flames of the last day, shall come from under the lid.' I did not reason with him that night, because his excitement was great and I feared to make him angry; and when I called at his house a few days later, he was gone and his house was locked up and empty. I have deeply regretted my failure both to combat his heresy and to test the genuineness of his strange book. Since my conversion I have indeed done penance for an error which I was only able to measure after some years. II I was walking along one of the Dublin quays, on the side nearest the river, about ten years after our conversation, stopping from time to time to turn over the books upon an old bookstall, and thinking, curiously enough, of the terrible destiny of Michael Robartes, and his brotherhood; when I saw a tall and bent man walking slowly along the other side of the quay. I recognized, with a start, in a lifeless mask with dim eyes, the once resolute and delicate face of Owen Aherne. I crossed the quay quickly, but had not gone many yards before he turned away, as though he had seen me, and hurried down a side street; I followed, but only to lose him among the intricate streets on the north side of the river. During the next few weeks I inquired of everybody who had once known him, but he had made himself known to nobody; and I knocked, without result, at the door of his old house; and had nearly persuaded myself that I was mistaken, when I saw him again in a narrow street behind the Four Courts, and followed him to the door of his house. I laid my hand on his arm; he turned quite without surprise; and indeed it is possible that to him, whose inner life had soaked up the outer life, a parting of years was a parting from forenoon to afternoon. He stood holding the door half open, as though he would keep me from entering; and would perhaps have parted from me without further words had I not said: 'Owen Aherne, you trusted me once, will you not trust me again, and tell me what has come of the ideas we discussed in this house ten years ago?--but perhaps you have already forgotten them.' 'You have a right to hear,' he said, 'for since I have told you the ideas, I should tell you the extreme danger they contain, or rather the boundless wickedness they contain; but when you have heard this we must part, and part for ever, because I am lost, and must be hidden!' I followed him through the paved passage, and saw that its corners were choked, and the pictures gray, with dust and cobwebs; and that the dust and cobwebs which covered the ruby and sapphire of the saints on the window had made it very dim. He pointed to where the ivory tablets glimmered faintly in the dimness, and I saw that they were covered with small writing, and went up to them and began to read the writing. It was in Latin, and was an elaborate casuistry, illustrated with many examples, but whether from his own life or from the lives of others I do not know. I had read but a few sentences when I imagined that a faint perfume had begun to fill the room, and turning round asked Owen Aherne if he were lighting the incense. 'No,' he replied, and pointed where the thurible lay rusty and empty on one of the benches; as he spoke the faint perfume seemed to vanish, and I was persuaded I had imagined it. 'Has the philosophy of the _Liber Inducens in Evangelium Æternum_ made you very unhappy?' I said. 'At first I was full of happiness,' he replied, 'for I felt a divine ecstasy, an immortal fire in every passion, in every hope, in every desire, in every dream; and I saw, in the shadows under leaves, in the hollow waters, in the eyes of men and women, its image, as in a mirror; and it was as though I was about to touch the Heart of God. Then all changed and I was full of misery, and I said to myself that I was caught in the glittering folds of an enormous serpent, and was falling with him through a fathomless abyss, and that henceforth the glittering folds were my world; and in my misery it was revealed to me that man can only come to that Heart through the sense of separation from it which we call sin, and I understood that I could not sin, because I had discovered the law of my being, and could only express or fail to express my being, and I understood that God has made a simple and an arbitrary law that we may sin and repent!' He had sat down on one of the wooden benches and now became silent, his bowed head and hanging arms and listless body having more of dejection than any image I have met with in life or in any art. I went and stood leaning against the altar, and watched him, not knowing what I should say; and I noticed his black closely-buttoned coat, his short hair, and shaven head, which preserved a memory of his priestly ambition, and understood how Catholicism had seized him in the midst of the vertigo he called philosophy; and I noticed his lightless eyes and his earth-coloured complexion, and understood how she had failed to do more than hold him on the margin: and I was full of an anguish of pity. 'It may be,' he went on, 'that the angels whose hearts are shadows of the Divine Heart, and whose bodies are made of the Divine Intellect, may come to where their longing is always by a thirst for the divine ecstasy, the immortal fire, that is in passion, in hope, in desire, in dreams; but we whose hearts perish every moment, and whose bodies melt away like a sigh, must bow and obey!' I went nearer to him and said: 'Prayer and repentance will make you like other men.' 'No, no,' he said, 'I am not among those for whom Christ died, and this is why I must be hidden. I have a leprosy that even eternity cannot cure. I have seen the whole, and how can I come again to believe that a part is the whole? I have lost my soul because I have looked out of the eyes of the angels.' Suddenly I saw, or imagined that I saw, the room darken, and faint figures robed in purple, and lifting faint torches with arms that gleamed like silver, bending, above Owen Aherne; and I saw, or imagined that I saw, drops, as of burning gum, fall from the torches, and a heavy purple smoke, as of incense, come pouring from the flames and sweeping about us. Owen Aherne, more happy than I who have been half initiated into the Order of the Alchemical Rose, and protected perhaps by his great piety, had sunk again into dejection and listlessness, and saw none of these things; but my knees shook under me, for the purple-robed figures were less faint every moment, and now I could hear the hissing of the gum in the torches. They did not appear to see me, for their eyes were upon Owen Aherne; and now and again I could hear them sigh as though with sorrow for his sorrow, and presently I heard words which I could not understand except that they were words of sorrow, and sweet as though immortal was talking to immortal. Then one of them waved her torch, and all the torches waved, and for a moment it was as though some great bird made of flames had fluttered its plumage, and a voice cried as from far up in the air: 'He has charged even his angels with folly, and they also bow and obey; but let your heart mingle with our hearts, which are wrought of divine ecstasy, and your body with our bodies, which are wrought of divine intellect.' And at that cry I understood that the Order of the Alchemical Rose was not of this earth, and that it was still seeking over this earth for whatever souls it could gather within its glittering net; and when all the faces turned towards me, and I saw the mild eyes and the unshaken eyelids, I was full of terror, and thought they were about to fling their torches upon me, so that all I held dear, all that bound me to spiritual and social order, would be burnt up, and my soul left naked and shivering among the winds that blow from beyond this world and from beyond the stars; and then a faint voice cried, 'Why do you fly from our torches that were made out of the trees under which Christ wept in the Garden of Gethsemane? Why do you fly from our torches that were made out of sweet wood, after it had perished from the world and come to us who made it of old times with our breath?' It was not until the door of the house had closed behind my flight, and the noise of the street was breaking on my ears, that I came back to myself and to a little of my courage; and I have never dared to pass the house of Owen Aherne from that day, even though I believe him to have been driven into some distant country by the spirits whose name is legion, and whose throne is in the indefinite abyss, and whom he obeys and cannot see. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI I was sitting reading late into the night a little after my last meeting with Aherne, when I heard a light knocking on my front door. I found upon the doorstep three very old men with stout sticks in their hands, who said they had been told I should be up and about, and that they were to tell me important things. I brought them into my study, and when the peacock curtains had closed behind us, I set their chairs for them close to the fire, for I saw that the frost was on their great-coats of frieze and upon the long beards that flowed almost to their waists. They took off their great-coats, and leaned over the fire warming their hands, and I saw that their clothes had much of the country of our time, but a little also, as it seemed to me, of the town life of a more courtly time. When they had warmed themselves--and they warmed themselves, I thought, less because of the cold of the night than because of a pleasure in warmth for the sake of warmth--they turned towards me, so that the light of the lamp fell full upon their weather-beaten faces, and told the story I am about to tell. Now one talked and now another, and they often interrupted one another, with a desire like that of countrymen, when they tell a story, to leave no detail untold. When they had finished they made me take notes of whatever conversation they had quoted, so that I might have the exact words, and got up to go. When I asked them where they were going, and what they were doing, and by what names I should call them, they would tell me nothing, except that they had been commanded to travel over Ireland continually, and upon foot and at night, that they might live close to the stones and the trees and at the hours when the immortals are awake. I have let some years go by before writing out this story, for I am always in dread of the illusions which come of that inquietude of the veil of the Temple, which M. Mallarmé considers a characteristic of our times; and only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. The three old men were three brothers, who had lived in one of the western islands from their early manhood, and had cared all their lives for nothing except for those classical writers and old Gaelic writers who expounded an heroic and simple life; night after night in winter, Gaelic story-tellers would chant old poems to them over the poteen; and night after night in summer, when the Gaelic story-tellers were at work in the fields or away at the fishing, they would read to one another Virgil and Homer, for they would not enjoy in solitude, but as the ancients enjoyed. At last a man, who told them he was Michael Robartes, came to them in a fishing boat, like St. Brandan drawn by some vision and called by some voice; and spoke of the coming again of the gods and the ancient things; and their hearts, which had never endured the body and pressure of our time, but only of distant times, found nothing unlikely in anything he told them, but accepted all simply and were happy. Years passed, and one day, when the oldest of the old men, who travelled in his youth and thought sometimes of other lands, looked out on the grey waters, on which the people see the dim outline of the Islands of the Young--the Happy Islands where the Gaelic heroes live the lives of Homer's Phæacians--a voice came out of the air over the waters and told him of the death of Michael Robartes. They were still mourning when the next oldest of the old men fell asleep while reading out the Fifth Eclogue of Virgil, and a strange voice spoke through him, and bid them set out for Paris, where a woman lay dying, who would reveal to them the secret names of the gods, which can be perfectly spoken only when the mind is steeped in certain colours and certain sounds and certain odours; but at whose perfect speaking the immortals cease to be cries and shadows, and walk and talk with one like men and women. They left their island, at first much troubled at all they saw in the world, and came to Paris, and there the youngest met a person in a dream, who told him they were to wander about at hazard until those who had been guiding their footsteps had brought them to a street and a house, whose likeness was shown him in the dream. They wandered hither and thither for many days, but one morning they came into some narrow and shabby streets, on the south of the Seine, where women with pale faces and untidy hair looked at them out of the windows; and just as they were about to turn back because Wisdom could not have alighted in so foolish a neighbourhood, they came to the street and the house of the dream. The oldest of the old men, who still remembered some of the modern languages he had known in his youth, went up to the door and knocked, but when he had knocked, the next in age to him said it was not a good house, and could not be the house they were looking for, and urged him to ask for some one they knew was not there and go away. The door was opened by an old over-dressed woman, who said, 'O, you are her three kinsmen from Ireland. She has been expecting you all day.' The old men looked at one another and followed her upstairs, passing doors from which pale and untidy women thrust out their heads, and into a room where a beautiful woman lay asleep in a bed, with another woman sitting by her. The old woman said: 'Yes they have come at last; now she will be able to die in peace,' and went out. 'We have been deceived by devils,' said one of the old men, 'for the immortals would not speak through a woman like this.' 'Yes,' said another, 'we have been deceived by devils, and we must go away quickly.' 'Yes,' said the third, 'we have been deceived by devils, but let us kneel down for a little, for we are by the deathbed of one that has been beautiful.' They knelt down, and the woman who sat by the bed, and seemed to be overcome with fear and awe, lowered her head. They watched for a little the face upon the pillow and wondered at its look, as of unquenchable desire, and at the porcelain-like refinement of the vessel in which so malevolent a flame had burned. Suddenly the second oldest of them crowed like a cock, and until the room seemed to shake with the crowing. The woman in the bed still slept on in her death-like sleep, but the woman who sat by her head crossed herself and grew pale, and the youngest of the old men cried out: 'A devil has gone into him, and we must begone or it will go into us also.' Before they could rise from their knees a resonant chanting voice came from the lips that had crowed and said: 'I am not a devil, but I am Hermes the Shepherd of the Dead, and I run upon the errands of the gods, and you have heard my sign, that has been my sign from the old days. Bow down before her from whose lips the secret names of the immortals, and of the things near their hearts, are about to come, that the immortals may come again into the world. Bow down, and understand that when they are about to overthrow the things that are to-day and bring the things that were yesterday, they have no one to help them, but one whom the things that are to-day have cast out. Bow down and very low, for they have chosen for their priestess this woman in whose heart all follies have gathered, and in whose body all desires have awaked; this woman who has been driven out of Time, and has lain upon the bosom of Eternity. After you have bowed down the old things shall be again, and another Argo shall carry heroes over sea, and another Achilles beleaguer another Troy.' The voice ended with a sigh, and immediately the old man awoke out of sleep, and said: 'Has a voice spoken through me, as it did when I fell asleep over my Virgil, or have I only been asleep?' The oldest of them said: 'A voice has spoken through you. Where has your soul been while the voice was speaking through you?' 'I do not know where my soul has been, but I dreamed I was under the roof of a manger, and I looked down and I saw an ox and an ass; and I saw a red cock perching on the hay-rack; and a woman hugging a child; and three old men, in armour, studded with rubies, kneeling with their heads bowed very low in front of the woman and the child. While I was looking the cock crowed and a man with wings on his heels swept up through the air, and as he passed me, cried out: "Foolish old men, you had once all the wisdom of the stars." I do not understand my dream or what it would have us do, but you who have heard the voice out of the wisdom of my sleep know what we have to do.' Then the oldest of the old men told him they were to take the parchments they had brought with them out of their pockets and spread them on the ground. When they had spread them on the ground, they took out of their pockets their pens, made of three feathers, which had fallen from the wing of the old eagle that is believed to have talked of wisdom with St. Patrick. 'He meant, I think,' said the youngest, as he put their ink-bottles by the side of the rolls of parchment, 'that when people are good the world likes them and takes possession of them, and so eternity comes through people who are not good or who have been forgotten. Perhaps Christianity was good and the world liked it, so now it is going away and the immortals are beginning to awake.' 'What you say has no wisdom,' said the oldest, 'because if there are many immortals, there cannot be only one immortal.' Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down the secret names,' and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. Presently she began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and in the Gaelic of their own country; and she spoke to them many secret powerful names, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft belonging to the owners of those names; but most about the Sidhe of Ireland and of their love for the Cauldron, and the Whetstone, and the Sword, and the Spear. Then she tossed feebly for a while and moaned, and when she spoke again it was in so faint a murmur that the woman who sat by the bed leaned down to listen, and while she was listening the spirit went out of the body. Then the oldest of the old men said in French to the woman who was still bending over the bed: 'There must have been yet one name which she had not given us, for she murmured a name while the spirit was going out of the body,' and the woman said, 'She was but murmuring over the name of a symbolist painter she was fond of. He used to go to something he called the Black Mass, and it was he who taught her to see visions and to hear voices. She met him for the first time a few months ago, and we have had no peace from that day because of her talk about visions and about voices. Why! it was only last night that I dreamed I saw a man with a red beard and red hair, and dressed in red, standing by my bedside. He held a rose in one hand, and tore it in pieces with the other hand, and the petals drifted about the room, and became beautiful people who began to dance slowly. When I woke up I was all in a heat with terror.' This is all the old men told me, and when I think of their speech and of their silence, of their coming and of their going, I am almost persuaded that had I gone out of the house after they had gone out of it, I should have found no footsteps on the snow. They may, for all I or any man can say, have been themselves immortals: immortal demons, come to put an untrue story into my mind for some purpose I do not understand. Whatever they were I have turned into a pathway which will lead me from them and from the Order of the Alchemical Rose. I no longer live an elaborate and haughty life, but seek to lose myself among the prayers and the sorrows of the multitude. I pray best in poor chapels, where the frieze coats brush by me as I kneel, and when I pray against the demons I repeat a prayer which was made I know not how many centuries ago to help some poor Gaelic man or woman who had suffered with a suffering like mine. _Seacht b-páidreacha fó seacht Chuir Muire faoi n-a Mac, Chuir Brigbid faoi n-a brat, Chuir Dia faoi n-a neart, Eidir sinn 'san Sluagh Sidhe, Eidir sinn 'san Sluagh Gaoith._ Seven paters seven times, Send Mary by her Son, Send Bridget by her mantle, Send God by His strength, Between us and the faery host, Between us and the demons of the air. _Printed by_ A. H. BULLEN, _at the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon_. Transcriber's Note: One printer's error or misspelling was found and fixed: Page 5. In the original book: orgaic dancing changed in this ebook to: orgiac dancing 
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5616	----	The Madman His Parables and Poems By Kahlil Gibran You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,--the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,--I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves." Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me. And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks." Thus I became a madman. And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief. God In the ancient days, when the first quiver of speech came to my lips, I ascended the holy mountain and spoke unto God, saying, "Master, I am thy slave. Thy hidden will is my law and I shall obey thee for ever more." But God made no answer, and like a mighty tempest passed away. And after a thousand years I ascended the holy mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, "Creator, I am thy creation. Out of clay hast thou fashioned me and to thee I owe mine all." And God made no answer, but like a thousand swift wings passed away. And after a thousand years I climbed the holy mountain and spoke unto God again, saying, "Father, I am thy son. In pity and love thou hast given me birth, and through love and worship I shall inherit thy kingdom." And God made no answer, and like the mist that veils the distant hills he passed away. And after a thousand years I climbed the sacred mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, "My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am thy yesterday and thou are my tomorrow. I am thy root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun." Then God leaned over me, and in my ears whispered words of sweetness, and even as the sea that enfoldeth a brook that runneth down to her, he enfolded me. And when I descended to the valleys and the plains God was there also. My Friend My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear--a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do--for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action. When thou sayest, "The wind bloweth eastward," I say, "Aye it doth blow eastward"; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea. Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand. I would be at sea alone. When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars--and I fain would not have thee hear or see. I would be with night alone. When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell--even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, "My companion, my comrade," and I call back to thee, "My comrade, my companion"--for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone. Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things. But in my heart I laught at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone. My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect--and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone. My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand. The Scarecrow Once I said to a scarecrow, "You must be tired of standing in this lonely field." And he said, "The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I never tire of it." Said I, after a minute of thought, "It is true; for I too have known that joy." Said he, "Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it." Then I left him, not knowing whether he had complimented or belittled me. A year passed, during which the scarecrow turned philosopher. And when I passed by him again I saw two crows building a nest under his hat. The Sleep-Walkers In the town where I was born lived a woman and her daughter, who walked in their sleep. One night, while silence enfolded the world, the woman and her daughter, walking, yet asleep, met in their mist-veiled garden. And the mother spoke, and she said: "At last, at last, my enemy! You by whom my youth was destroyed--who have built up your life upon the ruins of mine! Would I could kill you!" And the daughter spoke, and she said: "O hateful woman, selfish and old! Who stand between my freer self and me! Who would have my life an echo of your own faded life! Would you were dead!" At that moment a cock crew, and both women awoke. The mother said gently, "Is that you, darling?" And the daughter answered gently, "Yes, dear." The Wise Dog One day there passed by a company of cats a wise dog. And as he came near and saw that they were very intent and heeded him not, he stopped. Then there arose in the midst of the company a large, grave cat and looked upon them and said, "Brethren, pray ye; and when ye have prayed again and yet again, nothing doubting, verily then it shall rain mice." And when the dog heard this he laughed in his heart and turned from them saying, "O blind and foolish cats, has it not been written and have I not known and my fathers before me, that that which raineth for prayer and faith and supplication is not mice but bones." The Two Hermits Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God and loved one another. Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only possession. One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit and he came to the younger and said, "It is long that we have lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us divide our possessions." Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, "It grieves me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me. But if thou must needs go, so be it," and he brought the earthen bowl and gave it to him saying, "We cannot divide it, Brother, let it be thine." Then the older hermit said, "Charity I will not accept. I will take nothing but mine own. It must be divided." And the younger one said, "If the bowl be broken, of what use would it be to thee or to me? If it be thy pleasure let us rather cast a lot." But the older hermit said again, "I will have but justice and mine own, and I will not trust justice and mine own to vain chance. The bowl must be divided." Then the younger hermit could reason no further and he said, "If it be indeed thy will, and if even so thou wouldst have it let us now break the bowl." But the face of the older hermit grew exceedingly dark, and he cried, "O thou cursed coward, thou wouldst not fight." On Giving and Taking Once there lived a man who had a valley-full of needles. And one day the mother of Jesus came to him and said: "Friend, my son's garment is torn and I must needs mend it before he goeth to the temple. Wouldst thou not give me a needle?" And he gave her not a needle, but he gave her a learned discourse on Giving and Taking to carry to her son before he should go to the temple. The Seven Selves In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper: First Self: Here, in this madman, I have dwelt all these years, with naught to do but renew his pain by day and recreate his sorrow by night. I can bear my fate no longer, and now I rebel. Second Self: Yours is a better lot than mine, brother, for it is given to me to be this madman's joyous self. I laugh his laughter and sing his happy hours, and with thrice winged feet I dance his brighter thoughts. It is I that would rebel against my weary existence. Third Self: And what of me, the love-ridden self, the flaming brand of wild passion and fantastic desires? It is I the love-sick self who would rebel against this madman. Fourth Self: I, amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but odious hatred and destructive loathing. It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would protest against serving this madman. Fifth Self: Nay, it is I, the thinking self, the fanciful self, the self of hunger and thirst, the one doomed to wander without rest in search of unknown things and things not yet created; it is I, not you, who would rebel. Sixth Self: And I, the working self, the pitiful labourer, who, with patient hands, and longing eyes, fashion the days into images and give the formless elements new and eternal forms--it is I, the solitary one, who would rebel against this restless madman. Seventh Self: How strange that you all would rebel against this man, because each and every one of you has a preordained fate to fulfill. Ah! could I but be like one of you, a self with a determined lot! But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, while you are busy re-creating life. Is it you or I, neighbours, who should rebel? When the seventh self thus spake the other six selves looked with pity upon him but said nothing more; and as the night grew deeper one after the other went to sleep enfolded with a new and happy submission. But the seventh self remained watching and gazing at nothingness, which is behind all things. War One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled. And the prince inquired of him, "What has befallen you?" And the man replied, "O prince, I am by profession a thief, and this night, because there was no moon, I went to rob the money-changer's shop, and as I climbed in through the window I made a mistake and entered the weaver's shop, and in the dark I ran into the weaver's loom and my eye was plucked out. And now, O prince, I ask for justice upon the weaver." Then the prince sent for the weaver and he came, and it was decreed that one of his eyes should be plucked out. "O prince," said the weaver, "the decree is just. It is right that one of my eyes be taken. And yet, alas! both are necessary to me in order that I may see the two sides of the cloth that I weave. But I have a neighbour, a cobbler, who has also two eyes, and in his trade both eyes are not necessary." Then the prince sent for the cobbler. And he came. And they took out one of the cobbler's two eyes. And justice was satisfied. The Fox A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, "I will have a camel for lunch today." And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again--and he said, "A mouse will do." The Wise King Once there ruled in the distant city of Wirani a king who was both mighty and wise. And he was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now, in the heart of that city was a well, whose water was cool and crystalline, from which all the inhabitants drank, even the king and his courtiers; for there was no other well. One night when all were asleep, a witch entered the city, and poured seven drops of strange liquid into the well, and said, "From this hour he who drinks this water shall become mad." Next morning all the inhabitants, save the king and his lord chamberlain, drank from the well and became mad, even as the witch had foretold. And during that day the people in the narrow streets and in the market places did naught but whisper to one another, "The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Surely we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him." That evening the king ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the well. And when it was brought to him he drank deeply, and gave it to his lord chamberlain to drink. And there was great rejoicing in that distant city of Wirani, because its king and its lord chamberlain had regained their reason. Ambition Three men met at a tavern table. One was a weaver, another a carpenter and the third a ploughman. Said the weaver, "I sold a fine linen shroud today for two pieces of gold. Let us have all the wine we want." "And I," said the carpenter, "I sold my best coffin. We will have a great roast with the wine." "I only dug a grave," said the ploughman, "but my patron paid me double. Let us have honey cakes too." And all that evening the tavern was busy, for they called often for wine and meat and cakes. And they were merry. And the host rubbed his hands and smiled at his wife; for his guests were spending freely. When they left the moon was high, and they walked along the road singing and shouting together. The host and his wife stood in the tavern door and looked after them. "Ah!" said the wife, "these gentlemen! So freehanded and so gay! If only they could bring us such luck every day! Then our son need not be a tavern-keeper and work so hard. We could educate him, and he could become a priest." The New Pleasure Last night I invented a new pleasure, and as I was giving it the first trial an angel and a devil came rushing toward my house. They met at my door and fought with each other over my newly created pleasure; the one crying, "It is a sin!"--the other, "It is a virtue!" The Other Language Three days after I was born, as I lay in my silken cradle, gazing with astonished dismay on the new world round about me, my mother spoke to the wet-nurse, saying, "How does my child?" And the wet-nurse answered, "He does well, Madame, I have fed him three times; and never before have I seen a babe so young yet so gay." And I was indignant; and I cried, "It is not true, mother; for my bed is hard, and the milk I have sucked is bitter to my mouth, and the odour of the breast is foul in my nostrils, and I am most miserable." But my mother did not understand, nor did the nurse; for the language I spoke was that of the world from which I came. And on the twenty-first day of my life, as I was being christened, the priest said to my mother, "You should indeed by happy, Madame, that your son was born a Christian." And I was surprised,--and I said to the priest, "Then your mother in Heaven should be unhappy, for you were not born a Christian." But the priest too did not understand my language. And after seven moons, one day a soothsayer looked at me, and he said to my mother, "Your son will be a statesman and a great leader of men." But I cried out,--"That is a false prophet; for I shall be a musician, and naught but a musician shall I be." But even at that age my language was not understood--and great was my astonishment. And after three and thirty years, during which my mother, and the nurse, and the priest have all died, (the shadow of God be upon their spirits) the soothsayer still lives. And yesterday I met him near the gates of the temple; and while we were talking together he said, "I have always known you would become a great musician. Even in your infancy I prophesied and foretold your future." And I believed him--for now I too have forgotten the language of that other world. The Pomegranate Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate, I heard a seed saying, "Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be strong and beautiful through all the seasons." Then another seed spoke and said, "When I was as young as you, I too held such views; but now that I can weigh and measure things, I see that my hopes were vain." And a third seed spoke also, "I see in us nothing that promises so great a future." And a fourth said, "But what a mockery our life would be, without a greater future!" Said a fifth, "Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are." But a sixth replied, "Whatever we are, that we shall continue to be." And a seventh said, "I have such a clear idea how everything will be, but I cannot put it into words." Then an eight spoke--and a ninth--and a tenth--and then many--until all were speaking, and I could distinguish nothing for the many voices. And so I moved that very day into the heart of a quince, where the seeds are few and almost silent. The Two Cages In my father's garden there are two cages. In one is a lion, which my father's slaves brought from the desert of Ninavah; in the other is a songless sparrow. Every day at dawn the sparrow calls to the lion, "Good morrow to thee, brother prisoner." The Three Ants Three ants met on the nose of a man who was asleep in the sun. And after they had saluted one another, each according to the custom of his tribe, they stood there conversing. The first ant said, "These hills and plains are the most barren I have known. I have searched all day for a grain of some sort, and there is none to be found." Said the second ant, "I too have found nothing, though I have visited every nook and glade. This is, I believe, what my people call the soft, moving land where nothing grows." Then the third ant raised his head and said, "My friends, we are standing now on the nose of the Supreme Ant, the mighty and infinite Ant, whose body is so great that we cannot see it, whose shadow is so vast that we cannot trace it, whose voice is so loud that we cannot hear it; and He is omnipresent." When the third ant spoke thus the other ants looked at each other and laughed. At that moment the man moved and in his sleep raised his hand and scratched his nose, and the three ants were crushed. The Grave-Digger Once, as I was burying one of my dead selves, the grave-digger came by and said to me, "Of all those who come here to bury, you alone I like." Said I, "You please me exceedingly, but why do you like me?" "Because," said he, "They come weeping and go weeping--you only come laughing and go laughing." On the Steps of the Temple Yestereve, on the marble steps of the Temple, I saw a woman sitting between two men. One side of her face was pale, the other was blushing. The Blessed City In my youth I was told that in a certain city every one lived according to the Scriptures. And I said, "I will seek that city and the blessedness thereof." And it was far. And I made great provision for my journey. And after forty days I beheld the city and on the forty-first day I entered into it. And lo! the whole company of the inhabitants had each but a single eye and but one hand. And I was astonished and said to myself, "Shall they of this so holy city have but one eye and one hand?" Then I saw that they too were astonished, for they were marveling greatly at my two hands and my two eyes. And as they were speaking together I inquired of them saying, "Is this indeed the Blessed City, where each man lives according to the Scriptures?" And they said, "Yes, this is that city." "And what," said I, "hath befallen you, and where are your right eyes and your right hands?" And all the people were moved. And they said, "Come thou and see." And they took me to the temple in the midst of the city. And in the temple I saw a heap of hands and eyes. All withered. Then said I, "Alas! what conqueror hath committed this cruelty upon you?" And there went a murmur amongst them. And one of their elders stood forth and said, "This doing is of ourselves. God hath made us conquerors over the evil that was in us." And he led me to a high altar, and all the people followed. And he showed me above the altar an inscription graven, and I read: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that the whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Then I understood. And I turned about to all the people and cried, "Hath no man or woman among you two eyes or two hands?" And they answered me saying, "No, not one. There is none whole save such as are yet too young to read the Scripture and to understand its commandment." And when we had come out of the temple, I straightway left that Blessed City; for I was not too young, and I could read the scripture. The Good God and the Evil God The Good God and the Evil God met on the mountain top. The Good God said, "Good day to you, brother." The Evil God did not answer. And the Good God said, "You are in a bad humour today." "Yes," said the Evil God, "for of late I have been often mistaken for you, called by your name, and treated as if I were you, and it ill-pleases me." And the Good God said, "But I too have been mistaken for you and called by your name." The Evil God walked away cursing the stupidity of man. Defeat Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness; You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs, And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory. Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance, Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot And not to be trapped by withering laurels. And in you I have found aloneness And the joy of being shunned and scorned. Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield, In your eyes I have read That to be enthroned is to be enslaved, And to be understood is to be leveled down, And to be grasped is but to reach one's fullness And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed. Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion, You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences, And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings, And urging of seas, And of mountains that burn in the night, And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul. Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage, You and I shall laugh together with the storm, And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, And we shall stand in the sun with a will, And we shall be dangerous. Night and the Madman "I am like thee, O, Night, dark and naked; I walk on the flaming path which is above my day-dreams, and whenever my foot touches earth a giant oak tree comes forth." "Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thou still lookest backward to see how large a foot-print thou leavest on the sand." "I am like thee, O, Night, silent and deep; and in the heart of my loneliness lies a Goddess in child-bed; and in him who is being born Heaven touches Hell." "Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thou shudderest yet before pain, and the song of the abyss terrifies thee." "I am like thee, O, Night, wild and terrible; for my ears are crowded with cries of conquered nations and sighs for forgotten lands." "Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thou still takest thy little-self for a comrade, and with thy monster-self thou canst not be friend." "I am like thee, O, Night, cruel and awful; for my bosom is lit by burning ships at sea, and my lips are wet with blood of slain warriors." "Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman; for the desire for a sister-spirit is yet upon thee, and thou has not become alone unto thyself." "I am like thee, O, Night, joyous and glad; for he who dwells in my shadow is now drunk with virgin wine, and she who follows me is sinning mirthfully." "Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thy soul is wrapped in the veil of seven folds and thou holdest not thy heart in thine hand." "I am like thee, O, Night, patient and passionate; for in my breast a thousand dead lovers are buried in shrouds of withered kisses." "Yea, Madman, art thou like me? Art thou like me? And canst thou ride the tempest as a steed, and grasp the lightning as a sword?" "Like thee, O, Night, like thee, mighty and high, and my throne is built upon heaps of fallen Gods; and before me too pass the days to kiss the hem of my garment but never to gaze at my face." "Art thou like me, child of my darkest heart? And dost thou think my untamed thoughts and speak my vast language?" "Yea, we are twin brothers, O, Night; for thou revealest space and I reveal my soul." Faces I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould. I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was. I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven. I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath. The Greater Sea My soul and I went to the great sea to bathe. And when we reached the shore, we went about looking for a hidden and lonely place. But as we walked, we saw a man sitting on a grey rock taking pinches of salt from a bag and throwing them into the sea. "This is the pessimist," said my soul, "Let us leave this place. We cannot bathe here." We walked on until we reached an inlet. There we saw, standing on a white rock, a man holding a bejeweled box, from which he took sugar and threw it into the sea. "And this is the optimist," said my soul, "And he too must not see our naked bodies." Further on we walked. And on a beach we saw a man picking up dead fish and tenderly putting them back into the water. "And we cannot bathe before him," said my soul. "He is the humane philanthropist." And we passed on. Then we came where we saw a man tracing his shadow on the sand. Great waves came and erased it. But he went on tracing it again and again. "He is the mystic," said my soul, "Let us leave him." And we walked on, till in a quiet cover we saw a man scooping up the foam and putting it into an alabaster bowl. "He is the idealist," said my soul, "Surely he must not see our nudity." And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur. And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment." So we passed on. And in a weedy place among the rocks was a man with his head buried in the sand. And I said to my soul, "We can bath here, for he cannot see us." "Nay," said my soul, "For he is the most deadly of them all. He is the puritan." Then a great sadness came over the face of my soul, and into her voice. "Let us go hence," she said, "For there is no lonely, hidden place where we can bathe. I would not have this wind lift my golden hair, or bare my white bosom in this air, or let the light disclose my sacred nakedness." Then we left that sea to seek the Greater Sea. Crucified I cried to men, "I would be crucified!" And they said, "Why should your blood be upon our heads?" And I answered, "How else shall you be exalted except by crucifying madmen?" And they heeded and I was crucified. And the crucifixion appeased me. And when I was hanged between earth and heaven they lifted up their heads to see me. And they were exalted, for their heads had never before been lifted. But as they stood looking up at me one called out, "For what art thou seeking to atone?" And another cried, "In what cause dost thou sacrifice thyself?" And a third said, "Thinkest thou with this price to buy world glory?" Then said a fourth, "Behold, how he smiles! Can such pain be forgiven?" And I answered them all, and said: "Remember only that I smiled. I do not atone--nor sacrifice--nor wish for glory; and I have nothing to forgive. I thirsted--and I besought you to give me my blood to drink. For what is there can quench a madman's thirst but his own blood? I was dumb--and I asked wounds of you for mouths. I was imprisoned in your days and nights--and I sought a door into larger days and nights. And now I go--as others already crucified have gone. And think not we are weary of crucifixion. For we must be crucified by larger and yet larger men, between greater earths and greater heavens." The Astronomer In the shadow of the temple my friend and I saw a blind man sitting alone. And my friend said, "Behold the wisest man of our land." Then I left my friend and approached the blind man and greeted him. And we conversed. After a while I said, "Forgive my question; but since when has thou been blind?" "From my birth," he answered. Said I, "And what path of wisdom followest thou?" Said he, "I am an astronomer." Then he placed his hand upon his breast saying, "I watch all these suns and moons and stars." The Great Longing Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. Nay, it is deeper than my sister's depth and stronger than my brother's strength, and stranger than the strangeness of my madness. Aeons upon aeons have passed since the first grey dawn made us visible to one another; and though we have seen the birth and the fullness and the death of many worlds, we are still eager and young. We are young and eager and yet we are mateless and unvisited, and though we lie in unbroken half embrace, we are uncomforted. And what comfort is there for controlled desire and unspent passion? Whence shall come the flaming god to warm my sister's bed? And what she-torrent shall quench my brother's fire? And who is the woman that shall command my heart? In the stillness of the night my sister murmurs in her sleep the fire-god's unknown name, and my brother calls afar upon the cool and distant goddess. But upon whom I call in my sleep I know not. * * * * * * * * * Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. Said a Blade of Grass Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, "You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams." Said the leaf indignant, "Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing." Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again--and she was a blade of grass. And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, "O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams." The Eye Said the Eye one day, "I see beyond these valleys a mountain veiled with blue mist. Is it not beautiful?" The Ear listened, and after listening intently awhile, said, "But where is any mountain? I do not hear it." Then the Hand spoke and said, "I am trying in vain to feel it or touch it, and I can find no mountain." And the Nose said, "There is no mountain, I cannot smell it." Then the Eye turned the other way, and they all began to talk together about the Eye's strange delusion. And they said, "Something must be the matter with the Eye." The Two Learned Men Once there lived in the ancient city of Afkar two learned men who hated and belittled each other's learning. For one of them denied the existence of the gods and the other was a believer. One day the two met in the marketplace, and amidst their followers they began to dispute and to argue about the existence or the non-existence of the gods. And after hours of contention they parted. That evening the unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive his wayward past. And the same hour the other learned man, he who had upheld the gods, burned his sacred books. For he had become an unbeliever. When My Sorrow Was Born When my Sorrow was born I nursed it with care, and watched over it with loving tenderness. And my Sorrow grew like all living things, strong and beautiful and full of wondrous delights. And we loved one another, my Sorrow and I, and we loved the world about us; for Sorrow had a kindly heart and mine was kindly with Sorrow. And when we conversed, my Sorrow and I, our days were winged and our nights were girdled with dreams; for Sorrow had an eloquent tongue, and mine was eloquent with Sorrow. And when we sang together, my Sorrow and I, our neighbors sat at their windows and listened; for our songs were deep as the sea and our melodies were full of strange memories. And when we walked together, my Sorrow and I, people gazed at us with gentle eyes and whispered in words of exceeding sweetness. And there were those who looked with envy upon us, for Sorrow was a noble thing and I was proud with Sorrow. But my Sorrow died, like all living things, and alone I am left to muse and ponder. And now when I speak my words fall heavily upon my ears. And when I sing my songs my neighbours come not to listen. And when I walk the streets no one looks at me. Only in my sleep I hear voices saying in pity, "See, there lies the man whose Sorrow is dead." And When my Joy was Born And when my Joy was born, I held it in my arms and stood on the house-top shouting, "Come ye, my neighbours, come and see, for Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold this gladsome thing that laugheth in the sun." But none of my neighbours came to look upon my Joy, and great was my astonishment. And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the house-top--and yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and unvisited. Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips. Then my Joy died of isolation. And now I only remember my dead Joy in remembering my dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more. "The Perfect World" God of lost souls, thou who are lost amongst the gods, hear me: Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear me: I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect. I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst finished worlds--peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions are enrolled and registered. Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued. Here days and night are divided into seasons of conduct and governed by rules of blameless accuracy. To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one's nudity, and then to be weary in due time. To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when the clock strikes the hour. To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon. To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to destroy a sound with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then to wash the hands when the day's work is done. To love according to an established order, to entertain one's best self in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly, to intrigue the devils artfully--and then to forget all as though memory were dead. To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be happy sweetly, to suffer nobly--and then to empty the cup so that tomorrow may fill it again. All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method. And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are marked and numbered. It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God's garden, the master-thought of the universe. But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt planet? Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods? 
38590	----	THE STORY OF ANNA KINGSFORD AND EDWARD MAITLAND AND OF THE NEW GOSPEL OF INTERPRETATION BY EDWARD MAITLAND. EDITED BY SAMUEL HOPGOOD HART. "The days of the Covenant of Manifestation are passing away; The Gospel of Interpretation cometh." "There shall nothing new be told; but that which is ancient shall be interpreted." * * * * * "Now is the Gospel of Interpretation come, and the kingdom of the Mother of God."--_C.W.S._, Part I. No. ii. (part 2) 10. 11. and Part II. No. xiii. 31. THIRD AND ENLARGED EDITION. PRICE THREE SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE. BIRMINGHAM: THE RUSKIN PRESS, STAFFORD STREET. 1905. _1st Edition ... Christmas, 1893._ _2nd Edition ... Christmas, 1894._ _3rd Edition ... Christmas, 1905._ PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS. This book is designed (1) in satisfaction of the widely-expressed desire for a more particular account than has yet been rendered concerning the genesis of the writings claiming to constitute a "New Gospel of Interpretation"; and (2) in fulfilment of the duty incumbent on me as the survivor of the two recipients of such Gospel to spare no means which may minister to its recognition and acceptance by the world, for whose benefit it has been vouchsafed. Although largely biographical in character, this book is not a history of individuals, but of a Work, and involves only such personal references as are necessary to such history. It is not, however, a full or a final account that is contained in it. Such an account can be given only in the form of the regular biography which is in course of preparation. This book is an instalment only of that biography, being put forth in advance of it, partly, as said above, to meet a present need, and partly, to prevent a total loss of the record in the event of my failure to complete it--a contingency of which, in view of the magnitude of the task and my advanced age, I am bound to take account. E.M. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. Since the publication in 1893 of this book which, as stated in Chapter VII., was "intended but as an epitome and instalment" of a far larger book then in course of preparation, the full and final account of the "New Gospel of Interpretation" has been given to the world. In 1896 Edward Maitland published his _magnum opus_, "The Life of Anna Kingsford," in two large volumes of 420 pages, "illustrated with portraits, views, and facsimiles." This is, and will always be, the biography _par excellence_ of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, and it is absolutely indispensable for those who would know all that there is to be known of them and their work and of the "New Gospel of Interpretation." As that book, however, on account of its great length, must always be a costly book, and therefore beyond the means of many who would like to have some reliable information concerning Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and their work, and as there are many who, on account of their time for reading being limited or their inclination to read being little, require information within the compass of a small book or go without it altogether, there will, notwithstanding the publication of the "Life of Anna Kingsford," be a demand for this shorter "Story," which is so admirably suited to meet the needs or requirements of these classes of persons; for, be it noted, the publication of "The Life of Anna Kingsford" has not in any way depreciated the value of this book in this sense that, having been written by one of the two recipients of the "New Gospel of Interpretation," it is a first authority second to none for the statements therein contained. The change in the title of the book from "The Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation" to the present title calls for some explanation and justification, because the former title was an excellent one in many respects, and the book has become known to many by that title. The "Gospel of Interpretation" is the name or description which was given by its Divine Inspirers, the Hierarchy of the Spheres Celestial, to the work of which this book tells the story, in token of its relation to the previous "Gospel of Manifestation." The former title implied, as the Author pointed out in his preface, that that which this book propounded was "not really a new Gospel, but one of Interpretation only"; and this is not really new, but, as the Author has also pointed out, "so old as to have become forgotten and lost, being the purely spiritual sense, as discerned from the purely spiritual standpoint originally intended and insisted on by Scripture itself as its true sense and standpoint, and those which alone render Scripture intelligible"[1]. But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding that on the front page it was expressly stated that "There shall nothing new be told; but that which is ancient shall be interpreted," the former title failed to convey to the minds of some the meaning that it was intended to convey, and it gave no indication of the biographical nature of the work. Many who otherwise would have read the book refrained from doing so because they thought that a new Gospel, inconsistent with and perhaps opposed to if not intended to supersede the old Gospel, was propounded. It is necessary, therefore, for me to state, if possible more explicitly than it was stated in the previous editions of this book, that this is not an attempt to create a new Gospel differing from that of Jesus Christ[2]. Anna Kingsford's and Edward Maitland's mission and aim was to interpret the Christ, not to rival or supersede Him. The "New Gospel" is, first and foremost, _interpretative_, and is destructive only in the sense of reconstructive. "It tells nothing new; it simply restores and reinforces the old, even the Gnosis, which, as the doctrine of the Church unfallen, is that also of the Church fallen, though the latter has lost the key to its interpretation"[3]. Nor is the teaching represented by this book opposed to the existence of an objective Church. Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland fully recognised the necessity of such an organisation for the formulation, propagation, and exposition of religion. Their opposition was "only to the recognition by the Church of the objective, historical, and materialistic aspect of religion, _to the exclusion_ of that which really constitutes religion, namely, its subjective, spiritual, and substantial aspect, wherein alone it appeals to the mind and soul, and is efficacious for redemption." The aim of the New Gospel "is defined exactly," said Edward Maitland, "in the following citation from St. Dionysius the Areopagite 'not to destroy, but to construct; or, rather, to destroy by construction; to conquer error by the full presentment of truth.' As will be obvious, such a design does not necessarily involve the destruction of anything that exists whether of symbol or ritual, or ecclesiastical organisation, but only their regeneration by means of their translation into their spiritual and divinely intended sense. And it is precisely because that sense has been lost--as declared in Scripture it had long been, and would yet long be, lost--that a new 'Gospel of Interpretation' has been vouchsafed in fulfilment of the promises in Scripture to that effect; and this from the source of the original Divine revelation, namely, the Church Celestial, and by the method which always was that of such revelation, namely, the intuition operating under special illumination.... Even the priest, though hitherto deservedly regarded as the 'enemy of man,' will not be destroyed under the new _régime_ whose inauguration we are witnessing. For in becoming interpreter as well as administrator, he will be prophet as well as priest, and speak out the things of God and the soul instead of concealing them under a veil. So will the 'veil be taken away,' and Cain, the priest, instead of killing Abel, the prophet, as hitherto, will unite with him, becoming prophet and priest in one. And instead of any longer corrupting the 'woman' Intuition, and suppressing the 'man' Intellect, he will purify and exalt her, and enable her to fulfil her proper function as 'the Mother of God' in man, and will recognise the intellect, when duly conjoined with her, as the heir of all things. Thus, becoming interpreter as well as administrator, prophet as well as priest, and recognising interpretation as the corollary of the understanding, the prophet-priest of the regeneration will give to men freely of the waters of life, that only true bread of Heaven, which is the food of the understanding, instead of the indigestible 'stones' and poisonous 'serpents' of doctrines, the profession of which, by divorcing assent from conviction, involves that moral and intellectual suicide, to induce others to join him in committing which Cardinal Newman wrote his 'Grammar of Assent,' True it is 'faith that saves,' but the faith that is without understanding is not faith, but credulity"[4]. It is for the above-mentioned reasons that the title of this book has been changed. The title must be subservient to the book, and it is hoped that, the change having been made, there will not be any further misunderstanding--even on the part of those who are most superficial--as to the nature and object of "The Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation." Edward Maitland did not long survive the completion of the great task that he undertook when he set himself to write a full account of his life and that of his colleague. He retained his full mental vigour until the publication of "The Life of Anna Kingsford"; but after that he rapidly declined, and on the 2nd October, 1897, at the close of his seventy-third year, a little over nine years after the death of Anna Kingsford[5], he passed away peacefully at "The Warders" at Tonbridge, the home (at that time) of his friends Colonel and Mrs. Currie, with whom, and under whose loving care, he spent the last few months of his life--a life concerning which, as also that of Anna Kingsford, I will not say anything here, for this book will testify. Blessed are the souls whom the just commemorate before God. * * * * * Many who read these pages will not rest until they know more of those great prophets the story of whose lives is here told, and of the Divine Gnosis that it was their high mission to proclaim. I have indicated whence they can obtain this information. This "Story," interesting as it is and much as there is in it, is little more than an indication of some of the facts that are fully stated and dealt with in "The Life of Anna Kingsford," and there is much of importance that (as it could not possibly receive proper treatment in a book of this size) was passed over here to be related in the larger biography. I have not thought it expedient to alter the character of or to add much to this book, but I have enlarged it by incorporating therein, from "The Life of Anna Kingsford," some additional matter which is of interest, and which should add to the value of the book. The most important additions are the account of Anna Kingsford's vision of "The Doomed Train," on p.p. 43-47; the account of Anna Kingsford's vision of Adonai, on pp. 64-68; the "Exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes," on pp. 110-112; the verses "Concerning the Passage of the Soul," on pp. 169-170; and the illumination of Anna Kingsford concerning the "Work of Power," on pp. 180-181. I have also amplified the text in some places when, on comparing it with corresponding passages in "The Life of Anna Kingsford," I found that I could do so with advantage. These amplifications are not otherwise noted. Finally, I have added some notes where I thought that further explanation was desirable or would prove acceptable. SAML. HOPGOOD HART. Croydon, December, 1905. FOOTNOTES: [1] E.M. Letter in "Light" of 29th August, 1891. [2] See further as to this, an article by A.K. and E.M. in "Light" of 23rd September, 1882, reprinted in Life A.K. Vol. II. p. 77. [3] E.M. Letter in "Light" of 22nd July, 1893. [4] E.M. Letter in "Light" of 17th December, 1892. [5] A.K. died on the 22nd February, 1888 INTRODUCTION. There are certain introductory remarks which, in view of the prevailing tendency to reject prior to examination whatever conflicts with strongly cherished preconceptions--as anything purporting to be a "new Gospel" is undoubtedly calculated to do--may be made with advantage. Those remarks are as follows:-- (1) As its title implies[6], that which is propounded is not really a new Gospel, but one of Interpretation only, which is precisely what is admitted by all serious and thoughtful persons to be the supreme need of the times. It was said, for instance, by the late Matthew Arnold, "At the present moment there are two things about the Christian religion which must be obvious to every percipient person: one, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is." (2) As also its title implies[6] nothing new is told in it, but that only which is old is interpreted; and the appeal on its behalf is not to authority, whether of Book, Tradition, or Institution, but to the Understanding--a quality which accords not only with the spirit of the times, but also--as shewn herein--with that of religion itself, properly so called. (3) Scripture manifestly comprises two conflicting systems of doctrine and practice, having for their representatives respectively the priest and the prophet, one only of which systems, and this the system reprobated in Scripture itself, has hitherto obtained recognition from Christendom. It is the purpose of the New Gospel of Interpretation to expound the system represented by the prophet and approved in Scripture, with a view to replacing the other. (4) For those who attach value to the prophecies contained in the Bible, so far from there being an _a priori_ improbability against the delivery of a new revelation in interpretation, confirmation, or completion of the former revelation, and in correction of the false presentment of it, the probability ought to be all in favour of such an event. This is because Scripture abounds in predictions of a restoration both of faculty and of knowledge, as to take place at the present time and under the existing conditions of Church and World; and this of such kind as shall constitute a second and spiritual manifestation of the Christ in rectification of the perversion of the import of His first and personal manifestation, and in arrest of the great Apostacy, not only from the true faith of Christ but from religion itself, of which that perversion has been the cause. (5) So far from the idea of a new revelation which shall have for its end the disclosure, as the true sense of Scripture and Dogma, of a sense differing so widely from that hitherto accepted as to be virtually destructive of it,--so far from this idea being universally repugnant to orthodox ecclesiastics, it has found warm recognition from one of the foremost of modern churchmen. This is the late Cardinal Newman. Said Dr Newman in his _Apologia pro vitâ suâ_, speaking of his earlier days, "The broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away; the philosophy, not the theological doctrine.... Some portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies or Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable: Scripture was an allegory:.... The process of change had been slow; it had been done not rashly, but by rule and measure, 'at sundry times and in divers manners,' first one disclosure and then another, till the whole evangelical doctrine was brought into full manifestation. And thus room was made for the anticipation of further and deeper disclosures of truths still under the veil of the letter, and in their season to be revealed. The visible world still remains without its divine interpretation: Holy Church in her sacraments and her hierarchical appointments, will remain, even to the end of the world, after all but a symbol of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries are but the expressions, in human language, of truths to which the human mind is unequal"[7]. Dr Newman is credited also with the remark, made on visiting Rome for his investiture, that he saw no hope for religion save in a new revelation. These are utterances the value of which is in no way diminished by the fact that their utterer failed to bring his own life into accordance with them. He could write, indeed, the hymn "Lead, kindly light"; but when the "kindly light" was vouchsafed him of those suggestions of a system of thought concealed within the Christian Symbology, "magnificent in themselves" and making "music to his inward ear," which he found in the patristic writings; instead of following that lead, and striving to exhume the treasures of divine truth thus buried and hidden from sight, for the salvation of a world perishing for want of them,--he turned his back upon it, and--entering the Church of Rome--wrote his "Grammar of Assent," calling upon others to follow him in committing the suicide, intellectual and moral, of renouncing the understanding and divorcing profession from conviction. This was a catastrophe the explanation of which is not far to seek. Dr Newman had in him the elements which go to make both priest and prophet. But the former proved the stronger; and the Cain, the priest in him, suppressed the Abel, the prophet in him. Thus was he a type of the Church as hitherto she has been. But, happily, not as henceforth she will be. For "now is the Gospel of Interpretation come, and the kingdom of the Mother of God," even the "Woman," Intuition,--the mind's feminine mode, wherein it represents the perceptions and recollections of the Soul--who is ever "Mother of God" in man, and whose sons the prophets ever are, the greatest of them being called emphatically, for the fulness and purity of his intuition, the "Son of the Woman" and she a "virgin." E.M. FOOTNOTES: [6] The original title of this book was "The Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation." See preface to the present edition. S.H.H. [7] Apologia pro vitâ suâ, by J. H. Newman. New edition of 1893, pp. 26, 27. FRONTISPIECES. I.--PORTRAIT OF DR. ANNA KINGSFORD. _Born, Sep. 16th, 1846; Died, Feb. 22nd, 1888._ II.--PORTRAIT OF EDWARD MAITLAND (_B.A., Cantab_). _Born, Oct. 27th, 1824; Died, Oct, 2nd, 1897._ TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS v. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION vii.-xiii. INTRODUCTION xv.-xix. TABLE OF CONTENTS xx.-xxii. ABBREVIATIONS xxiii. CHAPTER I. THE VOCATION. The Instruments--Their early lives--Their consciousness of a special mission, and intimations of a call--Their training in respect of circumstance, character, and faculty, until brought together for their Joint work. 1-36 CHAPTER II. THE INITIATION. A baptism of the Spirit--"At last I have found a man through whom I can speak!"--Intimation of the nature and aim of their work--The Doomed train, "No one on the engine!"--Instantaneous transfer of inspiration--"Woman, what have I to do with thee?"--The recovery of a Gospel scene, and its import--"The woman taken in adultery"--Vision of Adonai--Source of the opening sentences in St. John's Gospel--Chapter from the recovered Gnosis--The Generation of the Word. 37-70 CHAPTER III. THE COMMUNICATION. The perfect love that casts out fear." In the presence of celestial visitants--A parable of the Intuition--"The Wonderful Spectacles"--The Greek element in the work--Hermes and John the Baptist--The "heresy of Prometheus"--The Fig-tree, a symbol of the inward understanding; the time come for it to bear fruit--The Seeress's faculty--Her relations with Hermes--"Thou art the Rock" addressed to Hermes--The parable of the Fig-tree--The Mystic Woman of Holy Writ--"Go thy way, Daniel.... Thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days"--The prophecy of the book of Esther--The Angel Genius, his account of himself and his office--Divine revelation the supreme common sense--The source and method of the New Revelation--Its chief recipient "not a medium or a seer, but a prophet"--An instruction and a caution concerning the survival of tendencies encouraged in past lives--Communion with souls of the departed--The conditions of such intercourse--An instruction concerning Inspiration and Prophesying--The prophecy of "the kingdom of the Mother of God." 71-108 CHAPTER IV. THE ANTAGONISATION. "Ye are not yet perfected"--Our respective _Auras_--An exhortation--The Seven Spirits of God, their co-operation necessary for a perfect work--"You belong to us now, to do our work and not your own"--Enforced silence--"The Powers of the Air;" their mode of attack--A strange visitant and his communication--A strained situation--Visions of guidance--The "refractory team," and the "Two Stars"--The promised land reached only through the wilderness--"The Word a Word of mystery, and they who guard it Seven"--"One Neophyte could not save himself"--A Horoscope--A descent into hell--Counsels of Perfection--A "Merry Christmas"--A timely arrival--Neoplatonic recognition of Hermes--The one Truth, never without a witness in the world--The key of knowledge restored--Problems solved--The mystic "Woman" of Holy Writ. 109-141 CHAPTER V. THE RECAPITULATION. The key to the mystery of the Bible; the "Veil of Moses" withdrawn--The secret laid bare of the world's sacrificial system, and the feud between priest and prophet--The Memory of the Soul--The Standpoint of the Bible--All that is true is Spiritual--The revelation of "that wicked one"--The seals broken and the books opened--The New Gospel of Interpretation--Sacerdotalism the "Jerusalem which killed the prophets"--The suppressed doctrines--Reincarnation the corollary and condition of Regeneration and implicit in the Bible--"Ye _must_ be born again of Virgin Mary and Holy Ghost"--The doctrines of the Trinity and Divine Incarnation as now interpreted, necessary and self-evident truths--Evolution the manifestation of a divine inherency; accomplished only by the realisation of Divinity--The process of regeneration, and therein of salvation, interior to the individual--Adam and Christ the initial and final stages in the spiritual evolution of every man--The "Christ within" of St Paul--The _Credo_ an epitome of the spiritual history of the Sons of God. 142-162 CHAPTER VI. THE EXEMPLIFICATION. Spontaneity of the Seeress's faculty--Specific illuminations, in illustration, chiefly, of the process of Regeneration; concerning (1) Holy Writ; (2) Redemption; (3) Sin and death; (4) The Twelve Gates of Regeneration; (5) The Passage of the Soul; (6) The Mystic Exodus; (7) The Spiritual Phoibos and the order of the Christs; (8) The Previous Lives of Jesus, and Reincarnation; (9) The Work of Power; the land and tongue of the New Revelation, why ours. 163-183 CHAPTER VII. THE PROMULGATION AND RECOGNITION. Accordance of all the dates with those prophesied--Other coincidences--Why our work has remained so long unknown to the generality--Notable recognitions, by representative Kabalists, Mystics, Occultists and Divines, Catholic, Anglican, and others--Spiritualism, Theosophy, and the New Gospel of Interpretation as fellow-agents in the unfoldment of the world's spiritual consciousness, and the unsealing of the world's Bibles, prophesied to take place at this epoch--"Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," the Hebrew equivalents for Brahma, Isis, and Iacchos, to denote the mysteries of India, Egypt, and Greece, the Spirit, the Soul, and the Body, and therein the Gnosis of which the Christ is the fulfilment and personal demonstration, and the restoration of which was prophesied by Jesus as to mean the Regeneration of the Church and the establishment of the divine kingdom on earth--Mysticism and Occultism, the distinction between them, and the necessity of both physical and spiritual science to a perfect system of thought and rule of life--Conclusion. 184-204 ABBREVIATIONS. A.K., for Anna Kingsford. B.O.A.I., for "The Bible's Own Account of Itself," by E.M.; second edition, 1905. C.W.S., for "Clothed With The Sun," being the book of the Illuminations of A.K.; edited by E.M., 1889. D. and D.-S., for "Dreams and Dream-Stones," by A.K., edited by E.M.; second edition, 1888. E.C.U., for "The Esoteric Christian Union," founded by E.M. in 1891. E. and I., for "England and Islam; or, The Counsel of Caiaphas," by E.M., 1877. E.M., for Edward Maitland. Life A.K., for "The Life of Anna Kingsford," by E.M., 1896. P.W., for "The Perfect Way; or, The Finding of Christ," by A.K. and E.M.; third edition, revised, 1890. Statement, E.C.U., for "The New Gospel of Interpretation; being an Abstract of the Doctrine and Statement of the Objects of the Esoteric Christian Union," by E.M.; revised and enlarged edition, 1892. BIRMINGHAM: THE RUSKIN PRESS, RUSKIN HOUSE, STAFFORD STREET. 1905. [Illustration: Edward Maitland] [Illustration: Anna Kingsford] THE STORY OF ANNA KINGSFORD AND EDWARD MAITLAND AND OF THE NEW GOSPEL OF INTERPRETATION. CHAPTER I. THE VOCATION. My colleague in the work, the history of which I am about to render some account, was the late Anna Kingsford, _née_ Bonus, M.D. of the University of Paris. There was a link between her husband's family and mine, but we were not personally acquainted until, in the summer of 1873, she was led by reading one of my books[8] to open a correspondence with me, which disclosed so striking a community between us of ideas, aims, and methods, that I accepted an invitation to visit her at her husband's rectory at Pontesbury, Salop, in Shropshire, for the sake of a fuller discussion of them. This visit which lasted nearly a fortnight, took place in February, 1874[9]. The account I received of her history was in this wise. Born at Stratford, in Essex, on the 16th September, 1846, long after the last of her many brothers and sisters, and endowed with the most fragile of constitutions and liabilities the most distressing of bodily weakness and suffering, and differing widely, moreover, in temperament from all with whom she was associated, her young life had enjoyed but a scanty share of human sympathy, and was largely one of solitude and meditation, and such as to foster the highly artistic, idealistic, and mystic tendencies with which she was born. Singularly energetic of will, and conscious of powers both transcending in degree and differing in kind from any that she recognised in others, she assiduously exercised her faculties in many and various directions in the hope of discovering the special direction in which her mission lay. For, from her earliest childhood she had been conscious of a mission, for the accomplishment of which she had expressly come into the earth-life. And she claimed even to have distinct recollection of having been strongly dissuaded from coming, on account of the terrible suffering which awaited her in the event of her assuming a body of flesh. Indeed, so little conscious was she of the reality of her human parentage that she was wont to look upon herself as a suppositious child of fairy origin; and on her first visit to the pantomime, when the fairies made their appearance on the stage, she declared that they were her proper people, and cried and struggled to get to them with such vehemence that it was necessary to remove her from the theatre. Among her amusements, her chief delight was in the ample gardens around her homes at Stratford and Blackheath, where she would hold familiar converse with the flowers, putting into their petals tiny notes for her lost relatives, the fairies, who in return would visit her in her dreams and assure her of their continued affection, and counsel her to have patience and courage. The chief occupation of her girlhood was the writing of poems and tales[10] which were tinged with an exquisite mysticism, and showed a ripeness of soul and maturity of feeling and knowledge wholly unaccountable for by her years, her experiences, or her physical heredity. At school she always obtained the first prizes for composition, and her faculty of improvisation was the delight of her companions; the subjects of these her earlier romances being lovely princesses, gallant knights, castles, dragons, and the like, when--as may readily be supposed--her tall and slender frame, long golden hair, delicacy of complexion, deep-set hazel eyes, beauty of feature, the brow and the mouth being especially notable, the brightness of her looks, vivacity of her manner, her musical voice, and the easy eloquence of her diction,--all combined to make her an ideal heroine for her own romances. She could hardly, however, be said to be a _persona grata_ with her pastors and masters. For while her independence of character and strength of will were apt to bring her into conflict with rules and regulations of which she failed to recognise the need, her thirst for knowledge, especially on religious subjects, prompted her to the proposition of questions which were highly embarrassing to her teachers; and nothing that they could say succeeded in convincing her that her duty lay in believing what she was told, and not in understanding it. She very early learnt to resent the disabilities of her sex, and to insist that they were not real but artificial, the result of masculine selfishness and injustice. This hatred of injustice and its correlative cruelty, especially towards animals, attained in her the force and dignity of a passion, her sensitiveness on this score making the chief mental misery of her life. Of one gift possessed by her she early learnt to repress the manifestation. This was the faculty for seeing apparitions and divining the characters and fortunes of people. For she was a born seer. But the inability of her elders to comprehend the faculty, and their consequent ascription of it to pathological causes, were wont to lead to references to the family doctor with results so eminently disagreeable and even injurious to her, as soon to suggest the wisdom of keeping silence respecting her experiences. Her first published compositions were written at the age of thirteen[11], the editors who accepted her contributions to their magazines being under the impression that they came from a grown-up person and not from the mere child that she was. They cost her, she assured me, little labour, especially the poems, but seemed to come to her ready-made, and to flow through her spontaneously. And whatever the country in which their scene lay, the local colouring and descriptions were always faithful and vivid, as if the places and their inhabitants were familiar and even actually visible to her. It was not, however, to any encouragement of her peculiar gifts that such excellency as she exhibited was due. Rather were they severely repressed, especially in respect of drawing, singing and music, lest she should be tempted to follow them as a profession; a fear which had been excited by the suggestions of her masters that she would be certain of success in any of those lines. Her innate consciousness of a mission seemed to her to indicate her as destined for some redemptive work, not only for others, but also for herself. For, while the instincts of the Champion and the Saviour were potent in her, she was dimly conscious of its possessing also an expiatory element, in virtue of which her own salvation would largely depend upon her endeavours to save others. She had as yet no theory whereby to explain this or any other of the problems she was to herself. All that she knew was that she possessed, or rather was possessed of, these feelings and impulses. It was easy to see by her account of herself that she was as one driven of the Spirit long before the Spirit definitely revealed itself to her. The two departments of humanity which she felt especially impelled to succour and save were her own sex and the animals. For she would recognise no hard and fast line between masculine and feminine, human and animal, or even between animal and plant. In her eyes everything that lived was humanity, only in different stages of its unfoldment. Even the flowers were persons for her. As she approached womanhood she found herself looking forward to marriage far less for its own sake than as a means of emancipation from restrictions on her choice of a career. Her father died while she was yet wanting two or three years of her majority, leaving her mistress of an income ample for a single woman. And when at length she became engaged to Algernon Godfrey Kingsford, a cousin to whom she had some time been attached, it was on the understanding that she should remain unfettered in this respect. He held at the time a post in the Civil Service; but soon after their marriage, which took place on the last day of 1867, determined to read for holy orders. This gave her an opportunity for making herself acquainted with Anglican theology, of which--thirsting for knowledge of all kinds--she eagerly availed herself, accompanying him in all his studies, and greatly facilitating them by her admirable scholarly methods. This proved to be the first great step in her religious and intellectual training for her destined mission. One of the occupations of her early married life was the editing of a lady's magazine, which she purchased with a view of making it an instrument for the dissemination of her ideas especially in regard to her sex. And she accordingly took an active part in the movement then recently originated for the enfranchisement of women, achieving an extraordinary success as a public speaker. But, becoming convinced that their cause would be best advanced by the practical demonstration of their fitness for the promotion they sought, and also feeling her own need for the discipline of a severe intellectual training to balance the emotional side of her nature, she soon withdrew from active participation in the movement. She moreover recognised as a grave mistake the disposition evinced by her fellow-workers to suppress their womanliness in favour of a factitious masculinity, under the impression that they would thereby exalt their sex; her idea being, that their true policy lay in magnifying rather than in depreciating their womanhood. Meanwhile she had given birth to a daughter, her only child. Her magazine was given up after a couple of years, the results failing to justify the expenditure of time, labour and money, requisite for its continuance. Not that it lacked adequate support; but the principles on which she insisted on conducting it proved to be incompatible with commercial success. She resolutely refused all advertisements of articles, whether of food or of clothing, of which she disapproved; and she had adopted the pythagorean regimen and discarded as unhygienic sundry articles of attire ordinarily deemed indispensable by her sex. It was in her magazine that she first struck the note which proved the initiation of the holy warfare since waged against the horrors of the physiological laboratory, a warfare in which she bore a foremost part and developed the malady of which she died. In 1870, a long and severe illness, which compelled her return to her mother's house at Hastings to be nursed, led to her entry upon another phase in her inner life, and a further stage in the process of her education for her mission. She had early recoiled from the faith in which she had been reared. This was Protestantism in its most unlovely form, cold, harsh, narrow, dogmatic. Her closer acquaintance with it as a clergyman's wife had done nothing to mitigate her judgment of it. Explaining nothing and lacking fervour and poetry, it left head and heart alike unsatisfied. Her residence as an invalid at Hastings brought her into intimacy with some devout Catholics, the effect of which was to intensify the repugnance already set up. She attended the Catholic services, and visited the sisters in the convent, reading their books of devotion and even making an extended study of Catholic doctrine, for she would do nothing by halves. She found what satisfied her heart and artistic tastes. But the chief determining cause of the change upon which she at length resolved, was her reception by night of sundry visitations, purporting to be of angelic nature, and enjoining on her, for the sake of the mission to which she was called--the knowledge of which, she was told, would in due time be revealed to her--that she join the Roman communion. Well aware that the confession of such experiences, whether to her relations or to a minister of her own Church, would elicit only a smile of pity or contempt, with a recommendation to seek medical advice, and involve other contingencies equally distasteful, she resolved to see how the same confession would be treated by a Catholic priest. The result of the essay was that she was listened to with respect and sympathy, and informed that the Church fully recognised such visitations as coming within the divine order, and as being a token of high spiritual favour and grace; and while it refrained from pronouncing positively on them, considered that they ought not to be lightly disregarded. She was soon afterwards received into the Roman Church, being baptised on September 14, 1870. On June 9, 1872, she was confirmed by Archbishop Manning, who admonished her to utilise her attractions in making converts. And on each occasion she received additional names, in virtue of which she now bore the names of all the five women who were by the Cross and at the Sepulchre. None the less, however, did she retain her independence of mind and conduct. She accepted no direction, and professed no tenet that she did not understand. And it was soon made clear to her that the Spirit, of whom she was being impelled, did not intend her to regard her adoption of Catholicism as more than a step in her education for the work required of her. For the following year saw her bent on seeking a medical degree, under the impression that such a step was in some way related to the mission of which she had received such and so many mysterious intimations. And she had scarcely commenced her study of medicine when this impression was reinforced by the following incident, the scene of which was her home in Shropshire, in the parish of which her husband had then recently become incumbent, and where I first visited them. This was the receipt of a letter from a lady who was a stranger to her, written from a distant part of the country, and saying that she, the writer, had read with profound interest and admiration a story[12] of Mrs Kingsford which, after appearing in her magazine, had been published as a book, and that after reading it she had received from the Holy Spirit a message for her which was to be delivered in person. After some hesitation as to what reply to make, Mrs Kingsford--whose account I am following exactly--agreed to receive her; an appointment was made, and the stranger duly presented herself. She was tall, erect, distinguished looking, with hair of iron-grey and strangely brilliant eyes, and was perfectly calm and collected of demeanour. The message was to the effect that Mrs Kingsford was to remain in retirement for five years, continuing the studies and mode of life on which she had entered, whatever they might be--for that the messenger did not know--and to suffer nothing and no one to draw her aside from them. That when these probationary five years were past, the Holy Spirit would bring her forth from her seclusion, and a great work would be given her to do. All this was uttered with a rapt and inspired expression, as though she had been a Sibyl pronouncing an oracle. After delivering her message, the messenger kissed her on both cheeks and departed, first asking only whether she thought her mad; a question to which for a moment Mrs Kingsford found it somewhat difficult to make reply. But only for a moment. For then there rushed on her the conviction that it was all genuine and true, and was but a fresh unfoldment of the mystery of her life and destiny, and in full accordance with her own foreshadowings from the beginning. Some four years later, at a time when Mrs Kingsford was in great straits for want of a suitable home in London in which to carry on her studies, the same lady was similarly commissioned on her behalf, while totally ignorant both of her whereabouts and her need, and with results entirely satisfactory. On which occasion I had the privilege of making her acquaintance, and the satisfaction of finding her not merely perfectly sane, but a person entitled to the highest consideration, noted for her pious devotion to works of beneficence involving complete self-abnegation; and in short a veritable "Mother in Israel." The event above related occurred in the spring of 1873, the summer of which year saw Mrs Kingsford impelled to do what led to the most crucial of the events upon which her destined mission hinged, namely, to write to me the letter which led to my visit to her home. In the autumn of the same year she passed her matriculation examination at the Apothecaries' Hall with success so great as to fill her with high hopes of a triumphant passage through the course of her student-life. But immediately afterwards her hopes were dashed, for the English medical authorities saw fit to close their schools to women, and the way to her anticipated career was shut against her. Such was the position when, in February, 1874, I visited the Shropshire rectory, and such in brief the history which was gradually unfolded to me as my evident sympathy and appreciation gained the confidence of the still young couple, whose senior I was by some twenty years. Both husband and wife were at their wits' end, the situation being aggravated by a circumstance which was first brought to my knowledge on my suggestion of the postponement of her design until such time as the medical authorities should come to their right minds and re-open their schools to women. The circumstance in question was her terrible liability on the ground of ill-health, and especially of asthma, to which she was a martyr, life in the country being impossible to her for the greater part of the year, when it was only in some large city that she was able to breathe. With the schools closed against her in England, her thoughts turned towards France, the University of Paris being open to women. But for obvious reasons her husband, who could not absent himself from his duties to accompany her, would not consent to her going thither unless under suitable protection. For himself he had but one wish, that she should follow her bent and fashion her life as seemed best to her; for he recognised her as entitled by her endowments and aspirations, as well as by the terms of their engagement, to full liberty of action, while the conditions of her health claimed all consideration from him. If, indeed, the Gods had destined her for a mission requiring freedom of action combined with the shelter and support of a husband's name, it seemed to me that in him they had created a man expressly for the office. For some time, however, the difficulty seemed insuperable, and one that would yield to no amount of deliberation, even with the best will of all concerned. Meanwhile her self-revelations continued, being evidently prompted, at least as much by the desire to obtain some explanation of herself for herself, to whom she was, she avowed, a complete puzzle, as by the desire to elicit answering confidences from me. And they became with each disclosure more and more striking, until I could hardly resist the conviction that she was possessed of some faculty in virtue of which she was able to have direct perception of conclusions to which I had won my way by dint of long and arduous thinking, and in some instances in advance of me. She had read my mental history between the lines of my books, and was fully prepared to learn that I too had a consciousness, analogous to her own, of a mission in life perhaps also analogous to her own. This, I was able to assure her, was indeed the case, and that all my books had been written in the idea of finding my way to it by dint of free, unfettered thinking. For, brought up in the strictest of evangelical sects, I had even as a lad begun to be revolted by the creed in which I was reared, and had very early come to regard its tenets, especially of total depravity and vicarious atonement, as a libel nothing short of blasphemous against both God and man, and to feel that no greater boon could be bestowed on the world than its emancipation from the bondage of a belief so degrading and so destructive of any lofty ideal. I had felt strongly that only in such measure as I might be the means of its abolition would my life be a success and a satisfaction to myself. It even seemed to me that my own credit was involved in the matter; and that in disproving such beliefs I should be vindicating my own character. For if God were evil, as those doctrines made Him, I could by no possibility be good, since I must have my derivation from Him. And I knew that, however weak and unwise I might be, I was not evil. Then, too, my life, like hers, had been one of much isolation and meditation. I had felt myself a stranger even with my closest intimates. For I was always conscious of a difference which separated me from them, and of a side to which they could not have access. I had graduated at Cambridge with the design of taking orders; but only to find that I could not do so conscientiously, and to feel that to commit myself to any conditions incompatible with absolute freedom of thought and expression would be a treachery against both myself and my kind;--for it was for no merely personal end that I wanted to discover the truth. I longed to get away from all my surroundings in order, first, to think myself out of all that I had been taught, and so to make my mind as a clean sheet whereon to receive true impressions and at first hand; and, next, to think myself into a condition and to a level wherein I could see all things--myself, nature, and God--face to face, with vision undimmed and undistorted by beliefs which, being inherited only and traditional, instead of the result of conviction honestly arrived at, were factitious and unreal; no living outcome of my own growth and observation, but a veritable straitwaistcoat, stifling life and restraining development. And so it had come that--as related in my first novel, "The Pilgrim and the Shrine"[13], which was essentially autobiographical--I had eagerly fallen in with a proposal to join an expedition to the then newly-discovered placers of California, an enterprise which, besides promising to gratify the love for adventure, physical as well as mental, which was strong in me, would postpone if not solve the difficulty of my position. It possessed, moreover, the high recommendation of taking me to the world of the fresh, unsophisticated West, instead of to that East which had been made almost hateful to me by its association with the tenets by which existence had been poisoned for me. So, setting my face towards the sunset, I became one of the band of "Forty-niners" in California, and remained abroad in the continents and isles of the Pacific, from America passing to Australia, until the intended year of my absence had grown into nearly ten years, and I had experienced well-nigh every vicissitude and extreme which might serve to heighten the consciousness, toughen the fibre, and try the soul of man. But throughout all, the idea of a mission remained with me, gathering force and consistency, until it was made clear to me that not destruction merely, but construction, not the exposure of error but the demonstration of truth, was comprised in it. For I saw that it was possible to reduce religion to a series of first principles, necessary truths and self-evident propositions, and that only in such measure as it was thus reduced and discerned, was it really true and really believed;--in short, that faith and knowledge are identical. To accept a religion on the ground that one had been born in it, and apart from its appeal to the mind and moral conscience, and thus to make it dependent upon the accident of birth and parentage, was to resemble the African savage who for the same reason worships Mumbo Jumbo. How, moreover,--I asked myself--could a religion which was not in accord with first principles, represent a God, Who, to be God, must Himself be the first of, and must comprise all principles; must account logically for all the facts of consciousness, be it unfolded as far as it may? Granting that, as the poet says, "an honest man's the noblest work of God," it was for me no less true that "an honest God's the noblest work of man." And it was precisely such a being that I longed to elaborate out of, or discover in, my own consciousness, confident that the achievement meant the solution of all problems, the rectification of all difficulties, the satisfaction of all aspirations, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Following such trains of thought, I arrived at the assurance that I had within my own consciousness both the truth itself and the verification of the truth, and that it remained only to find these. Returning to England in 1857, and, after an interval, devoting myself to literature, all that I wrote, whether essay or fiction, represented the endeavour by probing the consciousness to the utmost in every direction to discover a central, radiant, and indefeasible point from which all things could be deduced, and on which, as a pivot they must depend and revolve. I read largely, and went much among people, always in search of aid in my quest; but only with the result of finding that neither from books nor from persons could I even begin to get what I sought, but only from thought. Meanwhile everything seemed ordered with a view to the end ultimately attained. For, so far from having left behind me for ever the vicissitudes, and struggles, and trials, and ordeals, in which the wildernesses of the western and southern worlds had been so fruitful, I was found of them in the old world to which I had returned; and this in number, kind, and degree, such as to make it appear as if what I had borne before had been inflicted expressly for the purpose of enabling me to bear what was put upon me now. And it was only when I had learnt by experience that the very capacity for thought is enhanced by feeling no less than by thinking, that the "ministry of pain" found its explanation. For the feeling required of me proved to be that of the inner, not merely of the outer man, of the soul, not merely of the body; and the faculty, to be the intuition, and not merely the intellect. Hence I was made to learn by experience, long before the fact was formulated for me in words, that only "by the bruising of the outer, the inner is set free," and "man is alive only so far as he has felt." Everything seemed contrived expressly in order to force me in this inward direction. Even in my literary work, nothing of the "trade" element was permitted to intrude. I could not write except when writing to or from my own centre. Faculty itself was shut off, if turned to any other purpose. Everything I wrote must minister to and represent a step in my own unfoldment. I can confidently affirm that the only books which really helped me were, with scarcely an exception, those which I wrote myself. Of the exceptions the chief was Emerson. His essays had been my _vade mecum_ in all my world-wide wanderings. And there were three sentences of his which, to use his own phrase, "found" me as no others had done. They were these: "The talent is the call"; "I the imperfect adore my own perfect"; and, "Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the earth." Like Emerson himself, I had yet to learn that man's own perfect is God, and self-culture is God-culture, provided the self be the inmost self. The two other books which most helped me were Bailey's "Festus," and Carlyle's "Hero-Worship." And I owed something to Tucker's "Light of Nature." By which it will be seen that my affinity was always for the prophets rather than the priests of literature; for the intuitionalists rather than the externalists. Gradually two leading ideas took definite form in my mind, which, however, proved to be but two aspects or applications of one and the same idea. And that idea proved to be the keynote of all that I was seeking after. For it finally solved the problems of existence, of religion, of the Bible, of Being itself. Hence the necessity of this reference to it. This idea was that of a duality subsisting in every unity, such as I had nowhere read or heard of. I was, of course, aware that the theological doctrine of the Trinity involved a Duality. But not of a kind to find a response in my mind. And being unable to assimilate it as it stood, I ignored it; putting it aside until it should present itself to me in an aspect in which it was intelligible. I felt, however vaguely, that the Duality I sought was in the Bible, though it had been missed by the official expositors of that book. And the conviction that it was in some way connected with my life-work was so strong that I constructed for the covers of my two first books a monogram symbolical of Genesis i. 27. And I looked to the unfoldment of what I felt to be the secret significance of that utterance for the explication of all the mysteries the solution of which engrossed me. The thought did not seem to originate in any of my experiences, but rather to be part of my original stock of innate ideas, supposing that there are such ideas, and to derive confirmation and explanation from my experiences. Those experiences were in this wise. It had been my privilege to have the friendship of several women of a type so noble that to know them was at once an education and a religion; women whose perfection of character had served more than anything else to make me believe in God, when all other grounds had failed. I could in no wise account for them on the hypothesis of a fortuitous concourse of unintelligent atoms. And not only did I find that the higher the type the more richly they were endowed with precisely the faculty of which I myself was conscious as distinguishing me from my fellows; I found also that I was unable to recognise any woman as of a high type as woman save in so far as she was possessed of it. I had failed to find any who possessed the knowledge I craved, and who were thereby able to help me in my thought. They helped me nevertheless, but it was by _being_ what they were, rather than by _knowing_ and _doing_, be they admirable as they might in these respects. I recognised in them that which supplemented and complemented my mental self in such wise as to suggest unbounded possibilities of results to accrue from the intimate association of two minds thus attuned to each other, and duly unfolded by thought and study. It needed, it seemed to me, but the reverberation and intensification of thought, induced by the apposition of two minds thus related, for the production of the divine child Truth in the very highest spheres of thought. So that the results would by no means be restricted to the mere sum of the associated capacities of the two minds themselves. And in view of such high possibilities I found myself appropriating and applying the ejaculation which Virgil puts into the mouth of Anna when urging the union of her sister Dido with Æneas-- "Quæ surgere regna Conjugio tali!" and I felt with Tennyson that "They two together well might move the world." So boundless seemed to me the kingdoms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty which would spring from such conjunction. It goes without saying that such relationship was contemplated by me only as the accompaniment of a happy re-marriage. [For I had married in Australia only to be widowered after a year's wedlock.] But such a prospect was so long withheld as to make me dubious of its realisation[14]. Nevertheless, some inner voice was ever saying: "Wait; wait. Everything comes to him who waits, provided only he do so in faith and patience, looking to the highest." But that I did wait, and accordingly kept myself free for what ultimately was assigned to me, was due far less to the expectation of finding that for which I waited, than to the vivid consciousness which I had of the bitterness that would come of finding it, only to be withheld from it through a previous disposal of myself in some other and incompatible quarter. This was an impression which served largely to keep my life as free as I desired my thought to be. But that the as yet undisclosed arbiters of my destiny deemed it insufficient as a deterrent, appeared from their reinforcement of it in a manner which effectually debarred me from marriage save on the condition, impossible to me, of a mercenary alliance. This was a reversal of fortune through a succession of losses so serious as to be the cause of reducing my means to the minimum compatible with existence at all in my own station, which soon afterwards happened. That there were yet further reasons for this imposition on me of the rule of poverty, arising out of the nature of the work required of me, was in due time made manifest, and also what those reasons were. They need not be specified here, excepting only this one. It made impossible the ascription to my destined colleague of mercenary motives for her association with me. In this I came to recognise a delicate providence for which I felt I could not be too thankful. In the meantime, even while smarting severely from this dispensation, and others yet more bitter which were heaped on me for no apparent cause or fault of my own that I could discern, the thought that most of all served to sustain me under what I felt would have utterly broken down in heart or head, or in both of these organs, any other person whatever of whom I had knowledge,--that thought was the surmise or suspicion that all these things, hard to bear as they were, and undeserved as they seemed, might prove to be blessings in disguise, in ministering to the realisation of the controlling ambition of my life by educating me for it; and that according to the manner in which I bore them might be the result. There is yet one more personal disclosure essential to this part of my relation. It concerns my own mental standpoint at the time at which my narrative has arrived. Bent as I was on penetrating the secret of things at first hand, and by means of a thought absolutely free, I was never for a moment disposed to turn, as my so-called free-thinking contemporaries one and all had turned, a scornful back upon whatever related to or savoured of the current religion. Scripture and dogma were not for me necessarily either false or inscrutable because their official exponents had presented them in an aspect which outraged my reason and revolted my conscience. I felt bound--if only in justice to them and myself--at least to find out what they did mean before finally discarding them. And in this act of justice I was strangely sustained by a sense of the possibility that the truth, if any, contained in them, was no other than that of which I was in search. This is to say, that in all my investigations I kept before me the idea that, if I could discern the actual nature of existence and the intended sense of the Bible and Christianity, independently of each other, they might prove on comparison to be identical; in which case the latter would really represent a true revelation. Meanwhile, I found myself constrained to believe, as an axiomatic proposition, that the higher and nobler the conception I framed in my imagination of the nature of existence, and the more in accordance with my ideas of what, to be perfect, the constitution of the universe ought to be, the nearer I should come to the actual truth. Similarly with religion. For a religion to be true, it must, I felt absolutely assured, be ideally perfect after the most perfect ideal that we can frame. This is to say, that not only must it be in itself such as to satisfy both head and heart, mind and moral conscience, spirit and soul; it must also be perfectly simple, obviously reasonable, coherent, self-evident, founded in the nature of things, incapable--when once comprehended--of being conceived of as otherwise, absolutely equitable, eternally true, and recognisable as being all these, invariable in operation, independent of all accidents of time, place, persons and events, and comparable to the demonstration of a mathematical problem in that it needs no testimony or authority beyond those of the mind; and requiring for its efficacious observance, nothing that is extraneous or inaccessible to the subject-individual, but within his ability to recognise and fulfil, provided only that he so will. It must also be such as to enable him by the observance of it to turn his existence to the highest possible account imaginable by him, be his imagination as developed as it may: and all this as independently of any being other than himself, as if he were the sole personal entity in the universe, and were himself the universe. That is to say, the means of a man's perfectionment must inhere in his own system, and he must be competent of himself effectually to apply them. It is further necessary, because equitable, that he be allowed sufficient time and opportunity for the discovery, understanding and application of such means. Such are the terms and conditions of an ideally perfect religion, as I conceived of them. It is a definition which excludes well-nigh, if not quite, all the characteristics ordinarily regarded as appertaining to religion, and notably to that of Christendom. For in excluding everything extraneous to the actual subject-individual, and requiring religion to be self-evident and necessarily true, it excludes as superfluous and irrelevant, history, tradition, authority, revelation, as ordinarily conceived of, ecclesiastical ordinance, priestly ministration, mediatorial function, vicarious satisfaction, and even the operation of Deity as subsisting without and apart from the man, all of which are essential elements in the accepted conception of religion. Nevertheless, profound as was my distrust of the faithfulness of the orthodox presentation, I could not reconcile myself to a renunciation of the originals on which that presentation was founded, until I had satisfied myself that I had fathomed their intended and real meaning. I had, moreover, very early conceived a personal affection for Jesus as a man, so strong as to serve as a deterrent both from abandoning the faith founded on Him, and from accepting it as it is as worthy of Him. Such was my standpoint, intellectual and religious, at the period in question. The time came when it found full justification; our results being such as to verify it in everyone of its manifold aspects. And not this only. The doctrine which had so mysteriously evolved itself out of my consciousness to attain by slow degrees the position of a controlling influence in my life, the doctrine, namely of a Duality subsisting in the Original Unity of Underived Being, and as inhering therefore in every unit of derived being, this doctrine proved to be the key to the mysteries both of Creation and of Redemption, as propounded in the Bible and manifested in the Christ; the key also to the nature of man, disclosing the facts both of his possession of divine potentialities as his birthright, and his endowment with the faculty whereby to discern and to realise them. And while it proved constructive in respect of Divine Truth, it proved destructive in respect of the falsification of that truth which had passed for orthodoxy, by disclosing the source, the motive, the method and the agents of that falsification. But these things were still in the future. At the time with which we are now concerned, I had commenced a book to represent the standpoint just described, "The Keys of the Creeds." The first and initial draft of that book was written under the sympathetic eye of one of the order of noble women to which reference has been made, and owed much to the enhancement of faculty derived by me from such conjunction of minds. The second and final draft was written under like relationship with another member of the self-same order, even she who proved to be my destined collaborator in the work of which this book recounts the story. It was published in 1875. It is necessary only to say further of the book thus produced, that notwithstanding certain defects of expression, due chiefly to an insufficient acquaintance with the terminology of metaphysics, it proved an invaluable help to very many, as was amply shown by the letters of grateful appreciation received from them by me. The keynote was that which afterwards found expression in the utterance,-- "There is no enlightenment from without: the secret of things is revealed from within. "From without cometh no Divine Revelation: but the Spirit within beareth witness"[15]. For the lesson it contained was the lesson that the phenomenal world cannot disclose its own secret. To find this, man must seek in that substantial world which lies within himself, since all that is real is within the man. From which it followed that if there is no within, or if that within be inaccessible, either there is no reality, or man has no organon of knowledge, and is by constitution agnostic. Meanwhile, the very fact of my possession of an ideal exempt from the limitations of the apparent, constituted for me a strong presumption in favour of the reality of the ideal. The moment of contact between my destined colleague and myself, was as critical for one as for the other, only that in my case the crisis was intellectual. I could see to the end of the argument I was then elaborating; and that it landed me close to the dividing barrier between the two worlds of sense and spirit, supposing the latter to have any being[16]. But I neither saw beyond, nor knew how to ascertain whether or not there is a beyond. We were discussing the question of there being an inner sense in Scripture, such as my book suggested; and whether, supposing it to have such a sense, it required for its discernment any faculty more recondite than a subtle imagination; and if it did, is there such a faculty? and what is its nature? By which it will be seen that I was still in ignorance of the nature of the faculty I found in myself and recognised as especially subsisting in women, and which, for me, really made the woman. The reply rendered by her to these questionings constituted the proof positive that I had at length discovered the mind which my own had so long craved as its sorely needed complement. In response to them she gave me a manuscript in her own writing, asking me to read it and tell her frankly what I thought of it. Having read and re-read it, I enquired how and where she had got it. She replied by asking what I thought of it. I answered, "If there is such a thing as divine revelation, I know of nothing that comes nearer to my ideal of what it ought to be. It is exactly what the world is perishing for want of--a reasonable faith." She then told me that it had come to her in her sleep, but whence or how she did not know; nor could she say whether she had seen it or heard it, but only that it came suddenly into her mind, without her having ever heard or thought of such teaching before. It was an exposition of the Story of the Fall, exhibiting it as a parable having a significance purely spiritual, wholly reasonable, and of universal application, physical persons, things, and events described in it disappearing in favour of principles, processes, and states appertaining to the soul; no mere local history, therefore, but an eternal verity. The experience, she went on to tell me, was far from exceptional; she had received many things which had greatly struck and pleased her in the same way, and sometimes while in the waking state in a sort of day-dream. It was subsequently incorporated into our book, "The Perfect Way." Her account of her faculty, of which she related several instances, produced a profound impression on me. It differed altogether from any that I had heard of as claimed by the votaries of "Spiritualism," a creed to which neither of us had assented; such little experience as we had of it having failed to convince us of the genuineness of its phenomena; though she, on her part, confessed to having been somewhat at a loss to account for some things she had seen. But though not spiritualists, we were not materialists. Rather were we idealists, who had yet to learn and, as the event proved, were destined shortly to learn, that the Ideal _is_ the Real, and is Spiritual. The event also proved that in order to learn it and to know it positively by experience, there were two conditions to be fulfilled, on both of which she had already entered, but I had yet to enter. One of these conditions was physical, the other was emotional. The former consisted in the renunciation of flesh-food in favour of a diet derived from the vegetable kingdom. The latter condition consisted in the kindling of our enthusiasm for the ideal into a flame of such ardour and intensity as to make it the dominant passion of our lives, and one in which all others would be swallowed up. It was to be an enthusiasm at once for Humanity, for Perfection, for God. Had we been in any degree instructed in spiritual or occult science, we should have known that the renunciation of flesh-food, though in itself a physical act, has ever been recognised by initiates as the prime essential in the unfoldment of the spiritual faculties; since only when man is purely nourished can he attain clearness and fulness of spiritual perception. As it was, neither of us had ever heard of occult science, or of the necessity of such a regimen to the perfectionment of faculty. She had adopted it on grounds physiological, chemical, hygienic, æsthetic, and moral; not on grounds mental or spiritual. I now undertook to adopt it partly on the same grounds which had influenced her, and partly with a view to enhance and consolidate the sympathy subsisting between us. The mental and spiritual advantages of the regimen made themselves known to us by experience. The other condition found its fulfilment through the knowledge I derived from her of the methods of the physiologists. That savages, sorcerers, brigands, religious fanatics, and corrupt priesthoods had always been wont to make torture their gain or their pastime, I was well aware, and believed that evolution would sweep them and their practices away in its course. But the discovery now first made to me that identical barbarities are systematically perpetrated by the leaders of modern science on the pretext of benefiting humanity, in an age which claims to represent the summit of such evolution as has yet been accomplished; and that after all its boasts, the best that science can do for the world is to convert it into a hell and its population into fiends, by the deliberate renunciation of the distinctive sentiments of humanity,--this was a discovery which filled me with unspeakable horror and amazement, at once raising to a white heat the enthusiasm of love for the ideal already kindled within me, and adding to it a like enthusiasm of detestation for its opposite. From which it came that I found myself under the impulsion simultaneously of two mighty influences, the one attracting, the other repelling, but both operating in the same direction. For while by the former I was drawn upwards by the beauty of an ideal indefinitely enhanced by its contrast with the foul actual below, by the latter I was impelled upwards by the hideousness of that actual. The sight of the moral abyss disclosed to me in Vivisection, as I perused volume after volume of the annals of the practice written by the perpetrators themselves, and now first made accessible to me, effectually purged out of my system any particle of dilettanteism that might have still lurked in it, compelling me to regard as of the utmost urgency all and more than all that I had hitherto contemplated doing deliberately. This was the construction of a system of thought which by force of its appeal to both those two indispensable constituents of humanity, the head and the heart, shall compel acceptance from all persons really human, and in presence of which the whole system of which Vivisection was the typical outcome and symbol should vanish from off the earth. This system was Materialism of which only now did I discern the full significance. The systematic organisation of wholesale, protracted, uncompensatable torture, for ends purely selfish, was--I saw with absolute distinctness--not an accidental and avoidable outcome of Materialism, but its logical and inevitable outcome. And it was to the eradication of Materialism that, from that moment, I dedicated myself. It was a rescue work for both man and beast, seeing that humanity itself was menaced with extinction. For the materialist, of course, that which makes the man is the form. For me it was the character, and it was this, the character of mankind present and to come, that was at stake. For man demonised is no longer man. In the overthrow of Materialism, I saw absolutely, was salvation alone to be found, whether for man or beast. The consideration that only as an abstainer from flesh-food I could with entire consistency contend against vivisection, was a potent factor in determining my change of diet. True, the distinction between death and torture was a broad one. But the statistics I now for the first time perused, of the slaughter-house and the cattle-traffic, showed beyond question, that torture, and this prolonged and severe, is involved in the use of animals for food as well as for science. And over and above this was the instinctive perception of the probability that neither would they who had them killed, whether for food, for sport, or for clothing, be allowed the privilege of rescuing them from the hands of the physiologist; nor would the animals be allowed to accept their deliverance at the hands of those who thus used them. They who would save others, we felt, must first make sacrifice in themselves. And in the presence of the joy of working to effect such salvation, sacrifice would cease to be sacrifice. This, too, we noted, and with no small satisfaction--that to make the rescue of the animals an immediate and urgent motive, was in no way to abandon the original motive of hatred to the tenet of vicarious atonement. For we recognised vivisection itself as but the extension to the domain of science, of the very principle by which we had been inexpressibly revolted in the domain of religion;--the principle of seeking one's own salvation by the sacrifice of another, and that the innocent. And so we learnt that "New Scientist is but Old Priest writ differently,"--to vary Milton's expression; and that in both domains the tenet had its root in Materialism. When the time came for our mission to be more particularly defined, our satisfaction was unbounded on receiving the charge, "We mean you to lay bare the secrets of the world's sacrificial system." It expressed with absolute conciseness and exactitude all that we had in our minds, far better than we could have expressed it. The importance of this question of vivisection in vitalising us for the work before us, will be seen by the following fact. The time came when we knew that the work committed to us was that revelation anew of the Christ which was to constitute His Second Advent, inasmuch as it was the interpretation of the truth of which He was the manifestation. It was to be a spiritual coming; in the "clouds of heaven," the heaven of the "kingdom within" of man's restored understanding. And, as at His first advent so at His second, He was to have His birth among the animals. And so it verily was. For--as I have elsewhere stated[17]--"Their terrible wrongs, culminating at the hands of their scientific tormentors, were the last drops which filled to overflowing with anguish, indignation and wrath, hearts already brimming with the sense of the world's degradation and misery, wringing from them the cry which rent the heavens for His descent, and in direct and immediate response to which He came. "For the New Gospel of Interpretation was vouchsafed in express recognition of the determined endeavour, by means of a thought absolutely fearless and free, to scale the topmost heights, fathom the lowest depths, and penetrate to the inmost recesses of Consciousness, in search of the solution of the problem of Existence, under the assured conviction that, when found, it would prove to be one that would make above all things Vivisection impossible, if only by demonstrating the constitution of things to be such that, terrible as is the lot of the victims of the practice here, they are not without compensation hereafter, while the lot of their tormentors will be unspeakably worse than even that of their victims here. And so it proved, with absolute certainty to be the case, to the full vindication at the same time of the Divine Justice and the Divine Love;" no experience being withheld which would qualify us to bear positive testimony thereto. For, although at the outset we were, as I have said, in no wise believers in the possibility of such experiences, the time came, and came quickly, when the veil was withdrawn, and the secrets of the Beyond were disclosed to us in plenitude, in its every sphere, from the abyss of hell to the heights of heaven. And we learnt that this had become possible through the passionate energy with which, in our search for the highest truth, for the highest ends, and in purest love to redeem, we had directed our thought inwards and upwards, living at the same time the life requisite to qualify us for such perceptions. Thus did we obtain practical realisation of the promise that they who do the divine will, by living the divine life, shall know of the divine doctrine. Our whole mental attitude had been one of prayer in its essential sense; which is not that of _saying_ prayers, but as it came to be defined for us--"the intense direction of the will and desire towards the Highest; an unchanging intent to know nothing but the Highest." Because "to think inwardly, to pray intensely, and to imagine centrally, is to hold converse with God." And we had done this without knowing it was prayer, or calling it by that name. For, knowing only the conventional conception of prayer, we had recoiled from it as from other conventional conceptions of things religious. Now, however, we found that we had done instinctively and spontaneously precisely what was necessary to bring us into relations at once with our spiritual selves and with the world of those who consist only of the spiritual self. For, by thus becoming vitalised and sensitive in that part of man's system which endures and passes on, we had come into open conditions with the world of those who have thus endured and passed on, and are no longer of the terrestrial, but of the celestial, having surmounted all lower and intermediate planes. All this came to us without anticipation on our part, or any conscious seeking for it; but yet without causing dismay or surprise when it came. For it came so gradually as to seem to be but the natural and orderly result of the unfoldment of our own spiritual consciousness, and excited only feelings of joy and thankfulness at finding our method and aspirations crowned with so high a success. Thus was it made absolutely clear to us that, so far from divine revelation involving miracle, or requiring for its instruments persons other in kind than the ordinary, it is a prerogative of man, belonging to him as man; and requiring for its reception only that he be fully man, alive and sensitive in his own innermost and highest, in his centre as in his circumference. Thus living on the quick and finding no others who did so, it seemed to us as if we alone were the quick, and all others were dead. We noted yet another way in which we supplemented and complemented each other. It was in this wise. As I was bent on the construction of a system of thought which should be at once a science, a philosophy, a morality, and a religion, and recognisable by the understanding as indubitably true; she was bent on the construction of a rule of life equally obvious and binding, and recognisable by the sentiments as alone according with them, its basis being that sense of perfect justice which springs from perfect sympathy. By which it will be seen that while it was her aim to establish a perfect practice, which might or might not consist with a perfect doctrine, it was my aim to establish a perfect doctrine which would inevitably issue in a perfect practice, by at once defining it and supplying an all-compelling motive for its observance. These, as we at once recognised, were the two indispensable halves of one perfect whole. But we had yet to learn the nature and source of the compelling motive for its enforcement. The deficiency was made good by the discovery of the fact of man's permanence as an individual. The revelation of this truth was the demonstration to us of the inanity--not to use a stronger term--of the system called "Positivism." In ignoring the soul, that system lacks the motive and repudiates the source of the sentiments on which it insists, and to the experiences of which those sentiments are due. FOOTNOTES: [8] The book was "By and By: An Historical Romance of the Future," its object being to show a state of society in which the intuition is supreme, and individuals follow their own ideals. It represents a step in E.M.'s unfoldment, but not his final conclusions. In 1873 A.K., having read a review of this book in the _Examiner_ (which also contained a notice of one of her tales), communicated with E.M. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 27.) [9] This was not the first time that E.M. met A.K. He had met her once before, in January, 1874, in a picture gallery in London. "It was but for a short time, and during a single afternoon"; but it was "sufficient to convince" him of "the unusual character of the personality" with which he had come into contact. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 32.) [10] Her "very first published production" was a poem in a religious magazine, when she was "but nine years old." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 29.) [11] "Beatrice: A Tale of the Early Christians," was written by A.K. in 1859, for the _Churchman's Companion_, "but the publisher thought it worthy to make a separate volume, and offered to bring it out in that form, and to give her a present for it," which offer was accepted. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 4.) [12] The Story was "In my Lady's Chamber," and purported to be a "speculative romance touching a few questions of the day." It was afterwards published separately as by "Colossa." (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 21, 22.) [13] The first edition of "The Pilgrim and the Shrine" was published in 1867. [14] E.M. did not marry again. He had one child, Charles Bradley Maitland, and he died on the 16th February, 1901. [15] See p. 100 [16] E.M. says that "The Keys of the Creeds" brought his thought up to the extreme limits of a thought merely intellectual, to transcend which it would be necessary to penetrate the barrier between the worlds of sense and of spirit. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 54.) [17] Statement E.C.U. p. 80. CHAPTER II. THE INITIATION. My visit to the rectory resulted in an intimacy which made me to such extent a member of the family as to remove all obstacles to the collaboration required of us. It was soon made evident that not only our association, but her design of seeking a medical education was for both of us an indispensable element in our preparation for our now recognised joint-mission. In its general aspect that mission had for its purpose the overthrow of Materialism, and in order to qualify us for it, it was deemed necessary that we undergo a training in the most materialistic of the world's schools. This was the University of Paris. She alone was to seek a diploma. For me it was enough that I accompany her in her studies, and that we submit the teachings received by her to rigid analysis by our combined faculties. Doing this, we found ourselves competent to declare positively the falsity of the materialistic system on the strength both of logical processes and of practical demonstration, by means of the experiences of which we found ourselves the recipients. For although we had never heard of such things as "psychic faculties,"--the very phrase was not yet invented--we found ourselves possessed of them in such measure that no longer did the veil which divides the world sensible from the world spiritual constitute an impassable barrier, but both were open to view, and the latter was as real and accessible as the former. It was about the middle of 1876 that this remarkable accession of faculty began to manifest itself in plenitude, I being the first to experience it, notwithstanding my previous total lack of any faculty of the kind, or of belief in the possibility of my having it. But the purification which my physical system had undergone by means of my new dietary regimen, and the constant and intense direction of my thought inwards and upwards, the forcible concentration of my mind upon the essential and substantial ideas of things, and this under impulsion of an enthusiasm kindled to a white heat--an enthusiasm, as already said, both of aspiration and of repulsion--and the enhancement of faculty through sympathetic association,--these had so attenuated the veil that it no longer impeded my vision of spiritual realities. And I found myself--without seeking for or expecting it--spiritually sensitive in respect of sight, hearing, and touch, and in open, palpable relations with a world which I had no difficulty in recognising as of celestial nature; so far did it transcend everything of which I had heard or read in the annals of the contemporary spiritualism; so entirely did it accord with my conceptions of the divine. That I refrain from employing the terms "supernatural" and "superhuman," is because they assume the knowledge of the limits of the natural and the human, and arbitrarily exclude from those categories regions of being which may really belong to them. The celestial and the divine are not necessarily either superhuman or supernatural; they may be but the higher human and the higher natural. If they are at all, they are according to natural order, and it is natural for them to be. Nevertheless, vast as was the interval it represented between my past and present states, it came so naturally and easily as to be clearly the result, not of any abnormal or accidental cataclysm involving a breach of continuity, but of a perfectly orderly unfoldment every step of which was distinctly traceable. For though the process was akin to that of the attainment of sight by one previously blind, and the final issue was sudden, the issue had been led up to in such wise as to render it legitimate and normal. For its earliest indication[18] was an opening of the mind in such wise that subjects hitherto beyond my grasp, and problems deemed insoluble, became comprehensible and clear; while whole vistas of thought perfectly continuous and coherent, would disclose themselves to my view, stretching far away towards their source in the very principles of things, so that I found myself intellectually the master of questions which previously had baffled me. The experience I am about to relate was not only remarkable in itself, it was remarkable also as striking what proved to be the keynote of all our subsequent work, the doctrine, namely, of the _substantial_ identity of God and man. It had suddenly flashed on my mind as a necessary and self-evident truth, the contrary of which was absurd; and I had seated myself at my writing-table to give it expression for a book I had lately commenced[19]. I was alone and locked in my room in my chambers off Pall Mall, Mrs Kingsford being at the time in Paris, accompanied by her husband. It was past midnight, and all without was quiet; there was not a sound to break my abstraction. This was so profound that I had written some four pages without drawing breath, the matter seeming to flow not merely from but through me without conscious mental effort of my own. I _saw_ so clearly that there was no need to _think_. In the course of the writing I became distinctly aware of a presence as of someone bending over me from behind, and actively engaged in blending with and reinforcing my mind. Being unwilling to risk an interruption to the flow of my thought, I resisted the impulse to look up and ascertain who or what it was. Of alarm at so unlooked-for a presence I had not a particle. Be it whom it might, the accord between us was as perfect as if it had been merely a projection of my own higher self. I had never heard of higher selves in those days, or of the possibility of such a phenomenon; but the idea of such an explanation occurred to me then and there. But this solution of the problem of my visitant's personality was presently dissipated by the event. The passage I had been writing concluded with these words:-- "The perfect man of any race is no other than the perfect expression in the flesh of all the essential characteristics of the soul of that race. Escaping the limitations of the individual man, such an one represents the soul of his people. Escaping the limitations of the individual people, he represents the soul of all peoples, or Humanity. Escaping the limitations of Humanity, but still preserving its essential characteristics, he represents the soul of the system of which the earth is but an individual member. And finally, after climbing many a further step of the infinite ladder of existence, and escaping the limitations of all systems whatever, he represents--nay, finds that he is--the soul of the universe, even God Himself, once 'manifested in the flesh,' and now 'perfected through suffering,' 'purified, sanctified, redeemed, justified, glorified,' 'crowned with honour and glory,' and 'seated for ever at the right hand of the Father,' 'one with God,' even God Himself." At this moment--my mind being so wholly preoccupied with the utterance and all that I saw it involved, as to make me oblivious of all else--the presence I had felt bending over me darted itself into me just below the cerebral bulb at the back of my neck, the sensation being that of a slight tap, as of a finger-touch; and then in a voice full, rich, firm, measured, and so strong that it resounded through the room, exclaimed, in a tone indicative of high satisfaction, "At last I have found a man through whom I can speak!" So powerful was the intonation that the tympana of my ears vibrated to the sound, palpably bulging outwards, showing that they had been struck on the inner side, and that the presence had actually projected itself into my larynx and spoken from within me, but without using my organs of speech, I was conscious of being in radiant health at the time, and was unable to detect any symptom of being otherwise. My thought, too, and observation were perfectly coherent and continuous, and I could discern no smallest pretext for distrust of the reality of the experience. And my delight and satisfaction, which were unbounded, found expression in the single utterance, "Then the ancients were right, and the Gods ARE!" so resistless was the conviction that only by a divinised being could the wisdom and power be manifested of the presence of which I was conscious. The words, "At last I have found a man" were incompatible with the theory of its being an objectivation of my own particular ego, and, moreover, they indicated the speaker as one high in authority over the race. Nothing more passed on that occasion; but a vivid impression was left with me that my visitant belonged to the order of spirits called "Planetaries." But as I had then no knowledge of such beings, I put aside the question of his identity for the solution which I trusted would come of further enlightenment. This came in due time, with the result of confirming the impression given me at the time. The explanation, however, does not come within the scope of this present writing. Some time afterwards, when searching at the library of the British Museum in the writings of the old occultists for experiences analogous to our own, I came upon one account which described the entrance into the man of an overshadowing spirit exactly as it had occurred to me, so far as it concerned the nape of the neck as the point of entry and the slightness of the sensation. The only further reference to the incident necessary here is as follows. A little later Mrs Kingsford had returned to England, being compelled to quit Paris by a severe illness which she had contracted immediately on her arrival there; and was pursuing her studies in London, making her home with a relative in Chelsea. The event proved that she had been sent back by the supervisors of our work expressly in order to be within reach of me. Indeed, an intimation had been given me before she had gone that she would not be allowed to stay abroad, as our near contiguity was indispensable, and I had accordingly viewed her departure with considerable disquietude, circumstances rendering it impossible for me to leave home just then. Prior to coming back she had obtained from the Minister of Education the exceptional privilege of a permit allowing her attendance at a London hospital to count in her Paris course. The first experience received by her in relation to our work, after her return to London, was the terrific vision of "The Doomed Train"[20]. On bringing it to me on the morning of its occurrence, she exclaimed as she entered the room, "Oh, I have had such a terrific dream! It has quite shattered me. And I have brought it for you to try and find its meaning, if it has one. I wrote it down the moment I was able." Her appearance fully confirmed her statement. It alarmed me. This is the account:-- "I was visited, last night, by a dream of so strange and vivid a kind that I feel impelled to communicate it to you, not only to relieve my own mind of the oppression which the recollection of it causes me, but also to give you an opportunity of finding the meaning, which I am still far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself. "It seemed to me that you and I were two of a vast company of men and women, upon all of whom, with the exception of myself--for I was there voluntarily--sentence of death had been passed. I was sensible of the knowledge--how obtained I know not--that this terrible doom had been pronounced by the official agents of some new reign of terror. Certain I was that none of the party had really been guilty of any crime deserving of death; but that the penalty had been incurred through their connection with some regime, political, social, or religious, which was doomed to utter destruction. It became known among us that the sentence was about to be carried out on a colossal scale; but we remained in absolute ignorance as to the place and method of the intended execution. Thus far my dream gave me no intimation of the scene which next burst on me,--a scene which strained to their utmost tension every sense of sight, hearing, and touch in a manner unprecedented in any dream I have previously had. "It was night, dark and starless, and I found myself, together with the whole company of doomed men and women who knew that they were soon to die, but not how or where, in a railway train hurrying through the darkness to some unknown destination. I sat in a carriage quite at the rear end of the train, in a corner seat, and was leaning out of the open window, peering into the darkness, when, suddenly, a voice, which seemed to speak out of the air, said to me in a low, distinct, intense tone, the mere recollection of which makes me shudder,--'The sentence is being carried out even now. You are all of you lost. Ahead of the train is a frightful precipice of monstrous height, and at its base beats a fathomless sea. The railway ends only with the abyss. Over that will the train hurl itself into annihilation. THERE IS NO ONE ON THE ENGINE!' "At this I sprang from my seat in horror, and looked round at the faces of the persons in the carriage with me. No one of them had spoken, or had heard those awful words. The lamplight from the dome of the carriage flickered on the forms about me. I looked from one to the other, but saw no sign of alarm given by any of them. Then again the voice out of the air spoke to me,--'There is but one way to be saved. You must leap out of the train!' "In frantic haste I pushed open the carriage-door and stepped out on the footboard. The train was going at a terrific pace, swaying to and fro as with the passion of its speed; and the mighty wind of its passage beat my hair about my face and tore at my garments. "Until this moment I had not thought of you, or even seemed conscious of your presence in the train. Holding tightly on to the rail by the carriage-door, I began to creep along the footboard towards the engine, hoping to find a chance of dropping safely down on the line. Hand-over-hand I passed along in this way from one carriage to another; and as I did so I saw by the light within each carriage that the passengers had no idea of the fate upon which they were being hurried. At length, in one of the compartments, I saw _you_. 'Come out!' I cried; 'come out! Save yourself! In another minute we shall be dashed to pieces!' "You rose instantly, wrenched open the door, and stood beside me outside on the footboard. The rapidity at which we were going was now more fearful than ever. The train rocked as it fled onwards. The wind shrieked as we were carried through it. 'Leap down!' I cried to you. 'Save yourself! It is certain death to stay here. Before us is an abyss; and there is no one on the engine!' "At this you turned your face full upon me with a look of intense earnestness, and said, 'No, we will not leap down; we will stop the train.' "With these words you left me, and crept along the footboard towards the front of the train. Full of half-angry anxiety at what seemed to me a Quixotic act, I followed. In one of the carriages we passed I saw my mother and eldest brother, unconscious as the rest. Presently we reached the last carriage, and saw by the lurid light of the furnace that the voice had spoken truly, and that there was no one on the engine. "You continued to move onwards. 'Impossible! Impossible!' I cried; 'it cannot be done. Oh, pray, come away!' "Then you knelt upon the footboard, and said, 'You are right. It cannot be done in that way; but we can save the train. Help me to get these irons asunder.' "The engine was connected with the train by two great iron hooks and staples. By a tremendous effort, in making which I almost lost my balance, we unhooked the irons and detached the train; when, with a mighty leap as of some mad supernatural monster, the engine sped on its way alone, shooting back as it went a great flaming trail of sparks, and was lost in the darkness. We stood together on the footboard, watching in silence the gradual slackening of the speed. When at length the train had come to a standstill, we cried to the passengers, 'Saved! Saved!' And then, amid the confusion of opening the doors and descending and eager talking, my dream ended, leaving me shattered and palpitating with the horror of it." This vision was intended to show us the destruction, moral, intellectual, and spiritual, towards which the world was tending by following materialistic modes of thought, and the part we were to bear in arresting its progress towards the fatal precipice, at all hazards to ourselves. The startling announcement made to her by the invisible voice when the crowded train was rushing at full speed to its doom, "There is no one on the engine!" exactly represented the philosophy which, denying mind in the universe, recognises only blind force. I had determined to include an account of this vision in the book on which I was then engaged, "England and Islam." And I was alone in my rooms, reading the proofs of it, my mind being occupied solely with the letterpress, until I came to the remark ascribed to me in the vision, as made in reply to her entreaty that I would jump out with her to save ourselves, "No, we will not leap down, we will stop the train." At this moment the voice which shortly before[21] had said to me, "At last I have found a man through whom I can speak!" addressed me again, saying in a pleased and encouraging tone, as if the speaker had been following me in my reading, and desired to remove any doubts I might have of the reality of our mission,--"Yes! Yes! I have trusted all to you!" This time he spoke from without me, but apparently quite close by. And among the impressions which at the same instant were flashed into my mind, was the impression, amounting to a conviction, that whatever might be the part assigned to others in the work of the new illumination in progress and the restoration thereby to the world of one true doctrine of existence, the exposition of its innermost and highest sphere, the head corner-stone of the pyramid of the system which is to make the humanity of the future, had been committed to us alone. And now, writing nearly twenty years later, I can truly say that this conviction has never for a moment been weakened, but on the contrary has gathered confirmation and strength with every successive accession of experience and knowledge, and while cognisant of and fully appreciating all that has taken place in the unfoldment of the world's thought during the interval. Ever since that memorable winter of 1876-7, the conviction, shared equally by my colleague, has been with me that the controlling spirit of the Hebrew prophets was that also of our work, the purpose of which was the accomplishment of their prophecies, by the promotion of the world's spiritual consciousness to a level surpassing any yet attained by it, to the regeneration of the church and the establishment of the kingdom of God with power. Having which conviction, there was for us but one object in life:--to fulfil at whatever cost to ourselves the conditions necessary to make us fitting instruments for the perfect accomplishment of a work which we recognised as the loftiest that could be committed to mortals. My colleague's enforced return to London was promptly signalised by an experience which served not only yet further to demonstrate the reality and nature of our mission, and of her primacy in our work, but to disclose its essentially Christian character, which hitherto had been an open question for us. For that upon which we ourselves were bent was the discovery of the nature of existence at first hand, and independently of any existing system whatever. It was truth and truth alone that we sought, and to this end we had laboured to make ourselves as those of whom it is said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." For in divesting ourselves of all prepossessions and prejudices, we had made ourselves as "little children." We were neither believers nor disbelievers, but pure sceptics in that best sense of the term in which it denotes the unbiased seeker after God and truth. This is to say, we were, and we gloried in being, absolutely free thinkers, a term which, in its true acceptation, we regarded as man's noblest title. This is the sense in which it denotes a thought able to exercise itself in all directions open to thought, outwards and downwards to matter and negation, and inwards and upwards to spirit and reality. And our work proved in the event to be the supreme triumph of Free Thought. The experience in question was as follows. It was night and I was alone and locked in my chambers, and was writing at full speed, lest it should escape me, an exposition of the place and office of woman under the coming regeneration. And I was conscious of an exaltation of faculty such as might conceivably be the result of an enhancement of my own mind by junction with another and superior mind. I was even conscious, though in a far less degree than before, of an invisible presence. But I was too much engrossed with my idea to pay heed to persons, be they whom they might, human or divine, as well as anxious to take advantage of such assistance. I had clearly and vividly in my mind all that I desired to say for several pages on. Then, suddenly and completely, like the stoppage of a stream in its flow through a tube by the quick turning of a tap, the current of my thought ceased, leaving my mind an utter blank as to what I had meant to say, and totally unable to recall the least idea of it. So palpable was its withdrawal, that it seemed to me as if it must still be hovering somewhere near me, and I looked up and impatiently exclaimed aloud to it, "Where are you?" At length, after ransacking my mind in vain, I turned to other work, for I was perfectly fresh, and the desertion had been in no way due to exhaustion, physical or mental. On taking note of the time of the disappearance, I found it was 11.30 precisely. The next morning failed to bring my thought back to me as I had hoped it would do; but it brought instead, an unusually early visit from Mrs. Kingsford, who was--as I have said--staying in Chelsea. "Such a curious thing happened to me last night," she began, on entering the room, "and I want to tell you of it and see if you can explain it. I had finished my day's work, but though it was late I was not inclined to rest, for I was wakeful with a sense of irritation at the thought of what you are doing, and at my exclusion from any share in it. And I was feeling envious of your sex for the superior advantages you have over ours of doing great and useful work. As I sat by the fire thinking this, I suddenly found myself impelled to take a pencil and paper, and to write. I did so, and wrote with extreme rapidity, in a half-dreamy state, without any clear idea of what I was writing, but supposing it to be something expressive of my discontent. I had soon covered a page and a half of a large sheet with writing different from my own, and it was quite unlike what was in my mind, as you will see." On perusing the paper I found that it was a continuation of my missing thought, taken up at the point where it had left me, but translated to a higher plane, the expression also being similarly elevated in accordance both with the theme and the writer, having the exquisiteness so characteristic of her genius. To my enquiry as to the hour of the occurrence, she at once replied, "Half-past eleven exactly; for I was so struck by it that I took particular notice of the time." What I had written was as follows:-- "Those of us who, being men, refuse to accord to women the same freedom of evolution for their consciousness which we claim for ourselves, do so in consequence of a total misconception of the nature and functions both of Humanity and of Existence at large. The notion that men and women can by any possibility do each other's work, is utterly absurd. Whom God hath distinguished, none can confound. To do the same thing is not to do the same work; inasmuch as the spirit is more than the fact, and the spirit of man and of woman is different. While for the production of perfect results it is necessary that they work harmoniously together, it is necessary also that they fulfil separate functions in regard to that work"[22]. This was the point at which my thought had failed me, to be taken up by her at the same instant two miles away, without her knowing even that I contemplated treating that particular theme, as I had purposely reserved it until I should have completed the expression, hoping to give her a pleasant surprise; for it was one very near to her heart. This is her continuation of it. It will be seen that, besides complementing my thought, it responded remedially to her own mood:-- "In a true mission of redemption, in the proclamation of a gospel to save, it is the man who must preach; it is the man who must stand forward among the people; it is the man who, if need be, must die. But he is not alone. If his be the glory of the full noontide, his day has been ushered in by a goddess. Aurora has preceded Phoibos Apollo; Mary has been before Christ. For, mark that He shall do His first and greatest work at her suggestion. To her shall ever belong the glory of the inauguration; of her shall the gospel be born; from her lips shall the Christ take the bidding for His first miracle; from her shall His earliest inspiration be drawn. The people are athirst for the living wine, which shall be better, sweeter, purer, stronger, than any they have yet tasted. The festival lags, the joy slackens, for need of it. The Christ is in their midst, but He opens not His lips; His heart is sealed, His hour is not yet come. Mark that the first inspiration falls on the woman by His side, on Mary the Mother of God; she saith unto Him, 'They have no wine.' She has spoken, the impulse is given to Divinity. His soul awakens, His pulse quickens, He utters the word that works the miracle. Hail, Mary, full of grace; Christ is thy gift to the world! Without thee He could not have been; but for thine impulse He could have worked no mighty work. This shall be the history of all time; it shall be the sign of the Christ. Mary shall feel; Christ shall speak. Hers the glory of setting His heart in action; hers the thrill of emotion to which His power shall respond. But for her He shall be powerless; but for her He shall be dumb; but for her He shall have no strength to smite, no hand to help. It is the seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent's head. The Christ, the true prophet, is her child, her gift to the world. 'Woman, behold thy Son!'" Such was the first intimation and the manner thereof, given us of the truth subsequently revealed in plenitude,--the presence in Scripture of a mystical sense concealed within the apparent sense, as a kernel in its shell, which, and not the literal sense, is the intended sense[23]. As was later shown us in regard to the story of the cursing of the fig-tree, that of the marriage in Cana was a parable having a spiritual import; and the character of Jesus was cleared from the reproaches based on the literal sense. Striving for fuller unfoldment and enlightenment, we were at length enabled to discern the tremendous mistake which orthodoxy has made; the mistake of confounding, first, Jesus with Christ, and, next, Mary the mother of Jesus, with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ, and the conversion thereby of a perfect philosophy into a gross idolatry. Meanwhile, the experience was a further demonstration to us of the reality and accessibility not merely of the world spiritual, but of the world celestial also, and of the high source of the commission under which we had become associated together. It was also an indication that as concerned ourselves our work appertained to the spiritual, rather than to the social plane. Such application of it would follow in due time. No other hypothesis that we could devise would account for the facts. Nor could we imagine any source other than the Church invisible for an interpretation so noble of the Scriptures of the Church visible. Not that the hypothesis of an extraneous source accounted for all our experiences. For besides receiving knowledge from such influences, there were instances in which we actually saw and seemed to remember scenes, events, and persons, long since vanished from earth, and felt at the time that it needed only that the period of lucidity be sufficiently prolonged to enable us to recover from personal recollection the whole history concerned. I was somewhat surprised by finding the first experiences of this nature, as well as certain others of an equally high and rare order, occurring to me rather than to my colleague, of the superiority of whose faculty and of whose primacy in our work I had no manner of doubt. The explanation at length vouchsafed was in this wise. It was in order to qualify me for recognising by my own experiences the reality and value of hers when they should come. Not otherwise should I know enough to be able to believe. It proved, moreover, to be part of the plan ordained to withdraw from me, in a great measure, the faculty requisite for them, when I had become familiar with them. The reason for according her such preference over and above the superiority of her gifts will presently appear. It was another and an exquisite illustration of the depth and tenderness of the mystical element underlying Christianity as divinely conceived and intended. * * * * * The partial withdrawal from me of faculty just alluded to took place early in 1877, but not until I had undergone a thorough experiential training in its varied manifestations. Among these were two which call for relation here, by reason of their serving to show that nothing was withheld which might minister to the completeness of the work set us. The first was as follows:-- Being seated at my writing-table, and meditating on the gospel narrative, with a strange sense of being separated by only a narrow interval from a full knowledge of all that it implied, I found myself impelled to seek the precise idea intended to be conveyed by the story of the woman taken in adultery. No account that I had read of it had satisfied me, least of all that which was proposed in the "Ecce Homo" of Professor Seeley, a book then recent and enjoying a repute which filled me with a strong feeling of personal resentment. For his account, especially of the feelings excited in Jesus by the sight of the accused woman, revolted me by its inscription to Him of a sense of impropriety at once monkish and conventional, and of a limitation of charity altogether incompatible with the abounding sympathy which was the essence of His nature. It made Him that most odious of characters, a _prude_. As I meditated, and in following my idea I passed into a state which, though highly interior, was not sufficiently interior for my purpose--for I wanted, so to speak, to _see_ my idea--a voice audible only to the inner hearing, yet quite distinct, said to me, "You have it within you. Seek for it." Thus encouraged, I made a further effort at concentration, when--to my utter surprise, for I had no expectation or conception of such a thing--the whole scene of the incident appeared palpably before me, like a living picture in a _camera obscura_, so natural, minute and distinct as to leave nothing to be desired, and, at the same time, utterly unlike any pictorial representation I had ever seen of it. Close before me, on my right hand, stood the Temple, with Jesus seated on a stone ledge in the porch, while ranged before Him was a crowd of persons in the costumes of the country and the time; each costume showing the grade or calling of its wearer. Standing together in a group in front of Him were the disciples, and immediately beside them were the accusers, who were readily recognisable by their ample robes and sanctimonious demeanour; and quite close to Him, between Him and them, stood the accused woman. As I approached the scene, moving meteor-like through the air, He was in the act of lifting Himself up from stooping to write on the ground, and I had a perfect view of His face. He was of middle age, but, to my surprise, the type was that of a Murillo, rather than a Raffaelle, and the lower portion of the face was covered with a short, dark beard. The expression was worn and anxious, and somewhat weary. The skin was rough as from exposure to the weather. The eyes were deep-set and lustrous, and remarkable for the tenderness of their gaze. One of the apostles, whom I at once recognised by his comparative youthfulness as John, though his back was towards me as I approached, was in the act of bending forwards to read the words just traced in the dust on the pavement; and, as if drawn to him by some potent attraction, I at once passed unhesitatingly into him as he bent forward, and tried to read the words through his eyes. Their exact purport escaped me; but the impression I obtained was that they were unimportant in themselves, having been written merely to enable Jesus to collect and calm Himself. For He was filled with a mighty indignation, which was directed, not against the accused woman, but against the by-standing representatives of the conventional orthodoxies, the chief priests and Pharisees, her sanctimonious and hypocritical accusers,--those moral vivisectors through whose pitilessness the shrinking woman stood there exposed to the public gaze, while her fault was so brutally blurted out in her presence for all to hear; for her attitude showed her ready to sink with shame into the ground, and afraid to look either her accusers or her Judge in the face. He, her Judge, also has heard it, and knows that they who utter it are themselves a thousand-fold greater sinners than she, inasmuch as that which she has yielded through exigency either of passion or of compassion, has with them been a cold-blooded habit engendered of ingrained impurity. In contrast with them she stands out in His eyes an angel of innocence; and an overwhelming indignation takes possession of Him, so that He will not at once trust Himself to speak. His impulse is to drive them forth with blows and reproaches from His presence, as once already He has driven the barterers from the Temple. And so, to keep His wrath from exploding, He stoops down and scribbles on the ground,--no matter what, anything to keep Himself within bounds. In the exercise His spirit calms. Indignation, He reflects, is too noble a thing to be expended upon insensates such as they, and exhortation would be vain. He will try sarcasm. So He raises himself up, and looks at them, very quietly, and even assentingly. Yes, they are quite right; the law must be vindicated, and so flagrant a sin severely punished. But, of course, only the guiltless is entitled to inflict punishment on the guilty. Therefore He says, "He of you who is blameless in respect of this sin, let him first cast a stone at her." And having said this, He stoops down again to write, this time to hide His smiles at their confusion, the sight of which would but have incensed and hardened them. What! no rush for ammunition wherewith to pound to death this only too human specimen of humanity[24]! What can be the meaning of the general move among these self-appointed censors of morals? "They which heard Him, being convicted of their own consciences, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last." No wonder they crucified Him when they got their chance. And no wonder that most of the ancient authorities omit all mention of the incident. Even of His immediate biographers only he records it who is styled "the Beloved," and whose name, office, and character indicate him as the representative especially of the love-principle in humanity. Such were the impressions made on me by this vision while it lasted, and written down at the time. And so strong in me was the feeling that I could similarly recall the whole history of Jesus, that I mentally addressed to the presences which I felt, though I could not see, around me an inquiry whether I should then and there begin the attempt. The reply, similarly given, was a decided negative so far as that present time was concerned, but accompanied by an intimation that our future work would comprise something of the kind; a prediction which was duly fulfilled. I found myself perplexed beyond measure to comprehend the _modus operandi_ of this experience. No explanation was forthcoming, whether from my own mind or from my illuminators, until long afterwards; and when it came it was in reference immediately to similar experiences received by my colleague, some of which likewise involved corresponding personal recollections coinciding with but surpassing mine. In the meantime the teaching given us comprised the doctrine of reincarnation, stated so positively, systematically, and scientifically that, when taken in conjunction with our experiences, we found that it, and it alone, afforded a satisfactory explanation of them. And then it was shown us that the method of the new Gospel of Interpretation, of which we were the appointed recipients, was so ordered as to be itself a demonstration of the truth of that doctrine, and that among the lives we had lived, which qualified us for our mission, were those in which we had been in association with Jesus and with each other[25]. Concerning this doctrine, the motive for its suppression, and the fatal consequences thereof to the religion of Christ, it will be time to speak when describing the results attained by us. It is with our initial experiences--those which constituted our initiation--that the present concern lies. There is one supreme experience in the spiritual life, known to mystics as "the vision of Adonai," or God as the Lord. The reception of this vision by us was, we were assured, a conclusive proof that nothing would be withheld that was necessary to our full equipment for a complete work. Although described several times in the Bible as an actual occurrence, it had failed to find any response in our own consciousness, more than if it had no existence. Nor had it ever been the subject of intelligent comment by any Bible-expositors known to us. Rather did it seem to have been entirely passed over as a matter wholly apart from human cognition. Hence, when it was vouchsafed to us, it was entirely without anticipation of its occurrence or previous knowledge even of its possibility. It was received first by myself, the manner of it being as follows. I had observed that when I was following an idea inwards in search of its primary meaning, and to that end concentrated my mind upon a point lying within and beyond the apparent concept, I saw a whole vista of related ideas stretching far away as if towards their source, in what I could only suppose to be the Divine Mind; and I seemed at the same time to reach a more interior region of my own consciousness; so that, supposing man's system to consist of a series of concentric spheres, each fresh effort to focus my mind upon a more recondite aspect of the idea under analysis was accompanied and marked by a corresponding advance of the perceptive point of the mind itself towards my own central sphere and radiant point. And I was prompted to try to ascertain the extent to which it was possible thus to concentrate myself interiorly, and what would be the effect of reaching the mind's ultimate focus. I was absolutely without knowledge or expectation when I yielded to the impulse to make the attempt. I simply experimented on a faculty of which I found myself newly possessed, with the view of discovering the range of its capacity, being seated at my writing-table the while in order to record the results as they came, and resolved to retain my hold on my outer and circumferential consciousness no matter how far towards my inner and central consciousness I might go. For I knew not whether I should be able to regain the former if I once quitted my hold of it, or to recollect the facts of the experience. At length I achieved my object, though only by a strong effort, the tension occasioned by the endeavour to keep both extremes of the consciousness in view at once being very great. Once well started on my quest, I found myself traversing a succession of spheres or belts of a medium, the tenuity and luminance of which increased at every stage of my progress; the impression produced being that of mounting a vast ladder stretching from the circumference towards the centre of a system, which was at once my own system, the solar system, and the universal system, the three systems being at once diverse and identical. My progress in this ascent was clearly dependent upon my ability to concentrate the rays of my consciousness into a focus. For, while to relax the effort was to recede outwards, to intensify it was to advance inwards. The process was like that of travelling by will power from the orbit of Saturn to the Sun--taking Saturn as representing the seventh and outermost sphere of the spiritual kosmos, and the Sun its central and radiant point--with the intermediate orbits for stepping-stones and stages, I trying the while to keep both extremes in view. Presently, by a supreme, and what I felt must be a final, effort--for the tension was becoming too much for me, unless I let go my hold of the outer--I succeeded in polarising the whole of the convergent rays of my consciousness into the desired focus. And at the same instant, as if through the sudden ignition of the rays thus fused into a unity, I found myself confronted with a glory of unspeakable whiteness and brightness, and of a lustre so intense as well-nigh to beat me back. At the same instant, too, there came to me, as by a sudden recollection, the sense of being already familiar with the phenomenon, as also with its whole import, as if in virtue of having experienced it in some former and forgotten state of being. I knew it to be the "Great White Throne" of the seer of the Apocalypse. But though feeling that I had no need to explore further, I resolved to make assurance doubly sure by piercing, if I could, the almost blinding lustre, and seeing what it enshrined. With a great effort I succeeded, and the glance revealed to me that which I had felt must be there. This was the dual form of the Son, the Word, the Logos, the Adonai, the "Sitter on the Throne," the first formulation of Divinity, the unmanifest made manifest, the unformulate formulate, the unindividuate individuate, God as the Lord, proving by His Duality that God is Substance as well as Force, Love as well as Will, feminine as well as masculine, Mother as well as Father. Overjoyed at having this supreme problem solved in accordance with my highest aspirations, my one thought was to return and proclaim the glad news. But I had no sooner set myself to write down the things thus seen and remembered, than I found myself constrained to maintain regarding them the strictest silence, and this even as regarded my fellow-worker; and all that I was permitted to say at that time was, that under a sudden burst of illumination I had become absolutely aware of the truth of the doctrine of the Duality in Unity of Deity to which that in Humanity corresponds, both alike being twain in one. On seeking the reason for the reticence thus imposed on me, I learned that the stage in our work had not yet come when it could be given to the world, either with safety to myself or with advantage to others; and it was necessary that my colleague receive no intimation in advance of any experiences which were to be given to her--of which this experience was one--in order that her mind might be wholly free from bias or expectation. Only so would our testimony have its due value as that of two independent witnesses. In the following summer the same vision was vouchsafed to her in a measure and with a fulness far transcending mine[26]. On the occasion she had been forewarned of something of unusual solemnity as about to occur, and prompted to make certain ceremonial preparations obviously calculated to impress the imagination. The access came upon her while standing by the open window, gazing at the moon, then close upon the full. The first effect of the _afflatus_ was to cause her to kneel and pray in a rapt attitude, with her arms extended towards the sky. It appeared afterwards, that under an access of spiritual exaltation, she had yielded to a sudden and uncontrollable impulse to pray that she might be taken to the stars, and shown all the glory of the universe. Presently she rose, and after gazing upwards in ecstasy for a few moments, lowered her eyes, and, clasping her arms around her head as if to shut out the view, uttered in tones of wonder, mingled with moans and cries of anguish, the following tokens of the intolerable splendour of the vision she had unwittingly invited:-- "Oh, I see masses, masses of stars! It makes me giddy to look at them. O my God, what masses! Millions and millions! WHEELS of planets! O my God, my God, why didst Thou create? It was by Will, all Will, that Thou didst it. Oh! what might, what might of Will! Oh, what gulfs! what gulfs! Millions and millions of miles broad and deep! Hold me! hold me up! I shall sink--I shall sink into the gulfs. I am sick and giddy, as on a billowy sea. I am on a sea, an ocean--the ocean of infinite space. Oh, what depths! what depths! I sink--I fail! I cannot, cannot bear it!" "I shall never come back. I have left my body for ever. I am dying; I believe I am dead. Impossible to return from such a distance! Oh, what colossal forms! They are the angels of the planets. Every planet has its angel standing erect above it. And what beauty!--what marvellous beauty! I see Raphael. I see the Angel of the Earth. He has six wings. He is a God--the God of our planet. I see my genius, who called himself A.Z.; but his name is Salathiel. Oh, how surpassingly beautiful he is! My genius is a male, and his colour is ruby. Yours, Caro, is a female, and sapphire. They are friends--they are the same--not two, but one; and for that reason they have associated us together, and speak of themselves sometimes as _I_, sometimes as _We_. It is the Angel of the Earth himself that is your genius and mine, Caro. He it was who inspired you, who spoke to you. And they call me 'Bitterness.' And I see sorrow--oh, what unending sorrow do I behold! Sorrow, always sorrow, but never without love. I shall always have love. How dim is this sphere!... I am entering a brighter region now... Oh, the dazzling, dazzling brightness! Hide me, hide me from it! I cannot, cannot bear it! It is agony supreme to look upon. O God! O God! Thou art slaying me with Thy light. It is the Throne itself, the Great White Throne of God that I behold! Oh, what light! what light! It is like an emerald? a sapphire? No; a diamond! In its midst stands Deity erect, His right hand raised aloft, and from Him pours the light of light. Forth from His right hand streams the universe, projected by the omnipotent repulsion of His will. Back to His left, which is depressed and set backwards, returns the universe, drawn by the attraction of His love. Repulsion and attraction, will and love, right and left, these are the forces, centrifugal and centripetal, male and female, whereby God creates and redeems. Adonai! O Adonai! Lord God of life, made of the substance of light, how beautiful art Thou in Thine everlasting youth! with Thy glowing golden locks, how adorable! And I had thought of God as elderly and venerable! As if the Eternal could grow old! And now not as Man only do I behold Thee! For now Thou art to me as Woman. Lo, Thou art both. One, and Two also. And thereby dost Thou produce creation. O God, O God! why didst Thou create this stupendous existence? Surely, surely, it had been better in love to have restrained Thy will. It was by will that Thou createdst, by will alone, not by love, was it not?--was it not? I cannot see clearly. A cloud has come between. "I see Thee now as Woman. Maria is next beside Thee. Thou art Maria. Maria is God. Oh Maria! God as Woman! Thee, thee I adore! Maria-Aphrodite! Mother! Mother-God! "They are returning with me now, I think. But I shall never get back. What strange forms! how huge they are! All angels and archangels. Human in form, yet some with eagles' heads. All the planets are inhabited! how innumerable is the variety of forms! Oh! universe of existence, how stupendous is existence! Oh! take me not near the sun; I cannot bear its heat. Already do I feel myself burning. Here is Jupiter! It has nine moons! Yes; nine. Some are exceedingly small. And, oh, how red it is! It has so much iron. And what enormous men and women! There is evil there, too. For evil is wherever are matter and limitation. But the people of Jupiter are far better than we on earth. They know much more; they are much wiser. There is less evil in their planet. Ah! and they have another sense, too. What is it? No; I cannot describe it. I cannot tell what it is. It differs from any of the others. We have nothing like it. I cannot get back yet. I shall never get back. I believe I am dead. It is only my body you are holding. It has grown cold for want of me. Yet I must be approaching; it is growing shallower. We are passing out of the depths. Yet I can never wholly return--never--never!"[27] The account given of the vision of Adonai in Lecture IX. of "The Perfect Way," was written solely from our joint experiences. It was with an interest altogether novel in kind and degree that I now turned to the Bible narratives of the same vision, and found that in the record of its reception by the Elders of Israel, it is stated, as if in token of the power of the spiritual battery with which Moses had surrounded himself, that no less than seventy of his initiates were able to receive the vision without magnetic reinforcement by the imposition of their master's hands. But, as we learnt from our own manifold experiences, it does not follow that because there is no imposition of visible hands, no extraneous aid is rendered. The seeker after God cannot, even if he would, accomplish his quest alone; but always are there attracted to him those angelic beings whose office it is, as ministers of God, to sustain and illuminate souls by the imposition of hands invisible to the outer senses. In her case such aid was palpable. There was no effort on her part. And she held converse with those by whom she was upborne in her stupendous flight. When in due course the time came for us to receive the ancient and long-lost Gnosis which underlay the sacred religions and scriptures of antiquity, the following was given us, and we recognised in it the original Scripture from which the opening sentences in St John's Gospel are drawn. After defining the Elohim as comprising the two original principles of all Being, "the Spirit and the Water," or Force and Substance, and bringing up the process whereby Deity proceeds into manifestation to the point described in Genesis in the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Waters. And God _said_,"--the utterance thus continues,-- Then from the midst of the Divine Duality, the Only Begotten of God came forth: Adonai, the Word, the Voice invisible. He was in the beginning, and by Him were all things discovered. Without Him was not anything made which is visible. For He is the Manifestor, and in Him was the life of the world. God the nameless hath not revealed God, but Adonai hath revealed God from the beginning. He is the presentation of Elohim, and by Him the Gods are made manifest. He is the third aspect of the Divine Triad: Co-equal with the Spirit and the heavenly deep. For except by three in one, the Spirits of the Invisible Light could not have been made manifest. But now is the prism perfect, and the generation of the Gods discovered in their order. Adonai dissolves and resumes; in His two hands are the dual powers of all things. He is of His Father the Spirit, and of His Mother the great deep. Having the potency of both in Himself, and the power of things material. Yet being Himself invisible, for He is the cause, and not the effect. He is the Manifestor, and not that which is manifest. That which is manifest is the Divine Substance[28]. The reason for the suppression by the translators of the Bible of its numerous affirmations of the Divine Duality, saving only those of Genesis i. 26, 27, was in due time disclosed to us; as also was the extent of the loss to man through the elimination of the feminine principle from his conception of Original Being, and the consequent perversion of the doctrine of the Trinity, and therein of the true nature of Existence, in both its aspects, Creation and Redemption. FOOTNOTES: [18] In 1875. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 73.) [19] The book was "England and Islam: or The Counsel of Caiaphas," which was published in 1877. [20] This vision occurred in London in November, 1876. It was merely referred to in the previous editions of this book, but I have inserted it here in full from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 115-117. It is also given in "England and Islam," pp. 438-442. S.H.H. [21] p. 41. [22] E. and I. p. 299. [23] It is probable that E.M. intended this statement to apply only to the N.T., or to the Gospels, because, before February, 1874, when he first visited A.K. at her house (p. 2), she had received in sleep "an exposition of the Story of the Fall, exhibiting it as a parable having a significance purely spiritual" and E.M. certainty regarded the Biblical Story of the Fall as "Scripture." S.H.H. [24] The expression of which the above is an adaptation, had recently been applied by Mr Gladstone to the Turkish power. For the period was the eve of the Turco-Russian War; and Mr Gladstone had found vent for his strong sacerdotal proclivities by siding fiercely against the priest-hating and prophet-venerating Turks, and demanding their expulsion from Europe, very much on the plea that "it was good for Europe that one nation die for the rest." It was in recognition of the part thus played by him that I took for the sub-title of my book ("England and Islam") "The Counsel of Caiaphas." The book--which was written under a high degree of illumination--contained an earnest appeal to Mr Gladstone, which, if heeded, would have saved the country from its subsequent humiliations. Among other things I was clearly shown that the policy which sought to detach England from the East, was of infernal instigation, being intended to thwart the rapprochement between Christianity and Buddhism from which the new humanity was to spring. But the circumstances of the book's production--it was poured through me at great speed and printed off as it came--precluded due revision and elimination of redundant matter; and for these and other reasons, I have suffered it to go out of print. E.M. [25] There is another fact, referred to in "The Life of A.K.," that must be taken into consideration in connection with experiences of this nature, that is, "the survival for an indefinite period of the images of events occurring on the earth, in the astral light, or memory of the planet, called the anima mundi, which images can be evoked and beheld." (Life A.K. Vol I. p. 125.) S.H.H. [26] This "Vision of Adonai" by A.K. was merely referred to in the previous editions of this book. I have extracted the following account of the most interesting part of it from "The Life of A.K." (Vol. I. pp. 193-196.) S.H.H. [27] Speaking of this vision, E.M. says:--"Her apprehension was not without justification; for her body was completely torpid, and several hours passed before consciousness was fully restored to it." (C.W.S. p. 283.) [28] This is one of the illuminations that were received by A.K., during the latter part of 1878, "directly from the hierarchy of the Church Invisible and Celestial." Speaking of these illuminations, which "dealt with the profoundest subjects of cognition," E.M. says that he and A.K. found in them "a synthesis and an analysis combined of the sacred mysteries of all the great religions of antiquity, and the true _origines_ of Christianity as originally and divinely intended, together with the secret and method of its corruption and perversion into that which now bears its name"; and they "were at no loss to recognise in them the destined Scriptures of the future, so long promised and at length vouchsafed in interpretation of the Scriptures of the past." (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 293, 294.) S.H.H. CHAPTER III. THE COMMUNICATION. A striking feature for us was the exquisite tenderness and poetic delicacy, both in matter and manner, which characterised all that we received. Nor was there the intrusion of anything to suggest feelings such as are described by Daniel when he says, "I saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me, neither was there breath left in me." And not only was the element of terror so completely absent as to make us feel as if we had entered on the dispensation of that "perfect love which casteth out fear," but there was occasionally an element of playfulness, and this on the part of our chiefest illuminators, the Gods themselves. While their instructions were replete with every graceful and delicate adornment such as could not but delight the poet and the artist, and this without abatement of profundity or solemnity. By these things it was intimated to us that the religion of the future was indeed to be one of sweetness and light, and for the severe and gloomy spirit of the Semite would be substituted the bright and joyous spirit of the Greek. All this, we learnt, was because the new dispensation was to be that of the "Woman," and in accord therefore with woman's nature and sentiments. It was moreover to be introduced by means of the Woman's faculty, the Intuition, and this as subsisting in _a_ woman. The following exquisite little apologue, which was given us in the early days of our novitiate, is an instance in point:-- A blind man once lost himself in a forest. An angel took pity on him, and led him into an open place. As he went he received his sight. Then he saw the angel, and said to him, "Brother, what doest thou here? Suffer me to go before thee, for I am thine elder." So the man went first, taking the lead. But the angel spread his wings and returned to heaven. And darkness fell again upon him to whom sight had been given. Here was a parable which, slight as it seemed, was truly Biblical for the depth and manifoldness of its signification. For while it applied to ourselves both separately and jointly, and to our work, it was also an eternal verity applicable alike to the individual, the collective, and the universal. For as the angel was to the man, so is the intuition to the intellect, which of itself cannot transcend the sense-nature, but remains blind and dark and lost in the wilderness of illusion. And as she, my colleague, had supplemented me, so were we each to supplement in ourselves intellect by intuition, in order to become capable of knowledge and understanding. It was, moreover, a parable of the Fall and of the Redemption, an epitome in short of man's spiritual history. And it had been spelt out for us by the tilting of a table in one of our earliest essays in spiritualism! So carefully guarded and daintily taught were we from the outset. The charming allegory of "The Wonderful Spectacles" which was given in London on the 31st January, 1877, to my colleague in sleep, was not only an instruction concerning the nature of her faculty and its indispensableness as an adjunct to mine for the work assigned to us; it was also a prophetic intimation of the character of that work, and of the nature of the influences controlling it, which at the time was altogether unsuspected by us. This is the account which she sent to me by letter, for we were not then together:-- I dreamt that I was walking alone on the sea-shore. The day was singularly clear and sunny. Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which were white with glistening snow. Along the sands by the sea towards me came a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a letter. It was from you. It ran thus:-- "I have got hold of the rarest and most precious book extant. It was written before the world began. The text is easy enough to read; but the notes, which are very copious and numerous, are in such very minute and obscure characters that I cannot make them out. I want you to get for me the spectacles which Swedenborg used to wear; not the smaller pair--those he gave to Hans Christian Andersen--but the large pair, and these seem to have got mislaid. I think they are Spinoza's make. You know he was an optical-glass maker by profession, and the best we have ever had. See if you can get them for me"[29]. When I looked up after reading this letter, I saw the postman hastening away across the sands, and I called out to him, "Stop! how am I to send the answer? Won't you wait for me?" He looked round, stopped, and came back to me. "I have the answer here," he said, tapping his letter bag, "and I shall deliver it immediately." "How can you have the answer before I have written it?" said I. "You are making a mistake." "No," said he, "In the city from which I come, the replies are all written at the office and sent out with the letters themselves. Your reply is in my bag." "Let me see it," I said. He took another letter from his wallet and gave it to me. I opened it, and read, in my own handwriting, this answer, addressed to you:-- "The spectacles you want can be bought in London. But you will not be able to use them at once, for they have not been worn for many years, and they want cleaning sadly. This you will not be able to do yourself in London, because it is too dark there to see, and because your fingers are not small enough to clean them properly. Bring them here to me, and I will do it for you." I gave this letter back to the postman. He smiled and nodded at me; and I saw then to my astonishment that he wore a camel's-hair tunic round his waist. I had been on the point of addressing him--I know not why--as _Hermes_. But I now saw that it was John the Baptist; and in my fright at having spoken with so great a saint, I awoke. This was the second suggestion of a Greek element in our work, the first having been the slight allusion to Phoibos Apollo in the illumination concerning the Marriage in Cana of Galilee[30]. The signification of the connection between Hermes and John the Baptist remained unintelligible to us until the key to it was given us in a revelation of the method of the Bible-writers explaining their practice of representing principles as persons. We then found that by the baptism or purification, physical and mental, practised by John, was meant the course of life and thought whereby alone man develops the faculty of the understanding of spiritual things. And Hermes is the Greco-Egyptian name for the "second of the Gods," called by Isaiah the Spirit of Understanding. Hence the adoption of this name by the formulators of the Hermetic, or sacred books of Egypt; and the favourite motto of the Hermetists:-- "Est in Mercurio quicquid quoerunt sapientes," All is in the understanding that the wise seek,--Mercury being the Latin equivalent for Hermes. The mention of Swedenborg and Andersen implied their possession of the faculty indispensable to our work, that of mystical insight, of which they were the most notable recent representatives. A larger part was played by Hermes in another instruction received a few months later[31]. This was also given in sleep, the vision taking the form of a "Banquet of the Gods" in which the seeress received the following exhortation from him, in enforcement of the necessity of pure and natural habits of life for the perfectionment of the faculties requisite for full spiritual perception, when, having put into her hands a branch of a fig-tree bearing upon it ripe fruit, he said:-- "If you would be perfect, and able to know and to do all things, quit the heresy of Prometheus. Let fire warm and comfort you externally: it is heaven's gift. But do not wrest it from its rightful purpose, as did that betrayer of your race, to fill the veins of humanity with its contagion, and to consume your interior being with its breath. All of you are men of clay, as was the image which Prometheus made. Ye are nourished with stolen fire, and it consumes you. Of all the evil uses of heaven's good gifts, none is so evil as the internal use of fire. For your hot foods and drinks have consumed and dried up the magnetic power of your nerves, sealed your senses, and cut short your lives. Now, you neither see nor hear; for the fire in your organs consumes your senses. Ye are all blind and deaf, creatures of clay. We have sent you a book to read. Practise its precepts, and your senses shall be opened." Then, not recognising him, I said, "Tell me your name, Lord." At this he laughed and answered, "I have been about you from the beginning. I am the white cloud on the noon-day sky." "Do you, then," I asked, "desire the whole world to abandon the use of fire in preparing food and drink?" Instead of answering my question, he said, "We show you the excellent way. Two places only are vacant at our table. We have told you all that can be shown you on the level on which you stand. But our perfect gifts, the fruits of the Tree of Life, are beyond your reach now. We cannot give them to you until you are purified and have come up higher. The conditions are GOD'S; the will is with you"[32]. The allusion to Prometheus, and the fact that Hermes had been represented in the Greek tragedy of that name as the executor of the vengeance of the Gods upon Prometheus, as well also as the significance of the fig-branch and the fact of its being the symbol of Hermes as the Spirit of Understanding,--all these things were beyond her knowledge at the time, some of them indeed having been long lost. But all were made clear as our education for our work proceeded, and we learnt the intention and recognised the necessity of restoring the Greek presentment of the Sacred Mysteries in explanation of the Hebrew, and in correction of the ecclesiastical presentment of Christianity. The restoration was to be twofold, of faculty and of knowledge, the knowledge to be recovered through the faculty by which it was originally obtained. Hence the insistance on our adoption of the pure regimen of the Seers of all time. Hence, too, the presentation to her by Hermes of the fig-branch bearing ripe fruit. The parable of the cursing of the barren fig-tree was explained to us as denoting the loss by the church of the inward understanding, the Intuition. In the Seeress it was restored; she was the appointed representative of it. The "time of the end" was at hand, of the approach of which the budding of the fig-tree was to be the sign. And here it was not merely budding and blossoming, but bearing mature fruit to signify that in her the faculty was restored in its perfection. In an instruction subsequently given to me by her Genius, he said of her, "I have fashioned a perfect instrument," implying that the process of her preparation under his tuition had extended over numerous lives. And again, "The Gods have given to their own a perfect ear." Being desirous once to test the powers of a medium to whom she was totally unknown even by name, she asked his controlling spirit about herself and her faculty. "You are not a trance-medium at all!" the spirit exclaimed in reply. "My medium is a trance-medium. You are far beyond that. You are a spiritual lens. You are a mirror in which the highest spirits--the Gods--can reflect their faces. You take the light of the whole universe and divide it so that it can be understood, as it has never been understood yet. Your gift is very extraordinary. You are a glass to reflect the highest and the greatest to the world." This was in 1877, before she was known in connection with the spiritual movement of the age. The description given of himself by Hermes as "the white cloud in the noon-day sky," proved to be a quotation from an ancient ritual, subsequently recovered by her, in which the "Hymn to Hermes"[33] opens thus:-- As a moving light between heaven and earth: as a white cloud assuming many shapes; He descends and rises: he guides and illumines; he transmutes himself from small to great, from bright to shadowy, from the opaque image to the diaphanous mist. Star of the East, conducting the Magi; cloud from whose midst the holy voice speaketh; by day a pillar of vapour, by night a shining flame. All these are symbolic expressions for the Understanding, especially in respect of divine things, so that Hermes is no individual soul or spirit, but the divine spirit Itself operating as the second of the Creative Elohim, and as a function therefore of man's own spirit when duly unfolded and purified, in token whereof it is said in the recovered hymn[34] to the Planet-God Iacchos-- Within thee, O Man, is the Universe; the thrones of all the Gods are in thy temple.... And the Spirits which speak unto thee are of thine own kingdom. In the hymn of invocation summoning the Seeress to her mission in the name of the two first of the "Holy Seven," the Spirits of Wisdom and Understanding, both of whom were wont to manifest themselves to her, Hermes is referred to as "the God who knows"; the other being personified as Pallas Athena. "In the Celestial," we were informed, "all things are Persons." "Wake, prophet-soul, the time draws near, 'The God who knows' within thee stirs And speaks, for His thou art, and Hers Who bears the mystic shield and spear. A touch divine shall thrill thy brain, Thy soul shall leap to life, and lo! What she has known, again shall know, What she has seen, shall see again. The ancient past through which she came...."[35] As the Spirit of Understanding, the name of Hermes signifies both Rock and Interpreter. Hence the significance of the saying of Jesus, "Thou art the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build My Church," which He addressed not to the man Peter, but to the Spirit of Understanding whom He discerned as the prompter of Peter's confession of faith. By this Jesus implied that the only true and infallible church is that which is founded on the Understanding, and not on authority whether of book, tradition or institution. The utterance of Jesus was a citation from the proem to the hymn to Hermes[36] recovered by us:-- "He is as a rock between earth and heaven, and the Lord God shall build His Church thereon. As a city upon a mountain of stone, whose windows look forth on either side." As our education proceeded we found indubitably that in excluding from its curriculum the whole range of the knowledges represented by the term "Hermetic," Ecclesiasticism has ignored the chief source of information concerning the Christian _origines_. Doing which it has incurred the reproach uttered by Jesus against those who took away the key of knowledge, neither entering in themselves, nor suffering others to enter in. And it was to restore this Gnosis, suppressed by the priests, that the new revelation was promised, with the reception of which we found ourselves charged, the prophecies pointing to a restoration both of faculty and of knowledge. Besides the Fig-branch of Hermes, there is another symbol of the intuitional understanding which was disclosed to us as having special and peculiar relation to the work set us. This symbol is Woman herself. She had already, in the instruction concerning the marriage in Cana[37], been shown to us as the inspirer and prompter. She was now shown to us as the interpreter. The reason why the fig-tree was the emblem of the inward understanding will be found in the citation presently to be given; which is a portion of an instruction received in interpretation of the prophecy of Daniel, re-enunciated by Jesus, concerning the recognition of the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy place"[38], as making and marking the time of the end of that generation which, for its materialisation of spiritual things, was called by Him an "adulterous," meaning an idolatrous, generation. It will be seen that in the Scripture symbology, as the soul is the feminine principle in man's spiritual system, and is called therefore the "Woman," the spirit being the masculine principle; so in man's mental system the intuition as the feminine mode of the mind is called the "Woman," and the intellect, as the masculine mode, the "Man." The following is the citation in question:-- Behold the FIG-TREE, and learn her parable. When the branch thereof shall become tender, and her buds appear, know that the day of God is upon you." Wherefore, then, saith the Lord that the budding of the Fig-Tree shall foretell the end? Because the Fig-Tree is the symbol of the Divine Woman, as the Vine of the Divine Man. The Fig is the similitude of the Matrix, containing inward buds, bearing blossoms on its placenta, and bringing forth fruit in darkness. It is the Cup of Life, and its flesh is the seed-ground of new births. The stems of the Fig-Tree run with milk: her leaves are as human hands, like the leaves of her brother the Vine. And when the Fig-Tree shall bear figs, then shall be the Second Advent, the new sign of the Man bearing Water, and the manifestation of the Virgin-Mother crowned. For when the Lord would enter the holy city, to celebrate His Last Supper with His disciples, He sent before Him the Fisherman Peter to meet the Man of the Coming Sign. "There shall meet you a Man bearing a pitcher of Water." Because, as the Lord was first manifest at a wine-feast in the morning, so must He consummate His work at a wine-feast in the evening. It is His Pass-Over; for thereafter the Sun must pass into a new Sign. After the Fish, the Water-Carrier; but the Lamb of God remains always in the place of victory, being slain from the foundation of the world. For His place is the place of the Sun's triumph. After the Vine the Fig; for Adam is first formed, then Eve. And because our Lady is not yet manifest, our Lord is crucified. Therefore came He vainly seeking fruit upon the Fig-Tree, "for the time of figs was not yet." And from that day forth, because of the curse of Eve, no man has eaten fruit of the Fig-Tree. For the inward understanding has withered away, there is no discernment any more in men. They have crucified the Lord because of their ignorance, not knowing what they did. Wherefore, indeed, said our Lord to our Lady:--"Woman, what is between me and thee? For even _my_ hour is not yet come." Because until the hour of the Man is accomplished and fulfilled, the hour of the Woman must be deferred. Jesus is the Vine; Mary is the Fig-Tree. And the vintage must be completed and the wine trodden out, or ever the harvest of the Figs be gathered. But when the hour of our Lord is achieved; hanging on His Cross, He gives our Lady to the faithful. The chalice is drained, the lees are wrung out: then says He to His Elect:--"Behold thy Mother!" But so long as the grapes remain unplucked, the Vine has nought to do with the Fig-Tree, nor Jesus with Mary. He is first revealed, for He is the Word; afterwards shall come the hour of its Interpretation. And in that day every man shall sit under the VINE and the FIG-TREE; the Dayspring shall arise in the Orient, and the Fig-Tree shall bear her fruit. For, from the beginning, the Fig-leaf covered the shame of Incarnation, because the riddle of existence can be expounded only by him who has the Woman's secret. It is the riddle of the Sphinx. Look for that Tree which alone of all Trees bears a fruit blossoming interiorly, in concealment, and thou shalt discover the Fig. Look for the sufficient meaning of the manifest universe and of the written Word, and thou shalt find only their mystical sense. Cover the nakedness of Matter and of Nature with the Fig-leaf, and thou hast hidden all their shame. For the Fig is the Interpreter. So when the hour of Interpretation comes, and the Fig-Tree puts forth her buds, know that the time of the End and the dawning of the new Day are at hand,--"even at the doors." On handing me the first portion of the instruction of which the foregoing is the conclusion, "Mary"--to use the name which meanwhile had been bestowed on her by our Illuminators in token of her office as representative of the Soul and Intuition--confessed to some perplexity. Her usual Illuminator for revelations of this order was Hermes, whose Hebrew equivalent is Raphael. But on this occasion it had been a Hebrew one, Gabriel. Her surprise and delight were great on being reminded that Gabriel was Daniel's own inspirer in respect of the prophecy in question, and that he had prophesied his return, saying, "Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.... Thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." The explanation given us was that both Daniel's own spirit and his illuminating angel had come to her, the former serving as the vehicle of the latter. As with all our other results similarly obtained, we judged it entirely by its own intrinsic merits, and not by its alleged derivation. We knew too well the propensity of low influences to appropriate to themselves great and even divine names, and the liability of the recipients to be deceived and to make the names the criterion instead of the communication itself. But in no instance did it happen to us that we had any cause to distrust the genuineness either of messenger or of message, even when both claimed to be divine. * * * * * The difference between the two interpretations or applications given us of the incident at the "Marriage in Cana of Galilee," was explained to us as an instance of the manifoldness of the sense of Scripture. The parables have a separate meaning for each of the four planes of existence[39]. We wondered much whether there were any parallels in history to our work and to the manner of it; and especially as to how far an association such as ours coincided with the ideas of the Hebrews. It was true that they had both prophets and prophetesses, but did they work like us in supplement and complement of each other? As regarded the recovery of knowledge acquired in a previous life, Ezra also had ascribed his recovery of the long lost Law to intuitional recollection occurring under special illumination, saying, "The Spirit strengthened my memory." But no mention is made of a female coadjutor. Nor does it appear that the Vestal Virgins were similarly supplemented, except to be thrown into the magnetic trance-state. In her zeal for her sex and her corresponding distrust of men--sentiments which seemed to be inborn in her--"Mary" was disposed to think that most of the prophesying of old had been done by women, but that the credit had been appropriated by men. The answer to these questionings was of a kind altogether unexpected by us, both as regarded its manner and its matter. For neither of us had the smallest suspicion that the book referred to was capable of the interpretation given us of it. This was the book of Esther. The incident was as follows:-- The occasion was an Easter Sunday[40], and we were at Paris. Electing to remain indoors rather than encounter the crowds of holiday makers, "Mary" was moved during the afternoon to sit for some communication by joint writing. But we were no sooner seated than it was written,-- "Do you, Caro[41], take a pencil and write, and let her look inwards, and we will dictate slowly." "Mary" then became entranced, and delivered orally, repeating it slowly, without break or pause, after a voice heard interiorly, the following exposition of the book of Esther, an exposition entirely novel, as I have said, to us, and, we believed, to the world. Some divines have called the book a romance, but none have discovered that it is a prophecy in the form of a parable. Luther, indeed, pronounced both it and the Apocalypse to be so worthless that their destruction would be no loss. The most important book in the Bible for you to study now, and that most nearly about to be fulfilled, is one of the most mystic books in the Old Testament, the book of Esther. This book is a mystic prophecy, written in the form of an actual history. If I give you the key, the clue of the thread of it, it will be the easiest thing in the world to unravel the whole. The great King Assuerus, who had all the world under his dominion, and possessed the wealth of all the nations, is the genius of the age. Queen Vasthi, who for her disobedience to the king was deposed from her royal seat, is the orthodox Catholic Church. The Jews, scattered among the nations under the dominion of the king, are the true Israel of God. Mardochi the Jew represents the spirit of intuitive reason and understanding. His enemy Aman is the spirit of materialism, taken into the favour and protection of the genius of the age, and exalted to the highest place in the world's councils after the deposition of the orthodox religion. Now Aman has a wife and ten sons. Esther--who, under the care and tuition of Mardochi, is brought up pure and virgin--is that spirit of love and sympathetic interpretation which shall redeem the world. I have told you that it shall be redeemed by a "woman." Now the several philosophical systems by which the councillors of the age propose to replace the dethroned Church, are one by one submitted to the judgment of the age; and Esther, coming last, shall find favour. Six years shall she be anointed with oil of myrrh, that is, with study and training severe and bitter, that she may be proficient in intellectual knowledge, as must all systems which seek the favour of the age. And six years with sweet perfumes, that is with the gracious loveliness of the imagery and poetry of the faiths of the past, that religion may not be lacking in sweetness and beauty. But she shall not seek to put on any of those adornments of dogma, or of mere sense, which, by trick of priestcraft, former systems have used to gain power or favour with the world and the age, and for which they have been found wanting. Now there come out of the darkness and the storm which shall arise upon the earth, two dragons[42]. And they fight and tear each other, until there arises a star, a fountain of light, a queen, who is Esther[43]. I have given you the key. Unlock the meaning of all that is written. I do not tell you if in the history of the past these voices had part in the world of men. If they had, guess now who were Mardochi and Esther. But I tell you that which shall be in the days about to come[44]. On consulting the Bible-dictionary, we found this relation between Esther and Easter. The feast of Purim, which was instituted in token of the deliverance wrought through Esther, coincides in date with Easter. And it was on Easter day that this was given us, by way of enhancing the correspondence between the parts assigned to us and those of Mordecai and Esther. Later it was shown us that the parts assigned to Joseph and Mary were, in one aspect, also identical with those of Mordecai and Esther. This is the aspect in which Joseph represents the mind, and Mary the soul in the regenerated human system. Besides "Hermes," "Mary" received much of her illumination from her "Genius," her relations with whom far surpassed not only my relations with mine, but any that are recorded in history, the experiences of Socrates, the chief instance on record, being insignificant both in quantity and in quality as compared with hers. It is important, therefore, to give an account of the nature and office of this order of angels, which shall be rendered in his own words. Every man is a planet, having sun, moon, and stars. The Genius of a man is his satellite; God--the God of the man--is his sun, and the moon of this planet is Isis, its initiator or Genius. The Genius is made to minister to the man, and to give him light. But the light he gives is from God, and not of himself. He is not a planet but a moon, and his function is to light up the dark places of his planet. The day and night of the microcosm, man, are its positive and passive, or protective and reflective states. In the projective state we seek actively outwards; we aspire and will forcibly; we hold active communion with the God without. In the reflective state we look inwards; we commune with our own heart; we indraw and concentrate ourselves secretly and interiorly. During this condition the "Moon" enlightens our hidden chamber with her torch, and shows us ourselves in our interior recess. Who or what, then, is this moon? It is part of ourselves and revolves with us. It is our celestial affinity,--of whose order it is said--as by Jesus--"Their angels do always behold the face of My Father." Every human soul has a celestial affinity, which is part of his system and a type of his spiritual nature. This angelic counterpart is the bond of union between the man and God; and it is in virtue of his spiritual nature that this angel is attached to him.... It is in virtue of man's being a planet that he has a moon. If he were not fourfold, as is the planet, he could not have one. Rudimentary men are not fourfold, they have not the Spirit. The Genius is the moon to the planet man, reflecting to him the Sun, or God, within him. For the Divine Spirit which animates and eternises the man, is the God of the man, the Sun that enlightens him.... And because the Genius reflects, not the planet, but the Sun, not the man (as do the astrals), but the God, his light is always to be trusted.... The memory of the soul is recovered by a threefold operation--that of the Soul herself, of the Moon, and of the Sun. The Genius is not an informing spirit. He can tell nothing to the soul. All that she receives is already within herself. But in the darkness of the night, it would remain there undiscovered, but for the torch of the angel who enlightens. "Yea," says the angel Genius to his client, "I illuminate thee, but I instruct thee not. I warn thee, but I fight not. I attend, but I lead not. Thy treasure is within thyself. My light showeth where it lieth."... The voice of the Genius is the voice of God; for God speaks through him as a man through the horn of a trumpet. Thou mayest not adore him, for he is the instrument of God, and thy minister. But thou must obey him, for he hath no voice of his own, but sheweth thee the will of the Spirit. We noted that the inspiring angel of the Apocalypse had twice similarly spoken when the seer was about to worship him;--"See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: Worship God." The like positive injunctions were given us also against according divine honours to Jesus. Besides Socrates, there is another notable historical "Spiritualist" of whom our experiences vividly reminded us. This was Joan of Arc. The correspondence between her and "Mary," in gifts, experiences, and personal characteristics, was of the closest. We had no difficulty in believing her history. Each of them, moreover, had a mission of deliverance, the one political and national, the other spiritual and universal. Although we had learned to trust our Illuminators implicitly long before the receipt of the above instruction, we were still without assurance as to the source and method of the revelation. Be the knowledges received by us as new as they might to our external selves, they never failed to be familiar as recovered memories, excepting in such cases as they were couched in terms of which the sense, being mystical, was not at once recognised. But such difficulties were soon overcome, and the doctrine, when fully apprehended, was always to us as necessary and self-evident truth, and such as to excite wonder at the potency of the glamour which had hitherto withheld it from the world's recognition. In every detail, the revelation represented for us Common-Sense in its loftiest mode. For the agreement it represented was not that of all men merely, but that of all parts of Man: of mind, soul and spirit, intellect and intuition, and these purified and unfolded to the utmost, and perfectly equilibrated. Whatever the manner of its communication, whether heard by the interior ear, seen by the interior eye, flashed on the mind as vivid ideas, whether acquired waking or sleeping, or in the intermediate state of trance-lucidity, or given in writing, it always seemed that we knew it before, and did not require to be told it, but only to be reminded of it. The problem specially exercised myself. "Mary" had other work than the analysis of our spiritual experiences. That was my special function. I learnt to see in her a soul of surpassing luminousness and variousness, who had been entrusted to my charge expressly in order that by my study of her I might recover for the world's benefit the long-lost knowledge of the soul's being, nature, and history. And so many and various were her spiritual states, that she seemed to me to represent in turn every stage of the soul's evolution, and to be "not one, but all mankind's epitome." This also used to occur so frequently as to be observed by both of us and discussed between us. When in the process of my endeavour to find the solution of some problem, such as the meaning of a parabolic or otherwise obscure passage in Scripture, I had exhausted my stock of tentative hypotheses, but, through consideration for her other and engrossing work, refrained from imparting my need to her, she would receive in sleep the desired solution, which she wrote down on waking, and which invariably proved satisfactory beyond my highest imaginings. And besides showing intimate acquaintance with the course of my thought, it was couched in language which, for simplicity, dignity, purity, and lucidity, was without an equal in literature; the English being that of the best period of our literature, and better than the best even of that period. She herself had a remarkable mastery of English, but these compositions reduced her to despair, causing her to exclaim, "Why cannot I write as well when I am awake as I do in my sleep!" Of course the explanation lay in the limiting influence of the physical organism. The frequency of this occurrence led me, in the absence of authoritative explanation, to try the following, as an hypothesis purely tentative. The revelations generally came to her when, through my inability to find the interpretations which satisfied me, my work required them, and they came independently of any desire or knowledge on her part. Might it not be, then, that it was my own spirit who knew them and gave them to her, finding her more sensitive to impression than myself? The explanation was not one that either pleased or satisfied me, one reason being that I took a delight in recognising the primacy accorded to her. The idea occurred to me one night, and I pondered it the next day, but did not divulge it. What happened on the evening of that day led me to suspect that our Genii had suggested it to me in order to make it the occasion of imparting to me the knowledge in question, namely, that of the real source and method of the revelation. For the experience to be properly appreciated it must be remembered that "Mary" had no knowledge of the explanation suggested to me, and neither of us had as yet entertained the idea of past lives as the key to our present work. The question of Reincarnation itself had not come before us, and far less the possibility of recovering the memory of the things learnt in previous existences, much as we had been puzzled to account for our experiences in the absence of some such explanation. The proposal to sit for a written communication came from her, having evidently been prompted by our illuminators. The method was one which both they and we disliked, and it was adopted only when they desired to address us both at once. So we sat for writing. The result confirmed my surmise. We had scarcely seated ourselves when the writing began, as if we were being waited for. And this is what was written:-- "We are instructed to say several things to-night. We are your Genii. "(To CARO.) In the first place, you entirely misconceive the process by which the Revelation comes to Mary. The method of this revelation is entirely interior. Mary is not a Medium; nor is she even a Seer as you understand the word. She is a Prophet. By this we mean that all she has ever written or will write, is from within, and not from without. She knows. She is not told. Hers is an old, old spirit. She is older than you are, Caro, older by many thousand years. Do not think that spirits other than her own are to be credited with the authorship of the new Gospel. As a proof of this, and to correct the false impression you have on the subject, the holy and inner truth, of which she is the depositary, will not in future be given to her by the former method. All she writes henceforth, she will write consciously. Yes, she must finish the new Evangel by conscious effort of brain and will." Coming from a source which we had learnt to trust implicitly, and according with our own highest conceptions, this message was supremely satisfactory, and was welcomed accordingly. But it was followed forthwith by another which excited feelings of a very different character. For, as if expressly in order to prevent her from being made vain-glorious and uplifted by it, they added-- "(To MARY.) It may serve to exhibit the path by which you have come, and to suggest the nature of some ancient tendencies which may yet tarnish the mirror of a soul destined to attain perfection, to learn that you dwelt within the body of ----." Here were given the name and character of a certain Roman dame of some seventeen centuries ago, one of high station, but of a repute so evil as to cause an immense shock to both of us. It does not come within the design of this book to disclose the particular personalities with whom we had been identified in the past[45]. Concerning this one it must suffice to state here that, omitting from account one whole side of "Mary's" character, we both recognised in the other side traits strongly resembling those which had been indicated. And she subsequently recovered distinct recollections of scenes in the life in question which served to assure her on the point. Our discussions on the matter tended to conclusions of which fuller knowledge brought the verification. It was not one of those lives in virtue of which she was directly qualified for her present work; but it was one of those lives of which the sin and the suffering may well be conceived of as indispensable elements in the education of a soul called to a lofty work and destiny in the future, in accordance with the principle which finds expression in the sayings, "The greater the sinner the greater the saint," and "_Pecca Fortiter_." This also we discerned clearly, that, supposing it to be indeed a truth that man is "made perfect through suffering," the experiences in the course of which the suffering is undergone must imply sin as well as pain and sorrow; since otherwise there would be a whole region of his nature, namely the moral, in which he would remain unvitalised. The lesson of which is that a man is alive only so far as he has lived. There was yet another reflection that was prompted by the occasion in question, and one which crowned and glorified the rest. This was the assurance implied that none need despair. If the soul which had dwelt in the body of the person named, could nevertheless become within measureable time what "Mary" was now, and be "destined to attain perfection," there is hope for all, and the doctrine of Reincarnation is indeed a gospel of salvation. And herein we discerned a lesson hitherto unsuspected so far as we were aware, in the parable of the Prodigal Son. It is not the "elder brother" who stays at home that can best appreciate the divine order; but the prodigal who has gone forth into the world of experience to acquire knowledge for himself at first hand. They who have been the most fully satiated with the husks of materiality, can--when their time arrives for coming to their true selves--best estimate the fare provided in the "Father's House." "He loveth most to whom most has been forgiven. While sitting alone one day and pondering these things, and particularly the difficulty which people often find in correcting in themselves even the faults which they deplore, this pregnant sentence was spoken audibly to my inner hearing by a voice which I recognised as that of my Genius:--"Tendencies encouraged for ages cannot be cured in a single lifetime, but may require ages." This further reflection also was suggested to me: that souls of exceptional strength are reincarnated in bodies of exceptionally strong passional natures, expressly in order to obtain the discipline which comes of the effort to subdue them. All of which reflections tended to exhibit the rashness of judging outward judgment in respect of others. In order to judge righteous judgment it is necessary to know the strength of their temptations, and of their efforts to resist them. And these can be known only to God. The attainment of perfection, and therein of salvation by conquest and not by flight,--this is the principle of reincarnation. It is the _condition_ of Regeneration, which is _from out of_ the body. In due time we were able to recognise the whole plan of our work as so ordered as to make the work itself a demonstration of the doctrine of reincarnation. When once this doctrine had become a practical question for us, it assumed a prominent place both in our teachings and in our experiences. One instruction given us was no less striking in itself than in the circumstances of its communication. The messenger was one with whom we had never anticipated coming into relations, for, besides not courting intercourse with the souls of the departed, we had not paid to the writings of the person concerned the heed that would entitle us to count him among our cordial sympathisers; and still less as among our possible visitants. This was the famous Swedish Seer, Emmanuel Swedenborg. In the course of what we afterwards found to be a strikingly characteristic communication from him, he informed us that owing to the difficulty our angels had in approaching us just then, through the condition of the spiritual atmosphere, they had charged him with a message to us, in which "Mary's" Genius had spoken to him of her as "A soul of vast experience, who under his tuition had so painfully acquired the evangel of which she was the depositary"; adding that he, her Genius, "had been promised help to recover for her, in this incarnation, the memory of all that was in the past"; and--which was the point of the message--that it was to be put forward, not as we were then contemplating putting it forward, but "as fragmentary specimens of such recollection occurring to one now a woman, but formerly an initiate, who is beginning to recover this power." It will be interesting to remark on this experience, that to this day the followers of Swedenborg set their faces against the doctrine of reincarnation, expressly on the ground that their master denied it in his lifetime. Whether Swedenborg really denied it is uncertain. There is grave cause to doubt whether his writings on the subject have been rightly understood or fairly represented. It has been maintained with much show of reason that Swedenborg denied only the reincarnation of the astral soul, not of the true soul; in which case he would be right. Having once obtained access to us, his visits were for a time frequent, the manner of them being various. For he came to us jointly and separately, in waking and in sleeping--the latter to "Mary" only--and audibly and visibly--the latter also to "Mary" only. He alluded to a recent incarnation of mine, of which I have since had full and independent proof. And he recognised our work as not only a confirmation and continuation of his own, but also as a correction. For, as he gave us to understand, he had been too much under the influence of the current orthodoxy to be able to transmit the revelation given to him in its proper purity, and unbiased by his own preconceptions. The doctrine in respect of which he was chiefly desirous of being set right was that of the Incarnation, the orthodox presentment of which he now saw to be wrong, by reason of its deification of Jesus. In referring to the perversion of the truth by the formulators of the Christian orthodoxy, he said to us, with much emphasis, "Do not be too kind to the Christians." This allusion to an experience which belongs to the category of "spiritualism" rather than to that of our special work, may with advantage be followed by some account of our other experiences of the same order, partly for the sake of testifying to the genuineness of the experiences relied on by spiritualists, and partly in order to show the distinction between the two orders of experience, as discerned by persons whose familiarity with both qualified them to institute comparison between them. For, having once become sensitised in the inner and higher regions of the consciousness, we had become sensitised also in the intermediate regions, and were able therefore to hold palpable converse with the denizens of these also. And the converse thus held was of the most satisfactory character, on the ground both of the certainty of its reality and its intrinsic nature. Father, mother, wife, brothers, sundry dear friends, and others interested in our work, all came to me, and some of them to my colleague, and this several times, and in a manner impossible to be distrusted. For my mother more than once spoke to me aloud in her own unmistakeable voice, and in tones that anyone might have heard, as I sat alone in my study. My wife came repeatedly to both of us, jointly and separately, audibly, visibly, and tangibly; giving us timely warnings of dangers unsuspected by us but proving to be real. And one of my brothers cleared up a mystery which had hung over his death. No mere attenuated wraiths or soulless phantoms were they who thus visited us from "beyond the veil," they were strong, distinct, intelligent individualities, veritable souls, palpitating with vitality, and eager to render loving service. But they came spontaneously and unevoked, for we never sought to compel their presence. Our quest was purely and simply for truth, not for persons. But we considered that, when these also came, as they did come, to ourselves directly and without intervention of any third party, to refuse to receive them on the ground that they had put off their bodies, would be equivalent to repulsing our friends in the flesh on the ground that they had put off their overcoats. The spirit in which alone such intercourse is permissible will be seen by the following citations from the instructions received by us. Terms from the Hebrew, Greek, and Oriental Scriptures were used indifferently by our illuminators. The word _Ruach_ in the following--which is Hebrew for Spirit--is here used in a kabalistic sense to denote the astral soul or ghost, as distinguished from the divine soul, the _Psyche_ or _Neshamah_, and from the _Nephesh_ or mere phantom. The following is from an instruction given to "Mary" in sleep, in direct solution of certain perplexities. "Thou knowest that in the end, when Nirvâna is attained, the soul shall gather up all that it hath left within the astral of holy memories and worthy experience, and to this end the Ruach rises in the astral sphere, by the gradual decay and loss of its more material affinities, until these have so disintegrated and perished that its substance is thereby lightened and purified. But continual commerce and intercourse with earth add, as it were, fresh fuel to its earthly affinities, keeping these alive, and hindering its recall to its spiritual ego. Thus, therefore, the spiritual ego itself is detained from perfect absorption into the divine, and union therewith. For the Ruach shall not all die, if there be in it anything worthy of recall. The astral sphere is its purging chamber. For Saturn, who is Time, is the trier of all things; he devoureth all the dross; only that escapeth which in its nature is ethereal and destined to reign. And this death of the Ruach is gradual and natural. It is a process of elimination and disintegration, often--as men measure time--extending over many decades, or even centuries. And those Ruachs which appertain to wicked and evil persons, having strong wills inclined earthwards,--these persist longest and manifest most frequently and vividly, because they _rise not_, but, being destined to perish utterly, are not withdrawn from immediate contact with the earth. They are all dross; there is in them no redeemable element. But the Ruach of the righteous complaineth if thou disturb his evolution. 'Why callest thou me? disturb me not. The memories of my earth-life are chains about my neck; the desire of the past detaineth me. Suffer me to rise towards my rest, and hinder me not with evocations. But let thy love go after me and encompass me; so shalt thou rise with me through sphere after sphere.' "For the good man upon earth can love nothing less than the divine. Wherefore that which he loveth in his friend is the divine, that is, the true and radiant self. And if he love it as differentiated from God, it is only on account of its separate tincture. For in the perfect light there are innumerable tinctures. And according to its celestial affinity, one soul loveth this or that splendour more than the rest. And when the righteous friend of the good man dieth, the love of the living man goeth after the true soul of the dead; and the strength and divinity of this love helpeth the purgation of the astral soul, the psychic ghost. It is to this astral soul, which ever remaineth near the living friend, an indication of the way it must also go,--a light shining upon the upward path that leads from the astral to the celestial and everlasting. For love, being divine, is _towards_ the divine. 'Love exalteth, love purifieth, love uplifteth.'" And this also, which was similarly obtained, represents a further restoration of the original, pure, undistorted and unmutilated doctrine of Christianity concerning the communion of souls. * * * * * So weepest thou and lamentest, because the Soul thou lovest is taken from thy sight. And life seemeth to thee a bitter thing: yea, thou cursest the destiny of all living creatures. And thou deemest thy love of no avail, and thy tears as idle drops. Behold, Love is a ransom, and the tears thereof are prayers. And if thou have lived purely, thy fervent desire shall be counted grace to the soul of thy dead. For the burning and continual prayer of the just availeth much. Yea, thy love shall enfold the soul which thou lovest: it shall be unto him a wedding garment and a vesture of blessing. The baptism of thy sorrow shall baptize thy dead, and he shall rise because of it. Thy prayers shall lift him up, and thy tears shall encompass his steps: thy love shall be to him a light shining upon the upward way. And the angels of God shall say unto him, "O happy Soul, that art so well-beloved; that art made so strong with all these tears and sighs. "Praise the Father of Spirits therefor: for this great love shall save thee many incarnations. "Thou art advanced thereby; thou art drawn aloft and carried upward by cords of grace." For in such wise do souls profit one another and have communion, and receive and give blessing, the departed of the living, and the living of the departed. And so much the more as the heart within them is clean, and the way of their intention is innocent in the sight of God.... Count not as lost thy suffering on behalf of other souls; for every cry is a prayer, and all prayer is power. That thou willest to do is done; thine intention is united to the Will of Divine Love. Nothing is lost of that which thou layest out for God and for thy brother. And it is love alone who redeemeth, and love hath nothing of her own[46]. But precious as is the communion of souls when thus conditioned, it was not to them that we looked for light and guidance in our work. Nor, indeed, to any persons at all in the sense in which the term is ordinarily used. We looked steadfastly and directly to the Highest, confidently leaving to the Highest the appointment both of the Messenger and of the Message, but never failing to submit both manner and matter to the keenest scrutiny of faculties which we had striven to the utmost to attune to divine things. We were, moreover, emphatically warned from the outset against allowing any intrusion into our work of the influences accessible to the ordinary sensitive, the two planes being absolutely distinct. Herein lay the significance of the saying of "Mary's" Genius, that he had been "promised help to enable her to recover in this incarnation the memory of all that is in the past." The Genii themselves, although of the celestial, belong to its circumferential and lowest sphere. They touch the astral, but do not enter it. The help spoken of was to come from the innermost and highest spheres. And the charge was accordingly given us, "Do not, then, seek after 'controls.' Keep your temple for the Lord God of Hosts; and turn out of it the money-changers, the dove-sellers, and the dealers in curious arts, yea, with a scourge of cords if need be." The manner in which we received the first full and particular account respecting the method of revelation, was as follows. I was pondering to myself with much intentness the nature and source of inspiration, and desiring a test whereby to distinguish between true and false inspiration. But I refrained for various reasons from consulting my colleague, at least until I should have exhausted my own resources. And she was still without any intimation of my need when she received the instruction concerning inspiration and prophesying of which the following is a portion. It was received in sleep, and the date was shortly before we were told that her knowledges were due to experiences undergone in previous lives[47]. When I had read it she said, referring to the first verse, "But I did not ask." In reply to which I told her that I had asked. It was addressed equally to both of us, as making together one system. "I heard last night in my sleep a voice speaking to me, and saying-- "You ask the method and nature of Inspiration, and the means whereby God revealeth the Truth. "Know that there is no enlightenment from without: the secret of things is revealed from within. "From without cometh no Divine Revelation: but the Spirit within beareth witness. "Think not that I tell you that which you know not: for except you know it, it cannot be given to you. "To him that hath it is given, and he hath the more abundantly. "None is a prophet save he who knoweth: the instructor of the people is a man of many lives. "Inborn knowledge and the perception of things, these are the sources of revelation: the Soul of the man instructeth him, having already learned by experience. "Intuition is inborn experience; that which the soul knoweth of old and of former years. "And Illumination is the Light of Wisdom, whereby a man perceiveth heavenly secrets. "Which Light is the Spirit of God within the man, showing unto him the things of God. "Do not think that I tell you anything you know not; all cometh from within: the Spirit that informeth is the Spirit of God in the prophet. * * * * * "Inspiration may indeed be mediumship, but it is conscious; and the knowledge of the prophet instructeth him. "Even though he speak in an ecstasy, he uttereth nothing that he knoweth not." Then followed this apostrophe to the Prophet:-- "Thou who art a prophet hast had many lives: yea, thou hast taught many nations, and hast stood before kings. And God hath instructed thee in the years that are past, and in the former times of the earth. By prayer, by fasting, by meditation, by painful seeking, hast thou attained that thou knowest. There is no knowledge but by labour: there is no intuition but by experience. I have seen thee on the hills of the East: I have followed thy steps in the wilderness: I have seen thee adore at sunrise: I have marked thy night watches in the caves of the mountains. Thou hast attained with patience, O prophet! God hath revealed the truth to thee from within." Thus, for the first time known to history, was given a definition of the nature and method of inspiration and prophecy, at once luminous, reasonable, and inexpugnable, to the full and final solution of this stupendous problem; and comporting with and explaining, as it did, all our own experiences, we felt that we could bear unreserved testimony to its truth. But, vast as was the addition thus made to the New Gospel of Interpretation, it did not exhaust the treasures revealed and communicated on that wondrous night; for it was followed immediately by a prophecy of the meaning of the new dispensation on which the world is entering, and of which our work is the introduction. At once Biblical in diction and character, it reached in loftiness the highest level of Biblical prophecy and inspiration, demonstrating the same world celestial and divine as the source of both. For which reason, and the crushing blow administered by it to the superstitions which have made of Christianity a by-word and a reproach by their gross materialisations of mysteries purely spiritual, it is reproduced in full here. The heading is of our own devising:-- A Prophecy of the Kingdom of the Soul, mystically called the Day of the Woman. "And now I show you a mystery and a new thing, which is part of the mystery of the fourth day of creation. The word which shall come to save the world, shall be uttered by a woman. A woman shall conceive, and shall bring forth the tidings of salvation. For the reign of Adam is at its last hour; and God shall crown all things by the creation of Eve. Hitherto the man hath been alone, and hath had dominion over the earth. But when the woman shall be created, God shall give unto her the kingdom; and she shall be first in rule and highest in dignity. Yea, the last shall be first, and the elder shall serve the younger. So that women shall no more lament for their womanhood; but men shall rather say, "O that we had been born women!" For the strong shall be put down from their seat, and the meek shall be exalted to their place. The days of the Covenant of Manifestation are passing away: the Gospel of Interpretation cometh. There shall nothing new be told; but that which is ancient shall be interpreted. So that man the manifesto shall resign his office: and woman the interpreter shall give light to the world. Hers is the fourth office: she revealeth that which the Lord hath manifested. Hers is the light of the heavens, and the brightest of the planets of the holy seven. She is the fourth dimension; the eyes which enlighten; the power which draweth inward to God. And her kingdom cometh; the day of the exaltation of woman. And her reign shall be greater than the reign of the man: for Adam shall be put down from his place; and she shall have dominion for ever. And she who is alone shall bring forth more children to God, then she who hath an husband. There shall no more be a reproach against women: but against men shall be the reproach. For the woman is the crown of man, and the final manifestation of humanity. She is the nearest to the throne of God, when she shall be revealed. But the creation of woman is not yet complete: but it shall be complete in the time which is at hand. All things are thine, O Mother of God: all things are thine, O Thou who risest from the sea; and Thou shalt have dominion over all the worlds[48]. FOOTNOTES: [29] A.K. knew nothing of Spinoza at this time, and was unaware that he was an optician. Subsequent experience made it clear that the spectacles in question were intended to represent her own remarkable faculty of intuitional and interpretative perception. (See Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 150-1.) S.H.H. [30] Page 525 [31] The 22nd September, 1877. [32] The book referred to was a treatise entitled "Fruit and Bread," which had been sent to her anonymously the previous day. E.M. [33] The "Hymn to Hermes" was received by A.K. in 1878, "under illumination occurring in sleep." She remembered it so perfectly that on waking she wrote it without hesitation or error. Representing knowledges long lost, by no amount of mere scholarship could it have been reproduced. It is given at length in the P.W. pp. 357-358, and in "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. p. 287. S.H.H. [34] As to the recovery by A.K. of the Hymn to the Planet-God, see p. 122-3. [35] These dream-verses are from "Through the Ages," a poem received by A.K., "in sleep," in 1880. In this poem, "some of her earliest incarnations" are referred to. (D. and D-S. p. 77.) S.H.H. [36] See p. 122 note. [37] See pp. 51-52-53 ante. [38] That is, in the place of God and the Soul. [39] The four planes being, from without inwards, those of the body, mind, soul, and spirit. S.H.H. [40] The 28th March, 1880. S.H.H. [41] The name by which I was thus addressed had been given me by our illuminators as an initiation name, as that of "Mary" to her. It denoted love as the dominant note of our work, and was an equivalent for "John the Beloved," who--we were given to understand--is one of the two controlling "angels" of the new illumination--Daniel being the other--in accordance with the intimations given by Jesus, one to His disciples and the other to the Seer of the Apocalypse himself, that John should tarry within reach of the earth-plane to bear part in the event which was to constitute the second advent of Christ. These names had a further correspondence in the Greek parable of Eros and Psyche, which denotes love as the vivifying principle of the soul. E.M. [42] Materialism and Superstition. [43] The name Esther denotes a star or fountain of light, a dawn or rising. [44] The spelling of the names is that of the Douay Version, the Protestants having relegated the second part of the book of Esther, in which the latter part of this narrative occurs, to the Apocrypha. As also that of Ezra above cited. E.M. [45] These are disclosed in "The Life of A.K." The personality referred to on this occasion was "Faustine, the Roman," the Empress of Marcus Aurelius. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 353-354.) S.H.H. [46] The "Hymn of Aphrodite," including the "Discourse of the Communion of Souls, and of the Uses of Love between Creature and Creature; being part of the Golden Book of Venus," from which latter the above is taken, is given in full in the P.W. pp. 350-356. [47] The instruction concerning inspiration and prophesying was received by A.K. in Paris on the 7th February, 1880. S.H.H. [48] P.W. pp. 311-314. Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 344-345. CHAPTER IV. THE ANTAGONISATION. Even had we been disposed, which happily we were not, to exalt ourselves on the strength of the loftiness of our mission, the constant proofs afforded us of the paucity of our knowledge in comparison with what remained to be known, would have effectually restrained us. But as it was, we were from the first penetrated by the conviction that only in so far as we succeeded in subordinating the individual to the universal, the personal to the divine, could the work be successfully accomplished. The man must make himself nothing that the God may be all. This was the burden of the injunctions enforced on us throughout; the failures of others through self-exaltation being adduced in illustration. For, as we were plainly given to understand, "many are called but few are chosen"; the weak point in their system, the "Judas" by whom they are betrayed and fail, being generally vanity. They are as instruments which mistake themselves for the mind and hand which wield them. Humility and Love, the violet and the red, these are the two extremes of the prism which comprise between them all the Seven Spirits of God. Blended, they make the royal purple; but the hue of that purple depends on the spiritual states of the individuals themselves whose tinctures they are. They were, we were told, the tinctures of our own souls as indicated by the colours of our respective _auras_. "Mary's" was the "blood-red ray of the innermost sphere," the sphere of the "first of the Gods," wherein "love and wisdom are one." "For the Hebrews Uriel, for the Greeks Phoibos, the Bright One of God." Mine was the violet of the outermost sphere, that of the "last of the Gods," the "Spirit of the Fear of the Lord," and therein of Reverence and Humility; for the Greeks Saturn, and for the Hebrews Satan, the "Angel unfallen of the outermost sphere." Only when man is built up of all the Gods, and bears upon him the seal of each God, having climbed the ladder of his regeneration from circumference to centre, from "Saturn" to the "Sun," is the "week" of his new and spiritual creation accomplished. Similarly the co-operation of all these divine potencies was indispensable to our work. And we were emphatically warned of the dangers both to it and to ourselves, that would come of the lack of the divine presence in respect of any of them. Hence the necessity of maintaining the necessary conditions in ourselves, and the caution addressed to us by "Hermes," in view of the liability of mortals to appropriate to themselves the importance appertaining to their mission when this transcends the ordinary. To this end, in the following Exhortation, he disclosed to us the heights yet to be ascended, saying-- He whose adversaries fight with weapons of steel, must himself be armed in like manner, if he would not be ignominiously slain or save himself by flight. And not only so, but forasmuch as his adversaries may be many, while he is only one; it is even necessary that the steel he carries be of purer temper and of more subtle point and contrivance than theirs. I, Hermes, would arm you with such, that bearing a blade with a double edge, ye may be able to withstand in the evil hour. For it is written that the tree of life is guarded by a sword which turneth every way. Therefore I would have you armed both with a perfect philosophy and with the power of the divine life. And first the knowledge; that you and they who hear you may know the reason of the faith which is in you. But knowledge cannot prevail alone, and ye are not yet perfected. When the fulness of the time shall come, I will add unto you the power of the divine life. It is the life of contemplation, of fasting, of obedience, and of resistance. And afterwards the chrism, the power, and the glory. But these are not yet. Meanwhile remain together and perfect your philosophy. Boast not, and be not lifted up; for all things are God's, and ye are in God, and God in you. But when the word shall come to you, be ready to obey. There is but one way to power, and it is the way of obedience. Call no man your master or king upon the earth, lest ye forsake the spirit for the form and become idolaters. He who is indeed spiritual, and transformed into the divine image, desires a spiritual king. Purify your bodies, and eat no dead thing that has looked with living eyes upon the light of Heaven. For the eye is the symbol of brotherhood among you. Sight is the mystical sense. Let no man take the life of his brother to feed withal his own. But slay only such as are evil; in the name of the Lord. They are miserably deceived who expect eternal life, and restrain not their hands from blood and death. They are miserably deceived who look for wives from on high, and have not yet attained their manhood. Despise not the gift of knowledge; and make not spiritual eunuchs of yourselves. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. Ye are twain, the man with the woman, and she with him, neither man nor woman, but one creature. And the kingdom of God is within you[49]. The knowledge of the "Seven Spirits" whereby Deity operates in the universe, has been completely dropped out of sight by the Christian world. It is necessary, therefore, if only in vindication of the importance attached to them by our illuminators, to recite the instruction received by us concerning them, which is as follows. It is a chapter from the recovered Gnosis[50]:-- "In the bosom of the Eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the seven spirits of the prism, contained in the Invisible Light. * * * * * By the Word of Elohim were the Seven Elohim manifest: even the Seven Spirits of God in the order of their precedence: The Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Knowledge, the Spirit of Righteousness, and the Spirit of Divine Awfulness. All these are coequal and coeternal. Each has the nature of the whole in itself: and each is a perfect entity. And the brightness of their manifestation shineth forth from the midst of each, as wheel within wheel, encircling the White Throne of the Invisible Trinity in Unity. These are the Divine fires which burn before the presence of God: which proceed from the Spirit, and are one with the Spirit. He is divided, yet not diminished: He is All, and He is One. For the Spirit of God is a flame of fire which the Word of God divideth into many: yet the original flame is not decreased, nor the power thereof nor the brightness thereof lessened. Thou mayest light many lamps from the flame of one; yet thou dost in nothing diminish that first flame. Now the Spirit of God is expressed by the Word of God, which is Adonai. For without the Word the Will could have had no utterance. Thus the Divine Will divided the Spirit of God, and the seven fires went forth from the bosom of God and became seven spiritual entities. They went forth into the Divine Substance, which is the substance of all that is." As already stated, Hermes is the Greek name for the Second of the creative Elohim above enumerated. Hence his special relation to the New Gospel of Interpretation, the appeal of which is to the Understanding. Being shown one day in vision the path we had to traverse for the accomplishment of our work, "Mary" exclaimed:-- "What a dreadfully difficult thing it is to steer one's way amidst such numbers of influences! I see a fine, bright-shining thread. It is our own path, and it is a pathway of light. But, oh! so narrow, so narrow, and all around are spirits trying to lure us from it. Here is Hermes, shining like a silver light. My Genius says that the way to get the utmost vitality on the spiritual plane is to abandon the plane of the body, and keep it quite low, by not indulging it. The time for bodily indulgence is passed with us. Abstinence, we have been told, and watchfulness and fasting are needful. And the time for the first of these has come. Nothing is gained without labour or won without suffering. Fasting and Watching and Abstinence, these are Beads and Rosary. It is a hard way and a long way, and it makes one wishful to turn back. We are not to be misled by the story, so much dwelt on to you by the Astrals, of Moses and Aaron[51]. They both were failures, who entered not into the land of Canaan. We must be patient and trust. We have to be cultivated on both planes, the intellectual and the spiritual, and not on the physical, for this draws from and saps the others." So far as I was concerned, there was yet another rule that was made absolute: this was the rule of Poverty. Desiring at one time to mitigate the rigour of my enforced economies by working with a commercial intent, and to that end endeavouring to finish a tale some time before commenced, I found myself baffled by a complete withdrawal of power. I was well aware that no romance I could devise would compare with the romance I was living, and that any incidents I could invent would be tame before those of my actual life; but it was not this that withheld me. It was made clear to me that there was now only one direction and one plane in which I was accessible to ideas and in which therefore I could work, and this a direction and plane altogether incompatible with mundane ends. But I had not fully reconciled myself to the loss of my earning power, or resolved to refrain from further efforts in that behalf, when I received the following experience. I had gone to bed, but not to sleep, for thinking over the matter, when I became aware of the presence of a group of spiritual influences, one of whom, speaking for them all, said to me, in tones audible only to the inner hearing, but distinct, measured and authoritative-- "We whom you know as the Gods--Zeus, Phoibos, Hermes, and the rest--are actual celestial personalities, who are appointed to represent to mortals the principles and potencies called the Seven Spirits of God. We have chosen you for our instrument, and have tried you and proved you and instructed you; and you belong to us to do our work and not your own, save in so far as you make it your own. Only in such measure as you do this will you have any success. For you can do nothing without us now: and it is useless for you to attempt to do anything without our help." By this and manifold other experiences, we had practical demonstration of the existence of a celestial hierarchy consisting of souls perfected and divinised, divided into orders corresponding to the "Seven Spirits of God," and having for their function the illumination of those souls of men still on earth who are accessible by them; and to whom they manifest themselves in the forms recognised in the mysteries in which such persons have formerly been initiated. We had also manifold proofs of their power to arrest utterance before persons unfit to be entrusted with the mysteries. The first instance occurred to myself, and was in this wise. I was reading some passages in illustration of our work to an old clerical friend who came to see me in Paris, when I inadvertently turned to a part of the book which we had been charged to keep secret. But before I had read a line, the air round me became so dense with invisible presences that I was unable to see, and my heart was clutched, as if by an invisible hand, and lifted up towards my throat with such force as almost to choke me; while, at the same instant, an overwhelming sense of my fault was impressed on my mind, causing me for some hours to feel as one utterly God-forsaken and cast off. Not thinking that "Mary" was liable to err in the same way, or caring to tell her of my trespass, I kept silence respecting this experience. But a few weeks later it was repeated for her. She was speaking of our work to a spiritualist friend with whom we were spending the evening, and, in her eagerness, got upon topics which I recognised as forbidden. But before I had time to remind her, she suddenly stopped short and rose from her seat, gasping and dazed, and insisted on returning home forthwith, to our hostess's great amazement and disappointment. Divining what had occurred, I refrained from questioning her until we were outside and alone, when in reply to me she described exactly what had happened to me, using the words, "I did not want to be choked!" There were other occasions on which I was cut short under like circumstances, by having all that I meant to say suddenly and completely obliterated from my mind. Being desirous to know more of the adverse influences against which we had been warned, and from which we suffered, "Mary" consulted her illuminator respecting their origin and nature, when the following colloquy ensued:-- "They are," he said, "the powers which affect and influence Sensitives. They do not control, for they have no force.... They are Reflects. They have no real entity in themselves. They resemble mists which arise from the damp earth of low-lying lands, and which the heat of the sun disperses. Again, they are like vapours in high altitudes, upon which, if a man's shadow falls, he beholds himself as a giant. For these spirits invariably flatter and magnify a man to himself. And this is a sign whereby you may know them. They tell one that he is a king; another, that he is a Christ; another, that he is the wisest of mortals, and the like. For, being born of the fluids of the body, they are unspiritual and live _of_ the body." "Do they, then," I asked, "come from within the man?" "All things," he replied "come from within. A man's foes are they of his own household." "And how," I asked, "may we discern the Astrals from the higher spirits?" "I have told you of one sign;--they are flattering spirits. Now I will tell you of another. They always depreciate Woman. And they do this because their deadliest foe is the Intuition. And these, too, are signs. Is there anything strong? they will make it weak. Is there anything wise? they will make it foolish. Is there anything sublime? they will distort and travesty it. And this they do because they are exhalations of matter, and have no spiritual nature. Hence they pursue and persecute the Woman continually, sending after her a flood of vituperation like a torrent to sweep her away. But it shall be in vain. For God shall carry her to His throne, and she shall tread on the necks of them. "Therefore the High Gods will give through a woman the Interpretation which alone can save the world. A woman shall open the gates of the Kingdom to mankind, because Intuition only can redeem. Between the Woman and the Astrals there is always enmity; for they seek to destroy her and her office, and to put themselves in her place. They are the delusive shapes who tempted the saints of old with exceeding beauty and wiles of love, and great show of affection and flattery. Oh! beware of them when they flatter, for they spread a net for thy soul." "Am I, then, in danger from them?" I asked. "Am I, too, a Sensitive?" And he said,-- "No, you are a Poet. And in that is your strength and your salvation. Poets are the children of the Sun, and the Sun illumines them. No poet can be vain or self-exalted; for he knows that he speaks only the words of God. 'I sing,' he says, 'because I must.' Learn a truth which is known only to the sons of God. The Spirit within you is divine. It is God. When you prophesy and when you sing, it is the Spirit within you which gives you utterance. It is the 'New Wine of Dionysos.' By this Spirit your body is enlightened, as is a lamp by the flame within it. Now, the flame is not the oil, for the oil may be there without the light. Yet the flame cannot be there without the oil. Your body, then, is the lamp-case into which the oil is poured. And this--the oil--is your soul, a fine and combustible fluid. And the flame is the Divine Spirit, which is not born of the oil, but is conveyed to it by the hand of God. You may quench this Spirit utterly, and thenceforward you will have no immortality; but when the lamp-case breaks, the oil will be spilt on the earth, and a few fumes will for a time arise from it, and then it will expend itself and leave at last no trace. Some oils are finer and more spontaneous than others. The finest is that of the soul of the poet. And in such a medium the flame of God's Spirit burns more clearly and powerfully, and brightly, so that sometimes mortal eyes can hardly endure its brightness. Of such an one the soul is filled with holy raptures. He sees as no other man sees, and the atmosphere about him is enkindled. His soul becomes transmuted into flame; and when the lamp of his body is shattered, his flame mounts and soars, and is united to the Divine Fire. Can such an one, think you, be vain-glorious or self-exalted, and lifted up? Oh no; he is one with God, and knows that without God he is nothing. I tell no man that he is a reincarnation of Moses, of Elias, or of Christ. But I tell him that he may have the Spirit of these if, like them, he be humble and self-abased, and obedient to the Divine Word." So far from our being sufficiently advanced to escape molestation from the sources thus indicated, there were times when we suffered much from their incursions, even to the hindrance, for the time being, of the work on which our whole hearts were set. Knowing that everything depended on our unanimity, they sought to make division between us, and what they lacked in force was more than made up for by subtlety[52]. Despite all our vigilance, they would insinuate themselves like barbed and poisoned arrows between the joints of our armour, there to rankle and envenom, so insidious were their suggestions. They did not flatter, but attacked us. So that it was a satisfaction to be assured that they attack those only who are worth attacking. The very nature of our work was such as to invite attack from them, being what they were. Meanwhile, no experience was withheld that would serve to qualify us for what proved to be an essential part of our work, the "discerning of spirits" in the sense, not merely of perceiving them, but of distinguishing their nature and character. And always was the lesson given in a form which combined with its other features that of total unexpectedness. Especially important was it for us to be able to distinguish between the spirits _of_ the astral, against which we were warned, and spirits _in_ the astral, namely, souls which had not yet accomplished their emancipation, but were in course of doing so. But while as regarded the former we were left to fight the battle for ourselves, as regarded the latter there was a control exercised, and none were permitted to approach us save such as had a message of service which would minister to the solution of a present problem. Of this the following experience was an instance. It helped us to a yet fuller comprehension, both of the reasons which had dictated our association, and of the liabilities to be guarded against. It was evening[53], and we were occupied in our respective tasks, and so entirely engrossed by them as to be disposed to resent any interruption, when "Mary" bent across the table, and speaking in a low tone, said to me, "There is a spirit in the room who wants to speak to us. Shall I let him?" I assented on the condition that he had something to tell us really worth hearing. She then became entranced, being magnetised by his presence; and after telling me that he spoke with a strong American accent and professed to be a "meta-physical doctor"--meaning, she supposed, a doctor in metaphysics--repeated the following after him; for I could neither see nor hear him:-- "You two have been put together for a work which you could not do separately. I have been shown a chart of your past histories, containing your characters and your past incarnations. She is of a highly active, wilful disposition, and represents the centrifugal force. You, Caro, are her opposite, and, being contemplative and concentrated, represent the centripetal force. Without her expansive energy you would become altogether indrawn and inactive in deed; and without your restraining influence she would go forth and become dissipated in expansiveness. So extraordinary is her outward tendency that nothing but such an organism as she now has could repress it and keep it within bounds. It is for the work she has to do that she has been placed in a body of weakness and suffering. She is the man--and you the woman--element in your joint system. I can see only her female incarnations, but she has been a man much oftener than a woman; while you have generally been a woman, and would be one now but for the work you have to do. Even as a woman she has always been much more man than woman, for her wilfulness and recklessness have led her into enterprises of incredible daring. Nothing restrained her when her will prompted her. She would wreck any work to follow that, and only by combination with your centripetal tendency can she do the present work. As a man she has been initiated, once, a long time ago, in Thebes, afterwards in India. The things she has done in her past lives! Well, _I_ do not say they were wrong, for I do not hold the existence of moral evil. All things are allowed for good ends; but this is a difficult truth to express." Here she spoke in her own person, having under his magnetism recovered her own vision and recollection, saying-- "O Caro! I can see your past. You have been--no, it is all wiped out. I cannot see it now. I am not allowed to see it. Why is this? I see my own past. I see India:--a magnificent glittering white marble temple, and elephants. How tame they are! They are all out, and feeding in a field or enclosure. And there are such a number of splendid red flowers, they are cactuses, and all prickly. The trees have all their foliage on the top, and such long stems. They are palms. The soil is of a white dust. And the sky is so clear and blue! But the heat is terrible. I see you again. Your colour is blue, inclining to indigo, owing to your want of expansiveness. But I cannot see your past, except that you are mostly a woman. And now I am by the Nile,--such a fine broad river!" Here she returned to her normal consciousness, our visitor having taken his departure. Subsequently, in March, 1881, under the influence of a higher illuminative power, she found herself as one of a group of initiates making solemn procession through the aisles of a vast Egyptian temple, and chanting in chorus the rituals which compose the marvellous "Hymn to the Planet-God, Iacchos"[54]. For, long as it is, she was able to reproduce it afterwards. It was thus, by her recovery of the memory of knowledges acquired in past existences, that the divine originals were recovered from which the Bible-writers largely derived at once their doctrine and their diction. This is not to say that these were mere borrowers and unilluminate. It is to say only that they recognised the divinity of a prior revelation, and regarded it as a common heritage. The truth is one. Among the uses of the painful experience we were now undergoing[55] was this one. It put me on a track of thought of high value in enabling me to determine our respective positions in regard to our work. It was clearly the endeavour of the astral influences by which we were being assailed--the "haters of the mysteries" as our Genii called them[56]--to break down our work by destroying that perfect harmony between us which was the first condition of it. And all my endeavours failing to discover in myself the weak point which rendered us accessible to them, carefully as I sought there for it, I was forced to look for it in her, and was disposed to ascribe it to the survival from the far past of some defect of the affectional nature. For, as we were now learning, man has a dual heredity, that of his physical parentage and that of his spiritual selfhood. From the former of which he derives his outward characteristics; and from the latter his inward character. The experience just recited served to confirm the surmise, but it did something else besides. It suggested to me the following explanation of the situation as growing out of the exigencies of our work. That work had for its purpose the accomplishment of the prophesied downfall of the "world's sacrificial system." It meant war to the knife against all the orthodoxies at once, religious, social, scientific. It meant a death-"wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." It meant, in short, the destruction foretold by the prophets of "that great city," the world's materialistic system in Church, State, and Society, wherein the "Lord," the divinity in man, is ever systematically crucified, and its replacement by the "Holy City" or system which comes down from the heaven of a perfect ideal. What, then, I asked myself, was the foremost moral need for the instruments of such a work? Surely it was Courage. But courage subsists under two modes. There is the courage which manifests itself in action and aggression, and there is the courage which manifests itself in endurance and resistance. The former is its masculine mode, the latter its feminine mode. The former connotes Will, the latter connotes Love. And these were the parts assigned respectively to us in our joint system. Will and Love united had made the world; disunited, they had ruined the world; reunited, they would redeem the world. As He and She, King and Queen, positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, they are the dual powers of all things, the constituent principles at once of God and of Man. The whole Universe is Humanity, for it is the manifestation of God, and they are the divine man and woman of all being; in their conjunction omnipotent for good, in their disjunction omnipotent for evil. And whereas it is the function of Will to inflict, it is the function of Love to bear. It is not, then, to the lack of these qualities that our troubles are due, but to the defect of them, the defect of our respective qualities. The tension of feeling induced by the situation had for me reached a pitch at which I had cause for serious apprehension lest my organism prove unequal to the strain. For, resolute though I myself was to endure to the end, come what might, the effort involved had so greatly affected my organic system as nearly to double the number of the heart's pulsations, to the imminent risk of a rupture fatal to life or reason. Such was the emergency when, longing for light and aid, I received at night[57] the following experience, which I reproduce as recorded at the time:-- It seemed to me that I was sole spectator in some circus or hippodrome. And in the arena were some horses, seven in number, harnessed to a common centre, but all facing in different directions like the spokes of a wheel, and pulling frantically, so that the vehicle to which they were attached remained stationary between them, through their counterbalancing each other; while at the same time it seemed as if it must presently be dragged asunder into pieces. On looking at it more closely, the vehicle seemed to become a person who was attempting to drive the horses, but was unable to get them into a line; and, strange to say, the driver was one and identical both with the horses and the vehicle, so that it was a living person who was in danger of being torn asunder by creatures who were in reality himself. While wondering what this meant, some one addressed me and said that if I would do any good, I must help to control and direct the animals which were thus pulling their owner asunder. And that the only way to do this was by so disposing myself that I should be at one and the same time in the centre with the driver, to help him to curb and direct his steeds, and outside at their heads in order to compel their submission. And not only must I be indifferent to their ramping and chafing, I must even suffer myself to be struck and wounded and trampled upon to any extent without flinching; for only when I was so unconscious of self as to be indifferent as to what might happen to me, would they cease to have power against me. And the reason why I must be also in the centre was that only there could I effectually co-operate with the driver to enable him to do his part in directing what in reality were the forces, as yet unbroken in, of his own system, into the road it was necessary for us both to follow. We were destined to be fellow-travellers, and our journey was to be made together and with that team. It could not be made by one of us without the other, and the failure to effect a complete conjunction and co-operation would bring certain ruin to the hopes of both of us and of all who looked to us. The owner of the horses, I was assured, could not of himself control them, and I could only enable him to do so by an absolute surrender of myself. Applying this vision to the situation, the moral was obvious so far as I was concerned, and I wondered whether "Mary" would receive anything equally suggestive for herself. In the morning, after remaining unusually late in her room, she silently handed me the following account of an experience which had similarly and simultaneously been received by her:-- "I was shown two stars near each other, both of them shining with a clear bright light, only that of one the light had a purple tinge, and of the other a blood colour; and a great Angel stood beside me and bade me look at them attentively. I did so, and saw that the stars were not round, but seemed to have a piece cut out of the globe of each of them. And I said to the Angel, 'The stars are not perfect; but instead of being round, they are uneven.' He told me to look again; and I did so, and saw that each globe was really perfect, but that in each a small portion remained dark so as to present the appearance of having a piece out; and I noticed that these dark portions of the two stars were turned towards each other. Upon this I looked to the Angel for the explanation. And the Angel said to me, 'These stars derive their light not only from the sun but from each other. If there be darkness in one of them, the corresponding face of the other will likewise be darkened; and how shall either reflect perfectly the image of the sun if it be dark to its companion star? For how shall it respond to that which is above all, if it respond not to that which is nearest?' And I said, 'Lord, if the darkness in one of these stars be caused by the darkness in its fellow, which of them was first darkened?' Then he answered me and said, 'These stars are of different tinctures; one is of the sapphire, the other of the sardonyx. Of the first the atmosphere is cool and equable; of the other it is burning and irregular. The spirit of the first is as God towards man; the spirit of the second is as the soul towards God. The first loves; the second aspires. And the office of the spirit which loves is outwards; while the office of the spirit which aspires is upwards. The light of the first, which is blue, enfolds, and contains, and embraces, and sustains. The light of the second, which is red, is as a flame which scorches, and burns, and troubles, and seeks God only, and his duty is not to the outward, for it is not given to him to love. God, whom he seeks, _is_ love; and therefore is he drawn upward to God only. But the spirit of his fellow descends. She indraws, and blesses, and confers; and hers is the office which redeems. Wherefore if she fail in her love, her failure is greater than his who hath no love; and to be perfect she must forgive until the seventy times seven, and be great in humility. For the violet, which is the colour of humility, is of the blue. And if she seek her own, or yield not in outward things, her nature is not perfected, and her light is darkened. Let Love, therefore, think not of herself, for she hath no self, but all that she hath is towards others, and only in giving and forgiving is she rich. If, on the contrary, she make a self withinwards, her light is withdrawn and troubled, and she is not perfect, and if she demand of another that which he hath not, then she seeketh her own, and her light is darkened. And if she be darkened towards him, he also will darken towards her, in respect, that is, of enlightenment. And thus her failure of love will break the communion with the Divine, which is through him. He cannot darken outwardly first; for love is not of him. If he darken of himself, it must be within towards God. But that which he receives of God, he gives not forth himself. But he burns centrally and enlightens his fellow, and she gives it forth according to her office. And if she darken in any way outwardly, she cannot receive enlightenment, but darkens the burning star likewise, and so hinders their inter-communion.' Having thus spoken, the Angel looked upon me and said, 'Ye are the two stars, and to one is given the office of the Prophet, and to the other the office of the Redeemer. But to be Prophet and Redeemer in one, this is the glory of the Christ.'" Here again was an intimation that on one plane at least of our respective systems she was of masculine and I of feminine potency, with functions to correspond. That these functions were capable of being described in the terms employed was, we felt, no reason for arrogating high places to ourselves. Rather did we consider that everything is according to its degree; and that, as for persons, if the Gods were to wait until they found perfect instruments, or at least perfect persons for their instruments, they would never begin. And this also, that if the world were in a condition to produce such persons, it would have no need of redemption. Had not even Jesus Himself been "crucified through weakness"? In view of the intensity of the distress undergone in this connection, I found myself recalling the remark of Plato, "Many begin the mysteries, but few complete them." My only wonder was that any should survive the ordeals, if they approached ours in severity. Meanwhile it was said to us by way of encouragement, "Be sure there is trouble in store. No man ever got to the Promised Land without first going through the wilderness." The instruction to "Mary" had not only justified my surmise, it also met and corrected her in respect of the chief cause of our trouble. This was her disposition, at astral instigation, to withhold from me the products of her illuminations, and even to refrain from writing them down[58], on the specious pretext that they were meant for her own exclusive benefit, and were too sacred to be given to the world, or even to me; and she had failed to discern the source and motive of these suggestions. So effectually had what were really spirits of darkness disguised themselves as angels of light. The importance attached to the occult significance of our "tinctures" received illustration in this wise. Permission had been given us to make an exception to the rule of secrecy imposed with regard to certain of the Scriptures received by us, in favour of a friend[59] who took so warm an interest in our work as to be eager to render it material aid in the future should occasion arise. It was her mission, she declared, to do so. But when the day appointed for the reading came, "Mary" was so ill that her going seemed to be impossible, and the question accordingly arose as to whether I might go alone and read them without her. We had no sooner begun to consider the point than she became entranced, and was shown a large open volume, the book of the Greater Mysteries to which our Scriptures belonged, surrounded by an Iris composed of all the colours of the rainbow. She was then shown the following lines, which I wrote down as she repeated them:-- "The one in Red guards his privileges, and claims to be present whatever is read. For the air is filled with the haters of the Mysteries. Therefore for your sake the chain must be complete; And the Light must be refracted round you seven times. He who is Red stands within the holy circle. And the Violet guards the outermost. For the Word is a Word of Mystery, and they who guard it are Seven. Beware that nothing you hear be told unless the circle be perfect. And this charge we lay upon you until the work be accomplished. Fire and sword and war are against you; you walk in the midst of commotion. And your life is in peril every hour until the words be completed." Up to the latest moment of the interval before the appointment it seemed impossible for her to go. She then suddenly recovered as by miracle, and was able to attend the reading. The liabilities of our position subsequently[60] received this further illustration. "Mary" was introduced in sleep, by her Genius, into an apartment in the spiritual world which purported to be the laboratory of William Lilly, the famous astrologer who had foretold the great plague and fire of London in 1666, in order to have her horoscope told by him, he still pursuing his favourite studies. On quitting him she caught sight of a pile of books, one of which contained the Gnosis we were in course of recovering. The following colloquy then ensued:-- "You also have these Scriptures!" she exclaimed. "Yes," said he, "but I keep them for myself alone." "And why so," she asked, "since, if you have them, they are for the learning of others likewise? Will you not rather communicate these saving truths to thirsty souls?" "I will communicate them," said he, fixing his eyes on her intently, "when I can find Seven Men who for forty days have tasted no flesh, whose hands have shed no blood, and whose tongues have tasted of none." "But if you find not Seven?" "Then, mayhap, I shall find Five." "And if not Five?" "Then, maybe, I shall meet with Three." "But even this may be hard to find, and if you should not meet with Three, what then will you do?" "One Neophyte would not be able to protect himself." In communicating to her the results of his calculations, he had said that owing to the propensities indulged in certain of her former lives, she had made for herself a destiny which ensured suffering and failure, except when living in a similar manner; doing which she would have a life of unbounded success. "But," he continued, "your horoscope has nothing for you but misfortune so long as you persist in a virtuous course of life, and, indeed, it is now too late to adopt another. I speak herein according to your Fortune, not in regard to your Inner life. With that I have no concern. I tell you what is forecast for you on the material and actual planisphere of your Nativity.... I see nothing but misfortune before you. Yea, if you persist in virtue, it is not unlikely that you may be stript of all your worldly goods, and of all you possess, and this evil fortune will follow your nearest associates." To her enquiry, "Can I never overcome this evil prognostic?" he replied that she could do so only by outliving the time appointed for her natural life in the career indicated, and added this advice, "Steel yourself; learn to suffer; become a Stoic; care not. If Misfortune be yours, make it your Fortune. Let Poverty become to you Riches. Let Loss be Gain. Let Sickness be Health. Let Pain be Pleasure. Let Evil Report be Good Report. Yea, let Death be Life. Fortune is in the Imagination. If you believe you have all things, they are truly yours." He concluded with an explanation reconciling destiny with free will, and vindicating the divine justice, in a manner which removed all our difficulties on those points, and, as we later came to learn, was entirely in accordance with the Hindu doctrine of "Karma," of which at this time we had never heard[61]. There was no exaggeration in the terms of the warning of danger. We were constantly made aware of the presence of the malignant entities above described focusing their influences on us to prevent the accomplishment of our work, and requiring the utmost vigilance on our part, as well also as on the part of our illuminators, to thwart their purpose. And we had good reason to believe that our difficulties and dangers were enhanced through "Mary's" attendances at the schools and hospitals, owing to the evil nature of the influences there dominant under a regimen grossly materialistic, and her liability to be fastened upon and accompanied home by them. The outer walls of her spiritual system--it was explained to us--were not yet completed, owing to the vastness of the circuit of her selfhood; and hence her accessibility to the incursion of noxious influences from without. The treatment of the patients by men trained in the physiological laboratory, and bent upon turning the hospital ward also into a laboratory with the patients themselves for the victims of cruel and wanton experimentation, would send her home boiling with indignation and wrath, to the destruction of the serenity and self-control requisite for our spiritual work. It was clear to us that no experience was to be wanting to exhibit the contrast between the world's actual and the world's possible. The overthrow of "the world's sacrificial system" meant salvation for man and beast. The condition of all really redemptive work is a "descent into hell." The following instruction to us is a typical one:-- "Teach the doctrine of the Universal Soul and the Immortality of all creatures. Knowledge of this is what the world most needs, and this is the keynote of your joint mission. On this you must build; it is the key-stone of the arch. The perfect life is not attainable for man alone. The whole world must be redeemed under the new gospel you are to teach." The following "Counsel of Perfection" which was received[62] by "Mary," is an exquisite expression of the same theme:-- I dreamed that I was in a large room, and there were in it seven persons, all men, sitting at one long table; and each of them had before him a scroll, some having books also; and all were greyheaded and bent with age save one, and this was a youth of about twenty, without hair on his face. One of the aged men, who had his finger on a place in a book open before him, said: "This spirit, who is of our order, writes in this book,--'Be ye perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' How shall we understand this word 'perfection'?" And another of the old men, looking up, answered, "It must mean Wisdom, for wisdom is the sum of perfection." And another old man said, "That cannot be; for no creature can be wise as God is wise. Where is he among us who could attain to such a state? That which is part only, cannot comprehend the whole. To bid a creature to be wise as God is wise would be mockery." Then a fourth old man said:--"It must be Truth that is intended; for truth only is perfection." But he who sat next the last speaker answered, "Truth also is partial; for where is he among us who shall be able to see as God sees?" And the sixth said, "It must surely be Justice; for this is the whole of righteousness." And the old man who had spoken first, answered him:--"Not so; for justice comprehends vengeance, and it is written that vengeance is the Lord's alone." Then the young man stood up with an open book in his hand and said:--"I have here another record of one who likewise heard these words. Let us see whether his rendering of them can help us to the knowledge we seek." And he found a place in the book and read aloud:-- "Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful." And all of them closed their books and fixed their eyes upon me. That it was possible at all for her to study medicine in a school in which vivisection was an all prevailing practice, was only because she set her face resolutely against it, by refusing to attend any place or occasion where or on which it took place, and relying for her own education chiefly on private tuition. It was an essential part of her plan to prove that such experimentation was not necessary for a degree. And this she effectually demonstrated by accomplishing her student-course with rare expedition and distinction, despite her many and severe illnesses and her frequent change of professors. For one after another resigned the office on account of her refusal to allow them to experiment on live animals at her lessons. Not until she had secured her diploma did she enter a physiological laboratory. And then only in order to qualify herself by personal experience to denounce the practice. For herself it was not necessary, she declared, to see a murder or a robbery committed to know that it is a crime. The following incident shows how adverse the conditions of modern life were to our spiritual work:-- Being in London one Christmas evening[63], and speaking to me under illumination, "Mary" suddenly broke off and said-- "Do not ask me such deep questions just now, for I cannot see clearly, and it hurts me to look. The atmosphere is thick with the blood shed for the season's festivities. The Astral Belt is everywhere dense with blood. My Genius says that if we were in some country where the conditions of life are purer, we could live in constant communication with the spiritual world. For the earth here whirls round as in a cloud of blood like red fire. He says distinctly and emphatically that the salvation of the world is impossible while people nourish themselves on blood. The whole globe is like one vast charnel-house. The magnetism is intercepted. The blood strengthens the bonds between the Astrals and the Earth.... This time, which ought to be the best for spiritual communion, is the worst, on account of the horrid mode of living. Pray wake me up: I cannot bear looking; for I see the blood and hear the cries of the poor slaughtered creatures." Here her distress was so extreme that she wept bitterly, and some days passed before she fully recovered her composure. Our first acquaintance with any literature kindred to our special work took place toward the close of our sojourn in Paris[64]. It was due to the arrival of the friend in whose favour the exception had been made in respect of the reading of our Mysteries, and who was the possessor of an excellent library, which she placed at our disposal, of precisely the books it had now become necessary for us to read. This was Marie, Countess of Caithness and Duchesse de Pomár, who had for many years been a spiritualist of zeal so ardent that--as I now came to learn--she had been wont to make my conversion to that faith a matter of special prayer, long before I had been able to contemplate such an event as within the range of probability. Of wide culture, open mind, and large sympathies, she had an enthusiastic and intelligent appreciation of our work, and her arrival on the scene proved so timely as to point to superior direction. We were now able to begin to make acquaintance with many of the seers, mystics, and occultists of past ages, from the Neoplatonists, Hermetists, Rosicrucians, and other orders of initiates, to Boehme, Swedenborg and "Eliphas Levi," and to see what the various spiritualistic schools of the present day had to say for themselves. The following recognition of Hermes by one of the greatest of the Neoplatonists, Proclus, who lived in the fifth century of our era, was especially gratifying to us as proving the continuity of our experiences with those of past ages. Proclus, it must be remembered, was so eminent for his wisdom and powers as to be regarded by his contemporaries with a veneration approaching to adoration. Says Proclus, "Hermes, as the messenger of God, reveals to us His paternal Will, and--developing in us the Intuition--imparts to us knowledge. The knowledge which descends into the soul from above, excels any that can be attained by the mere exercise of the intellect. Intuition is the operation of the soul. The knowledge received through it from above, descending into the soul, fills it with the perception of the interior causes of things. The Gods announce it by their presence, and by illumination, and enable us to discern the universal order." Here was exactly the doctrine received by us, and the manner of it, only that the Intuition was further disclosed to us as due to interior recollection, as declared by Plato, as well as to perception. The results of the investigations thus begun, and afterwards continued in the library of the British Museum, proved satisfactory and gratifying beyond all that we could have anticipated. For while it was made clear to us that there had never been a time when there were not some in the world who had the witness to the truth in themselves, and this one and the same truth, it was also made clear that whereas others had received it in limitation, and beheld it as "through a glass darkly," we were receiving it in plenitude and "face to face," to the realisation of the high anticipations of the sages, saints, seers, prophets, redeemers, and Christs of all time; and this, too, at the period, in the manner, and under the conditions declared by them as to mark and make the "time of the end." For in the illuminations vouchsafed to us the key had been restored which unlocked the meaning of the symbols in which the doctrines of all the churches, pre-Christian as well as Christian, had been at once concealed and revealed, to the elucidation of all the problems which have so sorely perplexed the world, and the verification, by actual experience, of the truth contained in them. No longer now was there for us any doubt as to the meaning of allegories such as the Fall, the Deluge, the Exodus, and others were now shown us to be; or of prophecies such as those of the crushing of the serpent's head by the Woman and her seed; the return of Astræa with her progeny of divine sons; the fall from heaven of Lucifer and Satan; the Return of the Gods; the reign of Michael, "that great prince who standeth for the children of God's people"; the breaking of the seals, and opening of the books; the recognition of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place; the budding of the fig-tree, and the end of that "adulterous generation"; the revelation of "that wicked one, the mystery of iniquity and son of perdition, whom the Lord, at His coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and destroy with the brightness of His coming"; the two Witnesses, their resurrection from the dead, and their ascent into heaven; the drying up of the great river Euphrates, and the coming of the kings of the East by the way thus prepared; the binding of Satan, and the acceptable year of the Lord to follow; the exaltation to heaven, and clothing with the sun, of the mystic "Woman" of the Apocalypse; the advent of the angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to proclaim unto every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people; the coming of many from the East, and the West, and the North, and the South, to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; and the battle of Armageddon, and the end of the world. To all these, and other sacred enigmas of like nature, the key had been given us. And they one and all proved to be prophecies of one and the same event, the restoration of the faculty of inward understanding, and of the divine knowledges which only through it are possible. And whereas this was the faculty, the corruption and loss of which had made the Fall, which was that of the original Church, so was it the faculty, the purification and restoration of which was to reverse the Fall, accomplishing the Redemption. For by it man will regain his mental balance, in virtue of which he was "made upright," and become again sound, whole, and sane, and be by _condition_ that which he has been divinely declared from the first to be by _constitution_,--an instrument of understanding, competent for the comprehension of all truth. For only thus is he really man, and made in the divine image; seeing that he is not really man, but infant only, until he attains his spiritual majority and is able to understand. And that which thus makes him man on the plane mental and spiritual, is that which makes him man on the plane physical. It is his recognition and appropriation of the "Woman" of that plane, the mystic "Woman" of Holy Writ, the mind's feminine mode, the Intuition. It is of her first identification by us, as the key to the whole mystery of the Bible, that the manner will now be recounted. FOOTNOTES: [49] The occasion of the receipt by A.K. and E.M. of the above was one of peculiar interest. It was given in reference to a visit from the late Laurence Oliphant, an account of which will be found in "The Life of A.K." It will suffice to say here that, having heard of their work, Oliphant came to them as an emissary from his chief in America, Thomas Lake Harris, to summon them to place themselves and all that they were and had, at his disposal as the king and Christ of the new dispensation. The above instruction was given to them in direct reference to this incident. It was followed by others fully exposing the delusive source and nature of the doctrine and practice of Laurence Oliphant and Thomas Lake Harris. The above Exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes is now given in full in this book for the first time. It is taken from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 282-283. S.H.H. [50] See note p. 7 [51] The above reference is to an experience of mine which does not call for relation here. E.M. [52] Says E.M. in "The Life of A.K."--"The subtlety with which my most sensitive places were searched out, and the mercilessness with which they were probed by the influences which had now obtained access to us, seemed to me to belong altogether to the infernal." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 318.) S.H.H. [53] The date was 27th March, 1880. S.H.H. [54] The Hymn to the Planet-God has been referred to on p. 79. It is given in full in the P.W. pp. 341-349: a portion of it concerning the passage of the Soul, and concerning the Mystic Exodus, are given on pp. 169-173 post. The method of the recovery by A.K. of this most important Hymn "was such as to constitute it a proof positive of the great doctrine set forth in it, the doctrine of Reincarnation; for it was as one of a band of initiates, making solemn procession through the aisles of a vast Egyptian temple, chanting it in chorus, that 'Mary,' being asleep, recollected it." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 456.) S.H.H. [55] That is, the "strained conditions" under which their association was then maintained and their work carried on. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 374.) S.H.H. [56] See p. 130. [57] On the night of the 23rd June, 1880. This vision was received by E.M. as he pondered and while he was awake. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 376-377.) S.H.H. [58] Some of A.K.'s illuminations have thus been lost to the world. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 374.) S.H.H. [59] Lady Caithness. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 329.) See pp. 137 and 185 post. S.H.H. [60] On the 13th-14th January, 1881. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 435.) S.H.H. [61] A full account of this interview with William Lily is given in "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 435-441. [62] On the 9th April, 1877, in London. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 172.) S.H.H. [63] Christmas Day, 1880. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 430.) [64] The time referred to was September, 1878. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 285-385.) CHAPTER V. THE RECAPITULATION. The first compendious statement of the doctrine which it was intended to restore, was given to us at Paris in the summer of 1878, in the form of an exposition of the principles of Biblical interpretation, under the following circumstances. We had been following our respective tasks[65] for several months without any open or special illumination, and I had written enough to make a considerable volume in exposition of the principles which appeared to me to be those on which, in order to be a book of the soul, the Bible ought to be constructed, and by which, therefore, it must be interpreted. It was not intended for publication, but as an exercise for myself, being purely tentative; though I was conscious of being aided by the occasional suggestion of ideas which served as points of light and guidance. Meanwhile, I was entirely without help from books; for, besides being desirous of evolving the whole from my own consciousness, as in the case of the demonstration of any mathematical problem, I was not aware of any books which would help me; the little I knew of Swedenborg at this time--who was the only writer known to me as a worker in a similar direction--having failed to make much impression on me. I could accept his general principles, but not his particular applications of them. I felt also that the sources of the knowledges vouchsafed to us, far transcended those to which Swedenborg had access. And I accounted for the length of the interval which had elapsed without any larger measure of light being vouchsafed, by supposing that it was intended for me to exhaust my own resources first. The time had come when these were exhausted, and I was reduced to the conviction that if the work was to be carried any further, assistance must be rendered, whether for confirmation, for correction, or for extension. And on retiring to rest one night[66], painfully oppressed by the sense of my own lack, and the prolonged absence of the needed light, I stood at the open window, and in presence of a sky resplendent with stars mentally addressed to those whom we were wont to speak of as the Gods, and of whose presence I seemed to be dimly conscious, a strong expression of my need, declaring my utter inability to advance another step unassisted. Having done which I went to bed, but in a mood the reverse of sanguine; so many were the months for which they had been silent. In the course of the following day, "Mary"--who knew nothing either of my need or of my adjuration of the preceding night, and could not of herself have helped me--found herself under an access of exaltation of faculty which she described as resembling what might be produced by a draught of spiritual champagne. For she felt herself at her very best, having all her knowledge at her finger-ends. The expression recurred to my mind some time afterwards on our receiving an explanation of the "New Wine of Dionysos" in the ancient mysteries. In this state she went down to the schools, where an examination in her subjects was being held, in order to see how the candidates comported themselves, and to compare them with herself; for it was an oral examination. From this she returned home in high delight, declaring that she could have answered every question asked, and far better than any of the students had done. I hoped that her state might be an indication of the renewal of her illuminations. But the events of the evening put all thoughts in this direction entirely out of my mind. For, as if poisoned by the atmosphere of the schools, she was seized with an attack of sickness so intense and prolonged as seriously to endanger her life through the exhaustion induced. And it was a late hour--past midnight--before she could be left alone. Nevertheless she was up betimes in the morning, and on our meeting handed me a paper which she had written in pencil on waking, saying it was something she had read in her sleep, and asking if it was anything that I wanted, as she had written it down so rapidly that she scarcely observed what it was about, and she had not had time to read it over and think about it. Having read it, I found that it met my every difficulty, and shed on the Bible a light which rendered it luminous from beginning to end, disclosing it as pervaded by a system of thought which, when once seen, was as obvious as it had previously been unsuspected. And while it confirmed me in respect of principles and method, it corrected both of us in respect of sundry particulars. It even referred directly to one of my tentative hypotheses, at once negativing it and giving another altogether satisfactory. This was my supposition of Adam and Eve as possibly denoting spirit and matter. The following is the writing:-- "If, therefore, they be Mystic Books, they ought also to have a mystic consideration. But the fault of most writers lieth in this,--that they distinguish not between the books of Moses the prophet, and those books which are of an historical nature. And this is the more surprising because not a few of such critics have rightly discerned the esoteric character, if not indeed the true interpretation, of the story of Eden; yet have they not applied to the remainder of the allegory the same method which they found to fit the beginning; but so soon as they are over the earlier stanzas of the poem, they would have the rest of it to be of another nature. "It is, then, pretty well established and accepted of most authors, that the legend of Adam and Eve, and of the miraculous tree and the fruit which was the occasion of death, is, like the story of Eros and Psyche, and so many others of all religions, a parable with a hidden, that is, with a mystic meaning. But so also is the legend which follows concerning the sons of these mystical parents, the story of Cain and Abel his brother, the story of the Flood, of the Ark, of the saving of the clean and unclean beasts, of the rainbow, of the twelve sons of Jacob, and, not stopping there, of the whole relation concerning the flight out of Egypt. For it is not to be supposed that the two sacrifices offered to God by the sons of Adam, were real sacrifices, any more than it is to be supposed that the apple which caused the doom of mankind, was a real apple. It ought to be known, indeed, for the right understanding of the mystical books, that in their esoteric sense they deal, not with material things, but with spiritual realities; and that as Adam is not a man, nor Eve a woman, nor the tree a plant in its true signification, so also are not the beasts named in the same books real beasts, but that the mystic intention of them is implied. When, therefore, it is written that Abel took of the firstlings of his flock to offer unto the Lord, it is signified that he offered that which a lamb implies, and which is the holiest and highest of spiritual gifts. Nor is Abel himself a real person, but the type and spiritual presentation of the race of the prophets; of whom, also, Moses was a member, together with the Patriarchs. Were the prophets, then, shedders of blood? God forbid; they dwelt not with things material, but with spiritual significations. Their lambs without spot, their white doves, their goats, their rams, and other sacred creatures, are so many signs and symbols of the various graces and gifts which a mystic people should offer to Heaven. Without such sacrifices is no remission of sin. But when the mystic sense was lost, then carnage followed, the prophets ceased out of the land, and the priests bore rule over the people. Then, when again the voice of the prophets arose, they were constrained to speak plainly, and declared in a tongue foreign to their method, that the sacrifices of God are not the flesh of bulls or the blood of goats, but holy vows and sacred thanksgivings, their mystical counterparts. As God is a spirit, so also are His sacrifices spiritual. What folly, what ignorance, to offer material flesh and drink to pure power and essential being! Surely in vain have the prophets spoken, and in vain have the Christs been manifested! "Why will you have Adam to be spirit, and Eve matter, since the mystic books deal only with spiritual entities? The tempter himself even is not matter, but that which gives matter the precedence. Adam is, rather, intellectual force: he is of earth. Eve is the moral conscience: she is the mother of the living. Intellect, then, is the male, and Intuition the female principle. And the sons of Intuition, herself fallen, shall at last recover Truth, and redeem all things. By her fault, indeed, is the moral conscience of humanity made subject to the intellectual force, and thereby all manner of evil and confusion abounds, since her desire is unto him, and he rules over her until now. But the end foretold by the seer is not far off. Then shall the Woman be exalted, clothed with the Sun, and carried to the throne of God. And her sons shall make war with the dragon, and have victory over him. Intuition, therefore, pure and a virgin, shall be the mother and redemptress of her fallen sons, whom she bore under bondage to her husband the intellectual force." This marvellously luminous exposition, she then told me, had been read by her in a book she had found in a library which she had visited in sleep, the owner of which was a courtly old gentleman in the costume of the last century. The leaves of the book were of silver and reflected her back to herself as she read. I took this as symbolising the Intuition. The event proved that her host was no other than Swedenborg, and that--as her Genius informed us--she had been enabled, "under the magnetism of Swedenborg's presence, to recover a memory of no small value," thus confirming my surmise about its intuitional character. The event proved also that it was Swedenborg's doctrine, but without his limitations. We ardently desired a continuation of it, and on the next night but one, she received the following addition to it:-- "Moses, therefore, knowing the mysteries of the religion of the Egyptians, and having learned of their occultists the value and signification of all sacred birds and beasts, delivered like mysteries to his own people. But certain of the sacred animals of Egypt he retained not in honour, for motives which were equally of mystic origin. And he taught his initiated the spirit of the heavenly hieroglyphs, and bade them, when they made festival before God, to carry with them in procession, with music and with dancing, such of the sacred animals as were, by their interior significance, related to the occasion. Now, of these beasts, he chiefly selected males of the first year, without spot or blemish, to signify that it is beyond all things needful that man should dedicate to the Lord his intellect and his reason, and this from the beginning, and without the least reserve. And that he was very wise in teaching this, is evident from the history of the world in all ages, and particularly in these last days. For what is it that has led men to renounce the realities of the spirit, and to propagate false theories and corrupt sciences, denying all things save the appearance which can be apprehended by the outer senses, and making themselves one with the dust of the ground? It is their intellect which, being unsanctified, has led them astray; it is the force of the mind in them, which, being corrupt, is the cause of their own ruin, and of that of their disciples. As, then, the intellect is apt to be the great traitor against heaven, so also is it the force by which men, following their pure intuition, may also grasp and apprehend the truth. For which reason it is written that the Christs are subject to their mothers. Not that by any means the intellect is to be dishonoured; for it is the heir of all things, if only it be truly begotten and be no bastard. "And besides all these symbols, Moses taught the people to have beyond all things an abhorrence of idolatry. What, then, is idolatry, and what are false gods? "To make an idol is to materialise spiritual mysteries. The priests, then, were idolaters, who coming after Moses, and committing to writing those things which he by word of mouth had delivered unto Israel, replaced the true things signified, by their material symbols, and shed innocent blood on the pure altars of the Lord. "They also are idolaters who understand the things of sense where the things of the spirit are alone implied, and who conceal the true features of the Gods with material and spurious presentations. Idolatry is materialism, the common and original sin of men, which replaces spirit by appearance, substance by illusion, and leads both the moral and intellectual being into error, so that they substitute the nether for the upper, and the depth for the height. It is that false fruit which attracts the outer senses, the bait of the serpent in the beginning of the world. Until the mystic man and woman had eaten of this fruit, they knew only the things of the spirit, and found them suffice. But after their fall, they began to apprehend matter also, and gave it the preference, making themselves idolaters. And their sin, and the taint begotten of that false fruit, have corrupted the blood of the whole race of men, from which corruption the sons of God would have redeemed them." She had received this, also in sleep, as one of a class of neophytes seated in an ancient amphitheatre of white stone, and listening to a lecture delivered by a man in priestly garb, of which they took notes the while. She complained that her notes had disappeared on waking, thus preventing her from rendering what she had heard as perfectly as she could have wished; for she had trusted to her notes for it. The more we pondered these communications, the higher was our appreciation of them. We felt that the "veil of Moses" was at length "taken away" as promised, and we had been enabled to tap a reservoir of boundless wisdom and knowledge. For we found in them the longed-for solution of the purpose and nature of the Bible and Christianity, and the key to man's spiritual history. The method of the Bible-writers, the meaning of idolatry, the secret of the Cain and Abel feud between priest and prophet, as the ministers respectively of the sense-nature and of the intuition, and the process whereby the religion of Jesus had become distorted into the orthodoxy which has usurped His name;--all these things were now clear to us as the demonstration of a proposition in geometry, the witness of which was in our own minds. And we, too, we rejoiced to think, were of the school of the prophets, in that with all the force of our minds we had "exalted the Woman," Intuition, and refused to make the word of God of none effect by priestly traditions. Not the least marvellous element in the case was the faculty whereby the seeress had been able to reproduce, after waking, with such evident faithfulness the things seen and heard at so great length in sleep. In reply to my questionings she said that the words seemed to show themselves to her again as she wrote[67]. Discoursing with her Genius on this subject of memory, she received the following, which is valuable also for its recognition of the mystical import of the Bible narratives, and confirmation of St Paul when he says in reference to certain narratives in Genesis, "These things are an allegory." "Concerning memory; why should there any more be a difficulty in respect of it? Reflect on this saying,--'Man sees as he knows.' To thee the deeps are more visible than the surfaces of things; but to men generally the surfaces only are visible. The material can perceive only the material, the astral the astral, and the spiritual the spiritual. It all resolves itself, therefore, into a question of condition and of quality. Thy hold on matter is but slight, and thine organic memory is feeble and treacherous. It is hard for thee to perceive the surfaces of things and to remember their aspect. But thy spiritual perception is the stronger for this weakness, and the profound is that which thou seest the most readily. It is hard for thee to understand and to retain the memory of material facts; but their meaning thou knowest instantly and by intuition, which is the memory of the soul. For the soul takes no pains to remember; she knows divinely. Is it not said that the immaculate woman brings forth without a pang? The sorrow and travail of conception belong to her whose desire is unto 'Adam'"[68]. The following sentences sum up the conclusions to which, by degrees, we were led. The first two paragraphs are from an exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which we considered as one of the most sublime and momentous of all her illuminations[69]. "All that is true is spiritual.... No dogma is real that is not spiritual. If it be true, and yet seem to you to have a material signification, know that you have not solved it. It is a mystery; seek its interpretation. That which is true is for Spirit alone. "For matter shall cease and all that is of it, but the Word of the Lord shall remain for ever. And how shall it remain except it be purely spiritual; since, when matter ceases, it would then be no longer comprehensible?" "For, though matter is eternally the mode whereby spirit manifests itself, matter is not itself eternal." "The church has all the truth, but the priests have materialised it, making religion idolatry, and themselves and their people idolaters." "In their real and divinely intended sense, its doctrines are eternal verities, founded in the nature of Being. As ecclesiastically propounded, they are blasphemous absurdities." "All the mistakes made about the Bible arise out of the mystic books being referred to times, places, and persons material, instead of being regarded as containing only eternal verities about things spiritual." "The Bible was written by intuitionalists, for intuitionalists, and from the intuitionalist standpoint. It has been interpreted by externalists, for externalists, and from the externalist standpoint. The most occult and mystical of books, it has been expounded by persons without occult knowledge or mystical insight"[70]. Thus gradually but surely we learnt that Ecclesiastical education has rigidly excluded from its curriculum all those branches of study which could throw light on the real nature of existence, and consists in learning what other men have said who, themselves, did not know, but were mere hearsay scholars lacking the witness in themselves. We marvelled much as to how the priesthoods will comport themselves when compelled to recognise the fact that a New Gospel of Interpretation has actually been vouchsafed from the world celestial in correction of their perversion and mutilation of the former Gospel of Manifestation, and suppression of the true doctrine of salvation. Will Cain and Caiaphas still have the dominion, and ecclesiasticism be as ready to crucify the Christ on His second coming as it was on His first? And if not, how will it find courage to face the world with the humiliating confession that all through the long ages of its history, while arrogantly claiming to be the faithful and infallible minister of the Gospel of Christ, it has persistently withheld that gospel, and, losing the key to its meaning, has substituted for the wholesome "bread" of divine truth, the "stones" of innutritious because unintelligible dogmas; and for the "fish" of the living waters, the "serpents" of the letter which kills? and that when men have rightly suspected that Christianity has failed, not because it is false, but because it has been falsified, and have sought to their own inner light for the truth of which ecclesiasticism had defrauded them, it dealt out to them pitiless anathema and persecution, making the earth a scene of torture and slaughter in assertion of the right of the priesthoods to teach wrong? That the work committed to us implied nothing less than the fulfilment of the prophecies of which the promise of the Second Coming of Christ was the culmination, while intimated to us from the outset, was gradually unfolded into full assurance, and we were enabled to see that the very terms in which it was couched implied a spiritual advent, and one which should disclose the perfect system at once of science, philosophy, morality, and religion, of which Christ is both the foundation and the consummation. For the "clouds of heaven" in which it was to take place, were no other than the heaven of the kingdom within man of his restored spiritual consciousness. "That wicked one," "the son of perdition," and "mystery of iniquity" then to be revealed and destroyed, was no other than the inspiring evil spirit of an ecclesiasticism which had received indeed its doctrines from above, but their interpretation and application from below. And the "Spirit of His mouth," and the "Brightness of His Coming" were no other than a new Word of God, in the form of a New Gospel of Interpretation, so potent in its logic and so luminous in its exposition as to indicate the Logos Himself as its source, and the "Woman" Intuition, "clothed with the Sun" of full illumination, as its revealer. We saw, too, that with this "Woman" thus rehabilitated, God's "Two Witnesses,"--who have so long lain dead in the streets of "that great city" wherein the Lord, the divinity in man, is ever systematically crucified; the city of the world's system as fashioned and controlled by an ecclesiasticism shrouded in the threefold veil of Blood, Idolatry, and the Curse of Eve,--will rise and stand on their feet, and ascend to the heaven of their proper supremacy, _vice_ Lucifer deposed and fallen. And in them Lucifer himself will regain his lost estate, vindicating his title to be called the Light-bearer, the bright and morning star, the herald and bringer-in of the perfect day of the Lord God. For, as the Intellect, he is the heir of all things, if only he be begotten of the Spirit, and be no bastard engendered of the Sense-Nature. For--as we had come to learn--God's Two Witnesses in man are ever the Intellect and the Intuition, when duly unfolded and united in a pure spirit. Under such conditions the Shiloh comes, and mounted on them man rides triumphant as king into the holy city of his own regenerate nature. But divorced from her, the Intuition, and--leagued with the Sense-Nature--knowing matter only and the body, the Intellect becomes "prince of devils" in man, the maker of men into fiends, and of the earth into a hell. Wherefore his fall from the heaven of his power, on the advent of that whole Humanity, of whom it is said, "the Man is not without the Woman, nor the Woman without the Man, in the Lord," the humanity of intellect and intuition combined, has ever been exultingly hailed in anticipation by all true seers and prophets. The chief points of the doctrine, the prospect of the restoration of which has thus been the sustaining hope of the percipient faithful in all ages, may be summarised as follows:-- The doctrine which, first and foremost, it is the purpose of the Bible to affirm, and of the Christ to demonstrate, and in which reason entirely concurs, is no other than that of the divine potentialities of man, belonging to him in virtue of the nature of his constituent principles, the force and the substance of existence. These are the duality of the "heavens" which God is said to "create," meaning to put forth from Himself, "in the beginning," and of the mutual interaction of which all things are the product, varying according to the plane of operation, alike for creation and redemption, generation and regeneration. And that which Jesus really affirmed in the memorable but little understood words, "Ye _must_ be born again, or from above, of Water and the Spirit," was both the possibility and the necessity to all men of realising the potential divinity belonging to them in virtue of the divinity of their constituent principles. And in affirming this He affirmed both the necessity and the possibility to every man of being born exactly as He Himself, as typical man regenerate, is said to have been born, of Virgin Mary and Holy Ghost, and also His own identity in kind with all other men. And He affirmed, moreover, the utter falsity of that priest-constructed system, which, ignoring Regeneration, insists on Substitution, as the means of salvation. For "Virgin Mary," and "Holy Ghost," are but the mystical synonyms with "Water and the Spirit," the substance and force, or soul and spirit, of which, man is constituted, in their divine because pure condition, the product of which in man is the new regenerate selfhood called, as by St Paul, the "Christ within." Begotten in man as matrix, of the pure Spirit and Substance which are God, this new selfhood is son at once of God and of man; and in him God and man are "reconciled" or "at-oned." And that man is said to be saved by his blood, is because the "blood of God" is pure spirit, and it is the pure spirit in the man that saves him; and that he is called the only-begotten Son of God, is not because God begets no other of his kind, but because God, as God, begets directly none of any other kind. This, then, as we came to learn, and to recognise as having learned it in our own long-past lives, is the doctrine which Jesus came to teach and to demonstrate in His own person. Matter is spirit, being spiritual substance, projected by force of the divine Will into conditions and limitations, and made exteriorly cognisable. And being spirit it can revert to the condition of spirit. In virtue of the divinity of his constituent principles, man has within himself the seed of his own regeneration, and the power to effectuate it. He has in him, this is to say, the potentiality of divinity realisable at will. And the secret and method of the achievement, which is no other than the secret and method of Christ, is inward purification and unfoldment, the unfoldment of the capacities, mental, moral, and spiritual, of his nature, of which inward purification is the first and essential condition. Thus is the Finding of Christ the realisation of the Ideal, and Christ is for every man the summit of his own evolution. Stated in terms of modern science, but correcting its aberrations, the doctrine of Christ is in this wise. Evolution is the manifestation of inherency. Owing to the divinity of the constituent principles of existence, its Force and its Substance, both of which are God, the inherency of existence is divine. Wherefore, as the manifestation of a divine inherency, evolution is accomplished only by the attainment of divinity; and the cause of evolution is the tendency of substance to revert from its secondary and "created" condition of matter, to its original and divine condition of pure spirit. Wherefore evolution is definable as the process of the individuation of Deity in and through Humanity. Such is the genesis of the Christ in man. And he is called _a_ Christ who, having accomplished this process in himself, returns into the earth-life when he has no need to do so for his own sake, out of pure love to redeem, by showing to others their own equal divine potentialities and the method of the realisation thereof. This method consists in love, love of perfection, which is God, for its own sake, and love for others. The process is entirely interior to the individual. It consists in the sacrifice of the lower nature to the higher in himself, and of himself for others in love. That which directly saves the man is not the love of another for the man, but the love which he has in himself. All that can be done by another is to kindle this love in him. The philosophy of this doctrine of salvation by love was formulated for us as follows:--"It is love which is the centripetal power of the universe; it is by love that all creation returns into the bosom of God. The force which projected all things is will, and will is the centrifugal power of the universe. Will alone could not overcome the evil which results from the limitations of matter; but it shall be overcome in the end by sympathy, which is the knowledge of God in others,--the recognition of the omnipresent Self. This is love. And it is with the children of the spirit, the servants of love, that the dragon of matter makes war"[71]. In making the means of salvation extraneous to the individual, Sacerdotalism has defrauded man of his Saviour, making the first and personal coming of Christ of none effect. Hence the necessity for the second and spiritual coming represented by the New Gospel of Interpretation as was foretold:--the coming which was to be in the clouds of the heaven of man's restored understanding; the Hermes within. But the process of regeneration is a prolonged one, extending over many earth-lives; and so also is the prior process of evolution, whereby man reaches the stage at which he is amenable to regeneration. Wherefore regeneration has for its corollary reincarnation. To tell man that he "must be born again" spiritually, and deny him the requisite opportunities of experience, which must be acquired while in the body--seeing that regeneration is _from out of the body_--would be to mock him. This doctrine of a multiplicity of earth-lives is implicit and sometimes explicit in the Bible. The notion that the Hebrews had no belief in a future state because of the failure of commentators to discover it in their Scriptures, is altogether futile. The permanence of the Ego was a matter of course with them, saving only the Sadducees. And the Bible contemplates the persistence of the individual soul through all the manifold stages of its evolution, from the "Adam" stage to the "Christ" stage, saying, as by St Paul, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." But the Christ insisted on by him was not He Who is "after the flesh," not the man Jesus, who was but the vehicle of the Christ, but the Christ within both Jesus and all other regenerate men. For, as a highly illuminated follower of the Gnosis, St Paul was one who "after the way which" his orthodox accusers "called heresy, worshipped the God of his fathers, believing all things which are according to the law, and are written in the prophets." Rejecting the doctrine of regeneration, and with it that of reincarnation, in favour of substitution, the orthodoxy which claims to be Christianity has practically rejected both the doctrine of St Paul and that of Jesus as declared to Nicodemus. And, as St Paul implies, the "mystery of iniquity" was working even already in his days to annul the gospel of Christ by substituting Jesus as the object of worship, and His physical blood-shedding as the means of salvation. And Christendom, yielding to sacerdotal dictation, has to this day accepted a doctrine which at once dishonours God and robs men of their equal divine potentialities with Jesus, thus preferring Barabbas. Professing to rest its faith on the Bible, it has accepted the presentation of religion which the Bible persistently condemns, that of the priests, and rejected that on which the Bible emphatically insists, that of the prophets. That St Paul employed sacerdotal modes of expression was in order to spiritualise them. He was a mystic of mystics. Nevertheless the dogmas of the Church contain the truth, but this is not as the Church has propounded them. And--to cite two crucial instances--so far from the Church's supreme dogmas, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, having any personal or physical reference, they are prophecies of the method of redemption for every individual soul. For, as the New Gospel of Interpretation explicitly declares, restoring the Gnosis persistently rejected by the builders of the orthodoxies, The Immaculate Conception is none other than the prophecy of the means whereby the universe shall at last be redeemed. Maria--the sea of limitless space--Maria the Virgin, born herself immaculate and without spot, of the womb of the ages, shall in the fulness of time bring forth the perfect man, who shall redeem the race. He is not one man, but ten thousand times ten thousand, the Son of Man, who shall overcome the limitations of matter, and the evil which is the result of the materialisation of spirit[72]. By the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary we are secretly enlightened concerning the generation of the soul, who is begotten in the womb of matter, and yet from the first instant of her being is pure and incorrupt.... As the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of the mysteries, so is the Assumption their crown. For the entire object and end of kosmic evolution is precisely this triumph and apotheosis of the soul. In the mystery presented by this dogma, we behold the consummation of the whole scheme of creation--the perpetuation and glorification of the individual human ego. The grave--the material and astral consciousness, cannot retain the immaculate Mother of God. She rises into the heavens; she assumes divinity.... From end to end the mystery of the soul's evolution--the history, that is, of humanity and of the kosmic drama--is contained and enacted in the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The acts and the glories of Mary are the one supreme subject of the holy mysteries[73]. "Allegory of stupendous significance!" exclaimed the seeress's illuminator when imparting to her the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. "Allegory of stupendous significance! with which the Church of God has so long been familiar, but which yet never penetrated its understanding, like the holy fire which enveloped the sacred Bush, but which nevertheless the Bush withstood and resisted[10]. That such failure has been the rule and not the exception is the plea for the New Gospel of Interpretation. For lack of comprehension of its own symbols the Church has fallen into the disastrous errors of mistaking the man Jesus for the Christ within every man, and Mary the mother of Jesus for Virgin Mary the mother of that Christ, committing in both instances idolatry by preferring the form to the substance, persons to principles, and blinding men to the essential truth implied. FOOTNOTES: [65] A.K. was preparing for her second Doctorat, and E.M. was elaborating out of his own consciousness "a key to the interpretation especially of the initial chapters of Genesis." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 264.) [66] On the 4th June, 1878. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 265.) [67] E.M. says:--"Her notes, of course, disappeared with her dream, and she had to reproduce it from memory. But this was abnormally enhanced, for she said that the words presented themselves again to her as she wrote, and stood out luminously to view." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 269.) [68] That is the outer sense and lower reason. [69] The illumination in question was received by A.K. in Paris on the night of the 25th July, 1877, and was written down under trance. Further portions are given on pp. 158, 159, 161. It is given in full in "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 202-203. [70] See further on this most important subject "The Bible's Own Account of Itself," by E.M., the only complete edition of which is published by "The Ruskin Press," Ruskin House, Stafford Street, Birmingham. S.H.H. [71] From the exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, referred to on p. 151. [72] From the exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, referred to on p. 151. [73] From the exposition concerning the Christian Mysteries given in full in "The Life of A.K." Vol. II. pp. 99-100. CHAPTER VI. THE EXEMPLIFICATION. This chapter will be devoted to some examples of the recovered Gnosis, bearing chiefly upon the supreme doctrine of Regeneration. As with all else received by the Seeress, they are the product of intuitional memory regained under divine illumination occurring mostly in sleep. And here I will take occasion to state explicitly and positively, that the states, whether of sleep or of trance, in which her faculty was exercised, were all natural and spontaneous, being induced by the Spirit itself; and that in no case were artificial means employed by either of us, whether drugs, mesmerism, hypnotism, crystal-gazing, or any other of the devices ordinarily used to induce abnormal states of consciousness or promote enhancement of faculty. Our work was to be a real work, done not only by us but in us, and we had from the first a profound instinctive distrust of results obtained by such artificial stimulation. Nor was any change even of a word ever made in the teachings received. They came one and all in the finished perfection in which they are put forth, coming down as the holy city from the heaven of the upper and the within, and incapable of improvement. The following are the examples proposed:-- (1) Concerning Holy Writ. All Scriptures which are the true Word of God, have a dual interpretation, the intellectual and the intuitional, the apparent and the hidden. For nothing can come forth from God save that which is fruitful. As is the nature of God, so is the Word of God's mouth. The letter alone is barren; the spirit and the letter give life. But that Scripture is the more excellent, which is exceeding fruitful and brings forth abundant signification. For God is able to say many things in one, as the perfect ovary contains many seeds in its chalice. Therefore there are in the Scriptures of God's Word certain writings which, as richly yielding trees, bear more abundantly than others in the self-same holy garden. And one of the most excellent is the history of the generation of the heavens and the earth. For therein is contained in order a genealogy, which has four heads, as a stream divided into four branches, a word exceeding rich. And the first of these generations is that of the Gods. The second is that of the kingdom of heaven. The third is that of the visible world. And the fourth is that of the Church of Christ. (2) Concerning the Mystery of Redemption. All things in heaven and in earth are of God, both the invisible and the visible. Such as is the invisible, is the visible also, for there is no boundary line betwixt spirit and matter. Matter is spirit made exteriorly cognisable by the force of the Divine Word. And when God shall resume all things by love, the material shall be resolved into the spiritual, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. Not that matter shall be destroyed, for it came forth from God, and is of God indestructible and eternal. But it shall be indrawn and resolved into its true self. It shall put off corruption, and remain incorruptible. It shall put off mortality, and remain immortal. So that nothing be lost of the Divine substance. It was material entity: it shall be spiritual entity. For there is nothing which can go out from the presence of God. This is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead: that is, the transfiguration of the body. For the body, which is matter, is but the manifestation of spirit: and the Word of God shall transmute it into its inner being. The will of God is the alchemic crucible: and the dross which is cast therein is matter. And the dross shall become pure gold, seven times refined; even perfect spirit. It shall leave behind it nothing: but shall be transformed into the Divine image. For it is not a new substance: but its alchemic polarity is changed, and it is converted. But except it were gold in its true nature, it could not be resumed into the aspect of gold. And except matter were spirit, it could not revert to spirit. To make gold, the alchemist must have gold. But he knows that to be gold which others take to be dross. Cast thyself into the will of God, and thou shalt become as God. For thou art God, if thy will be the Divine Will. This is the great secret: it is the mystery of Redemption. (3) Concerning Sin and Death. As is the outer so is the inner: He that worketh is One. As the small is, so is the great: there is one law. Nothing is small and nothing is great in the Divine Economy. If thou wouldst understand the method of the world's corruption, and the condition to which sin hath reduced the work of God, Meditate upon the aspect of a corpse; and consider the method of the putrefaction of its tissues and humours. For the secret of death is the same, whether of the outer or of the inner. The body dieth when the central will of its system no longer bindeth in obedience the elements of its substance. Every cell is a living entity, whether of vegetable or of animal potency. In the healthy body every cell is polarised in subjection to the central will, the Adonai of the physical system. Health, therefore, is order, obedience, and government. But wherever disease is, there is disunion, rebellion, and insubordination. And the deeper the seat of the confusion, the more dangerous the malady, and the harder to quell it. That which is superficial may be more easily healed; or, if need be, the disorderly elements may be rooted out, and the body shall be whole and at unity again. But if the disobedient molecules corrupt each other continually, and the perversity spread, and the rebellious tracts multiply their elements; the whole body shall fall into dissolution, which is death. For the central will that should dominate all the kingdom of the body, is no longer obeyed; and every element is become its own ruler, and hath a divergent will of its own. So that the poles of the cells incline in divers directions; and the binding power which is the life of the body, is dissolved and destroyed. And when dissolution is complete, then follow corruption and putrefaction. Now, that which is true of the physical, is true likewise of its prototype. The whole world is full of revolt; and every element hath a will divergent from God. Whereas there ought to be but one will, attracting and ruling the whole man. But there is no longer Brotherhood among you; nor order, nor mutual sustenance. Every cell is its own arbiter; and every member is become a sect. Ye are not bound one to another: ye have confounded your offices, and abandoned your functions. Ye have reversed the direction of your magnetic currents: ye are fallen into confusion, and have given place to the spirit of misrule. Your wills are many and diverse; and every one of you is an anarchy. A house that is divided against itself, falleth. O wretched man; who shall deliver you from this body of Death? (4) Concerning the Twelve Gates of Regeneration. Now, the Kingdom of God is within us; that is, it is interior, invisible, mystic, spiritual. There is a power by means of which the Outer may be absorbed into the Inner. There is a power by means of which Matter may be ingested into its original Substance. He who possesses this power is Christ, and He has the devil under foot. For He reduces chaos to order, and indraws the external to the centre. He has learnt that Matter is illusion, and that Spirit alone is real. He has found His own Central Point; and all power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth. Now, the Central Point is the number Thirteen: it is the number of the Marriage of the Son of God. And all the members of the microcosm are bidden to the banquet of the marriage. But if there chance to be even one among them which has not on a wedding garment, Such a one is a Traitor, and the microcosm is found divided against itself. And that it may be wholly regenerate, it is necessary that Judas be cast out. Now the members of the microcosm are Twelve: of the Senses three, of the Mind three, of the Heart three, and of the Conscience three. For of the Body there are four elements; and the sign of the four is Sense, in the which are three Gates, The gate of the Eye, the gate of the Ear, and the gate of the Touch[74]. Renounce vanity, and be poor: renounce praise, and be humble: renounce luxury, and be chaste. Offer unto God a pure oblation: let the fire of the altar search thee, and prove thy fortitude. Cleanse thy sight, thine hands, and thy feet: carry the censer of thy worship into the courts of the Lord; and let thy vows be unto the Most High. And for the magnetic man[75] there are four elements: and the covering of the four is mind, in the which are three gates; The gate of desire, the gate of labour, and the gate of illumination. Renounce the world, and aspire heavenward: labour not for the meat which perishes, but ask of God thy daily bread: beware of wandering doctrines, and let the Word of the Lord be thy light. Also of the soul there are four elements: and the seat of the four is the heart, whereof likewise there are three gates; The gate of obedience, the gate of prayer, and the gate of discernment. Renounce thine own will, and let the law of God only be within thee: renounce doubt: pray always and faint not: be pure of heart also, and thou shalt see God. And within the soul is the Spirit: and the Spirit is One, yet has it likewise three elements. And these are the gates of the oracle of God, which is the ark of the covenant; The rod, the host[76], and the law: The force which solves, and transmutes, and divines: the bread of heaven which is the substance of all things and the food of angels; the table of the law, which is the will of God, written with the finger of the Lord. If these three be within thy spirit, then shall the Spirit of God be within thee. And the glory shall be upon the propitiatory, in the holy place of thy prayer. These are the twelve gates of regeneration: through which if a man enter he shall have right to the tree of life. For the number of that Tree is Thirteen. It may happen to a man to have three, to another five, to another seven, to another ten. But until a man have twelve, he is not master over the last enemy. (5) Concerning the Passage of the Soul[77]. Evoi, Father Iacchos, Lord God of Egypt: initiate thy servants in the halls of thy Temple; Upon whose walls are the forms of every creature: of every beast of the earth, and of every fowl of the air; The lynx, and the lion, and the bull: the ibis and the serpent: the scorpion and every flying thing. And the columns thereof are human shapes; having the heads of eagles and the hoofs of the ox. All these are of thy kingdom: they are the chambers of ordeal, and the houses of the initiation of the soul. For the soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold. Thou callest her from the deep, and from the secret places of the earth; from the dust of the ground, and from the herb of the field. Thou coverest her nakedness with an apron of fig-leaves; thou clothest her with the skins of beasts. Thou art from of old, O soul of man; yea, thou art from the everlasting. Thou puttest off thy bodies as raiment; and as vesture dost thou fold them up. They perish, but thou remainest: the wind rendeth and scattereth them; and the place of them shall no more be known. For the wind is the Spirit of God in man, which bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it shall go. Even so is the spirit of man, which cometh from afar off and tarrieth not, but passeth away to a place thou knowest not. (6) Concerning the Mystic Exodus[77]. Evoi, Iacchos, Lord of the Sphinx; who linkest the lowest to the highest; the loins of the wild beast to the head and breast of the woman. Thou holdest the chalice of divination: all the forms of nature are reflected therein. Thou turnest man to destruction: then thou sayest, Come again, ye children of my hand. Yea, blessed and holy art thou, O Master of Earth: Lord of the cross and the tree of salvation. Vine of God, whose blood redeemeth; bread of heaven, broken on the altar of death. There is corn in Egypt; go thou down into her, O my soul, with joy. For in the kingdom of the Body, thou shalt eat the bread of thine initiation. But beware lest thou become subject to the flesh, and a bond-slave in the land of thy sojourn. Serve not the idols of Egypt; and let not the senses be thy taskmasters. For they will bow thy neck to their yoke; they will bitterly oppress the Israel of God. An evil time shall come upon thee; and the Lord shall smite Egypt with plagues for thy sake. Thy body shall be broken on the wheel of God; thy flesh shall see trouble and the worm. Thy house shall be smitten with grievous plagues; blood, and pestilence, and great darkness; fire shall devour thy goods; and thou shalt be a prey to the locust and creeping thing. Thy glory shall be brought down to the dust; hail and storm shall smite thine harvest; yea, thy beloved and thy first-born shall the hand of the Lord destroy; Until the body let the soul go free; that she may serve the Lord God. Arise in the night, O soul, and fly, lest thou be consumed in Egypt. The angel of the understanding shall know thee for his elect, if thou offer unto God a reasonable faith. Savour thy reason with learning, with labour, and with obedience. Let the rod of thy desire be in thy right hand: put the sandals of Hermes on thy feet; and gird thy loins with strength. Then shalt thou pass through the waters of cleansing, which is the first death in the body. The waters shall be a wall unto thee on thy right hand and on thy left. And Hermes the Redeemer shall go before thee; for he is thy cloud of darkness by day, and thy pillar of fire by night. All the horsemen of Egypt and the chariots thereof; her princes, her counsellors, and her mighty men: These shall pursue thee, O soul, that fliest; and shall seek to bring thee back into bondage. Fly for thy life; fear not the deep; stretch out thy rod over the sea; and lift thy desire unto God. Thou hast learnt wisdom in Egypt; thou has spoiled the Egyptians; thou hast carried away their fine gold and their precious things. Thou hast enriched thyself in the body; but the body shall not hold thee; neither shall the waters of the deep swallow thee up. Thou shalt wash thy robes in the sea of regeneration; the blood of atonement shall redeem thee to God. This is thy chrism and anointing, O soul; this is the first death; thou art the Israel of the Lord, Who hath redeemed thee from the dominion of the body; and hath called thee from the grave, and from the house of bondage, Unto the way of the cross, and to the path in the midst of the wilderness; Where are the adder and the serpent, the mirage and the burning sand. For the feet of the saint are set in the way of the desert. But be thou of good courage, and fail thou not; then shall thy raiment endure, and thy sandals shall not wax old upon thee. And thy desire shall heal thy diseases; it shall bring streams for thee out of the stony rock; it shall lead thee to Paradise. Evoi, Father Iacchos, Jehovah-Nissi[78]; Lord of the garden and of the vineyard; Initiator and lawgiver; God of the cloud and of the mount. Evoi, Father Iacchos; out of Egypt has thou called thy Son. To vindicate the suppressed mysteries of the pre-Christian churches by disclosing them as the true _origines_ of Christianity, and to replace the false doctrine of the exclusive divinity of one man by the true doctrine of the potential divinity of all men,--these are among the foremost objects of the New Gospel of Interpretation. And it is especially in order to reinforce the last named, that it has restored the following hymn in celebration of the supreme results of regeneration, which formed part of the ritual of the greater mysteries of the Greeks. It is addressed to the first of the Holy Seven, the Spirit of Wisdom, as represented by his "angel," the angel of the sun, even "that light which Adonai created on the first day," "whose name is, in the Hebrew, Uriel, and in the Greek, Phoibos, the Bright One of God." Breathing both the Spirit and the letter of the Bible, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, the hymns, of which this is one, indicate unmistakeably the identity in source and substance of the Hebrew and the Christian with the other sacred mysteries of antiquity, and the derivation of the later through the earlier from their common source in the world celestial when once again they have been restored. And they supply also the motive which led the Christians to destroy the second Alexandrian library, showing that motive to have been the desire to conceal, first, the derivation of the Christian presentment from its predecessors, and next, the perversion of their doctrine in the interests of an unscrupulous sacerdocy. * * * * * Taken in connection with its fellow-hymns, similarly recovered, to others of the "Holy Seven," the hymn to Phoibos throws a flood of light on the creative week of Genesis, showing it to be no mere proem to Scripture, or concerned with the world physical merely, but an integral portion of Scripture, being an epitome of eternal verities ever in process, and appertaining both to Creation and to Redemption. The Hymn to Her who is mystically the fourth, but really the third of the Gods, the "Spirit of Counsel" of Isaiah, is especially notable for its solution of the problem of the inversion of the order of the third and fourth days of creation. These hymns, moreover, show indubitably that the order of the solar system was no secret to the hierophants of the sacred mysteries of antiquity. (7) Hymn to Phoibos, the First of the Gods. "Strong art thou and adorable, Phoibos Apollo, who bearest life and healing on thy wings, who crownest the year with thy bounty, and givest the spirit of thy divinity to the fruits and precious things of all the worlds. Where were the bread of the initiation of the Sons of God, except thou bring the corn to ear; or the wine of their mystical chalice, except thou bless the vintage? Many are the angels who serve in the courts of the spheres of heaven: but thou, Master of Light and of Life, art followed by the Christs of God. And thy sign is the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and of the Just made perfect; Whose path is as a shining light, shining more and more unto the innermost glory of the day of the Lord God. Thy banner is blood-red, and thy symbol is a milk-white lamb, and thy crown is of pure gold. They who reign with thee are the Hierophants of the celestial mysteries; for their will is the will of God, and they know as they are known. These are the sons of the innermost sphere; the Saviours of men, the Anointed of God. And their name is Christ Jesus, in the day of their initiation. And before them every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and of things on earth. They are come out of great tribulation, and are set down for ever at the right hand of God. And the Lamb, which is in the midst of the seven spheres, shall give them to drink of the river of living water. And they shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the centre of the garden of the kingdom of God. These are thine, O Mighty Master of Light; and this is the dominion which the Word of God appointed thee in the beginning: In the day when God created the light of all the worlds, and divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Phoibos, and the darkness God called Python. Now the darkness was before the light, as the night forerunneth the dawn. These are the evening and the morning of the first cycle of the Mysteries. And the glory of that cycle is as the glory of seven days; and they who dwell therein are seven times refined; Who have purged the garment of the flesh in the living waters; And have transmuted both body and soul into spirit, and are become pure virgins. For they were constrained by love to abandon the outer elements, and to seek the innermost which is undivided, even the Wisdom of God. And wisdom and love are one. In view of the restoration of the Gods to recognition by the New Gospel of Interpretation, it must be explained that the doctrines of Monotheism and Polytheism are not necessarily incompatible. This has already been shown in Chapter IV., in the utterance commencing--"In the bosom of the Eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the seven spirits of the prism contained in the Invisible Light." For as light is one though its rays are seven and each ray is light, so is God one though His spirits are seven and each spirit is God. And yet further. The deities recognised under various names or by various peoples are not necessarily different Gods, but may be either the same God or different modes or aspects of the same God. Notably is this the case with the Gods of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Christians. For while by the term Elohim is denoted the two principles, masculine and feminine, of Force and Substance, which constitute Original Being, by Jehovah or Yahveh, Adonai and Shaddai, is denoted the resultant of the interaction of these two principles as Father and Mother, who is called therefore their word, expression, and Son. By the Holy Ghost is denoted the same two principles in activity, having procession from the "Father-Mother" through the "Son," to be the constituent principles of creation, being Deity dynamic as distinguished from Deity static. By the Seven Spirits of God--as by the seven great Gods of the Greeks,--are denoted the seven potencies into which Deity differentiates on emerging as Holy Ghost from the prism constituted of Father, Mother, and Son, which are to each other as the force, substance, and phenomenon of which every manifest entity consists. For "Every entity that is manifest, is manifest by the evolution of its trinity." And by Christ is denoted the ultimate issue of such procession of Deity into manifestation, namely, divinity individuated by means of its passage through matter, and elaborated by co-operation of the Seven Spirits of God, into a perfected _spiritual_ Ego, who is at once God and man, and subsists under two modes--the microcosmic or individual, and the macrocosmic or universal, and who is always in process of increase, because, in manifestation, "the Father is greater than the Son;" and "the manifest never exhausts the unmanifest." Now the process of the Christ is by regeneration, and of this, as has been said, reincarnation is the condition. The New Gospel of Interpretation contains an utterance of Jesus on this subject which will fitly conclude this series of examples. It was recovered by "Mary" under illumination early in 1880, and consequently when we had not fully come to realise the actuality of the doctrine and the possibility of the recovery of the memories of past lives. Hence she sought from her illuminators confirmation of the genuineness of the experience, when she was distinctly and positively assured that the incident had actually occurred, and that she had borne part in it, though no record of it survives. Such is the extrinsic testimony on which it rests. We found the intrinsic no less satisfactory, whether as regards the substance or the form. (8) Concerning the previous lines of Jesus, and Reincarnation. This morning between sleeping and waking I saw myself, together with many other persons, walking with Jesus in the fields round about Jerusalem, and while He was speaking to us, a man approached, who looked very earnestly upon Him. And Jesus turned to us and said, "This man whom you see approaching is a seer. He can behold the past lives of a man by looking into his face." Then, the man being come up to us, Jesus took him by the hand and said, "What readest thou?" And the man answered, "I see Thy past, Lord Jesus, and the ways by which Thou hast come." And Jesus said to him, "Say on." So the man told Jesus that he could see Him in the past for many long ages back. But of all that he named, I remember but one incarnation, or, perhaps, one only struck me, and that was _Isaac_. And as the man went on speaking, and enumerating the incarnations he saw, Jesus waved His right hand twice or thrice before his eyes, and said, "It is enough," as though He wished him not to reveal further. Then I stepped forward from the rest and said, "Lord, if, as thou hast taught us, the woman is the highest form of humanity, and the last to be assumed, how comes it that Thou, the Christ, art still in the lower form of man? Why comest Thou not to lead the perfect life, and to save the world as woman? For surely Thou has attained to womanhood." And Jesus answered, "I have attained to womanhood, as thou sayest; and already have I taken the form of woman. But there are three conditions under which the soul returns to the man's form; and they are these:-- "1st. When the work which the Spirit proposes to accomplish is of a nature unsuitable to the female form. "2nd. When the Spirit has failed to acquire, in the degree necessary to perfection, certain special attributes of the male character. "3rd. When the Spirit has transgressed, and gone back in the path of perfection, by degrading the womanhood it had attained. "In the first of these cases the return to the male form is outward and superficial only. This is my case. I am a woman in all save the body. But had My body been a woman's, I could not have led the life necessary to the work I have to perform. I could not have trod the rough ways of the earth, nor have gone about from city to city preaching, nor have fasted on the mountains, nor have fulfilled My mission of poverty and labour. Therefore am I--a woman--clothed in a man's body that I may be enabled to do the work set before Me. "The second case is that of a soul who, having been a woman perhaps many times, has acquired more aptly and readily the higher qualities of womanhood than the lower qualities of manhood. Such a soul is lacking in energy, in resoluteness, in that particular attribute of the Spirit which the prophet ascribes to the Lord when he says, 'The Lord is a Man of war.' Therefore the soul is put back into a man's form to acquire the qualities yet lacking. "The third case is that of the backslider, who, having nearly attained perfection,--perhaps even touched it,--degrades and soils his white robe, and is put back into the lower form again. These are the common cases; for there are few women who are worthy to be women"[79]. (9) Concerning the "Work of Power." You have asked me if the Work of Power is a difficult one, and if it is open to all. It is open to all potentially and eventually, but not actually and in the present. In order to regain power and the resurrection, a man must be a Hierarch; that is to say, he must have attained the _magical_ age of thirty-three. This age is attained by having accomplished the Twelve Labours, passed the Twelve Gates, overcome the Five Senses, and obtained dominion over the Four Spirits of the elements. He must have been born Immaculate, baptised with Water and Fire, tempted in the Wilderness, crucified and buried. He must have borne Five Wounds on the Cross, and he must have answered the riddle of the Sphinx. When this is accomplished he is free of matter, and will never again have a phenomenal body. Who shall attain to this perfection? The Man who is without fear and without concupiscence; who has courage to be absolutely poor and absolutely chaste. When it is all one to you whether you have gold or whether you have none, whether you have a house and lands or whether you have them not, whether you have worldly reputation or whether you are an outcast,--then you are voluntarily poor. It is not necessary to have nothing, but it is necessary to care for nothing. When it is all one to you whether you have a wife or husband, or whether you are celibate, then you are free from concupiscence. It is not necessary to be a virgin; it is necessary to set no value on the flesh. There is nothing so difficult to attain as this equilibrium. Who is he who can part with his goods without regret? Who is he who is never consumed by the desires of the flesh? But when you have ceased both to wish to retain and to burn, then you have the remedy in your own hands, and the remedy is a hard and a sharp one, and a terrible ordeal. Nevertheless, be not afraid. Deny the five senses, and above all the taste and the touch. The power is within you if you will to attain it. The Two Seats are vacant at the Celestial Table, if you will put on Christ. Eat no dead thing. Drink no fermented drink. Make living elements of all the elements of your body. Mortify the members of earth. Take your food full of life, and let not the touch of death pass upon it. You understand me, but you shrink. Remember that without self-immolation, there is no power over death. Deny the touch. Seek no bodily pleasure in sexual communion; let desire be magnetic and soulic. If you indulge the body, you perpetuate the body, and the end of the body is corruption. You understand me again, but you shrink. Remember that without self-denial and restraint there is no power over death. Deny the taste first, and it will become easier to deny the touch. For to be a virgin is the crown of discipline. I have shown you the excellent way, and it is the _Via Dolorosa_. Judge whether the resurrection be worth the passion; whether the kingdom be worth the obedience; whether the power be worth the suffering. When the time of your calling comes, you will no longer hesitate. When a man has attained power over his body, the process of ordeal is no longer necessary. The Initiate is under a vow; the Hierarch is free. Jesus, therefore, came eating and drinking; for all things were lawful to Him. He had undergone, and had freed His will. For the object of the trial and the vow is polarisation. When the fixed is volatilised, the Magian is free. But before Christ was Christ He was subject; and His initiation lasted thirty years. All things are lawful to the Hierarch; for he knows the nature and value of all[80]. This chapter may appropriately terminate with a few remarks in reply to the inevitable question, why our country and language were selected as the place and tongue of the new revelation in preference to all others. It is, as we were enabled to see, because the British people are recognised in the celestial world, as possessing that peculiar quality of soul which, in spite of their many and grievous limitations, has made them to be the foremost witness among the nations to God and the Conscience, in such wise as to constitute them the counterpart of Israel in the modern world. Others besides ourselves have recognised this characteristic. Said Milton, speaking of a crisis which, momentous as it was, pales in presence of that which now is, seeing that Religion itself as Religion was not menaced then as in our time-- "Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of devout and holy men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is beginning to devise some new and great period in His Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He then, but address Himself to His servants, and--as His manner is--first to His Englishmen." To which we may add in reference to the present, "And having by the hands of His Intellectualists, beaten down the false interpretation of His holy Word, accomplishing the work of destruction, is about by the hands of His Intuitionalists, to establish the true interpretation, accomplishing the work of re-construction." Nor are there wanting specific historical facts pointing in the same direction. To Britain it was given by a timely act of revolt against a domination at once foreign and sacerdotal, to rescue the letter of Scripture from suppression and virtual extinction at the hands of an order bent only on exalting itself at whatever cost to truth and humanity. Meanwhile, for three centuries and a half--period suggestive of the mystical "time, times, and half a time,"--Britain has faithfully and lovingly, albeit unintelligently and mistakenly, guarded and cherished the letter thus rescued, even to the erecting of it into a fetish. And it may well be that she has now, for her guerdon, been further commissioned to be the recipient and minister of its interpretation. Moreover, as Mistress of the Sea, the especial symbol of the Soul, she has a prescriptive claim to be the vehicle of the latest and crowning message to earth, of which the Soul herself is at once the source, the subject, and the object. Nor are the universality of her language and the grandeur of her literature elements to be left out of consideration. All things point to her language as destined to become, practically, the language of the world; and hence its peculiar fitness to be the vehicle of that "eternal gospel" which it is declared should, at the end of the age, be proclaimed "unto them that dwell on the earth, even unto every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people." FOOTNOTES: [74] Taste and smell being modes of touch. E.M. [75] _I.e._, the astral and mental part of man, which is accounted a person or system in itself. E.M. [76] The Sacramental bread called by the Hebrews "showbread." [77] See note on p. 122, ante. [78] The names Nyssa, Nysa, Nysas, and Nissi are identical with each other, and also with Sinai, Sion, and those of other sacred mounts. For they all are names for the Mount of Regeneration, the mount or "holy hill" of the Lord, within the man, to be on which is to be in the Spirit. The river Hiddekel has the like import. It is the river of the soul, herself fluidic and called Maria (waters), which, as the receptacle of the divine nucleus, winds about and encompasses the Spirit. Thus Daniel is said to be "on Hiddekel" when under divine illumination. ("The Life of A.K." Vol. I. p. 459.) [79] A.K. was distinctly and positively assured that the incident then shown to her was one that actually occurred, and that she had borne part of it though no record of it survives. S.H.H. [80] This instruction is taken from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I, pp. 424-425. CHAPTER VII. THE PROMULGATION AND RECOGNITION. As will readily be imagined, the interest was intense with which we watched the progress of our work, in order to see whether the crucial event of its promulgation would coincide with the date prophesied for the turning point between the outgoing and the incoming dispensations. The predictions covered a period of six years, namely from 1876 to 1881 inclusive. In this period was to be laid the foundation of a universal kingdom of justice and knowledge, which should constitute the reign of Michael, and spring from a new illumination, one feature of which was to be the "return of the Gods" in 1876. It was in the autumn of this year that they first came to us, and the intimation was given us that the reign of Michael was then actually commencing; we having no knowledge either of the meaning or of the fact of such predictions. For, while the Bible references to Michael were altogether unintelligible to us, we had not learnt to refer the event to any assignable period. The fulfilment of this prediction disposed us to attach value to those which pointed to the year 1881 as that in which our work--supposing our estimate of its significance to be correct--ought to see the light. For our illuminators observed silence respecting times and seasons, contenting themselves with bringing under our notice the books containing the predictions, the application being left to our own perspicacity. We were powerless to influence events, even had we desired to do so. We could but work steadily on, as we did, "without haste, without rest," until my colleague had finished her university course and obtained her diploma. This she accomplished in the summer of 1880, soon after which we returned to England; and in the summer of 1881 we delivered in London, to a private audience, the lectures which constituted the first promulgation of our work. These were published in the following winter under the title of "The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ," our excellent friend at Paris faithfully fulfilling the mission she had accepted in relation to us and our work[81]. Thus were fulfilled exactly all the predictions respecting the dates, the character, and the manner of our work. There were many other coincidences of a kind so remarkable as to make us feel that to ascribe them to accident would require a larger measure of credulity than to ascribe them to design. Among the most striking were those which concerned "Mary's" names, and which were in this wise. When first the significance of the Apocalyptic utterance concerning the river Euphrates and the kings of the East was flashed on my mind, I asked her if she knew that she was mentioned, even to her very name, in the book of Revelation. To which she replied, smiling, that she had known it for some time, but which of her names did I mean? I said that I meant her married surname, which fitted exactly a way made for kings across a river, by the drying up of its waters, namely a _king's ford_; the "Kings of the East," meaning those principles in man whereby he has knowledge of divine things--the East being the mystical expression for the place of the dawn of spiritual light, such as that of which she was the revealer. While the Euphrates means, in the Apocalypse as in Genesis, the highest principle in the fourfold kosmos of man, the Spirit or Will[82]. Only when this principle in man is "dried up," or sublimated by being made one with the divine Will, is man accessible to the divine knowledges brought by the "Kings of the East." As the channel by which these knowledges were being restored to the world, she was the _kings' ford_ implied. She then told me, what I had not yet observed, that her baptismal and maiden names were equally appropriate, as the Latin for the "acceptable year of the Lord," or _good time_, announced as to follow the restoration of the knowledges brought by the Kings of the East, is--allowing for difference of gender--_Annus Bonus_. The coincidence of names did not end here, for we shortly afterwards, in the course of our researches, came upon an old prophecy declaring that the initials of the "Messenger" of the new Avâtar, due at this time, would be A.K.! She further identified the "Kings of the East" as functions of the three principles in man, the Spirit, the Soul, and the Mind; being respectively, right aspiration, which is of the Spirit; right perception, which is of the Soul; and right judgment, which is of the Mind; the combination of which is the necessary and sufficient condition of divine knowledge. Had we been sanguine of a favourable reception of our book by the press at large--which we were not--our disappointment would have been great. But we were by no means prepared either for the gross misrepresentation and even vulgar ribaldry with which it was treated by the few organs in the literary press which noticed it at all, or for the complete neglect of it by that portion of the press which especially concerns itself with religious exegesis. In no instance was any attempt made to exhibit its plan, purpose, and real nature, or any recognition accorded to its luminous solutions of the profound problems dealt with. The very claim to have experiential knowledge of things spiritual was accounted an offence; and it seemed as if the word had gone forth to adopt towards it an attitude which should effectually restrain the public from making its acquaintance, even though it met absolutely the need recognised on all hands as the world's supreme need, and vindicated its claim thereto by the presentation of teachings avowedly of divine derivation and demonstrating their divinity by their intrinsic character to all who are in the smallest degree spiritually percipient. To this day that attitude has never been abandoned or relaxed; and notwithstanding the assiduous endeavours made to counteract its influence, the whole mass of our people, saving only a few select circles, have yet to learn that the longed-for New Gospel of Interpretation has actually been vouchsafed, having been for years in their midst waiting but to be recognised of them,--a "light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehending it not"[83]. In compliance with the injunctions of our illuminators, we had withheld our names from our first edition, in order to secure for it a judgment unbiased by any personal element. But though we ourselves thus escaped the opprobrium attaching to our book, "Mary" was at first inclined to repent of having exposed her pearls to such profanation; and was only reassured by the suggestion that it showed how desperate was the need for precisely the change our work was designed to accomplish, and how exactly was fulfilled the prophecy which foretold the wrath of the dragon and his angels at the advent of the "Woman" Intuition, their destined destroyer, and the consequent shortness of their own time. We knew of course better than to regard such criticism as being in any sense a measure of our work. For us it was, like criticism in general, a measure not of the thing criticised but of the critics themselves. And these, in our case, but truly represented the condition of the age, and knew not what they were doing. Such is the reason why so many will hear for the first time from this book that a New Gospel of Interpretation has been received. To turn to the other and compensating side. With those who were specially qualified to judge, it was far otherwise. And among the most notable of the recognitions received from this quarter was the weighty utterance which appears in the preface to the second and succeeding editions, coming from that veteran student of the "Divine Science," the friend, disciple, and literary heir of the renowned Kabalist and magian, the late Abbé Constant ("Eliphas Levi"), namely, Baron Spedalieri of Marseilles, who though then an entire stranger to us, wrote to us as follows--for I think it may with advantage be reproduced here:-- "As with the corresponding Scriptures of the past, the appeal on behalf of your book is, really, to miracles, but with the difference that in your case they are intellectual ones, and incapable of simulation, being miracles of interpretation. And they have the further distinction of doing no violence to common sense by infringing the possibilities of Nature; while they are in complete accord with all mystical traditions, and especially with the great Mother of these, the Kabala. That miracles such as I am describing are to be found in _The Perfect Way_, in kind and number unexampled, they who are the best qualified to judge will be the most ready to affirm. "And here, _apropos_ of these renowned Scriptures, permit me to offer you some remarks on the Kabala as we have it. It is my opinion-- "(1) That this tradition is far from being genuine, and such as it was on its original emergence from the sanctuaries. "(2) That when Guillaume Postel--of excellent memory--and his brother Hermetists of the later middle age--the Abbot Trithemius and others--predicted that these sacred books of the Hebrews should become known and understood at the end of the era, and specified the present time for that event, they did not mean that such knowledge should be limited to the mere divulgement of these particular Scriptures, but that it would have for its base a new illumination, which should eliminate from them all that has been ignorantly or wilfully introduced, and should re-unite that great tradition with its source by restoring it in all its purity. "(3) That this illumination has just been accomplished, and has been manifested in _The Perfect Way_. For in this book we find all that there is of truth in the Kabala, supplemented by new intuitions, such as present a body of doctrine at once complete, homogeneous, logical and inexpungnable. "Since the whole tradition thus finds itself recovered or restored to its original purity, the prophecies of Postel and his fellow-Hermetists are accomplished; and I consider that from henceforth the study of the Kabala will be but an object of curiosity and erudition, like that of Hebrew antiquities. "Humanity has always and everywhere asked itself these three supreme questions: Whence come we? What are we? Whither go we? Now, these questions at length find an answer, complete, satisfactory, and consolatory, in _The Perfect Way_"[84]. He subsequently wrote:-- "If the Scriptures of the future are to be, as I firmly believe they will be, those which best interpret the Scriptures of the past, these writings will assuredly hold the foremost place among them"[85]. For those who are unacquainted with the Kabala, its origin, nature, and intent, it will be well to state that it represents the transcendental and esoteric doctrine of the Hebrews, as handed down from the remotest times. In recognition of its divine origin, the Rabbins describe it as having been communicated by God, first, to "Adam in Paradise," and, next, to "Moses on Sinai." By which expressions they implied that its doctrine was due to the highest possible illumination. It was also in recognition of this element in our book that Mr. MacGregor Mathers dedicated his learned work, "The Kabala Unveiled," to us, saying-- "I have much pleasure in dedicating this work to the authors of _The Perfect Way_, as they have in that excellent and wonderful book touched so much on the doctrines of the Kabala, and laid such value on its teachings. _The Perfect Way_ is one of the most deeply occult works that has been written for centuries." As the foregoing testimonies represent the _consensus_ of the Kabalists, Hermetists, and other great ancient schools of spiritual science in the West, so the following represents the _consensus_ of the corresponding schools of the East. As will be seen, it involves a coincidence so notable as to point to a source transcending the human and terrestrial, as that of the great spiritual revival which our age is witnessing. That coincidence is in this wise:-- Within two years of the commencement of our collaboration in the work which proved to be that of the restoration of the _Gnosis_ of the West--the divine doctrine of which, as we had come to learn, Christ was the personal demonstration, and the religion called after Him ought to have been the expression; a collaboration was commenced which had for its end the like exposition in regard to the religious systems of the East. This is the collaboration, also of a woman and a man, which had its issue in the Theosophical Society. The two pairs of collaborators worked simultaneously through the succeeding years in entire ignorance of each other and their work, until the commencement of the publication of our results in 1881, at which time the Theosophical Society was still so far from having completed the system of its doctrine, that neither of its two now fundamental tenets had yet been recognised by it, the tenets, namely, of Reincarnation and Karma--its chief text-book, the "Isis Unveiled" of its foundress, not containing them. We, on the contrary, had both of these doctrines, having derived them, as already stated herein, directly from celestial sources and wholly independently of human authority and tradition, of spiritualism, and of our own prepossessions. It was clear, both by this fact and by the avowals of the parties concerned, that up to this time the chiefs of the Theosophical Society had been unable to obtain from those whom they claimed as their masters more than a very meagre instalment of their doctrine. But after the arrival of our book in India this state of things was changed. It was then declared on behalf of the "masters" that we had obtained, from original and independent sources, a system of doctrine substantially identical with that of which they had for ages been, as they supposed, in exclusive possession, but had never been permitted to divulge, as it had always been reserved for initiates. The revelation of it through us, we were further informed, had "forced the hands of the masters," by showing them that the time had come when secrecy was no longer possible, and compelling them, if only in vindication of their own claims, to relax their rule of silence in regard to their mysteries. The coincidence between their doctrine and ours comprised sundry particulars the most recondite, including--besides the two great tenets already named--the multiplicity of principles in the human system, and their separation and respective conditions after death,--a subject lying outside the cognisance of "Spiritualism." Among other points of agreement was that of their recognition of the great antiquity of the soul of "Mary," whom they pronounced to be "the greatest natural mystic of the present day, and countless ages ahead of the great majority of mankind, the foremost of whom--the most civilised--belong to the last race of the fourth round, while she belongs to the first race of the fifth round." In presence of these and other proofs of the possession by the Eastern occultists, of knowledges which we had obtained directly at first hand from celestial sources, we could not but pay respectful heed to the claims of the representatives of the Theosophical Society, and welcome any token which might indicate it as a destined fellow-agent in the great spiritual revival of the age. So might it constitute, with "Spiritualism" and the work represented by us, a threefold power for accomplishing the promotion predicted for this era, of the consciousness of the race to a level which should transcend any yet reached by it as a race. With Spiritualism to represent the phenomenal and personal, Theosophy the philosophical and occult, and our own work the mystical and divine, every region of man's higher nature would find its due recognition and unfoldment. Meanwhile, the organ of the Society in India thus expressed itself respecting "The Perfect Way":-- "A grand book, keen of insight and eloquent in exposition; an upheaval of true spirituality.... We regard its authors as having produced one of the most--perhaps the most--important and spirit-stirring of appeals to the highest instincts of mankind which modern European literature has evolved"[86]. We had a yet further warrant, derived from Scripture itself, for looking to the Theosophical Society as possibly a divinely appointed factor in the spiritual evolution of the time. The unsealing of the World's Bibles was upon us, and not of that of Christendom only. And we saw in the following saying of Jesus an obvious allusion to the present epoch, "In those days many shall come from the East, and the West, and the North, and the South, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." Not that the terms East, West, North, and South, denoted for us the quarters of the physical globe. We had learnt to understand them in their mystical sense, wherein they denote the various human temperaments, the intuitional, the traditional, the intellectual, and the emotional, all of which would find satisfaction in the doctrine then to be recovered. It was in the terms Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that the significance of the utterance lay for us; these being in one aspect the Hebrew equivalents for Brahma, Isis, and Iacchos, and denoting the mysteries respectively of India, Egypt, and Greece, of the Spirit, the Soul, and the Body, and therein of the whole Man. For these mysteries together comprised the perfect doctrine of Existence, called also in Scripture the "Word of God," the "Law and the Prophets," and the "_Theou Sophia_," "Wisdom of God," and "hidden Wisdom," of which the Christ, as the typical Man regenerate, is the fulfilment and personal demonstration. This is to say, they constituted that Gnosis, or Knowledge, with the taking away and withholdment of the key of which Jesus so bitterly reproached, in the Ecclesiasticism of His time, that of all time, and, therefore, that knowledge to the restoration of which, in our day, through the faculty by means of which it was originally obtained and can alone be discerned, the prophecies one and all pointed, as to mark and to make the "time of the end" of the "adulterous," because idolatrous, "generation," hitherto in possession in the Church, and to introduce the "kingdom of God with power." Having warrant so high for anticipating the restoration at this time of the faculties and knowledges represented by the various movements in question, and knowing also, if only by the example of ourselves, that the divinity of a mission is not invalidated by the limitations, real or supposed, of its instruments, but that these must be educated by experience, and in such sense "perfected through suffering" to be fitted for their appointed tasks;--we had no doubt as to the attitude it was our duty to maintain towards all candidates for a share in that which we recognised as the greatest of all the endeavours yet made by the human soul to regain her long-lost rightful dominion over the minds and hearts of men, leaving it to time to determine that which was of divine appointment, and that which was not. It will have been observed that I have used the terms "mystical" and "occult" in such wise as to imply a distinction between them. It is important to the purpose of this book to define and emphasise that distinction. The instructions received by us from our illuminators were explicit and positive on this point. This is because they refer to two different domains of man's system. Occultism deals with transcendental physics, and is of the intellectual, belonging to science. Mysticism deals with transcendental metaphysics, and is of the spiritual, belonging to religion. Occultism, therefore, has for its domain the region which, lying between the body and the soul, is interior to the body but exterior to the soul; while Mysticism has for its domain the region which, comprising the soul and the spirit, is interior to the soul, and belongs to the divine. Of course, the terms themselves, which are respectively the Latin and the Greek for the same thing, and mean hidden from the outer senses and also from non-initiates, do not imply such distinction, but they have come by usage to be thus referable. The following citations are from the teachings received by us in this connection. They account for the scientific part of the training imposed on us. "The science of the Mysteries can be understood only by one who has studied the physical sciences, because it is the climax and crown of all these, and must be learned last and not first. Unless thou understand the physical sciences, thou canst not comprehend the doctrine of _Vehicles_, which is the basic doctrine of occult science. 'If thou understood not earthly things, how shall I make thee understand heavenly things?' Wherefore, get knowledge, and be greedy of knowledge, ever more and more. It is idle for thee to seek the inner chamber, until thou hast passed through the outer. This, also, is another reason why occult science cannot be unveiled to the horde. To the unlearned no truth can be demonstrated. Theosophy is the royal science[87]; if thou would reach the king's presence chamber, there is no way save through the outer rooms and galleries of the palace[88]. "The adept or occultist is, at best, a religious scientist; he is not a 'saint.' If occultism were all, and held the key of heaven, there would be no need of 'Christ.' But occultism, although it holds the 'power,' holds neither the 'kingdom' nor the 'glory,' for these are of Christ. The adept knows not the kingdom of heaven, and 'the least in this kingdom are greater than he.' "'Desire _first_ the kingdom of God and God's righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.' As Jesus said of Prometheus[89], 'Take no thought for to-morrow. Behold the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, and trust God as these,' For the saint has faith; the adept has knowledge. If the adepts in occultism or in physical science could suffice to man, I would have committed no message to you. But the two are not in opposition. All things are yours, even the kingdom and the power, but the glory is to God. Do not be ignorant of their teaching, for I would have you know all. Take, therefore, every means to know. This knowledge is of man, and cometh from the mind. Go, therefore, to man to learn it. 'If you will be perfect, learn also of these.' 'Yet the wisdom which is from above, is above all.' For one man may begin from within, that is, with wisdom, and wisdom is one with love. Blessed is the man who chooseth wisdom, for she leaveneth all things. And another man may begin from without, and that which is without is power. To such there shall be a thorn in the flesh[90]. For it is hard in such case to attain to the within. But if a man be first wise inwardly, he shall the more easily have this also added unto him. For he is born again and is free. Whereas at a great price must the adept buy freedom. Nevertheless, I bid you seek;--and in this also you shall find. But I have shown you a more excellent way than theirs. Yet both Ishmael and Isaac are sons of one father, and of all her children is Wisdom justified. So neither are they wrong, nor are you led astray. The goal is the same; but their way is harder than yours. They take the kingdom by violence, if they take it, and by much toil and agony of the flesh. But from the time of Christ within you, the kingdom is open to the sons of God. Receive what you can receive; I would have you know all things. And if you have served seven years for wisdom, count it not loss to serve seven years for power also. For if Rachel bear the best beloved, Leah hath many sons, and is exceeding fruitful. But her eye is not single; she looketh two ways, and seeketh not that which is above only. But to you Rachel is given first, and perchance her beauty may suffice. I say not, let it suffice; it is better to know all things, for if you know not all, how can you judge all? For as a man heareth, so must he judge. Will you therefore be regenerate in the without, as well as in the within? For they are renewed in the body, but you in the soul. It is well to be baptised into John's baptism, if a man receive also the Holy Ghost. But some know not so much as that there is any Holy Ghost. Yet Jesus also, being Himself regenerate in the spirit, sought unto the Baptism of John, for thus it became Him to fulfil Himself in all things. And having fulfilled, behold, the 'Dove' descended on Him. If then you will be perfect, seek both that which is within and that which is without; and the circle of being, which is the 'wheel of life,' shall be complete in you." The Scriptural allusions in this teaching, which was received by "Mary" under illumination occurring in sleep, proved to be on the lines of the Kabala. There were sundry other tokens of recognition which are entitled to reproduction here, as showing to how wide a range of educated and intelligent opinion within the pale of Christianity our work appeals. Their value is due to their representing a class of minds which, while possessed of the ordinary ecclesiastical training, are not restricted to the knowledge thereby acquired. For, seeing that such training means little, if anything, more than the mechanical learning of what other men have said who, themselves, had no real knowledge, the opinions, expressed on the strength of it, are neither educated nor intelligent, but adoptive only and perfunctory, and represent learning without insight. And as such precisely are the opinions which constitute ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the judgment of the representatives of that orthodoxy on our work possesses no more real value than did that of Caiaphas and his coadjutors on Jesus and His work[91]. Denouncing Him as a blasphemer, they were themselves blasphemers. And inasmuch as they were types of the votaries of ecclesiastical orthodoxy of all time, it is obvious that the only new revelation--if any--which would find acceptance at their hands, would be one that confirmed and reinforced their errors, instead of exposing and correcting them. Proceeding, as was declared by Jesus, from their "father, the devil," a priest-constructed system ever prefers Barabbas to Christ;--prefers, that is, a system which defrauds--hence the force of the term "robber" as applied to Barabbas--man of the divine potentialities which Christ came to reveal to him by demonstrating them in His own person, together with the manner of their realisation. Not that all who bear the title of Ecclesiastics come under this condemnation. In every age of the Church there have been those who, while holding office in it, have not consented to the "Scarlet Woman" of Sacerdotalism. And never was there a time when the proportion of these was larger, or when their sense of the need of a New Gospel of Interpretation was more keen and urgent than now: so intolerable to multitudes of the clergy of all sections of the Church has become the antagonism recognised by them as subsisting between the traditional and official presentation of religion and their own clear perceptions of goodness and truth[92]. The testimonies which remain to be added are valuable as coming from men who, while possessed of ecclesiastical training, have been taught also of the Spirit, and, adding to tradition intuition, and to learning insight, have in themselves the witness to that which they utter. A distinguished French ecclesiastic, the Abbé Roca, writing in _L'Aurore_, says of our books-- "These books seem to me to be the chosen organs of the Divine Feminine" (_i.e._ the interpretative) "Principle, in view of the new revelation of Revelation." By which it will be seen that he shared Cardinal Newman's expectation referred to in the introduction; and accepted as realised the forecast of Joseph de Maistre when he said "Religion and Science, in virtue of their natural affinity, will meet in the brain of some man of genius--perhaps of more than one--and the world will get what it needs and cries for, _not a new religion, but the revelation of Revelation_." As the event shows, for "the brain of some man," he should have said "the mind and soul of a woman." The Rev. Dr. John Pulsford, author of "The Supremacy of Man," "Quiet Hours," "Morgenrothe," and other works distinguished for the depth of their piety and insight, thus wrote to me on the publication of "Clothed with the Sun"-- "I cannot tell you with what thankfulness and pleasure I have read _Clothed with the Sun_. It is impossible for a spiritually intelligent reader to doubt that these teachings were received from _within_ the astral veil. They are full of the concentrated and compact wisdom of the Holy Heavens and of God. If Christians knew their own religion, they would find in these priceless records our Lord Christ and His vital process abundantly illustrated and confirmed. The regret is that so few, comparatively, who read the book, will be aware of the tithe of its pearls. But that such communications are possible, and are permitted to be given to the world, is a sign, and a most promising sign of our age. "It is no little joy to me to feel that I am so much more in sympathy with God's daughter, the Seeress, than I supposed. The testimony is so clearly above, and distinct from, aught that is derived from the occult powers of the universe, rather than from the Supreme Spirit and Father-Mother of our Spirits." Another notable student of spiritual science, a Priest, writing in _Light_ of 21st October, 1882, after describing _The Perfect Way_ as "that most wonderful of all books which has appeared since the beginning of the Christian Era," said:--"It is a book that no student can be without if he will know _the truth_ on these matters. It furnishes us with a master-key to the phenomena which so perplex the minds of enquirers, and gives a system, the like of which has not been seen for eighteen centuries." The late Rev. John Manners, a man venerable of years and mature of spirit, and deeply versed in the sciences of both worlds, declared of these illuminations, "the Great I Am speaks in every line of them. Only the Logos Himself could be their source." Lady Caithness, already referred to, upon receiving a copy of _The Perfect Way_, wrote: "I have got another Bible, the _most complete_ Revelation, _certainly_, that has yet been given to man on this planet"[93]. And a Parsee scholar, a native of India, wrote: "_The Perfect Way_ has made me a much nobler man--a man of tranquility and calmness, due to the knowledge of the philosophy of Being imbibed by me from it, and for which my mind was fortunately prepared"[94]. * * * * * As stated in the preface, this present book is intended but as an epitome and instalment of the far larger book in course of preparation. For, as with the old Gospel of Manifestation, so with the New Gospel of Interpretation, the excusable hyperbole is no less appropriate to it,--"I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books which might be written." For the human soul is a theme as inexhaustible as it is paramount. And, as never in the world's history have the need and the desire for the knowledge of it been so urgent as they now are, so never in the world's history has there been a revelation of it comparable with that which has been vouchsafed in our day, and is contained in the narrative, the completion of which, and this alone, will enable me to "depart in peace," having no apprehension of after disquietude on the score of having left unaccomplished a portion so important of the task committed to me. THE END. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [81] The French edition, subsequently issued at Paris, is also due to her zeal and generosity. See p. 137, ante. [82] For the meaning of the "Four Rivers of Eden" see P. W., vi. par. 6. See note on p. 172, ante as to meaning of river Hiddekel. [83] This indictment is as true to-day as it was twelve years ago, when the above passage was written. S.H.H. [84] Cited from the preface to the second and succeeding editions of "The P. W." [85] Cited from "The Life of A.K." Vol. II. p. 155. [86] The Theosophist, May, 1882. [87] The term Theosophy is here used in its Pauline and ancient sense of the science of the realisation of man's potential divinity;--the process, that is, of the Christ.--1 Cor. ii. 7. E.M. [88] From an address given on the 17th July, 1883, by A.K. to the Theosophical Society, a full report of which is given in "The Life of A.K." Vol. II. pp. 124-128. [89] A term which signifies forethought. The remonstrance is against undue anxiety and alarm on the soul's behalf while in the path of duty, as implying distrust of the divine sufficiency. E.M. [90] Meaning that in such case the flesh itself is the impediment. [91] In a letter on "The Church and the Bible," in the "Agnostic Journal" of 5th January, 1895, E.M. says:-- "Among the fallacies to be discarded is the fallacy which consists in believing that the Church, so vehemently denounced in its own sacred books for its manifold, grievous, and fatal perversions of the truth contained in those books, and so ignorant as to be unaware either of the source or of the meaning of its own dogmas, must understand its doctrines better than I understand them, whose high privilege it is to have been one of the two recipients of the New Gospel of Interpretation, which has been vouchsafed expressly to correct those perversions, and who not only have that gospel by heart, but who know absolutely by my own soul's experience--as also did my colleague--the truth of every word of it." (A long extract from this letter, including the above, is printed in the appendix to B.O.A.I. p. 83.) S.H.H. [92] See also E.M.'s remarks to the same effect in the "Statement E.C.U." pp. 10-11. [93] See Life A.K. Vol. II. pp. 52-53. [94] See Life A.K. Vol. II. p. 241. "SCRIPTURES OF THE FUTURE." Books rapidly coming into use in the Roman, Greek and Anglican communions as the text-books which represent the prophesied restoration of the Ancient Esoteric doctrine which, by interpreting the mysteries of religion, should reconcile faith and reason, religion and science, and accomplish the downfall of that sacerdotal system, which--"making the word of God of none effect by its traditions"--has hitherto usurped the name and perverted the truth of Christianity. Their standpoint is that Christian doctrines, when rightly understood, are necessary and self-evident truths, recognisable as founded in and representing the actual nature of existence, incapable of being conceived of as otherwise, and constituting a system of thought at once scientific, philosophic and religious, absolutely inexpugnable, and satisfactory to man's highest aspirations, intellectual, moral and spiritual. =The Perfect Way;= or The Finding of Christ. By Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Third English Edition, Price 6s. net. =The Life of Anna Kingsford=; by Edward Maitland. A new edition in preparation. =The New Gospel of Interpretation;= being an Abstract of the doctrine and Statement of the objects of The Esoteric Christian Union, founded by Edward Maitland, Nov., 1891. =The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, and of The New Gospel of Interpretation=; by Edward Maitland. Third and enlarged Edition, 228 pp., edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart, Cloth Gilt, Back and Side; Price 3s. 6d. net; Post Free 3s. 10d. The Ruskin Press, Stafford Street, Birmingham. =The Bible's Own Account of Itself=; by Edward Maitland. Second Edition, edited by Saml. Hopgood Hart, complete, with Appendix. Crown 8vo. 96 pp., Stiff Paper Covers, Price 6d.; Post Free 7d,; or in Cloth Covers, Gilt, 1s. 6d. net; Post Free 1s. 8d. The Ruskin Press, Birmingham. All the above Works may be obtained from =_THE RUSKIN PRESS, STAFFORD STREET, BIRMINGHAM._= (_Postages in addition to the above Prices._) =_Some Testimonies of notable profiolents in religious science._= "If the Scriptures of the future are to be, as I firmly believe they will be, those which best interpret the Scriptures of the past, these writings will assuredly hold the foremost place among them.... They present a body of doctrine at once complete, homogeneous, logical and inexpugnable, in which the three supreme questions, Whence come we? What are we? Whither go we? at length find an answer, complete, satisfactory, and consolatory."--BARON SPEDALIERI (_The Kabalist_). "It is impossible for a spiritually intelligent reader to doubt that these teachings were received from within the astral veil. They are full of the concentrated and compact wisdom of the Holy Heavens and of God. If Christians knew their own religion, they would find in these priceless records our Lord Christ and His vital process abundantly illustrated and confirmed. That such communications are possible, and are permitted to be given to the world, in a sign, and a most promising sign, of our age."--REV. DR. JOHN PULSFORD. THE BIBLE'S OWN ACCOUNT OF ITSELF. By EDWARD MAITLAND (_B.A., Cantab_) Author of "The Keys of the Creeds," "The Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation," "The Life of Anna Kingsford," etc.; and Joint Writer with Dr. Anna Kingsford of "The Perfect Way," etc. EDITED BY SAMUEL HOPGOOD HART. =Second Edition, (Complete) with Appendix, PRICE SIXPENCE.= Or in Cloth Covers, gilt, One Shilling and Sixpence. "Now there come out of the darkness and the storm which shall arise upon the earth, two dragons. And they fight and tear each other, until there arises a star, a fountain of light, a queen, who is Esther."--The Vision of Mordecai, as interpreted in "Clothed with the Sun," I., IX. BIRMINGHAM: The Ruskin Press, Stafford St., and all Booksellers. SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF _The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of The New Gospel of Interpretation._ _Literary World_--"A strangely interesting book--very curious--few who have any sympathy with mental phenomena of the 'occult' kind will fail to read it with sustained interest." _Light_--"A psychic history of umblemished veracity and astounding facts--supremely interesting--'full of beauty and perfect simplicity of purpose'--and showing that the 'fig-tree of the inward understanding is no longer barren, but has budded and blossomed and borne fruit.'" _Church Bells, 27th April, 1894_--"Mr. Maitland has written a fascinating book." _The Gentleman's Journal, March, 1894_--"Nothing Mr. Maitland writes would I like to miss--I never study his searching and striking pages without profit." _Agnostic Journal_--"A fascinating volume--the history of a work calculated to effect a fundamental revolution in religion--told in language which leaves nothing to be desired." _The Illustrated Church News, 31st March, 1894_--"This work is to Christians of real interest; for it enables them to study Gnosticism alive and vigorous in the nineteenth century." _Brighouse Gazette_--"One of those really great books associated with the names of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland." _The Unknown World_--"There is no man now known to be living in England who has had such an abundant transcendental experience." RELIGION AND MENTAL PHENOMENA. _From the "Christian Union."_ Whatever may be said in favour or disfavour of Mr. Edward Maitland's "Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation," it is one of the most remarkable and most fascinating books on mental-visional perceptions of Divine Revelation that has appeared at any time. It is a book that carries the reader away from the materialistic to the mystical and spiritual. The author claims to bring to the old revelation a new interpretation, or more correctly, to restore the original and spiritual interpretation which has been lost through literalism. According to the narrative, the two persons concerned were for some years in reception of revelations which convinced them that they had been enabled "to tap a boundless reservoir of wisdom and knowledge" before the method and source were declared to them.... At length it was made clear to them that the knowledges they had acquired were due to intuitional recollection occuring under Divine illumination. "Inborn knowledge and the perception of things--these are the sources of Revelation. The soul of the man instructeth him, having already learned by experience. Intuition is inborn experience, that which the soul knoweth of old and of former lives." The ordinary mind will doubtless be ready to pronounce it to be strange mental phenomena, and nothing more. But surely mental phenomena of an extraordinary character must have an extraordinary use and purpose. And so few persons know enough of the psyhic powers latent in man, to be able to believe in the reality of these manifestations.... The nature of the results is such as to negative all materialistic explanations. For the knowledges recovered are real, solving problems in the profoundest domains of theology, hitherto given up as mysteries hopeless of solution. And they are being thus recognised far and wide by the profoundest students of spiritual science.... Judge the story of the New Gospel of Interpretation in what light we may, it has in it all the evidences of a marvellous work in its mental and spiritual conception, exposition, interpretation, illustration, and Divine communication. It stands out conspicuously as a fuller development of Biblical truth, such as Cardinal Newman must have anticipated when he said that he saw no hope for religion, save in a new Revelation. THE RUSKIN PRESS. STAFFORD STREET, BIRMINGHAM, PRINTERS. * * * * * Transcribers notes: Maintained original spelling and punctuation. Silently corrected obvious typesetting errors. 
44245	----	HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE EVENTS By the same Author. +ARMINELL: A SOCIAL ROMANCE.+ 3 Vols. Cr. 8vo. (_On Nov. 1_). +OLD COUNTRY LIFE.+--With Numerous Illustrations, Initial Letters, &c. Cr. 8vo. (_In October_). +YORKSHIRE ODDITIES.+--New and Cheaper Edition (_In Preparation_). +STRANGE SURVIVALS.+--(_In Preparation_). +HISTORIC ODDITIES.+--Second Series (_In Preparation_). METHUEN & CO. HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE EVENTS BY S. BARING GOULD, M.A. AUTHOR OF "MEHALAH," "JOHN HERRING," ETC. FIRST SERIES LONDON METHUEN & CO. 18 BURY STREET, W.C. 1889 CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE, vii THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BATHURST, 1 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON, 26 GENERAL MALLET, 51 SCHWEINICHEN'S MEMOIRS, 67 THE LOCKSMITH GAMAIN, 83 ABRAM THE USURER, 103 SOPHIE APITZSCH, 121 PETER NIELSEN, 136 THE WONDER-WORKING PRINCE HOHENLOHE, 164 THE SNAIL TELEGRAPH, 185 THE COUNTESS GOERLITZ, 199 A WAX AND HONEY-MOON, 234 THE ELECTRESS' PLOT, 257 SUESS OPPENHEIM, 271 IGNATIUS FESSLER, 294 PREFACE. A reader of history in its various epochs in different countries, comes upon eccentric individuals and extraordinary events, lightly passed over, may be, as not materially affecting the continuity of history, as not producing any seriously disturbing effect on its course. Such persons, such events have always awakened interest in myself, and when I have come on them, it has been my pleasure to obtain such details concerning them as were available, and which would be out of place in a general history as encumbering it with matter that is unimportant, or of insufficient importance to occupy much space. Two of the narratives contained in this work have appeared already in the "Cornhill Magazine," but I have considerably enlarged them by the addition of fresh material; some of the others came out in the "Gentleman's Magazine," and one in "Belgravia." With only two of them--"Peter Nielsen" and "A Wax and Honey-Moon"--are the authorities somewhat gone beyond and the facts slightly dressed to assume the shape of stories. S. BARING GOULD. LEW TRENCHARD, N. DEVON, _July, 1889_. HISTORIC ODDITIES. The Disappearance of Bathurst. The mystery of the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst on November 25, 1809, is one which can never with certainty be cleared up. At the time public opinion in England was convinced that he had been secretly murdered by order of Napoleon, and the "Times" in a leader on January 23, 1810, so decisively asserted this, that the "Moniteur" of January 29 ensuing, in sharp and indignant terms repudiated the charge. Nevertheless, not in England only, but in Germany, was the impression so strong that Napoleon had ordered the murder, if murder had been committed, that the Emperor saw fit, in the spring of the same year, solemnly to assure the wife of the vanished man, on his word of honour, that he knew nothing about the disappearance of her husband. Thirty years later Varnhagen von Ense, a well-known German author, reproduced the story and reiterated the accusation against Napoleon, or at all events against the French. Later still, the "Spectator," in an article in 1862, gave a brief sketch of the disappearance of Bathurst, and again repeated the charge against French police agents or soldiers of having made away with the Englishman. At that time a skeleton was said to have been discovered in the citadel of Magdeburg with the hands bound, in an upright position, and the writer of the article sought to identify the skeleton with the lost man.[1] We shall see whether other discoveries do not upset this identification, and afford us another solution of the problem--What became of Benjamin Bathurst? Benjamin Bathurst was the third son of Dr. Henry Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich, Canon of Christchurch, and the Prebendary of Durham, by Grace, daughter of Charles Coote, Dean of Kilfenora, and sister of Lord Castlecoote. His eldest brother, Henry, was Archdeacon of Norwich; his next, Sir James, K.C.B., was in the army and was aide-de-camp to Lord Wellington in the Peninsula. Benjamin, the third son of the bishop, was born March 14, 1784,[2] and had been secretary of the Legation at Leghorn. In May, 1805, he married Phillida, daughter of Sir John Call, Bart., of Whiteford, in Cornwall, and sister of Sir William Pratt Call, the second baronet. Benjamin is a Christian name that occurs repeatedly in the Bathurst family after the founder of it, Sir Benjamin, Governor of the East India Company and of the Royal African Company. He died in 1703. The grandfather of the subject of our memoir was a Benjamin, brother of Allen, who was created Baron in 1711, and Earl in 1772. Benjamin had three children: a son who died, some years after his father's disappearance, in consequence of a fall from a horse at a race in Rome; a daughter, who was drowned in the Tiber; and another who married the Earl of Castlestuart in 1830, and after his death married Signor Pistocchi. In 1809, early in the year, Benjamin was sent to Vienna by his kinsman, Earl Bathurst, who was in the ministry of Lord Castlereagh, and, in October, Secretary of State for the Foreign Department. He was sent on a secret embassy from the English Government to the Court of the Emperor Francis. The time was one of great and critical importance to Austria. Since the Peace of Pressburg she had been quiet; the Cabinet of Vienna had adhered with cautious prudence to a system of neutrality, but she only waited her time, and in 1808 the government issued a decree by which a militia, raised by a conscription, under the name of the "Landwehr," was instituted, and this speedily reached the number of 300,000 men. Napoleon, who was harassed by the insurrection in the Peninsula, demanded angrily an explanation, which was evaded. To overawe Austria, he met the Emperor Alexander of Russia at Erfurth, and the latter when sounded by Austria refused to have any part in the confederation against Napoleon. England, in the meantime, was urging Austria to cast down the gauntlet. In pledge of amity, the port of Trieste was thrown open to the English and Spanish flags. In December, a declaration of the King of England openly alluded to the hostile preparations of Austria, but the Cabinet at Vienna were as yet undecided as to the course they would finally adopt. The extreme peril which the monarchy had undergone already in the wars with Napoleon made them hesitate. England was about to send fifty thousand men to the Peninsula, and desired the diversion of a war in the heart of Germany. Prussia resolved to remain neutral. Napoleon rapidly returned from Spain, and orders were despatched to Davoust to concentrate his immense corps at Bamberg; Massena was to repair to Strasburg, and press on to Ulm; Oudenot to move on Augsburg, and Bernadotte, at the head of the Saxons, was to menace Bohemia. It was at this juncture that Benjamin Bathurst hurried as Ambassador Extraordinary to Vienna, to assure the Cabinet there of the intentions of England to send a powerful contingent into Spain, and to do all in his power to urge Austria to declare war. Encouraged by England, the Cabinet of Vienna took the initiative, and on April 8 the Austrian troops crossed the frontier at once on the Inn, in Bohemia, in Tyrol, and in Italy. The irritation and exasperation of Napoleon were great; and Bathurst, who remained with the Court, laboured under the impression that the Emperor of the French bore him especial enmity, on account of his exertions to provoke the Austrian Ministry to declaration of war. Whether this opinion of his were well founded, or whether he had been warned that Napoleon would take the opportunity, if given him, of revenging himself, we do not know; but what is certain is, that Bathurst was prepossessed with the conviction that Napoleon regarded him with implacable hostility and would leave no stone unturned to compass his destruction. On July 6 came the battle of Wagram, then the humiliating armistice of Znaim, which was agreed to by the Emperor Francis at Komorn in spite of the urgency of Metternich and Lord Walpole, who sought to persuade him to reject the proposals. This armistice was the preliminary to a peace which was concluded at Schönbrun in October. With this, Bathurst's office at Vienna came to an end, and he set out on his way home. Now it was that he repeatedly spoke of the danger that menaced him, and of his fears lest Napoleon should arrest him on his journey to England. He hesitated for some time which road to take, and concluding that if he went by Trieste and Malta he might run the worst risks, he resolved to make his way to London by Berlin and the north of Germany. He took with him his private secretary and a valet; and, to evade observation, assumed the name of Koch, and pretended that he was a travelling merchant. His secretary was instructed to act as courier, and he passed under the name of Fisher. Benjamin Bathurst carried pistols about his person, and there were firearms in the back of the carriage. On November 25, 1809, about midday, he arrived at Perleberg, with post-horses, on the route from Berlin to Hamburg, halted at the post-house for refreshments, and ordered fresh horses to be harnessed to the carriage for the journey to Lenzen, which was the next station. Bathurst had come along the highway from Berlin to Schwerin, in Brandenburg, as far as the little town of Perleberg, which lies on the Stepnitz, that flows after a few miles into the Elbe at Wittenberge. He might have gone on to Ludwigslust, and thence to Hamburg, but this was a considerable détour, and he was anxious to be home. He had now before him a road that led along the Elbe close to the frontier of Saxony. The Elbe was about four miles distant. At Magdeburg were French troops. If he were in danger anywhere, it would be during the next few hours--that is, till he reached Dömitz. About a hundred paces from the post-house was an inn, the White Swan, the host of which was named Leger. By the side of the inn was the Parchimer gate of the town, furnished with a tower, and the road to Hamburg led through this gate, outside of which was a sort of suburb consisting of poor cottagers' and artisans' houses. Benjamin Bathurst went to the Swan and ordered an early dinner; the horses were not to be put in till he had dined. He wore a pair of grey trousers, a grey frogged short coat, and over it a handsome sable greatcoat lined with violet velvet. On his head was a fur cap to match. In his scarf was a diamond pin of some value. As soon as he had finished his meal, Bathurst inquired who was in command of the soldiers quartered in the town, and where he lodged. He was told that a squadron of the Brandenburg cuirassiers was there under Captain Klitzing, who was residing in a house behind the Town Hall. Mr. Bathurst then crossed the market place and called on the officer, who was at the time indisposed with a swollen neck. To Captain Klitzing he said that he was a traveller on his way to Hamburg, that he had strong and well-grounded suspicions that his person was endangered, and he requested that he might be given a guard in the inn, where he was staying. A lady who was present noticed that he seemed profoundly agitated, that he trembled as though ague-stricken, and was unable to raise a cup of tea that was offered him to his lips without spilling it. The captain laughed at his fears, but consented to let him have a couple of soldiers, and gave the requisite orders for their despatch; then Mr. Bathurst rose, resumed his sable overcoat, and, to account for his nervous difficulty in getting into his furs again, explained that he was much shaken by something that had alarmed him. Not long after the arrival of Mr. Bathurst at the Swan, two Jewish merchants arrived from Lenzen with post-horses, and left before nightfall. On Mr. Bathurst's return to the inn, he countermanded the horses; he said he would not start till night. He considered that it would be safer for him to spin along the dangerous portion of the route by night when Napoleon's spies would be less likely to be on the alert. He remained in the inn writing and burning papers. At seven o'clock he dismissed the soldiers on guard, and ordered the horses to be ready by nine. He stood outside the inn watching his portmanteau, which had been taken within, being replaced on the carriage, stepped round to the heads of the horses--_and was never seen again_. It must be remembered that this was at the end of November. Darkness had closed in before 5 P.M., as the sun set at four. An oil lantern hung across the street, emitting a feeble light; the ostler had a horn lantern, wherewith he and the postillion adjusted the harness of the horses. The landlord was in the doorway talking to the secretary, who, as courier, was paying the account. No one particularly observed the movements of Mr. Bathurst at the moment. He had gone to the horses' heads, where the ostler's lantern had fallen on him. The horses were in, the postillion ready, the valet stood by the carriage door, the landlord had his cap in hand ready to wish the gentleman a "lucky journey;" the secretary was impatient, as the wind was cold. They waited; they sent up to the room which Mr. Bathurst had engaged; they called. All in vain. Suddenly, inexplicably, without a word, a cry, an alarm of any sort, he was gone--spirited away, and what really became of him will never be known with certainty. Whilst the whole house was in amazement and perplexity the Jewish merchants ordered their carriage to be got ready, and departed. Some little time elapsed before it was realised that the case was serious. Then it occurred to the secretary that Mr. Bathurst might have gone again to the captain in command to solicit guards to attend his carriage. He at once sent to the captain, but Mr. Bathurst was not with him. The moment, however, that Klitzing heard that the traveller had disappeared, he remembered the alarm expressed by the gentleman, and acted with great promptitude. He sent soldiers to seize the carriage and all the effects of the missing man. He went, in spite of his swollen neck, immediately to the Swan, ordered a chaise, and required the secretary to enter it; he placed a cuirassier and the valet on the box, and, stepping into the carriage, ordered it to be driven to the Golden Crown, an inn at the further end of the town, where he installed the companions of Bathurst, and placed a soldier in guard over them. A guard was also placed over the Swan, and next morning every possible search was made for the lost man. The river was dragged, outhouses, woods, marshes, ditches were examined, but not a trace of him could be found. That day was Sunday. Klitzing remained at Perleberg only till noon, to wait some discovery, and then, without delay, hurried to Kyritz, where was his commandant, Colonel Bismark, to lay the case before him, and solicit leave to hasten direct to Berlin, there to receive further instructions what was to be done. He was back on Monday with full authority to investigate the matter. Before he left he had gone over the effects of Mr. Bathurst, and had learned that the fur coat belonging to him was missing; he communicated this fact to the civil magistrate of the district, and whilst he was away search was instituted for this. It was the sable coat lined with violet velvet already mentioned, and this, along with another belonging to the secretary, Fisher was under the impression had been left in the post-house. The amazing part of the matter is that the city authorities--and, indeed, on his return, Captain Klitzing--for a while confined themselves to a search for the fur coat, and valuable time was lost by this means. Moreover, the city authorities, the police, and the military were all independent, and all jealous of each other. The military commander, Klitzing, and the burgomaster were in open quarrel, and sent up to headquarters charges against each other for interference in the matter beyond their rights. The head of the police was inert, a man afterwards dismissed for allowing defalcation in the monies entrusted to him. There was no system in the investigation, and the proper clues were not followed. On December 16th, two poor women went out of Perleberg to a little fir wood in the direction of Quitzow, to pick up broken sticks for fuel. There they found, a few paces from a path leading through the wood, spread out on the grass, a pair of trousers turned inside out. On turning them back they observed that they were stained on the outside, as if the man who had worn them had lain on the earth. In the pocket was a paper with writing on it; this, as well as the trousers, was sodden with water. Two bullet holes were in the trousers, but no traces of blood about them, which could hardly have been the case had the bullets struck a man wearing the trousers. The women took what they had found to the burgomaster. The trousers were certainly those of the missing man. The paper in the pocket was a half-finished letter from Mr. Bathurst to his wife, scratched in pencil, stating that he was afraid he would never reach England, and that his ruin would be the work of Count d'Entraigues, and he requested her not to marry again in the event of his not returning. The English Government offered £1,000 reward, and his family another £1,000; Prince Frederick of Prussia, who took a lively interest in the matter, offered in addition 100 Friedrichs d'or for the discovery of the body, or for information which might lead to the solution of the mystery, but no information to be depended upon ever transpired. Various rumours circulated; and Mrs. Thistlethwaite, the sister of Benjamin Bathurst, in her Memoirs of Dr. Henry Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich, published by Bentley in 1853, gives them. He was said to have been lost at sea. Another report was that he was murdered by his valet, who took an open boat on the Elbe, and escaped. Another report again was that he had been lost in a vessel which was crossing to Sweden and which foundered about this time. These reports are all totally void of truth. Mrs. Thistlethwaite declares that Count d'Entraigues, who was afterwards so cruelly murdered along with his wife by their Italian servant, was heard to say that he could prove that Mr. Bathurst was murdered in the fortress of Magdeburg. In a letter to his wife, dated October 14, 1809, Benjamin Bathurst said that he trusted to reach home by way of Colberg and Sweden. D'Entraigues had been a French spy in London; and Mrs. Thistlethwaite says that he himself told Mrs. Bathurst that her husband had been carried off by _douaniers-montés_ from Perleberg to Magdeburg, and murdered there. This it is hard to believe. Thomas Richard Underwood, in a letter from Paris, November 24, 1816, says he was a prisoner of war in Paris in 1809, and that both the English and French there believed that the crime of his abduction and murder had been committed by the French Government. The "European Magazine" for January, 1810, says that he was apparently carried off by a party of French troops stationed at Lenzen, but this was not the case. No French troops were on that side of the Elbe. It further says, "The French Executive, with a view to ascertain by his papers the nature of the relations subsisting between this country and the Austrian Government, has added to the catalogue of its crimes by the seizure, or probably the murder, of this gentleman." If there had been French troops seen we should have known of it; but none were. Every effort was made by the civil and military authorities to trace Bathurst. Bloodhounds were employed to track the lost man, in vain. Every well was explored, the bed of the Stepnitz thoroughly searched. Every suspicious house in Perleberg was examined from attic to cellar, the gardens were turned up, the swamps sounded, but every effort to trace and discover him was in vain. On January 23, 1810, in a Hamburg paper, appeared a paragraph, which for the first time informed the people of Perleberg who the merchant Koch really was who had so mysteriously vanished. The paragraph was in the form of a letter, dated from London, January 6, 1810--that is, six weeks after the disappearance. It ran thus: "Sir Bathurst, Ambassador Extraordinary of England to the Court of Austria, concerning whom a German newspaper, under date of December 10, stated that he had committed suicide in a fit of insanity, is well in mind and body. His friends have received a letter from him dated December 13, which, therefore, must have been written after the date of his supposed death." Who inserted this, and for what purpose? It was absolutely untrue. Was it designed to cause the authorities to relax their efforts to probe the mystery, and perhaps to abandon them altogether? The Jewish merchants were examined, but were at once discharged; they were persons well-to-do, and generally respected. Was it possible that Mr. Bathurst had committed suicide? This was the view taken of his disappearance in France, where, in the "Moniteur" of December 12, 1809, a letter from the correspondent in Berlin stated: "Sir Bathurst on his way from Berlin showed signs of insanity, and destroyed himself in the neighbourhood of Perleberg." On January 23, 1810, as already said, the "Times" took the matter up, and not obscurely charged the Emperor Napoleon with having made away with Mr. Bathurst, who was peculiarly obnoxious to him. In the mean time, the fur coat had been found, hidden in the cellar of a family named Schmidt, behind some firewood. Frau Schmidt declared that it had been left at the post house, where she had found it; and had conveyed it away, and given it to her son Augustus, a fellow of notoriously bad character. Now, it is remarkable that one witness declared that she had seen the stranger who had disappeared go out of the square down the narrow lane in which the Schmidts lived, and where eventually the fur coat was found. When questioned, Augustus Schmidt said that "his mother had told him the stranger had two pistols, and had sent her to buy him some powder. He supposed therefore that the gentleman had shot himself." Unfortunately the conflict of authorities acted prejudicially at this point, and the questions how the Schmidts came to know anything about the pistols, whether Frau Schmidt really was sent for powder, and whether Bathurst was really seen entering the alley in which they lived, and at what hour, were never properly entered into. Whatever information Klitzing obtained, was forwarded to Berlin, and there his reports remain in the archives. They have not been examined. Fresh quarrels broke out between Klitzing and the Burgomaster, and Klitzing instead of pursuing the main investigations, set to work to investigate the proceedings of the Burgomaster. So more time was lost. On Thursday, November 30th, that is to say, five days after the disappearance of Bathurst, Captain Klitzing ordered the town magistrates; 1. To have all ditches and canals round the place examined; 2. To have the neighbourhood of the town explored by foresters with hounds; 3. To let off the river Stepnitz and examine the bed. Then he added, "as I have ascertained that Augustus Schmidt, who is now under arrest for the theft of the fur coat, was _not at home at the time that the stranger disappeared_, I require that this fact be taken into consideration, and investigated"--and this, as far as we can ascertain, was not done; it was just one of those valuable clues which were left untraced. The whole neighbourhood was searched, ditches, ponds, the river bed, drains, every cellar, and garden, and nothing found. The search went on to December 6, and proved wholly resultless. It was not till December 16 that the trousers were found. It is almost certain that they were laid in the Quitzow wood after the search had been given over, on December 6th. As nothing could be proved against the Schmidt family, except that they had taken the fur coat, Frau Schmidt and her son were sentenced to eight weeks' imprisonment. The matter of the pistols was not properly cleared up. That, again, was a point, and an important point that remained uninvestigated. The military authorities who examined the goods of Mr. Bathurst declared that nothing was missing except the fur cloak, which was afterwards recovered, and we suppose these pistols were included. If not, one may be sure that some notice would have been taken of the fact that he had gone off with his pistols, and had not returned. This would have lent colour to the opinion that he destroyed himself. Besides no shot was heard. A little way outside the gateway of the town beyond the Swan inn is a bridge over the small and sluggish stream of the Stepnitz. It was possible he might have shot himself there, and fallen into the water; but this theory will not bear looking closely into. A shot fired there would certainly have been heard at night in the cottages beside the road; the river was searched shortly after without a trace of him having been found, and his trousers with bullet holes made in them after they had been taken off him had been discovered in another direction. The "Moniteur" of January 29 said: "Among the civilised races, England is the only one that sets an example of having bandits[3] in pay, and inciting to crime. From information we have received from Berlin, we believe that Mr. Bathurst had gone off his head. It is the manner of the British Cabinet to commit diplomatic commissions to persons whom the whole nation knows are half fools. It is only the English diplomatic service which contains crazy people." This violent language was at the time attributed to Napoleon's dictation, stung with the charge made by the "Times," a charge ranking him with "vulgar murderers," and which attributed to him two other and somewhat similar cases, that of Wagstaff, and that of Sir George Rumbold. It is very certain that the "Moniteur" would not have ventured on such insulting language without his permission. In April Mrs. Bathurst, along with some relatives, arrived in Perleberg. The poor lady was in great distress and anxiety to have the intolerable suspense alleviated by a discovery of some sort, and the most liberal offers were made and published to induce a disclosure of the secret. At this time a woman named Hacker, the wife of a peasant who lived in the shoe-market, was lying in the town gaol--the tower already mentioned, adjoining the White Swan. She was imprisoned for various fraudulent acts. She now offered to make a confession, and this was her statement: "A few weeks before Christmas I was on my way to Perleberg from a place in Holstein, where my husband had found work. In the little town of Seeberg, twelve miles from Hamburg, I met the shoemaker's assistant Goldberger, of Perleberg, whom I knew from having danced with him. He was well-dressed, and had from his fob hanging a hair-chain with gold seals. His knitted silk purse was stuffed with louis d'ors. When I asked him how he came by so much money, he said, 'Oh, I got 500 dollars and the watch as hush-money when the Englishman was murdered.' He told me no more particulars, except that one of the seals was engraved with a name, and he had had that altered in Hamburg." No credit was given to this story, and no inquiry was instituted into the whereabouts of Goldberger. It was suspected that the woman had concocted it in the hopes of getting Mrs. Bathurst to interest herself in obtaining her release, and of getting some of the money offered to informers. Mrs. Bathurst did not return immediately to England; she appealed to Napoleon to grant her information, and he assured her through Cambacières, and on his word of honour, that he knew nothing of the matter beyond what he had seen in the papers. So the matter rested, an unsolved mystery. In Prussia, among the great bulk of the educated, in the higher and official classes, the prevailing conviction was that Napoleon had caused the disappearance of Bathurst, not out of personal feeling, but in political interests, for the purpose of getting hold of the dispatches which he was believed to be conveying to England from the Austrian Government. The murder was held to be an accident, or an unavoidable consequence. And in Perleberg itself this was the view taken of the matter as soon as it was known who the stranger was. But then, another opinion prevailed there, that Klitzing had secretly conveyed him over the frontier, so as to save him from the spies, and the pursuit which, as he and Bathurst knew, endangered the safety of the returning envoy. In Perleberg two opinions were formed, by such as conceived that he had been murdered, as to the manner in which he had been made away with. Not far from the post-house was at the time a low tavern kept by Hacker, who has been mentioned above; the man combined shoemaking with the sale of brandy. Augustus Schmidt spent a good deal of his time in this house. Now shortly after this affair, Hacker left Perleberg, and set up at Altona, where he showed himself possessed of a great deal of money. He was also said to have disposed of a gold repeater watch to a jeweller in Hamburg. This was never gone into; and how far it was true, or idle rumour, cannot be said. One view was that Bathurst had been robbed and murdered by Hacker and Schmidt. The other opinion was this. Opposite the post-house was a house occupied at the time by a fellow who was a paid French spy; a man who was tried for holding secret communication with the enemy of his Fatherland. He was a petty lawyer, who stirred up quarrels among the peasants, and lived by the result. He was a man of the worst possible character, capable of anything. The opinion of one section of the people of Perleberg was, that Bathurst, before entering the carriage, had gone across the square, and had entered into conversation with this man, who had persuaded him to enter his door, where he had strangled him, and buried him in his cellar. The widow of this man on her death-bed appeared anxious to confess something, but died before she could speak. In 1852 a discovery was made at Perleberg which may or may not give the requisite solution. We may state before mentioning this that Captain Klitzing never believed that Bathurst had been spirited away by French agents. He maintained that he had been murdered for his money. On April 15, 1852, a house on the Hamburg road that belonged to the mason Kiesewetter was being pulled down, when a human skeleton was discovered under the stone threshold of the stable. The skeleton lay stretched out, face upwards, on the black peat earth, covered with mortar and stone chips, the head embedded in walling-stones and mortar. In the back of the skull was a fracture, as if a blow of a heavy instrument had fallen on it. All the upper teeth were perfect, but one of the molars in the lower jaw was absent, and there were indications of its having been removed by a dentist. The house where these human remains were found had been purchased in 1834 by the mason Kiesewetter from Christian Mertens, who had inherited it from his father, which latter had bought it in 1803 of a shoemaker. _Mertens, the father, had been a serving man in the White Swan at the time of the disappearance of Mr. Bathurst._ Inquiry was made into what was known of old Mertens. Everyone spoke highly of him as a saving, steady man, God-fearing; who had scraped together during his service in the Swan sufficient money to dower his two daughters with respectively £150 and £120. After a long illness he had died, generally respected. Information of the discovery was forwarded to the Bathurst family, and on August 23, Mrs. Thistlethwaite, sister of Benjamin, came to Perleberg, bringing with her a portrait of her brother, but she was quite unable to say that the skull that was shown her belonged to the missing man, whom she had not seen for forty-three years. And--no wonder! When Goethe was shown the skull of his intimate friend Schiller he could hardly trace any likeness to the head he remembered so well. Mrs. Thistlethwaite left, believing that the discovery had no connection with the mystery of her brother's disappearance, so ineradicably fixed in the convictions of the family was the belief that he had been carried away by French agents. However, let us consider this discovery a little closer, and perhaps we shall be led to another conclusion. In the first place, the skeleton was that of a man who had been murdered by a blow on the back of his head, which had fractured the skull. It had been stripped before being buried, for not a trace of clothing could be found. Secondly, the house of the Mertens family lay on the Hamburg road, on the way to Lenzen, outside the Parchimer Gate, only three hundred paces from the White Swan. In fact, it was separated from the White Swan only by the old town-gate and prison tower, and a small patch of garden ground. At the time of the disappearance of Mr. Bathurst it was inhabited by Christian Mertens, who was servant at the White Swan. No examination was made at the time of the loss of Bathurst into the whereabouts of Mertens, nor was his cottage searched. It was assumed that he was at the inn waiting for his "vale," like the ostler and the _Kellner_. It is quite possible that he may have been standing near the horses' heads, and that he may have gone on with Mr. Bathurst a few steps to show him the direction he was to go; or, with the pretence that he had important information to give him, he may have allured him into his cottage, and there murdered him, or, again, he may have drawn him on to where by pre-arrangement Goldberger was lying in wait with a hammer or hatchet to strike him down from behind. Considering how uneasy Mr. Bathurst was about the road, and how preoccupied with the idea that French spies and secret agents were on the look-out for him, he might easily have been induced by a servant of the inn where he was staying to go a few steps through the gate, beyond earshot of the post-boy and landlord and ostler, to hear something which the boots pretended was of importance to him. Goldberger or another may have lain in wait in the blackness of the shadow of the gateway but a short distance from the lights about the carriage, and by one stroke have silenced him. It is possible that Augustus Schmidt may have been mixed up in the matter, and that the sable coat was taken off Mr. Bathurst when dead. Again, Mertens was able on the marriage of his two daughters to give one 150_l._ and the other 120_l._ This would mean that Mertens had saved as boots of the Swan at the least 300_l._, for he would not give every penny to his children. Surely this was a considerable sum for a boots in a little inn to amass from his wage and from "vales." Mrs. Thistlethwaite asserts in her Memoirs of Bishop Bathurst that shortly after the disappearance of her brother the ostler--can she mean Mertens?--also disappeared, ran away. But we do not know of any corroborating evidence. Lastly, the discovery of the trousers in the wood near Quitzow points to the traveller having been murdered in Perleberg; the murderers, whoever they were, finding that an investigation of houses, barns, gardens and stables was being made, took the garments of the unfortunate man, discharged a couple of shots through them to make believe he had been fired at by several persons lying in wait for him, and then exposed them in a place away from the road along which Mr. Bathurst was going. The man who carried these garments was afraid of being observed, and he probably did not go through the town with them, but made a circuit to the wood, and for the same reason did not take them very far. The road to Lenzen ran S.W. and that to Quitzow N.W. He placed the trousers near the latter, but did not venture to cross the highway. He could get to the wood over the fields unperceived. Supposing that this is the solution of the mystery, one thing remains to be accounted for--the paragraph in the Hamburg paper dated from London, announcing that Mr. Bathurst was alive and had been heard of since the disappearance. This, certainly, seems to have been inserted with a design to divert or allay suspicion, and it was generally held to have been sent from London by a French agent, on instruction from Paris. But it is possible that the London correspondent may have heard a coffee-house rumour that Bathurst was still alive, and at once reported it to the paper. Its falsehood was palpable, and would be demonstrated at once by the family of the lost man to the authorities at Perleberg. It could not answer the purpose of arresting inquiry and staying investigation. It remains only to inquire whether it was probable that Napoleon had any hand in the matter. What could induce him to lay hands on an envoy? He could not expect to find on the person of Mr. Bathurst any important dispatches, for the war was over, peace with Austria was concluded. He was doubtless angry at Austria having declared war, and angry at England having instigated her to do so, but Mr. Bathurst was very small game indeed on which to wreak his anger; moreover, the peace that had been concluded with Austria gave great advantages to France. He can have had no personal dislike to Bathurst, for he never saw him. When Napoleon entered Vienna, Bathurst was with the Emperor Francis in Hungary, at Komorn. And yet, he may have suspected that Austria was insincere, and was anxious to renew the conflict, if she could obtain assurance of assistance from England. He may have thought that by securing the papers carried to England by Bathurst, he would get at the real intentions of Austria, and so might be prepared for consequences. We cannot say. The discovery of the body in Mertens' house, under the threshold--supposing it to be that of Bathurst, does not by any means prove that the murder was a mere murder for the purpose of robbery. If Napoleon had given instructions for the capture of Bathurst, and the taking from him of his papers, it does not follow that he ordered his murder, on the contrary, he would have given instructions that he should be robbed--as if by highwaymen--and let go with his life. The murder was against his wishes, if he did give orders for him to be robbed. The Bathurst family never doubted that Benjamin had been murdered by the agents of Napoleon. It is certain that he was well aware that his safety was menaced, and menaced at Perleberg. That was why he at once on reaching the place asked for the protection of a guard. He had received warning from some one, and such warning shows that an attempt to rob him of his papers was in contemplation. That caution to be on his guard must have been given him, before he left Vienna. He probably received another before he reached Perleberg, for he appeared before the Commandant in a state of great alarm and agitation. That this was mere spiritual presage of evil is hardly credible. We cannot doubt--and his letter to his wife leads to this conviction--that he had been warned that spies in the pay of the French Government were on the look-out for him. Who the agents were that were employed to get hold of his papers, supposing that the French Government did attempt to waylay him, can never be determined, whether Mertens or Augustus Schmidt. In 1815 Earl Bathurst was Secretary of State for War and the Colonial Department. May we not suspect that there was some mingling of personal exultation along with political satisfaction, in being able to send to St. Helena the man who had not only been the scourge of Europe, and the terror of kings, but who, as he supposed--quite erroneously we believe--had inflicted on his own family an agony of suspense and doubt that was never to be wholly removed? FOOTNOTES: [1] The discovery of a skeleton as described was denied afterwards by the Magdeburg papers. It was a newspaper sensational paragraph, and unfounded. [2] Register of Baptisms, Christchurch, Oxford, 1784, March 14, Benjamin, s. of Henry Bathurst, Canon, and Grace his wife, born, and bap. April 19. [3] When, in 1815, Napoleon was at St. Helena, on his first introduction to Sir Hudson Lowe, he addressed the governor with the insulting words, "Monsieur, vous avez commandé des brigands." He alluded to the Corsican rangers in the British service, which Lowe had commanded. The Duchess of Kingston. Elizabeth Chudleigh, Countess of Bristol and Duchess of Kingston, who was tried for bigamy in Westminster Hall by the Peers in 1776, was, it can hardly be doubted, the original from whom Thackeray drew his detailed portrait of Beatrix Esmond, both as young Trix and as the old Baroness Bernstein; nor can one doubt that what he knew of his prototype was taken from that scandalous little book, "An Authentic Detail of Particulars relative to the late Duchess of Kingston," published by G. Kearsley in 1788. Thackeray not only reproduced some of the incidents of her life, but more especially caught the features of her character. Poor Trix! Who does not remember her coming down the great staircase at Walcote, candle in hand, in her red stockings and with a new cherry ribbon round her neck, her eyes like blue stars, her brown hair curling about her head, and not feel a lingering liking for the little coquette, trying to catch my Lord Mohun, and the Duke of Hamilton, and many another, and missing all? and for the naughty old baroness, with her scandalous stories, her tainted past, her love of cards, her complete unscrupulousness, and yet with one soft corner in the withered heart for the young Virginians? The famous, or infamous, Duchess has had hard measure dealt out to her, which she in part deserved; but some of the stories told of her are certainly not true, and one circumstance in her life, if true, goes far to palliate her naughtiness. Unfortunately, almost all we know of her is taken from unfriendly sources. The only really impartial source of information is the "Trial," published by order of the Peers, but that covers only one portion of her life, and one set of incidents. Elizabeth Chudleigh was the daughter of Colonel Thomas Chudleigh, of Chelsea, and his wife Henrietta, who was his first cousin, the fourth daughter of Hugh Chudleigh, of Chalmington, in Dorset. Thomas was the only brother of Sir George Chudleigh, fourth baronet of Asheton, in Devon. As Sir George left only daughters, Thomas, the brother of Elizabeth, whose baptism in 1718 is recorded in the Chelsea registers, succeeded as fifth baronet in 1738. Unfortunately the Chelsea registers do not give the baptism of Elizabeth, and we are not able to state her precise age, about which there is some difference. Her father had a post in Chelsea College, but apparently she was not born there. There can, however, be little doubt that she saw the light for the first time in 1726, and not in 1720, as is generally asserted. Her family was one of great antiquity in the county of Devon, and was connected by marriage with the first families of the west of England. The old seat, Asheton, lies in a pleasant coombe under the ridge of Haldon; some remains of the old mansion, and venerable trees of the park, linger on; and in the picturesque parish church, perched on a rock in the valley, are many family monuments and heraldic blazonings of the Chudleigh lions, gules on an ermine field. Elizabeth lost her father very early, and the widow was left on a poor pension to support and advance the prospects of her two children. Though narrowed in fortune, Mrs. Chudleigh had good connections, and she availed herself of these to push her way in the world. At the age of sixteen--that is, in 1743--Elizabeth was given the appointment of maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, through the favour of Mr. Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, who had met her one day while out shooting. The old beau was taken with the vivacity, intelligence and beauty of the girl. She was then not only remarkable for her beauty, delicacy of complexion, and sparkling eyes, but also for the brilliancy of her wit and the liveliness of her humour. Even her rival, the Marquise de la Touche, of whom more hereafter, bears testimony to her charms. Pulteney, himself a witty, pungent, and convivial man, was delighted with the cleverness of the lovely girl, and amused himself with drawing it out. In after years, when she was asked the secret of her sparkling repartee, she replied, "I always aim to be short, clear, and surprising." The Princess of Wales, Augusta, daughter of Frederick of Saxe-Gotha, who with the Prince, Frederick Lewis, had their court at Leicester House, became greatly attached to her young maid of honour. The beautiful Miss Chudleigh was speedily surrounded by admirers, among whom was James, sixth Duke of Hamilton, born in 1724, and therefore two years her senior. According to the "Authentic Detail," the Duke obtained from her a solemn engagement that, on his return from a tour on the Continent which he was about to take, she would become his wife. Then he departed, having arranged for a mutual correspondence. In the summer of 1744 she went on a visit to Lainston, near Winchester, to her maternal aunt, Anne Hanmer, who was then living at the house of Mr. Merrill, the son of another aunt, Susanna, who was dead. To understand the relationship of the parties, a look will suffice at the following pedigree.[4] Sir George Chudleigh = Elizabeth, da. of Hugh Fortescue 2nd Bart. | | +---------------------+-----------------------+ | | Hugh Chudleigh = Susanna da. Sir George Chudleigh = Mary da. 2nd surv. son, | Sir R. Stroud. s. & h., 3rd Bart., | R. Lee, d. 1716. | d. 1719. | d. 1710. | | +----------+-----------+ +----------------------+ | | | | | Susanna, Anne, Henrietta = Thomas Chudleigh, Sir George d. 1740, d. 1764, d. 1756. | 2nd son, Chudleigh, m. John m. Wm. | d. before 1734. 4th Bart. Merrill. Hanmer. | d. s. p. | 1738. +-----------+--------------+ | | ELIZABETH, Sir Thomas Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, 5th Bart., d. s. p. 1741. d. 1788. Mrs. Hanmer, a widow, kept house for her nephew, who was squire. At the Winchester races, to which she went with a party, Elizabeth met Lieutenant Hervey, second son of the late John, Lord Hervey, and grandson of the Earl of Bristol. Lieutenant Hervey, who was in the "Cornwall," then lying at Portsmouth, a vessel in Sir John Danver's squadron, was born in 1724, and was therefore two years the senior of Elizabeth; indeed, at the time he was only just twenty. He was fascinated by the beautiful girl, and was invited by Mrs. Hanmer to Lainston. "To this gentleman," says the "Authentic Detail," "Mrs. Hanmer became so exceedingly partial that she favoured his views on her niece, and engaged her efforts to effect, if possible, a matrimonial connexion. There were two difficulties which would have been insurmountable if not opposed by the fertile genius of a female: Miss Chudleigh disliked Captain Hervey, and she was betrothed to the Duke of Hamilton. To render this last nugatory, the letters of his Grace were intercepted by Mrs. Hanmer, and his supposed silence giving offence to her niece, she worked so successfully on her pride as to induce her to abandon all thoughts of the lover, whose passion she had cherished with delight." Is this story true? It seems incredible that Mrs. Hanmer should have urged her niece to throw over such a splendid prospect of family advancement as that offered by marriage with the Duke of Hamilton, for the sake of an impecunious young sailor who was without the means of supporting his wife, and who, at that time, had not the faintest expectation of succeeding to the Earldom of Bristol. It is allowable to hope that the story of the engagement to the Duke of Hamilton, broken through the intrigues of the aunt, is true, as it forms some excuse for the after conduct of Elizabeth Chudleigh. It is more probable that the Duke of Hamilton had not said anything to Elizabeth, and did not write to her, at all events not till later. She may have entertained a liking for him, but not receiving any token that the liking was reciprocated, she allowed her aunt to engage and marry her to young Hervey. That the poor girl had no fancy for the young man is abundantly clear. The Attorney General, in the trial, said that Mrs. Hanmer urged on the match "as advantageous to her niece;" but advantageous it certainly was not, and gave no prospect of being. In August, Augustus John Hervey got leave from his ship and came to Lainston. The house, which had belonged to the Dawleys, had passed into the possession of the Merrills. In the grounds stands the parish church, but as the only house in the parish is the mansion, it came to be regarded very much as the private chapel of the manor house. The living went with Sparsholt. There was no parsonage attached, and though the Dawleys had their children baptized in Lainston, they were registered in the book of Sparsholt. The church is now an ivy-covered ruin, and the mansion is much reduced in size from what it was in the time when it belonged to the Merrills. "Lainston is a small parish, the value of the living being £15 a year; Mr. Merrill's the only house in it, and the parish church at the end of his garden. On the 4th August, 1744, Mr. Amis, the then rector, was appointed to be at the church, alone, late at night. At eleven o'clock Mr. Hervey and Miss Chudleigh went out, as if to walk in the garden, followed by Mrs. Hanmer, her servant--Anne Craddock, Mr. Merrill, and Mr. Mountenay, which last carried a taper to read the service by. They found Mr. Amis in the church, according to his appointment, and there the service was celebrated, Mr. Mountenay holding the taper in his hat. The ceremony being performed, Mrs. Hanmer's maid was despatched to see that the coast was clear, and they returned into the house without being observed by any of the servants." This is the account of the wedding given at the trial by the Attorney General, from the evidence of Anne Craddock, then the sole surviving witness. There was no signing of registers, Mr. Amis was left to make the proper entry in the Sparsholt book--and he forgot to do this. The happiness of the newly-married couple lasted but a few days--two, or at the outside, three; and then Lieutenant Hervey left to rejoin his vessel, and in November sailed for the West Indies. The "Authentic Detail" declares that a violent quarrel broke out immediately on marriage between the young people, and that Elizabeth declared her aversion, and vowed never to associate with him again. So little was the marriage to her present advantage that Elizabeth was unable to proclaim it, and thereby forfeit her situation as maid of honour to the Princess, with its pay and perquisites. Consequently, by her aunt's advice, she kept it concealed. "Miss Chudleigh, now Mrs. Hervey,--a maid in appearance, a wife in disguise,--seemed from those who judge from externals only, to be in an enviable situation. Of the higher circles she was the attractive centre, of gayer life the invigorating spirit. Her royal mistress not only smiled on, but actually approved her. A few friendships she cemented, and conquests she made in such abundance that, like Cæsar in a triumph, she had a train of captives at her heels. Her husband, quieted for a time, grew obstreperous as she became more the object of admiration. He felt his right, and was determined to assert it. She endeavoured by letter to negotiate him into peace, but her efforts succeeded not. He demanded a private interview, and, enforcing his demands by threats of exposure in case of refusal, she complied through compulsion." The Duke of Hamilton returned from the grand tour, and he at once sought Elizabeth to know why his letters had not been answered. Then the fraud that had been practised on her was discovered, and the Duke laid his coronet at her feet. She was unable to accept the offer, and unable also to explain the reasons of her refusal. Rage at having been duped, disappointment at having lost the strawberry leaves, embittered Elizabeth, and stifled the germs of good principle in her. This is the generally received story. It is that given by the author, or authoress, of the "Authentic Detail," usually well informed. But, as we have seen, it is hardly possible to suppose that Mrs. Hanmer can have suppressed the Duke's letters. No doubt she was a fool, and a woman, when a fool, is of abnormal folly, yet she never loses sight of her own interest; and it was not Mrs. Hanmer's interest to spoil the chances of her niece with the Duke. After the Duke of Hamilton had been refused, and his visits to her house in Conduit Street prohibited, the Duke of Ancaster, Lord Howe, and other nobles made offers, and experienced a fate similar to that of his Grace of Hamilton. This astonished the fashionable world, and Mrs. Chudleigh, her mother, who was a stranger to the private marriage of her daughter, reprehended her folly with warmth.[5] To be freed from her embarrassments, Elizabeth resolved to travel. She embarked for the Continent, and visited Dresden, where she became an attached friend of the Electress of Saxony. On her return to England she was subjected to annoyance from her husband. She could not forgive him the deception practised on her, though he was probably innocent of connivance in it. "Captain Hervey, like a perturbed spirit, was eternally crossing the path trodden by his wife. Was she in the rooms at Bath? he was sure to be there. At a rout, ridotto, or ball, there was this fell destroyer of peace, embittering every pleasure and blighting the fruit of happiness by the pestilential malignity of his presence. As a proof of his disposition to annoy, he menaced his wife with an intimation that he would disclose the marriage to the Princess of Wales. In this Miss Chudleigh anticipated him by being the first relater of the circumstance. Her royal mistress heard and pitied her. She continued her patronage to the hour of her death." In 1749, Elizabeth attended a masquerade ball in the dress, or rather undress, of the character of Iphigenia. In a letter of Mrs. Montague to her sister, she says, "Miss Chudleigh's dress, or rather undress, was remarkable, she was Iphigenia for the sacrifice, but so naked, the high priest might easily inspect the entrails of the victim. The Maids of Honour (not of maids the strictest) were so offended they would not speak to her." Horace Walpole says, "Miss Chudleigh was Iphigenia, but so naked that you would have taken her for Andromeda." It was of her that the witty remark was then first made that she resembled Eve in that she was "naked and not ashamed." On May 17th Walpole writes: "I told you we were to have another masquerade; there was one by the King's command for Miss Chudleigh, the Maid of Honour, with whom our gracious monarch has a mind to believe himself in love, so much in love, that at one of the booths he gave her a fairing for her watch, which cost him five-and-thirty guineas, actually disbursed out of his privy purse, and not charged on the civil list. I hope some future Holinshed or Speed will acquaint posterity that five-and-thirty guineas were an immense sum in those days." In December 1750, George II. gave the situation of Housekeeper at Windsor to Mrs. Chudleigh, Elizabeth's mother. Walpole says, "Two days ago, the gallant Orondates (the King) strode up to Miss Chudleigh, and told her he was glad to have the opportunity of obeying her commands, that he appointed her mother Housekeeper at Windsor, and hoped she would not think a kiss too great a reward--against all precedent he kissed her in the circle. He has had a hankering these two years. Her life, which is now of thirty years' standing, has been a little historic. Why should not experience and a charming face on her side, and near seventy years on his, produce a title?" In 1760 she gave a soirée on the Prince's birthday, which Horace Walpole describes: "Poor thing," he writes, "I fear she has thrown away above a quarter's salary!" The Duke of Kingston saw and was captivated by Elizabeth. Evelyn Pierrepoint, Duke of Kingston, Marquis of Dorchester, Earl of Kingston, and Viscount Newark, was born in 1711. Horace Walpole says of him that he was "a very weak man, of the greatest beauty and finest person in England." He had been to Paris along with Lord Scarborough, taking with him an entire horse as a present to the Duke of Bourbon, and was unable to do this without a special Act of Parliament to authorise him. The Duke of Bourbon, in return for the compliment, placed his palace at Paris, and his château of Chantilly at the disposal of the visitor. The Duke was handsome, young, wealthy and unmarried. A strong set was made at him by the young ladies of the French court; but of all the women he there met, none attracted his attentions and engaged his heart but the Marquise de la Touche, a lady who had been married for ten years and was the mother of three children. He finally persuaded her to elope with him to England, where, however, he grew cold towards her, and when he fell under the fascinations of Elizabeth Chudleigh he dismissed her. The Marquise returned to France, and was reconciled to her husband; there in 1786 she published her version of the story, and gave a history of her rival, whom naturally she paints in the blackest colours. Now follows an incident which is stated in the English accounts of the life of Elizabeth Chudleigh; but of which there is no mention in the trial, and which is of more than doubtful truth. She had become desperate, resolved at all hazard to break the miserable tie that bound her to Captain Hervey. She made a sudden descent on Lainston--so runs the tale--visited the parsonage, and whilst Mr. Amis was kept in conversation with one of her attendants, she tore out the leaf of the register book that contained the entry of her marriage. This story cannot possibly be true. As already said, Lainston has no parsonage, and never had. Lainston goes with Sparsholt, half-a-mile off. But Mr. Amis never held Sparsholt, but acted as curate there for a while in 1756 and 1757. Lainston had no original register. What Elizabeth did was probably to convince herself that through inadvertence, her marriage had not been registered in the parish book of Sparsholt. In 1751 died John, Earl of Bristol, and was succeeded by his grandson, George William, who was unmarried. He was in delicate health; at one time seriously ill, and it was thought he would die. In that case Augustus John, Elizabeth's husband, would succeed to the Earldom of Bristol. She saw now that it was to her interest to establish her marriage. She accordingly took means to do so. She went at once to Winchester and sent for the wife of Mr. Amis, who had married her. She told Mrs. Amis that she wanted the register of her marriage to be made out. Mr. Amis then lay on his death-bed, but, nevertheless, she went to the rectory to obtain of him what she desired. What ensued shall be told in the words of Mrs. Amis at the trial. "I went up to Mr. Amis and told him her request. Then Mr. Merrill and the lady consulted together whom to send for, and they desired me to send for Mr. Spearing, the attorney. I did send for him, and during the time the messenger was gone the lady concealed herself in a closet; she said she did not care that Mr. Spearing should know that she was there. When Mr. Spearing came, Mr. Merrill produced a sheet of stamped paper that he brought to make the register upon. Mr. Spearing said it would not do; it must be a book, and that the lady must be at the making of it. Then I went to the closet and told the lady. Then the lady came to Mr. Spearing, and Mr. Spearing told the lady a sheet of stamped paper would not do, it must be a book. Then the lady desired Mr. Spearing to go and buy one. Mr. Spearing went and bought one, and when brought, the register was made. Then Mr. Amis delivered it to the lady; the lady thanked him, and said it might be an hundred thousand pounds in her way. Before Mr. Merrill and the lady left my house the lady sealed up the register and gave it to me, and desired I would take care of it until Mr. Amis's death, and then deliver it to Mr. Merrill." The entries made thus were those: "2 August, Mrs. Susanna Merrill, relict of John Merrill, Esq. buried. 4 August, 1744, married the Honourable Augustus Hervey, Esq., in the parish Church of Lainston, to Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, daughter of Col. Thomas Chudleigh, late of Chelsea College, by me, Thos. Amis." Unfortunately this register book was taken up to Westminster at the trial of the Duchess and was never returned. Application was made to Elbrow Woodcock, solicitor in the trial, for the return of the book, by the then rector and patron of the living, but in vain; and in December, 1777, a new register book was purchased for the parish. The Earl recovered, and did not die till some years later, in 1775, when Augustus John did succeed to the earldom. In 1751, the Prince of Wales died, and this necessitated a rearrangement of the household of the Princess. Elizabeth was reappointed maid of honour to her, still in her maiden name. Soon after--that is, in 1752--the Duke of Hamilton married the beautiful Miss Gunning. In 1760 the king was dead. "Charles Townshend, receiving an account of the impression the king's death had made," writes Walpole, "was told Miss Chudleigh cried. 'What,' said he, 'oysters?'" "There is no keeping off age," he writes in 1767, "as Miss Chudleigh does, by sticking roses and sweet peas in one's hair." Before this, in 1765, the Duke of Kingston's affection for her seeming to wane, Elizabeth, who was getting fat as well as old, started for Carlsbad to drink the waters. "She has no more wanted the Carlsbad waters than you did," wrote Lord Chesterfield. "Is it to show the Duke of Kingston he can not live without her? A dangerous experiment, which may possibly convince him that he can. There is a trick, no doubt, in it, but what, I neither know nor care." "Is the fair, or, at least, the fat Miss Chudleigh with you still? It must be confessed she knows the arts of courts to be so received at Dresden and so connived at in Leicester Fields." At last the bonds of a marriage in which he was never allowed even to speak with his wife became intolerable to Captain Hervey; and some negotiations were entered into between them, whereby it was agreed that she should institute a suit in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London for the jactitation of the marriage, and that he should not produce evidence to establish it. The case came on in the Michaelmas term, 1768, and was in form, proceedings to restrain the Hon. Augustus John Hervey from asserting that Elizabeth Chudleigh was his wife, "to the great danger of his soul's health, no small prejudice to the said Hon. Elizabeth Chudleigh, and pernicious example of others." There was a counter-suit of Captain Hervey against her, in which he asserted that in 1743 or 1744, being then a minor of the age of seventeen or eighteen, he had contracted himself in marriage to Elizabeth Chudleigh, and she to him; and that they had been married in the house of Mr. Merrill, on August 9, 1744, at eleven o'clock at night, by the Rev. Thomas Amis, since deceased, and in the presence of Mrs. Hanmer and Mr. Mountenay, both also deceased. As will be seen, the counter-libel was incorrectly drawn. The marriage had not taken place in the house, but in the church; Mr. Hervey was aged twenty, not seventeen or eighteen; and Anne Craddock, the sole surviving witness of the ceremony, was not mentioned. The register of the marriage was not produced,[6] and no serious attempt was made to establish it. Accordingly, on February 10, 1769, sentence was given, declaring the marriage form gone through in 1744 to have been null and void, and to restrain Mr. Hervey from asserting his claim to be husband to Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, and condemning him in costs to the sum of one hundred pounds. As the Attorney-General said at her subsequent trial, "a grosser artifice, I believe, than this suit was never fabricated." On March 8, 1769, the Duke of Kingston married Elizabeth Chudleigh by special licence from the Archbishop, the minister who performed it being the Rev. Samuel Harper, of the British Museum, and the Church, St. Margaret's, Westminster. The Prince and Princess of Wales wore favours on the occasion. No attempt was made during the lifetime of the Duke to dispute the legality of the marriage. Neither he nor Elizabeth had the least doubt that the former marriage had been legally dissolved. It was, no doubt, the case that Captain Hervey made no real attempt to prove his marriage, he was as impatient of the bond as was she. It can hardly be doubted that the sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court was just. Captain Hervey was a minor at the time, and the poor girl had been deluded into marrying him by her wretched aunt. Advantage had been taken of her--a mere girl--by the woman who was her natural guardian in the absence of her mother. Such a marriage would at once be annulled in the Court of the Church of Rome; it would be annulled in a modern English divorce court. The fortune of the Duke was not entailed; his Grace had, therefore, the option to bequeath it as seemed best to his inclination. His nearest of kin were his nephews, Evelyn and Charles Meadows, sons of Lady Francis Pierrepont; Charles was in 1806 created Earl Manners; he had previously changed his name to Pierrepont, and been created Baron Pierrepont and Viscount Newark in 1796. The Duke was and remained warmly attached to the Duchess. She made him happy. She had plenty of conversation, had her mind stored with gossip, and though old, oldened gracefully and pleasantly. Her bitter enemy--an old servant and confidant, who furnished the materials for the "Authentic Detail," says, "Contrarily gifted and disposed, they were frequently on discordant terms, but she had a strong hold on his mind." On September 23, 1773, the Duke died. The Duchess had anticipated his death. He had already made his will, bequeathing to her the entire income of his estates during her life, subject to the proviso that she remained in a state of widowhood. This did not at all please the Duchess, and directly she saw that her husband was dying she sent for a solicitor, a Mr. Field, to draw up a new will, omitting the obnoxious proviso; she was only by two years on the right side of fifty, and might marry again. When Mr. Field was introduced to the Duke, he saw that the dying man was not in a mental condition capable of executing a will, and he refused to have anything to do with an attempt to extort his signature from him. The Duchess was very angry; but the refusal of Mr. Field was most fortunate for her, as, had the will proposed been executed, it would most indubitably have been set aside. As soon as the Duke was dead the dowager Duchess determined to enjoy life. She had a pleasure yacht built, placed in command of it an officer who had served in the navy, fitted it up with every luxury, sailed for Italy, and visited Rome, where the Pope and the cardinals received her with great courtesy. Indeed, she was given up one of the palaces of the cardinals for her residence. Whilst she was amusing herself in Italy something happened in England that was destined to materially spoil her happiness. Anne Craddock was still alive, the sole witness of her marriage that survived. She was in bad circumstances, and applied to Mr. Field for pecuniary relief. He refused it, but the Duchess sent to offer her twenty guineas per annum. This Anne Craddock refused, and gave intimation to Mr. Evelyn Meadows that she had information of importance which she could divulge. When Mr. Meadows heard what Anne Craddock had to say, he set the machinery of the law in motion to obtain the prosecution of the Duchess, in the hopes of convicting her of bigamy, and then of upsetting the will of the late Duke in her favour. A bill of indictment for bigamy was preferred against her; the bill was found, Mr. Field had notice of the procedure, and the Duchess was advised to return instantly to England and appear to the indictment, to prevent an outlawry. At this time--that is, in 1775--the Earl of Bristol died without issue, and Augustus John, her first husband, succeeded to the title. The anxieties of the Duchess were not confined to the probable issue of the trial. Samuel Foote, the comedian, took a despicable advantage of her situation to attempt to extort money from her. He wrote a farce, entitled "A Trip to Calais," in which he introduced her Grace under the sobriquet of Lady Kitty Crocodile, and stuffed the piece with particulars relative to the private history of the Duchess, which he had obtained from Miss Penrose, a young lady who had been about her person for many years. When the piece was finished, he contrived to have it communicated to her Grace that the Haymarket Theatre would open with the entertainment in which she was held up to ridicule and scorn. She was alarmed, and sent for Foote. He attended with the piece in his pocket. She desired him to read a part of it. He obeyed; and had not read far before she could no longer control herself, but, starting up in a rage, exclaimed, "This is scandalous, Mr. Foote! Why, what a wretch you have made me!" After a few turns round the room, she composed herself to inquire on what terms he would suppress the play. Foote had the effrontery to demand two thousand pounds. She offered him fourteen, then sixteen hundred pounds; but he, grasping at too much, lost all. She consulted the Duke of Newcastle, and the Lord Chamberlain was apprised of the circumstances, and his interference solicited. He sent for the manuscript copy of the "Trip to Calais," perused, and censured it. In the event of its publication she threatened to prosecute Foote for libel. Public opinion ranged itself on the side of the Duchess, and Dr. Schomberg only expressed its opinion when he said that "Foote deserved to be run through the body for such an attempt. It was more ignoble than the conduct of a highwayman." On April 17, 1776, the trial of the Duchess came on in Westminster Hall, and lasted five days. The principal object argued was the admission, or not, of a sentence of the Spiritual Court, in a suit for jactitation of marriage, in an indictment for polygamy. As the judges decided against the admission of such a sentence in bar to evidence, the fact of the two marriages was most clearly proved, and a conviction of course followed. The Duchess was tried by the Peers, a hundred and nineteen of whom sat and passed judgment upon her, all declaring "Guilty, upon mine honour," except the Duke of Newcastle, who pronounced "Guilty, erroneously; but not intentionally, upon mine honour." No sooner did the Duchess see that her cause was lost than she determined to escape out of England. The penalty for bigamy was death, but she could escape this sentence by claiming the benefits of the statute 3 and 4 William and Mary, which left her in a condition to be burnt in the hand, or imprisoned; but she claimed the benefit of the peerage, and the Lord Chief Baron, having conferred with the rest of the judges, delivered their unanimous opinion that she ought "to be immediately discharged." However, her prosecutors prepared a writ "ne exeat regno," to obtain her arrest and the deprivation of her personal property. To escape this she fled to Dover, where her yacht was in waiting, and crossed to Calais, whilst amusing the public and her prosecutors by issuing invitations to a dinner at Kingston House, and causing her carriage to appear in the most fashionable quarters of the town. Mr. Meadows had carried his first point; she could no longer call herself Dowager Duchess of Kingston in England, but she was reinstated in her position of wife to Augustus John Hervey, and was therefore now Countess of Bristol. Mr. Meadows next proceeded to attack the will of the late Duke, but in this attempt he utterly failed. The will was confirmed, and Elizabeth, Countess of Bristol, was acknowledged as lawfully possessed of life interest in the property of the Duke so long as she remained unmarried. Mr. Meadows was completely ruined, and his sole gain was to keep the unhappy woman an exile from England. Abroad the Countess was still received as Duchess of Kingston. She lived in considerable state, and visited Italy, Russia, and France. Her visit to St. Petersburg was splendid, and to ensure a favourable reception by the Empress Catharine she sent her a present of some of the valuable paintings by old masters from Kingston House. When in Russia she purchased an estate near the capital, to which she gave the name of Chudleigh, and which cost her 25,000_l._[7] The Empress also gave her a property on the Neva. She had a corvette built of mahogany which was to be a present to the Empress, but the vessel stranded on the coast of Ingermanland. Eight of the cannons out of her are now at Chudleigh, almost the only things there that recall the Duchess. She gave magnificent entertainments; at one of these, to which the Empress was invited, a hundred and forty of her own servants attended in the Kingston livery of black turned up with red and silver. On her return from Russia she bought an estate at Montmartre, which cost her 9,000_l._, and another that belonged to one of the French royal princes at Saint Assise, which cost her 55,000_l._ The château was so large that three hundred beds could be made up in it. She was getting on in years, but did not lose her energy, her vivacity, and her selfishness. Once in Rome, the story goes, she had been invited to visit some tombs that were famous. She replied with a touch of real feeling: "Ce n'est pas la peine de chercher des tombeaux, on en porte assez dans son coeur." The account of her death shall be given in the words of the author of "Authentic Detail." "She was at dinner, when her servants received intelligence of a sentence respecting the house near Paris having been awarded against her. She flew into a violent passion, and, in the agitation of her mind and body, burst an internal blood-vessel. Even this she appeared to have surmounted, until a few days afterwards, on the morning of the 26th August (1788), when about to rise from her bed, a servant who had long been with her endeavoured at dissuasion. The Duchess addressed her thus: 'I am not very well, but I _will_ rise. At your peril disobey me; I will get up and walk about the room. Ring for the secretary to assist me.' She was obeyed, dressed, and the secretary entered the chamber. The Duchess then walked about, complained of thirst, and said, 'I could drink a glass of my fine Madeira and eat a slice of toasted bread; I shall be quite well afterwards; but let it be a large glass of wine.' The attendant reluctantly brought and the Duchess drank the wine. She then said, 'I knew the Madeira would do me good. My heart feels oddly; I will have another glass.' She then walked a little about the room, and afterwards said, 'I will lie on the couch.' She sat on the couch, a female having hold of each hand. In this situation she soon appeared to have fallen into a profound sleep, until the women found her hands colder than ordinary; other domestics were rung for, and the Duchess was found to have expired, as the wearied labourer sinks into the arms of rest." Was it a touch of final malice or of real regret that caused the old lady, by codicil to her will dated May 10, 1787, to leave pearl earrings and necklace to the Marquise de la Touche? Was it a token that she forgave her the cruel book, "Les aventures trop amoureuses; ou, Elizabeth Chudleigh," which she wrote, or caused to be written, for the blackening of her rival, and the whitewashing of herself? Let us hope it was so. The proviso in the Duke's will saved her from herself; but for that she would have married an adventurer who called himself the Chevalier de Wortha, a man who obtained great influence over her, and finally died by his own hand. Elizabeth Chudleigh's character and career have never been sketched by friends; her enemies, those jealous of her fascinations, angry at her success, discontented with not having been sufficiently considered in her will, have given us their impressions of her, have poured out all the evil they knew and imagined of her. She has been hardly used. The only perfectly reliable authority for her history is the report of her trial, and that covers only one portion of her story. The "Authentic Detail" published by G. Kearsley, London, in 1788, is anonymous. It is fairly reliable, but tinctured by animosity. The book "Les Aventures trop Amoureuses, ou, Elizabeth Chudleigh, ex-duchesse douairière de Kingston, aujourd'hui Comtesse de Bristol, et la Marquise de la Touche. Londres, aux depens des Interessez, 1776," was composed for the justification of Madame de la Touche, and with all the venom of a discomfited and supplanted rival. An utterly worthless book, "Histoire de la vie et des Aventures de la Duchesse de Kingston, a Londres, et se trouve à Paris, Chez Quillot, 1789," is fiction. It pretends to be based on family papers. At the commencement it gives a portion of the diary of Col. Thomas Chudleigh, in which, among other impossibilities, he records his having reduced the rents of his tenants on his estates twenty per cent. because the year was bad. As it happened, Col. Thomas Chudleigh neither possessed an acre of land, nor a tenant. In 1813 appeared "La Duchesse de Kingston, memoires rédigés par M. de Favolle," in two volumes; this is based solely on the preceding with rich additions from the imagination of the author. Not a statement in it can be trusted. Some little reliable information may be found in the "Memoires de la Baronne d'Oberkirch," Paris 1853. FOOTNOTES: [4] In Col. Vivian's "Visitations of the County of Devon," the pedigree is not so complete. He was unaware who the wife of Thos. Chudleigh was, and he had not seen the will of the duchess. [5] Mrs. Chudleigh died in 1756, and her will mentions her daughter by her maiden name. [6] Mr. John Merrill died February 1767, and his burial was entered in it. Mr. Bathurst, who had married his daughter, found the register book in the hall, and handed it over to the rector, Mr. Kinchin. Nevertheless it was not produced at the hearing of the case for jactitation in the Consistory Court. [7] This place still bears the name. It is on the main road through Livland and Esthonia to St. Petersburg; about twenty miles from Narwa. It also goes by the name of Fockenhof. The present mansion is more modern, and belongs to the family of Von Wilcken. General Mallet. On the return of Napoleon to Paris from Moscow, he was depressed with news that troubled him more than the loss of his legions. The news that had reached him related to perhaps the most extraordinary conspiracy that was ever devised, and which was within an ace of complete success. It was the news of this conspiracy that induced him to desert the army in the snows of Russia and hasten to Paris. The thoughts of this conspiracy frustrated by an accident, as Alison says, "incessantly occupied his mind during his long and solitary journey." "Gentlemen," said Napoleon, when the report of the conspiracy was read over to him, "we must no longer disbelieve in miracles." Claude François Mallet belonged to a noble family in the Franche Comté. He was born on June 28th, 1754, at Dole, and passed his early life in the army, where he commanded one of the first battalions of the Jura at the commencement of the Revolution. In May 1793, he was elevated to the rank of adjutant-General, and in August 1799, made General of Brigade, and commanded a division under Championnet. He was a man of enthusiastically Republican views, and viewed the progress of Napoleon with dissatisfaction mingled with envy. There can be no question as to what his opinions were at first; whether he changed them afterwards is not so certain. He was a reserved, hard, and bitter man, ambitious and restless. Envy of Napoleon, jealousy of his success seems to have been the ruling motive in his heart that made of him a conspirator, and not genuine disgust at Cæsarism. Bonaparte knew his political opinions; and though he did not fear the man, he did not trust him. He became implicated in some illegal exactions at Civita Vecchia, in the Roman States, and was in consequence deprived of his command, and sent before a commission of enquiry at Paris, in July 1807; and, in virtue of their sentence, he was confined for a short while, and then again set at liberty and reinstated. In 1808, when the war in the Peninsula broke out, Mallet entered at Dijon into a plot, along with some old anarchists, for the overthrow of the Emperor, among them the ex-General Guillaume, who betrayed the plot, and Mallet was arrested and imprisoned in La Force. Napoleon did not care that conspiracies against himself and his throne should be made public, and consequently he contented himself with the detention of Mallet alone. In prison, the General did not abandon his schemes, and he had the lack of prudence to commit them to paper. This fell into the hands of the Government. The minister regarded the scheme as chimerical and unimportant. The papers were shown to Napoleon, who apparently regarded the scheme or the man as really dangerous, and ordered him to perpetual detention in prison. Time passed, and Mallet and his schemes were forgotten. Who could suppose that a solitary prisoner, without means, without the opportunity of making confederates, could menace the safety of the Empire? Then came the Russian campaign, in 1812. Mallet saw what Napoleon did not; the inevitable failure that must attend it; and he immediately renewed his attempts to form a plot against the Emperor. But the prison of La Force was bad headquarters from which to work. He pretended to be ill, and he was removed to a hospital, that of the Doctor Belhomme near the Barrière du Trône. In this house were the two brothers Polignac, a M. de Puyvert, and the Abbé Lafon, who in 1814 wrote and published an account of this conspiracy of Mallet. These men were Royalists, and Mallet was a Republican. It did not matter so long as Napoleon could be overthrown, how divergent their views might be as to what form of Government was to take the place of the Empire. They came to discussion, and the Royalists supposed that they had succeeded in convincing Mallet. He, on his side, was content to dissemble his real views, and to make use of these men as his agents. The Polignac brothers were uneasy, they were afraid of the consequences, and they mistrusted the man who tried to draw them into his plot. Perhaps, also, they considered his scheme too daring to succeed. Accordingly they withdrew from the hospital, to be out of his reach. It was not so with the others. The Polignacs had been mixed up in the enterprise of Georges, and had no wish to be again involved. Whether there were many others in the plot we do not know, Lafon names only four, and it does not seem that M. de Puyvert took a very active part in it. Mallet's new scheme was identical with the old one that had been taken from him and shown to Napoleon. Napoleon had recognized its daring and ability, and had not despised it. That no further fear of Mallet was entertained is clear, or he would never have been transferred from the prison to a private hospital, where he would be under very little supervision. In his hospital, Mallet drew up the following report of a Session of the Senate, imagined by himself: "SÉNAT CONSERVATEUR "Session of 22 October, 1812. "The Session was opened at 8 P.M., under the presidency of Senator Sieyes. "The occasion of this extraordinary Session was the receipt of the news of the death of the Emperor Napoleon, under the walls of Moscow, on the 8th of the month. "The Senate, after mature consideration of the condition of affairs caused by this event, named a Commission to consider the danger of the situation, and to arrange for the maintenance of Government and order. After having received the report of this Commission, the following orders were passed by the Senate. "That as the Imperial Government has failed to satisfy the aspirations of the French people, and secure peace, it be decreed annulled forthwith. "That all such officers military and civil as shall use their authority prejudicially to the re-establishment of the Republic, shall be declared outlawed. "That a Provisional Government be established, to consist of 13 members:--Moreau, President; Carnot, Vice-President; General Augereau, Bigonet, Destutt-Tracy, Florent Guyot, Frochot; Mathieu Montmorency, General Mallet, Noailles, Truguet; Volney, Garat. "That this Provisional Government be required to watch over the internal and external safety of the State, and to enter into negociations with the military powers for the re-establishment of peace. "That a constitution shall be drawn up and submitted to the General Assembly of the French realm. "That the National Guard be reconstituted as formerly. "That a general Amnesty be proclaimed for all political offences; that all emigrants, exiles, be permitted to return. "That the freedom of the Press be restored. "That the command of the army of the Centre, and which consists of 50,000 men, and is stationed near Paris, be given to General Lecombe. "That General Mallet replaces General Hulin as commandant of Paris, and in the first division. He will have the right to nominate the officers in the general staff that will surround him." There were many other orders, 19 in all, but these will suffice to indicate the tendency of the document. It was signed by the President and his Secretaries. President, SIEYES. Secretaries, LANJUINAIS, et GREGOIRE. "Approved, and compared with a similar paper in my own hands, Signed, MALLET, General of Division, Commandant of the main army of Paris, and of the forces of the First Division." This document, which was designed to be shown to the troops, to the officers and officials, was drawn up in a form so close to the genuine form, and the signatures and seals were so accurately imitated, that the document was not likely at the first glance to excite mistrust. Moreover, Mallet had drawn up an order for the day, and a proclamation, which was printed in many thousand copies. On the 22nd October, 1812, at 10 o'clock at night, after he had been playing cards with great composure in the hospital, Mallet made his escape, along with four others, one was the Abbé Lafon, another a corporal named Rateau, whom he had named as his aide-de-camp. Mallet had just twelve francs in his pocket, and so furnished he embarked on his undertaking to upset the throne of the Emperor. He at once went to a Spanish monk, whose acquaintance he had made in prison; and in his rooms found his general's uniform which had been brought there by a woman the evening before. Uniforms and swords for his confederates were also ready. But it rained that night--it rained in torrents, and the streets of Paris ran with water. It has been remarked that rain in Paris has a very sobering effect on political agitations, and acts even better than bayonets in preventing a disturbance of the public peace. Mallet and his confederates could not leave their shelter till after midnight, and some of them did not appear at the place of rendezvous till 6 o'clock in the morning. Indisputably this had much to do with the defeat of the plot. The success of the undertaking depended on darkness, on the sudden bewilderment of minds, and the paralysis of the government through the assassination of some of the ministers. About 2 A.M. Mallet appeared in his general's uniform, attended by some of his confederates also in uniform, at the Popincour barracks, and demanded to see the Commandant Soulier at once, giving his name as Lamothe. Soulier was in bed asleep. He was also unwell. He was roused from his slumbers, hastily dressed himself, and received a sealed letter, which he broke open, and read: "To the General of Division, Commandant-in-Chief of the troops under arms in Paris, and the troops of the First Division, Soulier, Commandant of the 10th Cohort." "General Headquarters, "Place Vendôme. "23_rd_ Oct., 1812, 10 o'clock a.m. "M. LE COMMANDANT,--I have given orders to the General Lamothe with a police commissioner to attend at your barracks, and to read before you and your Cohort the decree of the senate consequent on the receipt of the news of the death of the Emperor, and the cessation of the Imperial Government. The said general will communicate to you the Order for the Day, which you will be pleased to further to the General of Brigade. You are required to get the troops under arms with all possible despatch and quietness. By daybreak, the officers who are in barracks will be sent to the Place de Grève, there to await their companies, which will there assemble, after the instructions which General Lamothe will furnish have been carried out." Then ensued a series of dispositions for the troops, and the whole was signed by Mallet. When Soulier had read this letter, Mallet, who pretended to be General Lamothe, handed him the document already given, relating to the assembly of the Senate, and its decisions. Then he gave him the Order for the Day, for the 23rd and 24th October. Colonel Soulier, raised from sleep, out of health, bewildered, did not for a moment mistrust the messenger, or the documents handed to him. He hastened at once to put in execution the orders he had received. The same proceedings were gone through in the barracks of Les Minimes, and of Picpus; the decree of the Senate, the Order of the Day, and a Proclamation, were read by torchlight. Everywhere the same success. The officers had not the smallest doubt as to the authenticity of the papers presented to them. Everywhere also the Proclamation announcing the death of the Emperor, the cessation of the Empire, and the establishment of the Provisional Government was being placarded about. At 6 A.M., at the head of a troop, Mallet, still acting as General Lamothe, marched before the prison of La Force, and the Governor was ordered to open the gates. The Decree of the Senate and the Order of the Day were read to him, and he was required at once to discharge three state prisoners he held, General Guidal, Lahorie, and a Corsican, Bocchejampe, together with certain officers there confined. He did as required, and Mallet separated his troops into four detachments, keeping one under his own command, and placing the others under the orders of Guidal, Lahorie and Bocchejampe. Guidal and Lahorie, by his orders, now marched to the Ministry of Police, where they arrested Savary, Duke of Rovigo, Minister of Police. At the same time Boutreux, another confederate, had gone to the prefecture of the Paris police, had arrested the prefect, Pasquier, and sent him to be confined in La Force. Mallet, now at the head of 150 men, went to the État-Major de-la-place, to go through the same farce with the Commandant-de-place, and get him to subscribe the Order for the Day. Count Hullin refused. Mallet presented a pistol at his head, fired, and Hullin fell covered with blood to the ground. Mallet left him for dead, but fortunately only his jaw was broken. By means of a forged order addressed to the commandant of one of the regiments of the paid guard of Paris, he occupied the National Bank, in which, at the time, there was a considerable treasure in specie. The État-Major of Paris was a post of the highest importance, as it was the headquarters of the whole military authority in Paris. Before Mallet approached it, he sent a packet to the Adjutant-General Doucet, of a similar tenor to that given to Soulier and the other colonels, and containing his nomination as general of brigade, and a treasury order for a hundred thousand francs. Soulier, Colonel of the 10th Cohort, obeying the orders he had received, the authenticity of which he did not for a moment dispute, had in the meantime made himself master of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and had stationed a strong force in the square before the building. Frochot, Prefect of the Seine, was riding into Paris from his country house at half-past eight in the morning, when he was met by his servants, in great excitement, with a note from Mallet, on the outside of which were written the ominous words "Fuit Imperator." Now it so happened that no tidings of the Emperor had been received for twenty-five days, and much uneasiness was felt concerning him. When Frochot therefore received this notice, he believed it, and hurried to the Hôtel-de-Ville. There he received a despatch from Mallet, under the title of Governor of Paris, ordering him to make ready the principal apartment in the building for the use of the Provisional Government. Not for a moment did Frochot remember that--even if the Emperor were dead, there was the young Napoleon, to whom his allegiance was due; he at once obeyed the orders he had received, and began to make the Hôtel ready for the meeting of the Provisional Government. Afterwards when he was reminded that there was a son to Napoleon, and that his duty was to support him, Frochot answered, "Ah! I forgot that. I was distracted with the news." By means of the forged orders despatched everywhere, all the barriers of Paris had been seized and were closed, and positive orders were issued that no one was to be allowed to enter or leave Paris. Mallet now drew up before the État-Major-Général, still accompanied and obeyed by the officer and detachment. Nothing was wanting now but the command of the adjutant-general's office to give to Mallet the entire direction of the military force of Paris, with command of the telegraph, and with it of all France. With that, and with the treasury already seized, he would be master of the situation. In another ten minutes Paris would be in his hand, and with Paris the whole of France. An accident--an accident only--at that moment saved the throne of Napoleon. Doucet was a little suspicious about the orders--or allowed it afterwards to be supposed that he was. He read them, and stood in perplexity. He would have put what doubts presented themselves aside, had it not been for his aide-de-camp, Laborde. It happened that Laborde had had charge of Mallet in La Force, and had seen him there quite recently. He came down to enter the room where was Doucet, standing in doubt before Mallet. Mallet's guard was before the door, and would have prevented him from entering; however, he peremptorily called to them to suffer him to pass, and the men, accustomed to obey his voice, allowed him to enter. The moment he saw Mallet in his general's uniform, he recognised him and said, "But--how the devil!-- That is my prisoner. How came he to escape?" Doucet still hesitated, and attempted to explain, when Laborde cut his superior officer short with, "There is something wrong here. Arrest the fellow, and I will go at once to the minister of police." Mallet put his hand in his pocket to draw out the pistol with which he had shot Hullin, when the gesture was observed in a mirror opposite, and before he had time to draw and cock the pistol, Doucet and Laborde were on him, and had disarmed him. Laborde, with great promptitude, threw open the door, and announced to the soldiers the deceit that had been practised on them, and assured them that the tidings of the death of the Emperor were false. The arrest of Mallet disconcerted the whole conspiracy. Had Generals Lahorie and Guidal been men of decision and resolution they might still have saved it, but this they were not; though at the head of considerable bodies of men, the moment they saw that their chief had met with a hitch in carrying out his plan, they concluded that all was lost, and made the best of their way from their posts to places of concealment. It was not till 8 o'clock that Saulnier, General Secretary of Police, heard of the arrest and imprisonment of his chief, Savary, Duke of Rovigo. He at once hastened to Cambaçérès, the President of the Ministry in the absence of the Emperor, and astonished and alarmed him with the tidings. Then Saulnier hastened to Hullin, whom he found weltering in his blood, and unable to speak. Baron Pasquier, released from La Force, attempted to return to his prefecture. The soldiers posted before it refused to admit him, and threatened to shoot him, believing that he had escaped from prison, and he was obliged to take refuge in an adjoining house. Laborde, who about noon came there, was arrested by the soldiers, and conducted by them as a prisoner to the État-Major-Gênéral, to deliver him over to General Mallet; and it was with difficulty that they could be persuaded that they had been deceived, and that Mallet was himself, at that moment, in irons. Savary, released from La Force, had Mallet and the rest of the conspirators brought before him. Soulier also, for having given too ready a credence to the forged orders, was also placed under arrest, to be tried along with the organisers and carriers out of the plot. Mallet confessed with great composure that he had planned the whole, but he peremptorily refused to say whether he had aiders or sympathisers elsewhere. Lahorie could not deny that he had taken an active part, but declared that it was against his will, his whole intention being to make a run for the United States, there to spend the rest of his days in tranquillity. He asserted that he had really believed that the Emperor was dead. Guidal tried to pass the whole off as a joke; but when he saw that he was being tried for his life, he became greatly and abjectly alarmed. Next day the generals and those in the army who were under charge were brought before a military commission. Saulnier had an interesting interview with Mallet that day. He passed through the hall where Mallet was dining, when the prisoner complained that he was not allowed the use of a knife. Saulnier at once ordered that he might be permitted one; and this consideration seems to have touched Mallet, for he spoke with more frankness to Saulnier than he did before his judges. When the General Secretary of Police asked him how he could dream of success attending such a mad enterprise, Mallet replied, "I had already three regiments of infantry on my side. Very shortly I would have been surrounded by the thousands who are weary of the Napoleonic yoke, and are longing for a change of order. Now, I was convinced that the moment the news of my success in Paris reached him, Napoleon would leave his army and fly home, I would have been prepared for him at Mayence, and have had him shot there. If it had not been for the cowardice of Guidal and Lahorie, my plot would have succeeded. I had resolved to collect 50,000 men at Chalons sur Marne to cover Paris. The promise I would have made to send all the conscripts to their homes, the moment the crisis was over, would have rallied all the soldiers to my side." On October 23, the prisoners to the number of twenty-four were tried, and fourteen were condemned to be shot, among these, Mallet, Guidai, Lahorie, and the unfortunate Soulier. Mallet at the trial behaved with great intrepidity. "Who are your accomplices?" asked the President. "The whole of France," answered Mallet, "and if I had succeeded, you yourself at their head. One who openly attacks a government by force, if he fails, expects to die." When he was asked to make his defence, "Monsieur," he said, "a man who has constituted himself defender of the rights of his Fatherland, needs no defence." Soulier put in as an apology, that the news of the death of the Emperor had produced such a sudorific effect on him, that he had been obliged to change his shirt four times in a quarter of an hour. This was not considered sufficient to establish his attachment to the Imperial government. In the afternoon of the same day the fourteen were conveyed to the plain of Grenelle to be shot, when pardon was accorded by the Empress Regent to two of the condemned, the Corporal Rateau, and Colonel Rabbe. When the procession passed through the Rue Grenelle, Mallet saw a group of students looking on; "Young men," he called to them, "remember the 23rd October." Arrived on the place of execution, some of the condemned cried out, "Vive l'empereur!" only a few "Vive la République." Mallet requested that his eyes might not be bandaged, and maintained the utmost coolness. He received permission, at his own desire, to give the requisite orders to the soldiers drawn up to shoot him and his party. "Peloton! Present!" The soldiers, moved by the tragic catastrophe, obeyed, but not promptly. "That is bad!" called Mallet, "imagine you are before the foe. Once again--Attention!--Present!" This time it was better. "Not so bad this time, but still not well," said the General; "now pay attention, and mind, when I say Fire, that all your guns are discharged as one. It is a good lesson for you to see how brave men die. Now then, again, Attention!" For a quarter of an hour he put the men through their drill, till he observed that his comrades were in the most deplorable condition. Some had fainted, some were in convulsions. Then he gave the command: Fire! the guns rattled and the ten fell to the ground, never to rise again. Mallet alone reeled, for a moment or two maintaining his feet, and then he also fell over, without a sound, and was dead. "But for the singular accident," says Savary, "which caused the arrest of the Minister of War to fail, Mallet, in a few moments, would have been master of almost everything; and in a country so much influenced by the contagion of example, there is no saying where his success would have stopped. He would have had possession of the treasury, then extremely rich; the post office, the telegraph, and the command of the hundred cohorts of the National Guard. He would soon have learned the alarming situation in Russia; and nothing could have prevented him from making prisoner of the Emperor himself if he returned alone, or from marching to meet him, if he had come at the head of his shattered forces." As Alison says, "When the news reached Napoleon, one only idea took possession of his imagination--that in this crisis the succession of his son was, by common consent, set aside; one only truth was ever present to his mind--that the Imperial Crown rested on himself alone. The fatal truth was brought home to him that the Revolution had destroyed the foundations of hereditary succession; and that the greatest achievements by him who wore the diadem afforded no security that it would descend to his progeny. These reflections, which seem to have burst on Napoleon all at once, when the news of this extraordinary affair reached him in Russia, weighed him down more than all the disasters of the Moscow retreat." Schweinichen's Memoirs. Memoirs, says Addison, in the Tatler, are so untrustworthy, so stuffed with lies, that, "I do hereby give notice to all booksellers and translators whatsoever, that the word _memoir_ is French for a novel; and to require of them, that they sell and translate it accordingly." There are, however, some memoirs that are trustworthy and dull, and others, again, that are conspicuously trustworthy, and yet are as entertaining as a novel, and to this latter category belong the memoirs of Hans von Schweinichen, the Silesian Knight, Marshal and Chamberlain to the Dukes of Liegnitz and Brieg at the close of the 16th century. Scherr, a well known writer on German Culture, and a scrupulous observer and annotator of all that is ugly and unseemly in the past, says of the diary of Schweinichen: "It carries us into a noble family at the end of the 16th century and reveals boorish meanness, coarseness and lack of culture." That is, in a measure, true, but, as is invariably the case with Scherr, he leaves out of sight all the redeeming elements, and there are many, that this transparently sincere diarist discloses. The MS. was first discovered and published in 1823, by Büsching; it was republished in 1878 at Breslau by Oesterley. The diary extends to the year 1602, and Schweinichen begins with an account of his birth in 1552, and his childish years. But we are wrong in saying that he begins with his birth--characteristic of the protestant theological spirit of his times, he begins with a confession of his faith. As a picture of the manners and customs of the highest classes in the age just after the Reformation it is unrivalled for its minuteness, and for its interest. The writer, who had not an idea that his diary would be printed, wrote for his own amusement, and, without intending it, drew a perfect portraiture of himself, without exaggeration of his virtues and observation of his faults; indeed the virtues we admire in him, he hardly recognised as virtues, and scarcely considered as serious the faults we deplore. In reading his truthful record we are angry with him, and yet, he makes us love and respect him, and acknowledge what sterling goodness, integrity, fidelity and honour were in the man. Hans was son of George, Knight of Schweinichen and Mertschütz, and was born in the Castle of Gröditzberg belonging to the Dukes of Silesia, of which his father was castellan, and warden of the Ducal Estates thereabouts. The Schweinichens were a very ancient noble Silesian family, and Hans could prove his purity of blood through the sixteen descents, eight paternal and eight maternal. In 1559, Duke Frederick III. was summoned before the Emperor Ferdinand I. at Breslau, to answer the accusations of extravagance and oppression brought against him by the Silesian Estates, and was deposed, imprisoned, and his son Henry XI. given the Ducal crown instead. The deposition of the Duke obliged the father of our hero to leave Gröditzberg and retire to his own estates, where Hans was given the village notary as teacher in reading and writing for a couple of years, and was then sent, young noble though he was, to keep the geese for the family. However, as he played tricks with the geese, put spills into their beaks, pegging them open, the flock was then withdrawn from his charge. This reminds us of Grettir the Strong, the Icelandic hero, who also as a boy was sent to drive the family geese to pasture, and who maltreated his charge. His father sent Hans to be page to the imprisoned Duke Frederick at Liegnitz, where also he was to study with the Duke's younger son, afterwards Frederick IV. Hans tells us he did not get as many whippings as his companion, because he slipped his money-allowance into the tutor's palm, and so his delinquencies were passed over. As page, he had to serve the Duke at table. A certain measure of wine was allowed the imprisoned Duke daily by his son, the reigning Duke; what he did not drink every day, Hans was required to empty into a cask, and when the cask was full, the Duke invited some good topers to him, and they sat and drank the cask out, then rolled over on the floor. All night Hans had to sit or lie on the floor and watch the drunken Duke. Duke Frederick took a dislike to the chaplain, and scribbled a lampoon on him, which may be thus rendered, without injustice to the original:-- "All the mischief ever done Twixt the old Duke and his son, Comes from that curs't snuffy one Franconian Parson Cut-and-run." The Duke ordered Hans to pin this to the pulpit cushion, and he did so. When the pastor ascended the pulpit he saw the paper, and instead of a text read it out. The reigning Duke Henry was very angry, and Hans was made the scape-goat, and sent home in disgrace to his father. In 1564, Hans attended his father, himself as page, his father as Marshal, when Duke Henry and his Duchess visited Stuttgard and Dresden. Pages were not then allowed to sit astride a horse, they stood in a sort of stirrup slung to the pommel, to which they held. At Dresden old Schweinichen ran a tilt in a tournament with the elector Augustus and unhorsed him, but had sufficient courtesy to at once throw himself off his own horse, as though he also had been cast by the elector. This so gratified the latter, that he sent old Schweinichen a gold chain, and a double florin worth about 4 shillings to the young one. When Hans was fifteen, he went to the marriage of Duke Wenceslas of Teschen with the daughter of Duke Franz of Saxony, and received from his father a present of a sword, which, he tells us, cost his father a little under a pound. One of the interesting features of this diary is that Hans enters the value of everything. For instance, we are given the price of wheat, barley, rye, oats, meat, &c., in 1562, and we learn from this that all kinds of grain cost one fifth or one sixth of what it costs now, and that meat--mutton, was one eighteenth or one twentieth the present cost. For a thaler, 3 shillings, in 1562 as much food could be purchased as would now cost from 25 to 30 shillings. Hans tells us what pocket money he received from his parents; he put a value on every present he was given, and tells what everything cost him which he give away. In the early spring of 1569 Duke Henry XI. went to Lublin in Poland to a diet. King Sigismund was old, and the Duke hoped to get elected to the kingdom of Poland on his death. This was a costly expedition, as the Duke had to make many presents, and to go in great state. Hans went with him, and gives an infinitely droll account of their reception, the miserable housing, his own dress, one leg black, the other yellow, and how many ells of ribbon went to make the bows on his jacket. His father and he, and a nobleman called Zedlitz and his son were put in a garret under the tiles in bitter frost--and "faith," says Hans, "our pigs at home are warmer in their styes." This expedition which led to no such result as the Duke hoped, exhausted his treasury, and exasperated the Silesian Estates. All the nobles had to stand surety for their Duke, Schweinichen and the rest to the amount of--in modern money £100,000. When Hans was aged eighteen he was drunk for the first time in his life, so drunk that he lay like a dead man for two days and two nights, and his life was in danger. Portia characterised the German as a drunkard, she liked him "very vilely in the morning, when he is sober; and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk. Set a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket: for, if the devil be within, and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge." How true this characterisation was of the old German noble, Schweinichen's memoirs show; it is a record of drunken bouts at small intervals. There was no escape, he who would live at court must drink and get drunken. At the age of nineteen old Schweinichen made his son keep the accounts at home, and look after the mill; he had the charge of the fish-ponds, and attended to the thrashing of the corn, and the feeding of the horses and cattle. Once Hans was invited to a wedding, and met at it four sisters from Glogau, two were widows and two unmarried. Their maiden name was Von Schaben. Hans, aged twenty, danced with the youngest a good deal, and before leaving invited the four sisters to pay his father and him a visit. A friend of his called Eicholz galloped ahead to forewarn old Schweinichen. Some hours later up drove Hans in a waggon with the four sisters; but he did not dare to bring them in till he had seen his father, so he went into the house, and was at once saluted with a burst of laughter, and the shout, "Here comes the bridegroom," and Eicholz sang at the top of his voice an improvised verse: "Rosie von Schaben Hans er will haben." "Where are the ladies?" asked the old knight. "In the waggon outside," answered Hans. "Send for the fiddlers, bring them in. We will eat, drink, dance and be merry," said the old man. But Hans was offended at being boisterously saluted as bridegroom, and he now kept Rosie at a distance. Somewhat later, the Duke tried to get him to marry a charming young heiress called Hese von Promnitz, and very amusing is Hans' account of how he kept himself clear of engagement. When he first met her at court she was aged fourteen, and was passionately fond of sugar. Hans says he spent as much as £3 in our modern money on sweets for her, but he would make no proposal, because, as he concluded, she was too young to be able "to cook a bowl of soup." Two years passed, and then an old fellow called Geisler, "looking more like a Jew than a gentleman," who offered Hese a box of sweets every day, proposed for her. Hese would not answer till she knew the intentions of Hans, and she frankly asked him whether he meant to propose for her hand or not. "My heart's best love, Hese," answered Schweinichen, "at the right time, and when God wills I shall marry, but I do not think I can do that for three years. So follow your own desires, take the old Jew, or wait, as you like." Hese said she would wait any number of years for Hans. This made Hans the colder. The Duke determined that the matter should be settled one way or other at once, so he sent a crown of gold roses to Hans, and said it was to be Hese's bridal wreath, if he desired that she should wear it for him, he was to lay hold of it; Hans thereupon put his hands behind his back. Then he went to his Schweinichen coat-of-arms and painted under it the motto, "I bide my time, when the old man dies, I'll get the prize." This Geisler read, and--says Hans, didn't like. Hans was now installed as gentleman-in-waiting to the Duke, and was henceforth always about his person. He got for his service free bed and board, a gala coat that cost in our modern money about £36, and an every day livery costing £18. His father made him a small allowance, but pay in addition to liveries and keep he got none. The Duke's great amusement consisted in mumming. For a whole year he rambled about every evening in masquerade, dropping in on the burghers unexpectedly. Some were, we are told, pleased to see and entertain him, others objected to these impromptu visits. The special costume in which the Duke delighted to run about the town making these visits was that of a Nun. Hans admits that this was very distasteful to him, but he could not help himself, he was obliged to accommodate himself to the whims of his master. He made an effort to free himself from the service of the Duke, so as to go out of the country to some other court--he felt intuitively that this association would be fatal to his best interests, but the Duke at once took him by his better side, pleaded with him to remain and be faithful to him, his proper master and sovereign, and Hans with misgivings at heart consented. There was at Court an old lady, Frau von Kittlitz, who acted as stewardess, and exercised great influence over the Duke, whom she had known from a boy. The Duchess resented her managing ways, and interference, and was jealous of her influence. One day in 1575 she refused to come down from her room and dine with the Duke unless the old Kittlitz were sent to sit at the table below the dais. This led to words and hot blood on both sides. The Duchess used a gross expression in reference to the stewardess, and the Duke who had already some wine under his belt, struck the Duchess in the face, saying, "I'll teach you not to call people names they do not deserve." Hans, who was present, threw himself between the angry couple; the Duke stormed and struck about. Hans entreated the Duchess to retire, and then he stood in her door and prevented the Duke following, though he shouted, "She is my wife, I can serve her as I like. Who are you to poke yourself in between married folk?" As soon as the Duchess had locked herself in, Hans escaped and fled; but an hour after the Duke sent for him, and stormed at him again for his meddlesomeness. Hans entreated the Duke to be quiet and get reconciled to the Duchess, but he would not hear of it, and dismissed Schweinichen. A quarter of an hour later another messenger came from his master, and Hans returned to him, to find him in a better mood. "Hans," said his Highness, "try if you can't get my wife to come round and come down to table--all fun is at an end with this." Hans went up and was admitted. The Duchess, in a towering rage, had already written a letter to her brother the Margrave of Anspach, telling him how her husband had struck her in the face and given her a black eye, and she had already dispatched a messenger with the letter. After much arguing, Hans wrung from her her consent to come down, on two conditions, one that the Duke should visit her at once and beg her pardon, the other that the old Kittlitz should sit at the table with the pages. The Duke was now in a yielding mood and ate his leek humbly. The Duchess consented to tell the Court that she had got her black eye from striking her face against a lamp, and the Duke ordered ten trumpeters and a kettledrum to make all the noise they could to celebrate the reconciliation. The Duchess in an aside to Schweinichen admitted that she had been rash and unjust, and regretted having sent off that letter. An unlucky letter--says our author--for it cost the duchy untold gold and years of trouble. The Duke had made several visits to Poland, chasing that Jack o' lantern--the Polish crown, and it had cost him so much money that he had quarrelled with his Estates, bullied and oppressed his subjects to extort money, and at last the Estates appealed to the Emperor against him, as they had against his father; and the Emperor summoned him to Prague. The Duke had great difficulty in scraping together money enough to convey him so far; and on reaching Prague, he begged permission of the Kaiser to be allowed to visit the Electors and the Free Cities, and see whether he could not obtain from them some relief from his embarrassments, and money wherewith to pacify the angry Estates of the Silesian Duchy. The consent required was given, and then the Duke with his faithful Schweinichen, and several other retainers, started on a grand begging and borrowing round of the Empire. Hans was constituted treasurer, and he had in his purse about £400. The Duke took with him five squires, two pages, three serving men, a cook, and several kitchen boys, one carriage drawn by six horses, another by four. And not only was this train to make the round of the Empire, but also to visit Italy--and all on £400. The first visit was paid, three days' journey from Prague, at Theusing to a half-sister of the Duchess. She received him coolly, and lectured him on his conduct to his wife. When the Duke asked her to lend him money, she answered that she would pay his expenses home, if he chose to go back to Liegnitz, but not one penny otherwise should he have. Not content with this refusal, the Duke went on to Nurnberg, where he sent Hans to the town council to invite them to lend him money; he asked for 4,000 florins. The council declined the honour. The two daughters of the Duke were in the charge of the Margrave of Anspach, their mother's brother. The Duke sent Hans to Anspach to urge the Margrave to send the little girls to him, or invite him to visit Anspach to see them. He was shy of visiting his brother-in-law uninvited, because of the box in the ear and the black eye. He confided to Hans that if he got his children at Nurnberg, he would not return them to their uncle, without a loan or a honorarium. This shabby transaction was not to Schweinichen's taste, but he was obliged to undertake it. It proved unsuccessful, the Margrave refused to give up the children till the Duke returned to his wife and duchy and set a better example. Whilst Hans was away, the Duke won a large sum of money at play, enough to pay his own bill, but instead of doing this with it, he had it melted up and made into silver cups. When he came to leave Nurnberg he was unable to pay his inn bill, and obliged to leave in pawn with the taverner a valuable jewel. Then he and his suite went to Augsburg and settled into an inn till the town council could agree to lend him money. One day, whilst there, Hans was invited to a wedding. The Duke wanted to go also, but, as he was not invited, he went as Hans' servant, but got so drunk that Hans was obliged to carry him home to the tavern, after which he returned to the wedding. In the evening, when dancing began, the Duke reappeared, he had slept off his drunkenness and was fresh for more entertainment. He was now recognized, and according to etiquette, two town councillors, in robes of office and gold chains, danced solemnly before his Highness. Hans tells us that it was customary for all dances to be led by two persons habited in scarlet with white sleeves, and these called the dance and set the figures, no one might execute any figure or do anything which had not been done by the leaders. Now as Hans vows he never saw so many pretty girls anywhere as on that evening, he tipped the leaders with half a thaler to kiss each other, whereupon the two solemn dancing councillors had also to kiss each other, and the Duke, nothing loth, his partner, and Hans, with zest, his. That evening he gave plenty of kisses, and what with the many lights, and the music and the dancing and the pretty girls he thought himself in Paradise. Shortly after this, the Duke was invited to dine with Fugger, the merchant prince, who showed him his treasury, gold to the worth of a million, and one tower lined within from top half way down with nothing but silver thalers. The Duke's mouth watered, and he graciously invited Fugger to lend him £5,000; this the merchant declined, but made him a present of 200 crowns and a good horse. The town council consented to lend the Duke £1,200 on his I.O.U. for a year; and then to pay his host he melted up his silver mugs again, pawned his plate and gave him a promissory note for two months. From Augsburg the Duke went about the abbeys, trying to squeeze loans out of the abbots, but found that they had always the excuse ready, that they would not lend to Lutheran princes. Then he stuck on in the abbeys, eating up all their provisions and rioting in their guest-apartments, till the abbots were fain to make him a present to be rid of him. All at once an opening offered for the Duke to gain both renown and money. Henry I. of Condé was at the court of the Elector Palatine at Heidelsberg, soliciting assistance in behalf of the Huguenots against the King of France. The Elector agreed to send a force under his son John Casimir, and the Duke of Liegnitz offered his services, which were readily accepted. He was to lead the rearguard, and to receive a liberal pay for his services. Whilst he was collecting this force and getting underway, John Casimir and the Prince of Condé marched through Lorraine to Metz, and Hans went with John Casimir. He trusted he was now on his way to fortune. But it was not so to be. The Duke, his master, insisted that he should return to him, and Hans, on doing so, found him rioting and gambling away, at Frankfort and Nassau, the money paid him in advance for his useless services. Almost the first duty imposed on Hans, on his return, was to negociate a loan for £5,000 with the magistrates of Frankfort, which was peremptorily refused; whereupon the Duke went to Cologne and stayed there seven months, endeavouring to cajole the town council there into advancing him money. But we can not follow any further the miserable story of the degradation of the Silesian Duke, till at the beginning of the new year, 1577, the Duke ran away from the town of Emmerich, leaving his servants to pay his debts as best they could. Hans sold the horses and whatever was left, and then, not sorry to be quit of such a master, returned on foot to his Silesian home. It is, perhaps, worth while quoting Duke Henry's letter, which Hans found in the morning announcing his master's evasion. "Dear Hans,--Here is a chain, do what you can with it. Weigh it and sell it, also the horses for ready money; I will not pillow my head in feathers till, by God's help, I have got some money, to enable me to clear out of this vile land, and away from these people. Good morning, best-loved Hans. "With mine own hand, HENRY, DUKE." As he neared home, sad news reached Hans. The Ducal creditors had come down on his father, who had made himself responsible, and had seized the family estates; whereat the old man's heart broke, and he had died in January. When Hans heard this, he sat for two hours on a stone beside the road, utterly unmanned, before he could recover himself sufficiently to pursue his journey. In the meantime an Imperial commission had sat on the Duke, deposed him, and appointed his brother Frederick duke in his room. Schweinichen's fidelity to Duke Henry ensured his disfavour with Duke Frederick, and he was not summoned to court, but was left quietly at Mertschütz to do his best along with his brother to bring the family affairs into some sort of order. His old master did not, however, allow him much rest. By the Imperial decision, he was to be provided with a daily allowance of money, food and wine. This drew Duke Henry home, and no sooner was he back in Silesia than he insisted on Hans returning to his service, and for some years more he led the faithful soul a troubled life, and involved him in miserable pecuniary perplexities. This was the more trying to Hans as he had now fallen in love with Margaret von Schellendorff, whom he married eventually. The tenderness and goodness of Schweinichen's heart break out whenever he speaks of his dear Margaretta, and of the children which came and were taken from him. His sorrows as he lingered over the sick-beds of his little ones, and the closeness with which he was drawn by domestic bereavements and pecuniary distresses, to his Margaretta, come out clearly in his narrative. The whole story is far too long to tell in its entirety. Hans was a voluminous diarist. His memoirs cease at the year 1602, when he was suffering from gout, but he lived on some years longer. In the church of S. John at Liegnitz was at one time his monument, with life-sized figure of Hans von Schweinichen, and above it his banner and an inscription stating that he died on the 23rd Aug., 1616. Alas! the hand of the destroyer has been there. The church and monument are destroyed, and we can no longer see what manner of face Hans wore; but of the inner man, of a good, faithful, God fearing, and loving soul, strong and true, he has himself left us the most accurate portrait in his precious memoirs. The Locksmith Gamain. Among the many episodes of the French Revolution there is one which deserves to be somewhat closely examined, because of the gravity of the accusation which it involves against the King and Queen, and because a good deal of controversy has raged round it. The episode is that of the locksmith Gamain, whom the King and Queen are charged with having attempted to poison. That the accusation was believed during "the Terror" goes without saying; the heated heads and angry hearts at that time were in no condition to sift evidence with impartiality. Afterwards, the charge was regarded as preposterous, till the late M. Paul Lacroix--better known as le Bibliophile Jacob--a student of history, very careful and diligent as a collector, gave it a new spell of life in 1836, when he reformulated the accusation in a _feuilleton_ of the _Siècle_. Not content to let it sleep or die in the ephemeral pages of a newspaper, he republished the whole story in 1838, in his "Dissertations sur quelques points curieux de l'histoire de France." This he again reproduced in his "Curiosités de l'histoire de France," in 1858. M. Louis Blanc, convinced that the case was made out, has reasserted the charge in his work on the French Revolution, and it has since been accepted by popular writers--as Décembre-Alonnier--who seek to justify the execution of the King and Queen, and to glorify the Revolution. M. Thiers rejected the accusation; M. Eckard pointed out the improbabilities in the story in the "Biographie Universelle," and M. Mortimer-Ternaux has also shown its falsity in his "Histoire de la Terreur;" and finally, M. Le Roy, librarian of Versailles, in 1867, devoted his special attention to it, and completely disproved the poisoning of Gamain. But in spite of disproval the slanderous accusation does not die, and no doubt is still largely believed in Paris. So tenacious of life is a lie--like the bacteria that can be steeped in sulphuric acid without destroying their vitality--that the story has been again recently raked up, and given to the public, from Lacroix, in a number of the Cornhill Magazine (December, 1887); the writer of course knew only Lacroix' myth, and had never seen how it had been disproved. It is well now to review the whole story. François Gamain was born at Versailles on August 29, 1751. He belonged to an hereditary locksmith family. His father Nicolas had been in the same trade, and had charge of the locks in the royal palaces in Versailles and elsewhere. The love of Louis XVI. for mechanical works is well known. He had a little workshop at Versailles, where he amused himself making locks, assisted by François Gamain, to whom he was much attached, and with whom he spent many hours in projecting and executing mechanical contrivances. The story is told of the Intendant Thierry, that when one day the King showed him a lock he had made, he replied, "Sire, when kings occupy themselves with the works of the common people, the common people will assume the functions of kings," but the _mot_ was probably made after the fact. After the terrible days of the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, the King was brought to Paris. Gamain remained at Versailles, which was his home, and retained the King's full confidence. When, later, the King was surrounded by enemies, and he felt the necessity for having some secret place where he could conceal papers of importance which might yet fall into the hands of the rabble if the palace was again invaded, as it had been at Versailles, he sent for Gamain to make for him an iron chest in a place of concealment, that could only be opened by one knowing the secret of the lock. Unfortunately, the man was not as trustworthy as Louis XVI. supposed. Surrounded by those who had adopted the principles of the Revolution, and being a man without strong mind, he followed the current, and in 1792 he was nominated member of the Council General of the Commune of Versailles, and on September 24 he was one of the commissioners appointed "to cause to disappear all such paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions from the monuments of the Commune as might serve to recall royalty and despotism." The records of the debates of the Communal Council show that Gamain attended regularly and took part in the discussions, which were often tumultuous. The Queen heard of Gamain's Jacobinism, and warned the King, who, however, could not believe that Gamain would betray him. Marie Antoinette insisted on the most important papers being removed from the iron chest, and they were confided to Mme. de Campan. When the trial of the King was begun, on November 20, Gamain went to Roland, Minister of the Interior, and told him the secret of the iron chest. Roland, alarmed at the consequences of such a discovery, hastened to consult his wife, who was in reality more minister than himself. From August 10, a commission had been appointed to collect all the papers found in the Tuileries; this commission, therefore, ought to be made acquainted with the discovery; but here lay the danger. Mme. Roland, as an instrument of the Girondins, feared that among the papers in the chest might be discovered some which would show in what close relations the Girondins stood to the Court. She decided that her husband should go to the Tuileries, accompanied by Gamain, an architect, and a servant. The chest was opened by the locksmith, Roland removed all the papers, tied them up in a napkin, and took them home. They were taken the same day to the Convention; and the commission charged the minister with having abstracted such papers as would have been inconvenient to him to deliver up. When Roland surrendered the papers he declared, without naming Gamain, that they had been discovered in a hole in the wall closed by an iron door, behind a wainscot panel, in so secret a place "that they could not have been found had not the secret been disclosed by the workman who had himself made the place of concealment." On December 24 following, Gamain was summoned to Paris by the Convention to give his evidence to prove that a key discovered in the desk of Thierry de Ville-d'Avray fitted the iron chest. After the execution of the King, on January 21, 1793, the Convention sent deputies into all the departments "to stimulate the authorities to act with the energy requisite under the circumstances." Crassous was sent into the department of Seine-et-Oise; and not finding the municipality of Versailles, of which Gamain was a member, "up to the requisite pitch," he discharged them from office; and by a law of September 17, all such discharged functionaries were declared to be "suspected persons," who were liable to be brought before the revolutionary tribunal on that charge alone. Thus, in spite of all the proofs he had given of his fidelity to the principles of the Revolution, Gamain was at any moment liable to arrest, and to being brought before that terrible tribunal from which the only exit was to the guillotine. Moreover, Gamain had lost his place and emoluments as Court locksmith; he had fallen into great poverty, was without work, and without health. On April 27, 1794, he presented a petition to the Convention which was supported by Musset, the deputy and constitutional curé. "It was not enough," said Musset from the tribune, "that the last of our tyrants should have delivered over thousands of citizens to be slain by the sword of the enemy. You will see by the petition I am about to read that he was familiarised with the most refined cruelty, and that he himself administered poison to the father of a family, in the hopes thereby of destroying evidence of his perfidy. You will see that his ferocious mind had adopted the maxim that to a king everything is permissible." After this preamble Musset read the petition of Gamain, which is as follows: "François Gamain, locksmith to the cabinets and to the laboratory of the late King, and for three years member of the Council General of the Commune of Versailles, declares that at the beginning of May 1792 he was ordered to go to Paris. On reaching it, Capet required him to make a cupboard in the thickness of one of the walls of his room, and to fasten it with an iron door; and he further states that he was thus engaged up to the 22nd of the said month, and that he worked in the King's presence. When the chest was completed, Capet himself offered citizen Gamain a large tumbler of wine, and asked him to drink it, as he, the said Gamain, was very hot. "_A few hours later_ he was attacked by a violent colic, which did not abate till he had taken two spoonfuls of elixir, which made him vomit all he had eaten and drunk that day. This was the prelude to a terrible illness, which lasted fourteen months, during which he lost the use of his limbs, and which has left him at present without hope of recovering his full health, and of working so as to provide for the necessities of his family." After reading the petition Musset added: "I hold in my hands the certificate of the doctors, that testifies to the bad state of the health of the citizen petitioner. "Citizens! If wickedness is common to kings, generosity is the prerogative of the free people. I demand that this petition be referred to the Committee of Public Assistance to be promptly dealt with. I demand that after the request all the papers relating to it be deposed in the national archives, as a monument of the atrocity of tyrants, and be inserted in the bulletin, that all those who have supposed that Capet did evil only at the instigation of others may know that crime was rooted in his very heart." This proposition was decreed. On May 17, 1794, the representative Peyssard mounted the tribune, and read the report of the Committee, which we must condense. "Citizens! At the tribunal of liberty the crimes of the oppressors of the human race stand to be judged. To paint a king in all his hideousness I need name only Louis XVI. This name sums in itself all crimes; it recalls a prodigy of iniquity and of perfidy. Hardly escaped from infancy, the germs of the ferocious perversity which characterise a despot appeared in him. His earliest sports were with blood, and his brutality grew with his years, and he delighted in wreaking his ferocity on all the animals he met. He was known to be cruel, treacherous, and murderous. The object of this report is to exhibit him to France cold-bloodedly offering a cup of poison to the unhappy artist whom he had just employed to construct a cupboard in which to conceal the plots of tyranny. It was no stranger he marked as his victim, but a workman whom he had employed for five-and-twenty years, and the father of a family, his own instructor in the locksmith's art. Monsters who thus treat their chosen servants, how will they deal with the rest of men?" The National Convention thereupon ordered that "François Gamain, poisoned by Louis Capet on May 22, 1792, should enjoy an annual pension of the sum of 1,200 livres, dating from the day on which he was poisoned." It will be noticed by the most careless reader that the evidence is _nil_. Gamain does not feel the colic till some hours after he has drunk the wine; he had eaten or drunk other things besides during the day; and finally the testimony of the doctors is, not that he was poisoned, but that, at the time of his presenting the petition, he was in a bad state of health. Accordingly, all reasonable historians, unblinded by party passion, have scouted the idea of an attempt on Gamain's life by the King. Thus the matter would have remained had not M. Paul Lacroix taken it up and propped the old slander on new legs. We will take his account, which he pretends to have received from several persons to whom Gamain related it repeatedly. This is his _mise en scène_. "The old inhabitants of Versailles will remember with pity the man whom they often encountered alone, bowed on his stick like one bent with years. Gamain was aged only fifty-eight when he died, but he bore all the marks of decrepitude." Here is a blunder, to begin with; he died, as the Versailles registers testify, on May 8, 1795, and was accordingly only forty-four years old,--that is, he died _one_ year after the grant of the annuity. M. Parrott, in his article on Gamain in the "Dictionnaire de la Révolution Française," says that he died in 1799, five years after having received his pension; but the Versailles registers are explicit. M. Lacroix goes on: "His hair had fallen off, and the little that remained had turned white over a brow furrowed deeply; the loss of his teeth made his cheeks hollow; his dull eyes only glared with sombre fire when the name of Louis XVI was pronounced. Sometimes even tears then filled them. Gamain lived very quietly with his family on his humble pension, which, notwithstanding the many changes of government, was always accorded him. It was not suppressed, lest the reason of its being granted should again be raked up before the public." As we have seen, Gamain died under the Government which granted the pension. M. Lacroix goes on to say "that the old locksmith bore to his dying day an implacable hatred of Louis XVI., whom he accused of having been guilty of an abominable act of treachery." "This act of treachery was the fixed and sole idea in Gamain's head, he recurred to it incessantly, and poured forth a flood of bitter and savage recriminations against the King. It was Gamain who disclosed the secret of the iron chest in the Tuileries, and the papers it contained, which furnished the chief accusation against Louis XVI.; it was he, therefore, who had, so to speak, prepared the guillotine for the royal head; it was he, finally, who provoked the decree of the Convention which blackened the memory of the King as that of a vulgar murderer. But this did not suffice the hate of Gamain, who went about everywhere pursuing the dead beyond the tomb, with his charge of having attempted murder as payment of life-long and devoted service. Gamain ordinarily passed his evenings in a cafe at Versailles, the name of which I have been told, but which I do not divulge lest I should make a mistake. He was generally in the society of two old notaries, who are still alive (in 1836), and of the doctor Lameyran, who attended him when he was poisoned. These three persons were prepared to attest all the particulars of the poisoning which had been proved at the _procès verbal_. Gamain, indeed, lacked witnesses to establish the incidents of the 22nd May, 1792, at the Tuileries; but his air of veracity and expression of pain, his accent of conviction, his face full of suffering, his burning eyes, his pathetic pantomime, were the guarantees of good faith." These three men, the notaries and the doctor, which latter M. Lacroix hints was living when he wrote, were his authorities for what follows. The notaries he does not name, nor the café where they met. His account published in the _Siècle_ at once attracted attention, and M. Lacroix was challenged to produce his witnesses. As for M. Lameyran, the doctor, he had died in 1811; consequently his testimony was not to be had in 1836. The other doctor who had attended Gamain was M. Voisin, who died in 1823, but M. Le Roy asserts positively that in 1813 M. Voisin told him, "Never was Gamain poisoned. Lameyran and I had long attended him for chronic malady of the stomach. This is all we testified to in our certificate, when he applied for a pension. In our certificate we stated that he was in weak health--not a word was in it about poisoning, which existed only in his fancy." These certificates are no longer in existence. They were not preserved in the archives of the Convention. Even this fact is taken as evidence in favour of the attempt. M. Emile Bonnet, in an article on Gamain in the "Intermédiaire des Chercheurs," declares that they have been substracted since the Restoration of Charles;[8] but there is no trace in the archives of them ever having been there. Moreover, we have M. Le Roy's word that M. Voisin assured him he had not testified to poisoning, and, what is more important, we have Musset's declaration before the Convention that the certificate of the doctors "asserted the ill-health of the claimant." If there had been a word about poison in it, he would assuredly have said so. M. Lacroix was asked to name his authorities--the two advocates who, as M. Lameyran was dead, were alive and would testify to the fact that they had heard the story from the lips of Gamain. He remained silent. He would not even name the café where they met, and which might lead to the identification. M. Eckard, who wrote the notice on Gamain in the "Biographie Universelle," consulted the family of the locksmith on the case, and was assured by them that the bad health of Gamain was due to no other cause than disappointment at the loss of his fortune, the privations he underwent, and, above all, his terror for his life after his dismissal from the Communal Council. We will now continue M. Lacroix's account, which he proceeds, not a little disingenuously, to put into the mouth of Gamain himself, so that the accusation may not be charged on the author. "On May 21, 1792," says Gamain, according to the "Bibliophile Jacob," "whilst I was working in my shop, a horseman drew up at my door and called me out. His disguise as a carter did not prevent me from recognising Durey, the King's forge assistant. I refused. I congratulated myself that evening at having done so, as the rumour spread in Versailles that the Tuileries had been attacked by the mob, but this did not really take place till a month later. Next morning Durey returned and showed me a note in the King's own hand, entreating me to lend my assistance in a difficult job past his unaided powers. My pride was flattered. I embraced my wife and children, without telling them whither I was going, but I promised to return that night. It was not without anxiety that they saw me depart with a stranger for Paris." We need merely point out that Durey was no stranger to the family: he had been for years associated daily with Gamain. "Durey conducted me to the Tuileries, where the King was guarded as in a prison. We went at once to the royal workshop, where Durey left me, whilst he went to announce my arrival. Whilst I was alone, I observed an iron door, recently forged, a mortise lock, well executed, and a little iron box with a secret spring which I did not at once discover. Then in came Durey with the King. 'The times are bad,' said Louis XVI., 'and I do not know how matters will end.' Then he showed me the works I had noticed, and said, 'What do you say to my skill? It took me ten days to execute these things. I am your apprentice, Gamain.' I protested my entire devotion. Then the King assured me that he always had confidence in me, and that he did not scruple to trust the fate of himself and his family in my hands. Thereupon he conducted me into the dark passage that led from his room to the chamber of the Dauphin. Durey lit a taper, and removed a panel in the passage, behind which I perceived a round hole, about two feet in diameter, bored in the wall. The King told me he intended to secrete his money in it, and that Durey, who had helped to make it, threw the dust and chips into the river during the night. Then the King told me that he was unable to fit the iron door to the hole unassisted. I went to work immediately. I went over all the parts of the lock, and got them into working order; then I fashioned a key to the lock, then made hinges and fastened them into the wall as firmly as I could, without letting the hammering be heard. The King helped as well as he was able, entreating me every moment to strike with less noise, and to be quicker over my work. The key was put in the little iron casket, and this casket was concealed under a slab of pavement in the corridor." It will be seen that this story does not agree with the account in the petition made by Gamain to the Convention. In that he said he was summoned to Paris at the beginning of the month of May, and that "Capet ordered him to make a cupboard in the thickness of the wall of his apartment, and to close it with an iron door, the whole of which was not accomplished till the 22nd of the same month." He was three weeks over the job, not a few hours. "I had been working," continues Gamain, or M. Lacroix for him, "for eight consecutive hours. The sweat poured from my brow; I was impatient to repose, and faint with hunger, as I had eaten nothing since I got up." But, according to his account before the Convention, the elixir made him throw up "all he had eaten and drunk during the day." "I seated myself a moment in the King's chamber, and he asked me to count for him two thousand double louis and tie them up in four leather bags. Whilst so doing I observed that Durey was carrying some bundles of papers which I conjectured were destined for the secret closet; and, indeed, the money-counting was designed to distract my attention from what Durey was about." What a clumsy story! Why were not the papers hidden after Gamain was gone? Was it necessary that this should be done in his presence, and he set to count money, so as not to observe what was going on? "As I was about to leave, the Queen suddenly entered by a masked door at the foot of the King's bed, holding in her hands a plate, in which was a cake (brioche) and a glass of wine. She came up to me, and I saluted her with surprise, because the King had assured me that she knew nothing about the fabrication of the chest. 'My dear Gamain,' said she in a caressing tone, 'how hot you are! Drink this tumbler of wine and eat this cake, and they will sustain you on your journey home.' I thanked her, confounded by this consideration for a poor workman, and I emptied the tumbler to her health. I put the cake in my pocket, intending to take it home to my children." Here again is a discrepancy. In his petition Gamain says that the King gave him a glass of wine, and makes no mention of the Queen. On leaving the Tuileries, Gamain set out on foot for Versailles, but was attacked by a violent colic in the Champs Elysées. His agonies increased; he was no longer able to walk; he fell, and rolled on the ground, uttering cries and moans. A carriage that was passing stopped, and an English gentleman got out--wonderful to relate!--extraordinary coincidence!--a physician, and an acquaintance. "The Englishman took me to his carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive at full gallop to an apothecary's shop. The conveyance halted at last before one in the Rue de Bac; the Englishman left me alone, whilst he prepared an elixir which might counteract the withering power of the poison. When I had swallowed this draught I ejected the venomous substances. An hour later nothing could have saved me. I recovered in part my sight and hearing; the cold that circulated in my veins was dissipated by degrees, and the Englishman judged that I might be safely removed to Versailles, which we reached at two o'clock in the morning. A physician, M. de Lameyran, and a surgeon, M. Voisin, were called in; they recognised the unequivocal tokens of poison. "After three days of fever, delirium, and inconceivable suffering, I triumphed over the poison, but suffered ever after from a paralysis almost complete, and a general inflammation of the digestive organs. "A few days after this catastrophe the servant maid, whilst cleaning my coat, which I had worn on the occasion of my accident, found my handkerchief, stained black, and the cake. She took a bite of the latter, and threw the rest into the yard, where a dog ate it and died. The girl, who had consumed only a morsel of the cake, fell dangerously ill. The dog was opened by M. Voisin, and a chemical analysis disclosed the presence of poison, both on my kerchief stained by my vomit, and in the cake. The cake alone contained enough corrosive sublimate to kill ten persons." So--the poison was found. But how is it that in Gamain's petition none of this occurs? According to that document, Gamain was offered a goblet of wine by the King himself. "A few hours later he was attacked by a violent colic. This was the prelude to a terrible illness." Only a vague hint as to poison, no specific statement that he had been poisoned, and that the kind of poison had been determined. Now, corrosive sublimate, when put in red wine, forms a violet precipitate, and alters the taste of the wine, giving it a characteristic metallic, harsh flavour, so disagreeable that it insures its immediate rejection. Gamain tasted nothing. Again, the action of corrosive sublimate is immediate or very nearly so; but Gamain was not affected till several hours after having drunk the wine. According to the petition, Gamain asserted that he was paralysed in all his limbs for fourteen months, from May 22, 1792; but the Communal registers of Versailles show that he attended a session of the Council and took part in the discussion on June 4 following, that is, less than a fortnight after; that he was present at the sessions of June 8, 17, 20, and on August 22, and that he was sufficiently hearty and active to be elected on the commission which was to obliterate the insignia of monarchy on September 24 following, which certainly would not have been the case had he been a sick man paralysed in all his members. Why, we may further inquire, did not Louis the XVI. or Queen Marie Antoinette attempt to poison Durey also, if they desired to make away with all those who knew the secret of the iron locker? Now, Durey was alive in 1800, and Eckard, who wrote the article on Gamain in the "Biographie Universelle," knew him and saw him at that date, and Durey told him that Gamain's story was a lie; the iron safe was made, not in 1792, but in May, 1791; and this is probable, as it would have been easier for the King to have the locker made before his escape to Varennes, than in 1792, when he was under the closest supervision. According to the version attributed to Gamain by M. Paul Lacroix, Gamain was paralysed for five months only. Why this change? Because either M. Lacroix or the locksmith had discovered that it was an anachronism for him to appear in November before Roland, and assist him in opening the case which he had made in May--five months before, and afterwards to declare that he was paralysed in all his members from May till the year following. We think this correction is due to the Bibliophile. But he was not acquainted with the Versailles archives proving him to have been at a session a few days after the pretended poisoning. There is not much difficulty in discovering Gamain's motive for formulating the accusation against the King. He betrayed his king, who trusted him, and then, to excuse his meanness, invented an odious calumny against him. But what was M. Lacroix's object in revivifying the base charge? We are not sure that he comes cleaner out of the slough than the despicable locksmith. He gave the story a new spell of life; he based his "facts" on testimonies, who, he said, were ready at any moment to vouch for the truth. When challenged to produce them he would not do so. His "facts" were proved again and again to be fables, and yet he dared to republish his slanderous story again and again, without a word of apology, explanation, or retractation. M. Lacroix died only a year or two ago, and it may seem ungenerous to attack a dead man, but one is forced to do this in defence of the honour of a dead Queen whom he grossly calumniated. The calumny was ingeniously put. M. Lacroix set it in the mouth of Gamain, thinking thereby to free himself from responsibility, but the responsibility sticks when he refuses to withdraw what has been demonstrated to be false. There is something offensive to the last degree in the pose of M. Lacroix as he opens his charge. "For some years I have kept by me, with a sort of terror, the materials for an historic revelation, without venturing to use them, and yet the fact, now almost unknown, on which I purpose casting a sinister light, is one that has been the object of my most active preoccupations. For long I condemned myself to silence and to fresh research, hitherto fruitless, hoping that the truth would come to light.... Well! now, at the moment of lifting the veil which covers a half-effaced page of history, with the documents I have consulted and the evidence I have gleaned lying before me, surrounded by a crowd of witnesses, one sustaining the testimony of the other, relying on my conscience and on my sentiments as a man of honour--still I hesitate to open my mouth and call up the remembrance of an event monstrous in itself, that has not found an echo even in the writings of the blindest partisans of a hideous epoch. Yes, I feel a certain repugnance in seeming to associate in thought, though not in act, with the enemies of Louis XVI. I have just re-read the sublime death of this unhappy political martyr; I have felt my eyes moisten with tears at the contemplation of the picture of the death inflicted by an inexorable state necessity, and I felt I must break my pen lest I should mix my ink with the yet warm blood of the innocent victim. Let my hand wither rather than rob Louis XVI. of the mantle of probity and goodness, which the outrages of '93 succeeded neither in staining nor in rending to rags." And so on--M. Lacroix is only acting under a high sense of the sacred duty of seeking the truth, "of forcing the disclosure of facts, before it be too late," which may establish the innocence of Louis XVI. Now, be it noted that M. Lacroix is the first to accuse the Queen of attempting the murder; his assault is on her as much as, more than, on the poor King--in the sacred interests of historic truth! What are his evidences, his crowd of witnesses, his documents that he has collected? What proof is there of his active preoccupations and fresh researches? He produced nothing that can be called proof, and refused the names of his witnesses when asked for them. We can quite understand that the Bibliophile Jacob may have heard some gossiping story such as he narrates, and may have believed it when he wrote the story; but then, where are the high sense of honour, the tender conscience, the enthusiasm for truth, when his story is proved to be a tissue of improbabilities and impossibilities, that permit him to republish, and again republish at intervals of years, this cruel and calumnious fabrication? FOOTNOTE: [8] Le Bibliophile Jacob says the same: "Les--pièces--détournées maladroitement par la Restauration." Abram the Usurer.[9] In the reign of Heraclius, when Sergius was patriarch of Constantinople, there lived in Byzantium a merchant named Theodore, a good man and just, fearing God, and serving him with all his heart. He went on a voyage to the ports of Syria and Palestine with his wares, in a large well-laden vessel, sold his goods to profit, and turned his ship's head homewards with a good lading of silks and spices, the former some of the produce of the looms of distant China, brought in caravans through Persia and Syria to the emporiums on the Mediterranean. It was late in the year when Theodore began his voyage home, the equinoctial gales had begun to blow, and prudence would have suggested that he should winter in Cyprus; but he was eager to return to Byzantium to his beloved wife, and to prepare for another adventure in the ensuing spring. But he was overtaken by a storm as he was sailing up the Propontis, and to save the vessel he was obliged to throw all the lading overboard. He reached Constantinople in safety, but with the loss of his goods. His grief and despair were excessive. His wife was unable to console him. He declared that he was weary of the world, his loss was sent him as a warning from heaven not to set his heart on Mammon, and that he was resolved to enter a monastery, and spend the rest of his days in devotion. "Hasten, husband mine," said the wife, "put this scheme into execution at once; for if you delay you may change your mind." The manifest impatience of his wife to get rid of him somewhat cooled the ardour of Theodore for the monastic profession, and before taking the irrevocable step, he consulted a friend. "I think, dearest brother, nay, I am certain, that this misfortune came on me as the indication of the finger of Providence that I should give up merchandise and care only for the saving of my soul." "My friend," answered the other, "I do not see this in the same light as you. Every merchant must expect loss. It is one of the ordinary risks of sailors. It is absurd to despair. Go to your friends and borrow of them sufficient to load your vessel again, and try your luck once more. You are known as a merchant, and trusted as an honest man, and will have no difficulty in raising the sum requisite." Theodore rushed home, and announced to his wife that he had already changed his mind, and that he was going to borrow money. "Whatever pleases you is right in my eyes," said the lady. Theodore then went the round of his acquaintances, told them of his misfortune, and then asked them to lend him enough to restock his vessel, promising to pay them a good percentage on the money lent. But the autumn had been fatal to more vessels than that of Theodore, and he found that no one was disposed to advance him the large sum he required. He went from door to door, but a cold refusal met him everywhere. Disappointed, and sick at heart, distressed at finding friends so unfriendly, he returned home, and said to his wife, "Woman! the world is hard and heartless, I will have nothing more to do with it. I will become a monk." "Dearest husband, do so by all means, and I shall be well pleased," answered the wife. Theodore tossed on his bed all night, unable to sleep; before dawn an idea struck him. There was a Jew named Abram who had often importuned him to trade with his money, but whom he had invariably refused. He would try this man as a last resource. So when morning came, Theodore rose and went to the shop of Abram. The Hebrew listened attentively to his story, and then said, smiling, "Master Theodore, when thou wast rich, I often asked thee to take my money and trade with it in foreign parts, so that I might turn it over with advantage. But I always met with refusal. And now that thou art poor, with only an empty ship, thou comest to me to ask for a loan. What if again tempest should fall on thee, and wreck and ruin be thy lot, where should I look for my money? Thou art poor. If I were to sell thy house it would not fetch much. Nay, if I am to lend thee money thou must provide a surety, to whom I may apply, and who will repay me, should accident befall thee. Go, find security, and I will find the money." So Theodore went to his best friend, and told him the circumstances, and asked him to stand surety for him to the Jew. "Dear friend," answered he, "I should be most happy to oblige you; but I am a poor man, I have not as much money in the world as would suffice. The Hebrew would not accept me as surety, he knows the state of my affairs too well. But I will do for you what little I can. We will go together to some merchants, and together beseech them to stand security for you to the Jew." So the two friends went to a rich merchant with whom they were acquainted, and told him what they wanted; but he blustered and turned red, and said, "Away with you, fellows; who ever heard of such insolence as that two needy beggars should ask a man of substance like me to go with them to the den of a cursed infidel Jew. God be thanked! I have no dealings with Jews. I never have spoken to one in my life, and never give them a greeting when I pass any in street or market-place. A man who goes to the Jews to-day, goes to the dogs to-morrow, and to the devil the day after." The friends visited other merchants, but with like ill-success. Theodore had spent the day fasting, and he went supperless to bed, very hopeless, and with the prospect growing more distinct of being obliged to put on the cowl of the monk, a prospect which somehow or other he did not relish. Next morning he started from home to tell Abram his failure. His way was through the great square called the Copper-Market before the Imperial palace. Now there stood there a porch consisting of four pillars, which supported a dome covered with brazen tiles, the whole surmounted by a cross, on the east side of which, looking down on the square, and across over the sparkling Bosphorus to the hills of Asia, was a large, solemn figure of the Crucified. This porch and cross had been set up by Constantine the Great,[10] and had been restored by Anastasius. As Theodore sped through the Copper-Market in the morning, he looked up; the sky was of the deepest gentian blue. Against it, glittering like gold in the early sun, above the blazing, brazen tiles, stood the great cross with the holy form thereon. Theodore halted, in his desolation, doubt and despair, and looked up at the figure. It was in the old, grave Byzantine style, very solemn, without the pain expressed in Mediæval crucifixes, and like so many early figures of the sort was probably vested and crowned. A sudden inspiration took hold of the ruined man. He fell on his knees, stretched his hands towards the shining form, and cried, "Lord Jesus Christ! the hope of the whole earth, the only succour of all who are cast down, the sure confidence of those that look to Thee! All on whom I could lean have failed me. I have none on earth on whom I can call. Do Thou, Lord, be surety for me, though I am unworthy to ask it." Then filled with confidence he rose from his knees, and ran to the house of Abram, and bursting in on him said, "Be of good cheer, I have found a Surety very great and noble and mighty. Trust thy money, He will keep it safe." Abram answered, "Let the man come, and sign the deed and see the money paid over." "Nay, my brother," said Theodore; "come thou with me. I have hurried in thus to bring thee to him." Then Abram went with Theodore, who led him to the Copper-Market, and bade him be seated, and then raising his finger, he pointed to the sacred form hanging on the cross, and, full of confidence, said to the Hebrew, "There, friend, thou could'st not have a better security than the Lord of heaven and earth. I have besought Him to stand for me, and I know He is so good that He will not deny me." The Jew was perplexed. He said nothing for a moment or two, and then, wondering at the man's faith, answered, "Friend, dost thou not know the difference between the faith of a Christian and of a Hebrew? How can'st thou ask me to accept as thy surety, One whom thou believest my people to have rejected and crucified? However, I will trust thee, for thou art a God-fearing and an honest man, and I will risk my money." So they twain returned to the Jew's quarters, and Abram counted out fifty pounds of gold, in our money about £2,400. He tied the money up in bags, and bade his servants bear it after Theodore. And Abram and the glad merchant came to the Copper-Market, and then the Jew ordered that the money bags should be set down under the Tetrastyle where was the great crucifix. Then said the Hebrew usurer, "See, Theodore, I make over to thee the loan here before thy God." And there, in the face of the great image of his Saviour, Theodore received the loan, and swore to deal faithfully by the Jew, and to restore the money to him with usury. After this, the merchant bought a cargo for his vessel, and hired sailors, and set sail for Syria. He put into port at Tyre and Sidon, and traded with his goods, and bought in place of them many rich Oriental stuffs, with spices and gums, and when his ship was well laden, he sailed for Constantinople. But again misfortune befell him. A storm arose, and the sailors were constrained to throw the bales of silk, and bags of costly gums, and vessels of Oriental chasing into the greedy waves. But as the ship began to fill, they were obliged to get into the boat and escape to land. The ship keeled over and drifted into shallow water. When the storm abated they got to her, succeeded in floating her, and made the best of their way in the battered ship to Constantinople, thankful that they had preserved their lives. But Theodore was in sad distress, chiefly because he had lost Abram's money. "How shall I dare to face the man who dealt so generously by me?" he said to himself. "What shall I say, when he reproaches me? What answer can I make to my Surety for having lost the money entrusted to me?" Now when Abram heard that Theodore had arrived in Constantinople in his wrecked vessel with the loss of all his cargo, he went to him at once, and found the man prostrate in his chamber, the pavement wet with his tears of shame and disappointment. Abram laid his hand gently on his shoulder, and said, in a kind voice, "Rise, my brother, do not be downcast; give glory to God who rules all things as He wills, and follow me home. God will order all for the best." Then the merchant rose, and followed the Jew, but he would not lift his eyes from the ground, for he was ashamed to look him in the face. Abram was troubled at the distress of his friend, and he said to him, as he shut the door of his house, "Let not thy heart be broken with overmuch grief, dearest friend, for it is the mark of a wise man to bear all things with firm mind. See! I am ready again to lend thee fifty pounds of gold, and may better fortune attend thee this time. I trust that our God will bless the money and multiply it, so that in the end we shall lose nothing by our former misadventure." "Then," said Theodore, "Christ shall again stand security for me. Bring the money to the Tetrastyle." Therefore again the bags of gold were brought before the cross, and when they had then been made over to the merchant, Abram said, "Accept, Master Theodore, this sum of fifty pounds of gold, paid over to thee before thy Surety, and go in peace. And may the Lord God prosper thee on thy journey, and make plain the way before thee. And remember, that before this thy Surety thou art bound to me for a hundred pounds of gold." Having thus spoken, Abram returned home. Theodore repaired and reloaded his ship, engaged mariners and made ready to sail. But on the day that he was about to depart, he went into the Copper-Market, and kneeling down, with his face towards the cross, he prayed the Lord to be his companion and captain, and to guide him on his journey, and bring him safe through all perils with his goods back to Byzantium once more. Then he went on to the house of Abram to bid him farewell. And the Jew said to him, "Keep thyself safe, brother, and beware now of trusting thy ship to the sea at the time of equinoctial gales. Thou hast twice experienced the risk, run not into it again. Winter at the place whither thou goest, and that I may know how thou farest, if thou hast the opportunity, send me some of the money by a sure hand. Then there is less chance of total ruin, for if one portion fails, the other is likely to be secure." Theodore approved of this advice, and promised to follow it; so then the Jew and the Christian parted with much affection and mutual respect, for each knew the other to be a good and true man, fearing God, and seeking to do that which is right. This time Theodore turned his ship's head towards the West, intending to carry his wares to the markets of Spain. He passed safely through the Straits of Hercules, and sailed North. Then a succession of steady strong breezes blew from the South and swept him on so that he could not get into harbour till he reached Britain. He anchored in a bay on the rugged Cornish coast, in the very emporium of tin and lead, in the Cassiterides famed of old for supplying ore precious in the manufacture of bronze. He readily disposed of all his merchandise, and bought as much tin and lead as his ship would hold. His goods had sold so well, and tin and lead were so cheap that he found he had fifty pounds in gold in addition to the cargo. The voyage back from Britain to Byzantium was long and dangerous, and Theodore was uneasy. He found no other ships from Constantinople where he was, and no means presented themselves for sending back the money in part, as he had promised. He was a conscientious man, and he wished to keep his word. He set sail from Cornwall before the summer was over, passed safely through the straits into the Mediterranean, but saw no chance of reaching Constantinople before winter. He would not again risk his vessel in the gales of the equinox, and he resolved to winter in Sicily. He arrived too late in the year to be able to send a message and the money to Abram. His promise troubled him, and he cast about in his mind how to keep his word. At last, in the simple faith which coloured the whole life of the man, he made a very solid wooden box and tarred it well internally and externally. Then he inclosed in it the fifty pounds of gold he had made by his goods in Britain over and above his lading of lead and tin, and with the money he put a letter, couched in these terms: "In the name of my heir and God, my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who is also my Surety for a large sum of money, I, Theodore, humbly address my master Abram, who, with God, is my benefactor and creditor. "I would have thee know, Master Abram, that we all, by the mercy of God, are in good health. God has verily prospered us well and brought our merchandise to a good market. And now, see! I send thee fifty pounds of gold, which I commit to the care of my Surety, and He will convey the money safely to thy hands. Receive it from me and do not forget us. Farewell." Then he fastened up the box, and raised his eyes to heaven, and prayed to God, saying: "O Lord Jesus Christ, Mediator between God and Man, Who dwellest in Heaven, but hast respect unto the lowly; hear the voice of thy servant this day; because Thou hast proved Thyself to me a good and kind Surety, I trust to Thee to return to my benefactor and creditor, Abram, the money I promised to send him. Trusting in Thee, Lord, I commit this little box to the sea!" So saying he flung the case containing the gold and the letter into the waves; and standing on a cliff watched it floating on the waters, rising and falling on the glittering wavelets, gradually drifting further and further out to sea, till it was lost to his sight, and then, nothing doubting but that the Lord Christ would look after the little box and guide it over the waste of waters to its proper destination, he went back to his lodging, and told the ship pilot what he had done. The sailor remained silent wondering in his mind at the great faith of his master. Then his rough heart softened, and he knelt down and blessed and praised God. That night Theodore had a dream, and in the morning he told it to the pilot. "I thought," said he, "that I was back in Byzantium, and standing in the Copper-Market before the great cross with Christ on it. And I fancied in my dream that Abram was at my side. And I looked, and saw him hold up his hands, and receive the box in them, and the great figure of Christ said, 'See, Abram, I give thee what Theodore committed to my trust.' And, thereupon, I awoke trembling. So now I am quite satisfied that the gold is in safe keeping, and will infallibly reach its destination." The summer passed, the storms of autumn had swept over the grey sea, and torn away from the trees the last russet leaves; winter had set in; yet Abram had received no news of Theodore. He did not doubt the good faith of his friend, but he began to fear that ill-luck attended him. He had risked a large sum, and would feel the loss severely should this cargo be lost like the former one. He talked the matter over with his steward, and considered it from every imaginable point of view. His anxiety took him constantly to the shore to watch the ships that arrived, hoping to hear news by some of them, and to recover part of his money. He hardly expected the return of Theodore after the injunctions he had given him not to risk his vessel in a stormy season. One day he was walking with his steward by the sea-side, when the waves were more boisterous than usual. Not a ship was visible. All were in winter quarters. Abram drew off his sandals, and began to wash his feet in the sea water. Whilst so doing he observed something floating at a little distance. With the assistance of his steward he fished out a box black with tar, firmly fastened up, like a solid cube of wood. Moved by curiosity he carried the box home, and succeeded with a little difficulty in forcing it open. Inside he found a letter, not directed, but marked with three crosses, and a bag of gold. It need hardly be said that this was the box Theodore had entrusted to Christ, and his Surety had fulfilled His trust and conveyed it to the hands of the creditor. Next spring Theodore returned to Constantinople in safety. As soon as he had disembarked, he hastened to the house of Abram to tell him the results of his voyage. The Jewish usurer, wishing to prove him, feigned not to understand, when Theodore related how he had sent him fifty pounds of gold, and made as though he had not received the money. But the merchant was full of confidence, and he said, "I cannot understand this, brother, for I enclosed the money in a box along with a letter, and committed it to the custody of my Saviour Christ, Who has acted as Surety for me unworthy. But as thou sayest that thou hast not received it, come with me, and let us go together before the crucifix, and say before it that thou hast not had the money conveyed to thee, and then I will believe thy word." Abram promised to accompany his friend, and rising from their seats, they went together to the Copper-Market. And when they came to the Tetrastyle, Theodore raised his hands to the Crucified, and said, "My Saviour and Surety, didst Thou not restore the gold to Abram that I entrusted to Thee for that purpose?" There was something so wonderful, so beautiful, in the man's faith, that Abram was overpowered; and withal there was the evidence that it was not misplaced so clear to the Jew, that the light of conviction like a dazzling sunbeam darted into his soul, and Theodore saw the Hebrew usurer fall prostrate on the pavement, half fainting with the emotion which oppressed him. Theodore ran and fetched water in his hands and sprinkled his face, and brought the usurer round. And Abram said, "As God liveth, my friend, I will not enter into my house till I have taken thy Lord and Surety for my Master." A crowd began to gather, and it was bruited abroad that the Jewish usurer sought baptism. And when the story reached the ears of the Emperor Heraclius, he glorified God. So Abram was put under instruction, and was baptised by the patriarch Sergius.[11] And after seven days a solemn procession was instituted through the streets of Constantinople to the Copper-Market, in which walked the emperor and the patriarch, and all the clergy of the city; and the box which had contained the money was conveyed by them to the Tetrastyle and laid up, along with the gold and the letter before the image, to be a memorial of what had taken place to all generations. And thenceforth the crucifix received the common appellation of Antiphonetos, or the Surety. As for the tin and lead with which the vessel of Theodore was freighted, it sold for a great price, so that both he and Abram realised a large sum by the transaction. But neither would keep to himself any portion of it, but gave it all to the Church of S. Sophia, and therewith a part of the sanctuary was overlaid with silver. Then Theodore and his wife, with mutual consent, gave up the world and retired into monastic institutions. Abram afterwards built and endowed an oratory near the Tetrastyle, and Sergius ordained him priest and his two sons deacons. Thus ends this strange and very beautiful story, which I have merely condensed from the somewhat prolix narrative of the Byzantine preacher. The reader will probably agree with me that if sermons in the 19th century were as entertaining as this of the 10th, fewer people would be found to go to sleep during their delivery. I have told the tale as related by the preacher. But there are reasons which awaken suspicion that he somewhat erred as to his dates; but that, nevertheless the story is really not without a foundation of fact. Towards the close of the oration the preacher points to the ambone, and the thusiasterion, and bids his hearers remark how they are overlaid with silver, and this he says was the silver that Abram, the wealthy Jewish usurer, and Theodore, the merchant, gave to the Church of S. Sophia. Now it happens that we have got a contemporary record of this overlaying of the sanctuary with silver; we know from the pen of Procopius of Gaza that it took place in the reign of Justinian in A.D. 537.[12] This was preparatory to the dedication of the great Church, when the Emperor and the wealthy citizens of Byzantium were lavishly contributing to the adornment of the glorious building. We can quite understand how that the new convert and the grateful merchant were carried away by the current of the general enthusiasm, and gave all their silver to the plating of the sanctuary of the new Church. Procopius tells us that forty thousand pounds of silver were spent in this work. Not all of this, however, could have been given by Abram and Theodore. If this then were the date of the conversion of Abram, for Heraclius we must read Justinian, and for Sergius we must substitute Mennas. As the sermon was not preached till four hundred years after, the error can be accounted for, one imperial benefactor of the Church was mistaken for another. Now about the time of Justinian, we know from other sources that there was a converted Jew named Abram who founded and built a church and monastery in Constantinople, and which in after times was known as the Abramite Monastery. We are told this by John Moschus. We can not fix the exact date of the foundation, Moschus heard about A.D. 600 from the abbot John Rutilus, who had heard it from Stephen the Moabite, that the Monastery of the Abramites had been constructed by Abram who afterwards was raised to the metropolitan See of Ephesus. We may put then the foundation of the monastery at about A.D. 540. Now Abram of Ephesus succeeded Procopius who was bishop in 560; and his successor was Rufinus in 597. The date of the elevation of Abram to the metropolitan throne of Ephesus is not known exactly, but it was probably about 565. There is, of course, much conjecture in thus identifying the usurer Abram with Abram, Bishop of Ephesus; but there is certainly a probability that they were identical; and if so, then one more pretty story of the good man survives. After having built the monastery in Constantinople, Moschus tells us that Abram went to Jerusalem, the home to which a Jewish heart naturally turns, and there he set to work to erect another monastery. Now there was among the workmen engaged on the building a mason who ate but sparingly, conversed with none, but worked diligently, and prayed much in his hours of relaxation from labour. Abram became interested in the man, and called him to him, and learned from him his story. It was this. The mason had been a monk in the Theodorian Monastery along with his brother. The brother weary of the life, had left and fallen into grave moral disorders. Then this one now acting as mason had gone after him, laid aside his cowl and undertaken the same daily toil as the erring brother, that he might be with him, waiting his time when by means of advice or example he might draw the young man from his life of sin. But though he had laid aside the outward emblems of his monastic profession, he kept the rule of life as closely as he was able, cultivating prayer and silence and fasting. Then Abram deeply moved, said to the monk-mason: "God will look on thy fraternal charity; be of good courage, He will give thee thy brother at thy petition." FOOTNOTES: [9] This account is taken from a sermon preached in the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople on Orthodoxy Sunday, printed by Combefisius (Auctuarium novum, pars post. col. 644), from a MS. in the National Library at Paris. Another copy of the sermon is in the Library at Turin. The probable date of the composition is the tenth century. Orthodoxy Sunday was not instituted till 842. [10] This famous figure was cast down and broken by Leo the Isaurian in 730, a riot ensued, the market-women interfering with the soldiers, who were engaged on pulling down the figure, they shook the ladders and threw down one who was engaged in hacking the face of the figure. This led to the execution of ten persons, among them Gregory, head of the bodyguard, and Mary, a lady of the Imperial family. The Empress Irene set up a mosaic figure in its place. This was again destroyed by Leo the Armenian, and again restored after his death by Theophilus in 829. [11] Sergius was patriarch of Constantinople between 610 and 638. He embraced the Monothelite heresy. [12] Fabricius, Bibl. Græca, Ed. Harles, T.X. p. 124, 125. Sophie Apitzsch. "Some are born great," said Malvolio, strutting in yellow stockings, cross-gartered, before Olivia, "some achieve greatness," and with a smile, "some have greatness thrust upon them." Of the latter was Sophie Sabine Apitzsch. She was not born great, she was the daughter of an armourer. She hardly can be said to have achieved greatness, though she did attain to notoriety; what greatness she had was thrust on her, not altogether reluctant to receive it. But the greatness was not much, and was of an ambiguous description. She was treated for a while as a prince in disguise, and then became the theme of an opera, of a drama, and of a novel. For a hundred years her top-boots were preserved as historical relics in the archives of the House of Saxony, till in 1813 a Cossack of the Russian army passing through Augustenburg, saw, desired, tried on, and marched off with them; and her boots entered Paris with the Allies. About five-and-twenty miles from Dresden lived in 1714 a couple of landed proprietors, the one called Volkmar, and the other von Günther, who fumed with fiery hostility against each other, and the cause of disagreement was, that the latter wrote himself von Günther. Now, to get a _von_ before the name makes a great deal of difference: it purifies, nay, it alters the colour of the blood, turning it from red to blue. No one in Germany can prefix _von_ to his name as any one in England can append Esq. to his. He must receive authorisation by diploma of nobility from his sovereign. George von Günther had been, not long before, plain George Günther, but in 1712 he had obtained from the Emperor Charles VI. a patent of nobility, or gentility, they are the same abroad, and the motive that moved his sacred apostolic majesty to grant the patent was--as set forth therein--that an ancestor of George Günther of the same name "had sat down to table with the elector John George II. of Saxony;" and it was inconceivable that a mere citizen could have been suffered to do this, unless there were some nobility in him. George von Günther possessed an estate which was a manor, a knight's fee, at Jägerhof, and he was moreover upper Forester and Master of the Fisheries to the King-elector of Saxony, and Sheriff of Chemnitz and Frankenberg. He managed to marry his daughters to men blessed with _von_ before their names, one to von Bretschneider, Privy-Councillor of War, the other to a Major von Wöllner. Now, all this was gall and wormwood to Councillor-of-Agriculture, Daniel Volkmar, who lived on his paternal acres at Hetzdorf, of which he was hereditary chief magistrate by virtue of his lordship of the acres. This man had made vain efforts to be ennobled. He could not find that any ancestor of his had sat at table with an elector; and, perhaps, he could not scrape together sufficient money to induce his sacred apostolic majesty to overlook this defect. As he could not get his diploma, he sought how he might injure his more fortunate neighbour, and this he did by spying out his acts, watching for neglect of his duties to the fishes or the game, and reporting him anonymously to head-quarters. Günther knew well enough who it was that sought to injure him, and, as Volkmar believed, had invited some of the gamekeepers to shoot him; accordingly, Volkmar never rode or walked in the neighbourhood of the royal forests and fish-ponds unarmed, and without servants carrying loaded muskets. One day a brother magistrate, Pöckel by name, came over to see him about a matter that puzzled him. There had appeared in the district under his jurisdiction a young man, tall, well-built, handsome, but slightly small-pox-pitted, who had been arrested by the police for blowing a hunting-horn. Now ignoble lips might not touch a hunting-horn, and for any other than breath that issued out of noble lungs to sound a note on such a horn was against the laws. "Oh," said Volkmar, "if he has done this, and is not a gentleman--lock him up. What is his name?" "He calls himself Karl Marbitz." "But I, even I, may not blow a blast on a horn--that scoundrel Günther may. Deal with the fellow Marbitz with the utmost severity." "But--suppose he may have the necessary qualification?" "How can he without a von before his name?" "Suppose he be a nobleman, or something even higher, in disguise?" "What, in disguise? Travelling incognito? Our Crown Prince is not at Dresden."[13] "Exactly. All kinds of rumours are afloat concerning this young man, who is, indeed, about the Crown Prince's age; he has been lodging with a baker at Aue, and there blowing the horn." "I'll go with you and see him. I will stand bail for him. Let him come to me. Hah-hah! George von Günther, hah-hah!" So Volkmar, already more than half disposed to believe that the horn-blower was a prince in disguise, rode over to the place where he was in confinement, saw him, and lost what little doubt he had. The upright carriage, the aristocratic cast of features, the stand-off manners, all betokened the purest of blue blood--all were glimmerings of that halo which surrounds sovereignty. The Crown Prince of Saxony was away--it was alleged, in France--making the grand tour, but, was it not more likely that he was going the round of the duchy of Saxony, inquiring into the wants and wrongs of the people? If so, who could better assist him to the knowledge of these things, than he, Volkmar, and who could better open his eyes to the delinquencies of high-placed, high-salaried officials--notably of the fisheries and forests? "There is one thing shakes my faith," said Pöckel: "our Crown Prince is not small-pox marked." "That is nothing," answered Volkmar eagerly. "His Serenity has caught the infection in making his studies among the people." "And then--he is so shabbily dressed." "That is nothing--it is the perfection of disguise." Volkmar carried off the young man to his house, and showed him the greatest respect, insisted on his sitting in the carriage facing the horses, and would on no account take a place at his side, but seated himself deferentially opposite him. On reaching Hetzdorf, Volkmar introduced his wife and his daughter Joanna to the distinguished prince, who behaved to them very graciously, and with the most courtly air expressed himself charmed with the room prepared for him. Dinner was served, and politics were discussed; the reserve with which the guest treated such subjects, the caution with which he expressed an opinion, served to deepen in Volkmar's mind the conviction that he had caught the Crown Prince travelling incog. After the servants had withdrawn, and when a good deal of wine--the best in the cellar--had been drunk, the host said confidentially in a whisper, "I see clearly enough what you are." "Indeed," answered the guest, "I can tell you what I am--by trade an armourer." "Ah, ha! but by birth--what?" said Volkmar, slyly, holding up his glass and winking over it. "Well," answered the guest, "I will admit this--I am not what I appear." "And may I further ask your--I mean you--where you are at home?" "I am a child of Saxony," was the answer. Afterwards, at the trial, the defendant insisted that this was exactly the reply made, whereas Volkmar asserted that the words were, "I am a child of the House of Saxony." But there can be no doubt that his imagination supplemented the actual words used with those he wished to hear. "The small-pox has altered you since you left home," said Volkmar. "Very likely. I have had the small-pox since I left my home." Volkmar at once placed his house, his servants, his purse, at the disposal of his guest, and his offer was readily accepted. It is now advisable to turn back and explain the situation, by relating the early history of this person, who passed under the name of Karl Marbitz, an armourer; but whom a good number of people suspected of being something other than what he gave himself out to be, though only Volkmar and Pöckel and one or two others supposed him to be the Crown Prince of Saxony. Sophie Sabine Apitzsch was born at Lunzenau in Saxony in 1692, was well brought up, kept to school, and learned to write orthographically, and to have a fair general knowledge of history and geography. When she left school she was employed by her father in his trade, which was that of an armourer. She was tall and handsome, somewhat masculine--in after years a Cossack got into her boots--had the small-pox, which, however, only slightly disfigured her. In 1710 she had a suitor, a gamekeeper, Melchior Leonhart. But Sophie entertained a rooted dislike to marriage, and she kept her lover off for three years, till her father peremptorily ordered her to marry Melchior, and fixed the day for the wedding. Then Sophie one night got out of her own clothing, stepped into her father's best suit, and walked away in the garments of a man, and shortly afterwards appeared in Anspach under a feigned name, as a barber's assistant. Here she got into difficulties with the police, as she had no papers of legitimation, and to escape them, enlisted. She carried a musket for a month only, deserted, and resumed her vagabond life in civil attire, as a barber's assistant, and came to Leipzig, where she lodged at the Golden Cock. How she acquired the art, and how those liked it on whose faces she made her experiments with the razor, we are not told. At the Golden Cock lodged an athletic lady of the name of Anna Franke, stout, muscular, and able to lift great weights with her teeth, and with a jerk throw them over her shoulders. Anna Franke gave daily exhibitions of her powers, and on the proceeds maintained herself and her daughter, a girl of seventeen. The stout and muscular lady also danced on a tight rope, which with her bounces acted like a taut bowstring, projecting the athlete high into the air. The Fräulein Franke very speedily fell in love with the fine young barber, and proposed to her mother that Herr Karl should be taken into the concern, as he would be useful to stretch the ropes, and go round for coppers. Sophie was nothing loth to have her inn bill paid on these terms, but when finally the bouncing mother announced that her daughter's hand was at the disposal of Karl, then the situation became even more embarrassing than that at home from which Sophie had run away. The barber maintained her place as long as she could, but at last, when the endearments of the daughter became oppressive, and the urgency of the mother for speedy nuptials became vexatious, she pretended that the father, who was represented as a well-to-do citizen of Hamburg, must first be consulted. On this plea Sophie borrowed of Mother Franke the requisite money for her journey and departed, promising to return in a few weeks. Instead of fulfilling her promise, Sophie wrote to ask for a further advance of money, and when this was refused, disappeared altogether from the knowledge of the athlete and her daughter. On this second flight from marriage, Sophie Apitzsch met with an armourer named Karl Marbitz, and by some means or other contrived to get possession of his pass, leaving him instead a paper of legitimation made out under the name of Karl Gottfried, which old Mother Franke had induced the police to grant to the young barber who was engaged to marry her daughter. In June 1714, under the name of Marbitz, Sophie appeared among the Erz-Gebirge, the chain of mountains that separate Saxony from Bohemia, and begged her way from place to place, pretending to be a schoolmaster out of employ. After rambling about for some time, she took up her quarters with a baker at Elterlein. Here it was that for the first time a suspicion was aroused that she was a person of greater consequence than she gave out. The rumour reached the nearest magistrate that there was a mysterious stranger there who wore a ribbon and star of some order, and he at once went to the place to make inquiries, but found that Sophie had neither ribbon nor order, and that her papers declared in proper form who and what she was. At this time she fell ill at the baker's house, and the man, perhaps moved by the reports abroad concerning her, was ready to advance her money to the amount of £6 or £7. When recovered, she left the village where she had been ill, and went to another one, where she took up her abode with another baker, named Fischer, whom she helped in his trade, or went about practising upon the huntsman's horn. This amusement it was which brought her into trouble. Possibly she may not have known that the horn was a reserved instrument that might not be played by the ignoble. At the time that Volkmar took her out of the lockup, and carried her off to his mansion in his carriage, she was absolutely without money, in threadbare black coat, stockings ill darned, and her hair very much in want of powder. Hitherto her associates had been of the lowest classes; she had been superior to them in education, in morals, and in character, and had to some extent imposed on them. They acknowledged in her an undefined dignity and quiet reserve, with unquestioned superiority in attainments and general tone of mind, and this they attributed to her belonging to a vastly higher class in society. Now, all at once she was translated into another condition of life, one in which she had never moved before; but she did not lose her head; she maintained the same caution and reserve in it, and never once exposed her ignorance so as to arouse suspicion that she was not what people insisted on believing her to be. She was sufficiently shrewd never by word to compromise herself, and afterwards, when brought to trial, she insisted that she had not once asserted that she was other than Karl Marbitz the armourer. Others had imagined she was a prince, but she had not encouraged them in their delusion by as much as a word. That, no doubt, was true, but she accepted the honours offered and presents made her under this erroneous impression, without an attempt to open the eyes of the deluded to their own folly. Perhaps this was more than could be expected of her. "Foolery," said the clown in "Twelfth Night," "does walk about the orb, like the sun; it shines everywhere"--and what are fools but the natural prey of the clever? Sophie had been ill, reduced to abject poverty, was in need of good food, new clothes, and shelter; all were offered, even forced upon her. Was she called upon to reject them? She thought not. Now that Volkmar had a supposed prince under his roof he threw open his house to the neighbourhood, and invited every gentleman he knew--except the von Günthers. He provided the prince with a coat of scarlet cloth frogged and laced with gold, with a new hat, gave him a horse, filled his purse, and provided him with those identical boots in which a century later a Cossack marched into Paris. She was addressed by her host and hostess as "Your Highness," and "Your Serenity," and they sought to kiss her hand, but she waived away these exhibitions of servility, saying, "Let be--we will regard each other as on a common level." Once Volkmar said slyly to her, "What would your august father say if he knew you were here?" "He would be surprised," was all the answer that could be drawn from her. One day the newspaper contained information of the Crown Prince's doings in Paris with his tutor and attendants. Volkmar pointed it out to her with a twinkle of the eye, saying, "Do not suppose I am to be hoodwinked by such attempts to deceive the public as that." In the mornings when the pseudo prince left the bedroom, outside the door stood Herr Volkmar, cap in hand, bowing. As he offered her a pinch of snuff from a gold _tabatière_ one day, he saw her eyes rest on it; he at once said, "This belonged formerly to the Königsmark." "Then," she replied, "it will have the double initials on it. 'A' for Aurora." Now, argued Volkmar, how was it likely that his guest should know the scandalous story of Augustus I. and the fair Aurora of Königsmark, mother of the famous French marshal, unless he had belonged to the royal family of Saxony?[14] He left out of account that Court scandal is talked about everywhere, and is in the mouths of all. Then he presented her with the snuff-box. Next he purchased for her a set of silver plate for her cover, and ordered a ribbon and a star of diamonds, because it became one of such distinguished rank not to appear without a decoration! As the girl said afterwards at her trial, she had but to hint a desire for anything, and it was granted her at once. Her host somewhat bored her with political disquisitions; he was desirous of impressing on his illustrious guest what a political genius he was, and in his own mind had resolved to become prime minister of Saxony in the place of the fallen Beichlingen, who was said to have made so much money out of the State that he could buy a principality, and who, indeed, struck a medal with his arms on it surmounted by a princely crown. But Volkmar's ambition went further. As already stated he had a daughter--the modest Joanna; what a splendid opportunity was in the hands of the scheming parents! If the young prince formed an attachment for Joanna, surely he might get the emperor to elevate her by diploma to the rank of a princess, and thus Volkmar would see his Joanna Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony. He and Frau Volkmar were far too good people to scheme to get their daughter such a place as the old Königsmark had occupied with the reigning sovereign. Besides, Königsmark had been merely created a countess, and who would crave to be a countess when she might be Queen? and a favourite, when, by playing her cards well, she might become a legitimate wife? So the old couple threw Joanna at the head of their guest, and did their utmost to entangle him. In the meantime the von Günthers were flaming with envy and rage. They no more doubted that the Volkmars had got the Crown Prince living with them, than did the Volkmars themselves. The whole neighbourhood flowed to the entertainments given in his honour at Hetzdorf; only the von Günthers were shut out. But von Günther met the mysterious stranger at one or two of the return festivities given by the gentry who had been entertained at Hetzdorf, and he seized on one of these occasions boldly to invite his Highness to pay him also a visit at his "little place;" and what was more than he expected, the offer was accepted. In fact, the Apitzsch who had twice run away from matrimony, was becoming embarrassed again by the tenderness of Joanna and the ambition of the parents. The dismay of the Volkmars passes description when their guest informed them he was going to pay a visit to the hated rivals. Sophie was fetched away in the von Günther carriage, and by servants put into new liveries for the occasion, and was received and entertained with the best at Jägerhof. Here, also, presents were made; among others a silver cover for table was given her by the daughter of her host, who had married a major, and who hoped, in return, to see her husband advanced to be a general. She was taken to see the royal castle of Augustusburg, and here a little difference of testimony occurs as to the observation she made in the chapel, which was found to be without an organ. At her trial it was asserted that she had said, "I must order an organ," but she positively swore she had said, "An organ ought to be provided." She was taken also to the mansion of the Duke of Holstein at Weisenburg, where she purchased one of his horses--that is to say, agreed to take it, and let her hosts find the money. The visit to the von Günthers did not last ten days, and then she was back again with the Volkmars, to their exuberant delight. Why she remained so short a time at Jägerhof does not appear. Possibly she may have been there more in fear of detection than at Hetzdorf. Now that the Volkmars had her back they would not let her out of their sight. They gave her two servants in livery to attend her; they assured her that her absence had so affected Joanna that the girl had done nothing but weep, and had refused to eat. They began to press in their daughter's interest for a declaration of intentions, and that negotiations with the Emperor should be opened that a title of princess of the Holy Roman Empire might be obtained for her as preliminary to the nuptials. Sophie Apitzsch saw that she must again make a bolt to escape the marriage ring, and she looked about for an opportunity. But there was no evading the watch of the Volkmars, who were alarmed lest their guest should again go to the hated von Günthers. Well would it have been for the Volkmars had they kept the "prince" under less close surveillance, and allowed him to succeed in his attempts to get away. It would have been to their advantage in many ways. A fortnight or three weeks passed, and the horse bought of the Duke of Holstein had not been sent In fact the Duke, when the matter was communicated to him, was puzzled. He knew that the Crown Prince was in Paris, and could not have visited his stables, and promised to purchase his horse. So he instituted inquiries before he consented to part with the horse, and at once the bubble burst. Police arrived at Hetzdorf to arrest the pretender, and convey her to Augustusburg, where she was imprisoned, till her trial. This was in February, 1715. In her prison she had an apoplectic stroke, but recovered. Sentence was pronounced against her by the court at Leipzig in 1716, that she should be publicly whipped out of the country. That is to say, sent from town to town, and whipped in the market-place of each, till she was sent over the frontier. In consideration of her having had a stroke, the king commuted the sentence to whipping in private, and imprisonment at his majesty's pleasure. She does not seem to have been harshly treated by the gaoler of Waldheim, the prison to which she was sent. She was given her own room, she dined at the table of the gaoler, continued to wear male clothes, and was cheerful, obedient, and contented. In 1717 both she and her father appealed to the king for further relaxation of her sentence, but this was refused. The prison authorities gave her the best testimony for good conduct whilst in their hands. In the same year, 1717, the unfortunate Volkmar made a claim for the scarlet coat--which he said the moths were likely to eat unless placed on some one's back--the gold snuff-box, the silver spoons, dishes, forks, the horse, the watch, and various other things he had given Sophie, being induced to do so by false representations. The horse as well as the plate, the star, the snuff-box, the coat and the boots had all been requisitioned as evidence before her trial. The question was a hard one to solve, whether Herr Volkmar could recover presents, and it had to be transmitted from one court to another. An order of court dated January, 1722, required further evidence to be produced before purse, coat, boots, &c., could be returned to Volkmar--that is, _seven_ years after they had been taken into the custody of the Court. The horse must have eaten more than his cost by this time, and the coat must have lost all value through moth-eating. The cost of proceedings was heavy, and Volkmar then withdrew from his attempt to recover the objects given to the false prince. But already--long before, by decree of October 1717--Sophie Apitzsch had been liberated. She left prison in half male, half female costume, and in this dress took service with a baker at Waldheim; and we hear no more of her, whether she married, and when she died. FOOTNOTES: [13] Augustus the Strong was King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. [14] Aurora v. Königsmark went out of favour in 1698--probably then sold the gold snuff-box. She died in 1728. Peter Nielsen. On the 29th day of April in the year 1465, died Henry Strangebjerg, bishop of Ribe in Denmark, after having occupied the See for just ten years. For some days before his decease public, official prayer had been made for his recovery by the Cathedral Chapter, but in their hearts the Canons were impatient for his departure. Not, be it understood, that the Bishop was an unworthy occupant of the See of Liafdag the Martyr--on the contrary, he had been a man of exemplary conduct; nor because he was harsh in his rule--on the contrary, he had been a lenient prelate. The reason why, when official prayer was made for his recovery, it was neutralised by private intercession for his removal, was solely this--his removal opened a prospect of advancement. The Cathedral Chapter of Ribe consisted of fifteen Canons, and a Dean or Provost, all men of family, learning and morals. Before the doctors had shaken their heads over the sick bed of Henry Strangebjerg, it was known throughout Ribe that there would be four candidates for the vacant throne. It was, of course, impossible for more than one man to be elected; but as the election lay entirely and uncontrolledly in the hands of the Chapter, it was quite possible for a Canon to make a good thing out of an election without being himself elected. The bishops nominated to many benefices, and there existed then no law against pluralities. The newly chosen prelate, if he had a spark of gratitude, must reward those faithful men who had made him bishop. At 4 p.m. on April 29th the breath left the body of Henry Strangebjerg. At 4.15 p.m. the Chapter were rubbing their hands and drawing sighs of relief. But Thomas Lange, the Dean, rubbed his hands and drew his sigh of relief ten minutes earlier, viz., at 4.5 p.m., for he stood by the bed of the dying bishop. At 3.25 p.m. Thomas Lange's nerves had received a great shock, for a flicker as of returning life had manifested itself in the sick man, and for a few minutes he really feared he might recover. At 4.10 p.m. Hartwig Juel, the Archdeacon, who had been standing outside the bishop's door, was seen running down the corridor with a flush in his cheeks. Through the keyhole he had heard the Dean exclaim: "Thank God!" and when he heard that pious ejaculation, he knew that all dread of the Bishop's restoration was over. It was not till so late as 4.20 p.m. that Olaf Petersen knew it. Olaf was kneeling in the Cathedral, in the Chapel of St. Lambert, the yellow chapel as it was called, absorbed in devotion, consequently the news did not reach him till five minutes after the Chapter, twenty minutes after the vacation of the See. Olaf Petersen was a very holy man; he was earnest and sincere. He was, above everything, desirous of the welfare of the Church and the advancement of religion. He was ascetic, denying himself in food, sleep and clothing, and was profuse in his alms and in his devotions. He saw the worldliness, the self-seeking, the greed of gain and honours that possessed his fellows, and he was convinced that one thing was necessary for the salvation of Christianity in Ribe, and that one thing was his own election to the See. The other candidates were moved by selfish interests. He cared only for true religion. Providence would do a manifest injustice if it did not take cognizance of his integrity and interfere to give him the mitre. He was resolved to use no unworthy means to secure it. He would make no promises, offer no bribes--that is, to his fellow Canons, but he promised a silver candlestick to St. Lambert, and bribed St. Gertrude to intervene with the assurance of a pilgrimage to her shrine. We have mentioned only three of the candidates. The fourth was Jep Mundelstrup, an old and amiable man, who had not thrust himself forward, but had been put forward by his friends, who considered him sufficiently malleable to be moulded to their purposes. Jep was, as has been said, old; he was so old that it was thought (and hoped), if chosen, his tenure of office would be but brief. Four or five years--under favourable circumstances, such as a changeable winter, a raw spring with east winds--he might drop off even sooner, and leave the mitre free for another scramble. The Kings of Denmark no longer nominated to the Sees, sent no _congé d'élire_ to the Chapter. They did not even appoint to the Canonries. Consequently the Canons had everything pretty much their own way, and had only two things to consider, to guide their determination--the good of the Church and their own petty interests. The expression "good of the Church" demands comment. "The good of the Church" was the motive, the only recognised motive, on which the Chapter were supposed to act. Practically, however, it was non-existent as a motive. It was a mere figure of speech used to cloak selfish ambition. From this sweeping characterisation we must, however, exclude Olaf Petersen, who did indeed regard pre-eminently the good of the Church, but then that good was, in his mind, inextricably involved with his own fortunes. He was the man to make religion a living reality. He was the man to bring the Church back to primitive purity. He could not blind his eyes to the fact that not one of the Canons beside himself cared a farthing for spiritual matters; therefore he desired the mitre for his own brows. The conclave at which the election was to be made was fixed for the afternoon of the day on which Henry Strangebjerg was to be buried, and the burial was appointed to take place as soon as was consistent with decency. The whole of the time between the death and the funeral was taken up by the Canons with hurrying to and from each other's residences, canvassing for votes. Olaf Petersen alone refrained from canvassing, he spent his whole time in fasting and prayer, so anxious was he for the welfare of the Church and the advancement of true religion. At length--Boom! Boom! Boom! The great bell of the minster tower summoned the Chapter to the hall of conclave. Every Canon was in his place, fifteen Canons and the provost, sixteen in all. It was certain that the provost, although chairman, would claim his right to vote, and exercise it, voting for himself. It was ruled that all voting should be open, for two reasons--that the successful candidate might know who had given him their shoulders on which to mount, and so reward these shoulders by laying many benefices upon them, and secondly, that he might know who had been his adversaries, and so might exclude them from preferments. Every one believed he would be on the winning side, no one supposed the other alternative possible. The candidates, as already intimated, were four. Thomas Lange, the Dean, who belonged to a good, though not wealthy family. He had been in business before taking orders, and brought with him into the Church practical shrewdness and business habits. He had husbanded well the resources of the Chapter, and had even enlarged its revenue by the purchase of three farms and a manor. The second candidate, Hartwig Juel, was a member of a powerful noble family. His brother was at Court and highly regarded by King Christian. His election would gratify the king. Hartwig Juel was Archdeacon. The third candidate was the good old Jep Mundelstrup; and the fourth was the representative of the ascetic, religious party, which was also the party of reform, Olaf Petersen. The Dean was, naturally, chairman. Before taking the chair he announced his intention of voting. The four candidates were proposed, and the votes taken. The Dean numbered 4. Hartwig Juel numbered 4. Jep Mundelstrup numbered 4. Olaf Petersen numbered 4. Moreover, each candidate had voted for himself. What was to be done? The Chapter sat silent, looking about them in each others' faces. Then the venerable Jep Mundelstrup, assisted by those who sat by him, staggered to his feet, and leaning on his staff, he mumbled forth this address: "My reverend brothers, it was wholly without my desire and not in furtherance of any ambition of mine, that my name was put up as that of a candidate for the vacant mitre of the Holy See of Ribe. I am old and infirm. With the patriarch Jacob I may say, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.' and I am not worthy to receive so great an honour. Evil my days have been, because I have had only my Canonry and one sorry living to support me; and there are comforts I should desire in my old age which I cannot afford. My health is not sound. I shrink from the responsibilities and labours of a bishopric. If I withdraw my candidature, I feel confident that the successful candidate will not forget my infirmities, and the facility I have afforded for his election. I decline to stand, and at the same time, lest I should seem to pose in opposition to three of my excellent brethren, I decline also to vote." Then he sat down, amidst general applause. Here was an unexpected simplification of matters. The Dean and Hartwig Juel cast kindly, even affectionate glances at those who had previously voted for Jep, Olaf Petersen looked up to heaven and prayed. Again, the votes were taken, and again the chairman claimed his right to vote. When taken they stood thus: The Dean, 5. Hartwig Juel, 5. Olaf Petersen, 5. What was to be done? Again the Chapter sat silent, rubbing their chins, and casting furtive glances at each other. The Chapter was adjourned to the same hour on the morrow. The intervening hours were spent in negociations between the several parties, and attempts made by the two first in combination to force Olaf Petersen to resign his candidature. But Olaf was too conscientious a man to do this. He felt that the salvation of souls depended on his staying the plague like Phinehas with his censer. Boom! Boom! Boom! The Cathedral bell again summoned the conclave to the Chapter House. Before proceeding to business the Dean, as chairman, addressed the electors. He was an eloquent man, and he set in moving words before them the solemnity of the duty imposed on them, the importance of considering only the welfare of the Church, and the responsibility that would weigh on them should they choose an unworthy prelate. He conjured them in tones vibrating with pathos, to put far from them all self-seeking thoughts, and to be guided only by conscience. Then he sat down. The votes were again taken. Jep Mundelstrup again shaking his head, and refusing to vote. When counted, they stood thus. Thomas Lange, 5. Hartwig Juel, 5. Olaf Petersen, 5. Then up started the Dean, very red in the face, and said, "Really this is preposterous! Are we to continue this farce? Some of the brethren must yield for the general good. I would cheerfully withdraw my candidature, but for one consideration. You all know that the temporal affairs of the See have fallen into confusion. Our late excellent prelate was not a man of business, and there has been alienation, and underletting, and racking out of church lands, which I have marked with anxiety, and which I am desirous to remedy. You all know that I have this one good quality, I am a business man, understand account keeping, and look sharp after the pecuniary interests of the Chapter lands. It is essential that the lands of the See should be attended to by some practical man like myself, therefore I do not withdraw from my candidature, but therefore only--" Then up sprang Hartwig Juel, and said, "The very Reverend the Dean has well said, this farce must not continue. Some must yield if a bishop is to be elected. I would cheerfully withdraw from candidature but for one little matter. I hold in my hand a letter received this morning from my brother, who tells me that his most gracious majesty, King Christian, expressed himself to my brother in terms of hope that I should be elected. You, my reverend brothers, all know that we are living in a critical time when it is most necessary that a close relation, a cordial relation, should be maintained between the Church and the State. Therefore, in the political interests of the See, but only in these interests, I cannot withdraw my candidature." Then all eyes turned on Olaf Petersen. His face was pale, his lips set. He stood up, and leaning forward said firmly, "The pecuniary and the political interests of the See are as nothing to me, its spiritual interests are supreme. Heaven is my witness, I have no personal ambition to wear the mitre. I know it will cause exhausting labour and terrible responsibilities, from which I shrink. Nevertheless, seeing as I do that this is a period in the history of the Church when self-seeking and corruption have penetrated her veins and are poisoning her life-blood, seeing as I do that unless there be a revival of religion, and an attempt at reform be made within the Church, there will ensue such a convulsion as will overthrow her, therefore, and only therefore do I feel that I can not withdraw from my candidature." "Very well," said the Dean in a crusty tone. "There is nothing for it but for us to vote again. Now at least we have clear issues before us, the temporal, the political, and the spiritual interests of the Church." The votes were again taken, and stood thus. The temporal interests, 5. The political interests, 5. The spiritual interests, 5. Here was a dead lock. It was clear that parties were exactly divided, and that none would yield. After a pause of ten minutes, Jep Mundelstrup was again helped to his feet. He looked round the Chapter with blinking eyes, and opened and shut his mouth several times before he came to speak. At last he said, in faltering tones, "My reverend brethren, it is clear to me that my resignation has complicated, rather than helped matters forward. Do not think I am about to renew my candidature, _that_ I am not, but I am going to make a proposition to which I hope you will give attentive hearing. If we go on in this manner, we shall elect no one, and then his Majesty, whom God bless, will step in and nominate." "Hear, hear!" from the adherents of Hartwig Juel. "I do not for a moment pretend that the nominee of his Majesty would not prove an excellent bishop, but I do fear that a nomination by the crown would be the establishment of a dangerous precedent." "Hear! hear!" from the adherents of Olaf Petersen. "At the same time it must be borne in mind that the temporal welfare of the See ought to be put in the hands of some one conversant with the condition into which they have been allowed to lapse." "Hear! hear!" from the adherents of Thomas Lange. "I would suggest, as we none of us can agree, that we refer the decision to an umpire." General commotion, and whispers, and looks of alarm. "How are we to obtain one at once conversant with the condition of the diocese, and not a partizan?" asked the Dean. "There is a wretched little village in the midst of the Roager Heath, cut off from communication with the world, in which lives a priest named Peter Nielsen on his cure, a man who is related to no one here, belongs, I believe, to no gentle family, and, therefore, would have no family interests one way or the other to bias him. He has the character of being a shrewd man of business, some of the estates of the Church are on the Roager Heath, and he knows how they have been treated, and I have always heard that he is a good preacher and an indefatigable parish priest. Let him be umpire. I can think of none other who would not be a partizan." The proposition was so extraordinary and unexpected that the Chapter, at first, did not know what to think of it. Who was this Peter Nielsen? No one knew of him anything more than what Jep Mundelstrup had said, and he, it was believed, had drawn largely on his imagination for his facts. Indeed, he was the least known man among the diocesan clergy. It was disputed whether he was a good preacher. Who had heard him? no one. Was it true that he was not a gentleman by birth? No one knew to what family he belonged. In default of any other solution to the dead lock in which the Chapter stood, it was agreed by all that the selection of a bishop for Ribe should be left to Peter Nielsen of Roager. That same day, indeed as soon after the dissolution of the meeting as was possible, one of the Canons mounted his horse, and rode away to the Roager Heath. The village of Ro or Raa-ager, literally the rough or barren field, lay in the dead flat of sandy heath that occupies so large a portion of the centre and west coast of Jutland, and which goes by various names, as Randböll Heath and Varde Moor. In many places it is mere fen, where the water lies and stagnates. In others it is a dry waste of sand strewn with coarse grass and a few scant bushes. The village itself consisted of one street of cottages thatched with turf, and with walls built of the same, heather and grass sprouting from the interstices of the blocks. The church was little more dignified than the hovels. It was without tower and bell. Near the church was the parsonage. The Canon descended from his cob; he had ridden faster than was his wont, and was hot. He drew his sleeve across his face and bald head, and then threw the bridle over the gate-post. In the door of the parsonage stood a short, stout, rosy-faced, dark-eyed woman, with two little children pulling at her skirts. This was Maren Grubbe, the housekeeper of the pastor, at least that was her official designation. She had been many years at Roager with Peter Nielsen, and was believed to manage him as well as the cattle and pigs and poultry of the glebe. From behind her peered a shock-headed boy of about eight years with a very dirty face and cunning eyes. The Canon stood and looked at the woman, then at the children, and the woman and children stood and looked at him. "Is this the house of the priest, Peter Nielsen?" he asked. "Certainly, do you want him?" inquired the housekeeper. "I have come from Ribe to see him on diocesan business." "Step inside," said the housekeeper curtly. "His reverence is not in the house at this moment, he is in the church saying his offices." "That's lies!" shouted the dirty boy from behind. "Dada is in the pigstye setting a trap for the rats." "Hold your tongue, Jens!" exclaimed the woman, giving the boy a cuff which knocked him over. Then to the Canon she said, "Take a seat and I will go to the church after him." She went out with the two smaller children staggering at her skirts, tumbling, picking themselves up, going head over heels, crowing and squealing. When she was outside the house, the dirty boy sat upright on the floor, winked at the Canon, crooked his fingers, and said, "Follow me, and I will show you Dada." The bald-headed ecclesiastic rose, and guided by the boy went into a back room, through a small window in which he saw into the pig-styes, and there, without his coat, in a pair of stained and patched breeches, and a blue worsted night-cap, over ankles in filth, was the parish priest engaged in setting a rat-trap. Outside, in the yard, the pigs were enjoying their freedom. Leisurely round the corner came the housekeeper with the satellites. "There, Peers!" said she, "There is a reverend gentleman from the cathedral come after thee." "Then," said the pastor, slowly rising, "do thou, Maren, keep out of sight, and especially be careful not to produce the brats. Their presence opens the door to misconstruction." The Canon stole back to his seat, mopped his brow and head, and thought to himself that the Chapter had put the selection of a chief pastor into very queer hands. The nasty little boy began to giggle and snuffle simultaneously. "Have you seen Dada? Dada saying his prayers in there." "Who are you?" asked the ecclesiastic stiffly of the child. "I'm Jens," answered the boy. "I know you are Jens, I heard your mother call you so. I presume that person is your mother." "That is my mother, but Dada is not my dada." "O, Jens, boy, Jens! Truth above all things. Magna est veritas et prævalebit." The Reverend Peter Nielsen entered, clean, in a cassock, and with a shovel hat on his head. "The children whom you have seen," said Peter Nielsen, "are the nephews and nieces of my worthy housekeeper, Maria Grubbe. She is a charitable woman, and as her sister is very poor, and has a large family, my Maren, I mean my housekeeper, takes charge of some of the overflow."[15] "It is a great burden to you," said the Canon. Peter Nielsen shrugged his shoulders. "To clothe the naked and give food to the hungry are deeds of mercy." "I quite understand, quite," said the Canon. "I only mentioned it," continued the parish priest, "lest you should suppose--" "I quite understand," said the Canon, interrupting him, with a bow and a benignant smile. "And now," said Peter Nielsen, "I am at your service." Thereupon the Canon unfolded to his astonished hearer the nature of his mission. The pastor sat listening attentively with his head bowed, and his hands planted on his knees. Then, when his visitor had done speaking, he thrust his left hand into his trouser pocket and produced a palmful of carraway seed. He put some into his mouth, and began to chew it; whereupon the whole room became scented with carraway. "I am fond of this seed," said the priest composedly, whilst he turned over the grains in his hand with the five fingers of his right. "It is good for the stomach, and it clears the brain. So I understand that there are three parties?" "Exactly, there is that of Olaf Petersen, a narrow, uncompromising man, very sharp on the morals of the clergy; there is also that of the Dean, Thomas Lange, an ambitious and scheming ecclesiastic; and there is lastly that of the Archdeacon Hartwig Juel, one of the most amiable men in the world." "And you incline strongly to the latter?" "I do--how could you discover that? Juel is not a man to forget a friend who has done him a favour." "Now, see!" exclaimed Peter Nielsen, "See the advantage of chewing carraway seed. Three minutes ago I knew or recollected nothing about Hartwig Juel, but I do now remember that five years ago he passed through Roager, and did me the honour of partaking of such poor hospitality as I was able to give. I supplied him and his four attendants, and six horses, with refreshment. Bless my soul! the efficacy of carraway is prodigious! I can now recall all that took place. I recollect that I had only hogs' puddings to offer the Archdeacon, his chaplain, and servants, and they ate up all I had. I remember also that I had a little barrel of ale which I broached for them, and they drank the whole dry. To be sure!--I had a bin of oats, and the horses consumed every grain! I know that the Archdeacon regretted that I had no bell to my church, and that he promised to send me one. He also assured me he would not leave a stone unturned till he had secured for me a better and more lucrative cure. I even sent a side of bacon away with him as a present--but nothing came of the promises. I ought to have given him a bushel of carraway. You really have no notion of the poverty of this living. I cannot now offer you any other food than buck-wheat brose, as I have no meat in the house. I can only give you water to drink as I am without beer. I cannot even furnish you with butter and milk, as I have not a cow." "Not even a cow!" exclaimed the Canon. "I really am thankful for your having spoken so plainly to me. I had no conception that your cure was so poor. That the Archdeacon should not have fulfilled the promises he made you is due to forgetfulness. Indeed, I assure you, for the last five years I have repeatedly seen Hartwig Juel strike his brow and exclaim, 'Something troubles me. I have made a promise, and cannot recall it. This lies on my conscience, and I shall have no peace till I recollect and discharge it.' This is plain fact." "Take him a handful of carraway," urged the parish priest. "No--he will remember all when I speak to him, unaided by carraway." "There is one thing I can offer you," said Peter Nielsen, "a mug of dill-water." "Dill-water! what is that?" "It is made from carraway. It is given to infants to enable them to retain their milk. It is good for adults to make them recollect their promises." "My dear good friend," said the Canon rising, "your requirements shall be complied with to-morrow. I see you have excellent pasture here for sheep. Have you any?" The parish priest shook his head. "That is a pity. That however can be rectified. Good-bye, rely on me. _Qui pacem habet, se primum pacat._" When the Canon was gone, Peter Nielsen, who had attended him to the door, turned, and found Maren Grubbe behind him. "I say, Peers!" spoke the housekeeper, nudging him, "What is the meaning of all this? What was that Latin he said as he went away?" "My dear, good Maren," answered the priest, "he quoted a saying familiar to us clergy. At the altar is a little metal plate with a cross on it, and this is called the Pax, or Peace. During the mass the priest kisses it, and then hands it to his assistant, who kisses it in turn and passes it on so throughout the attendance. The Latin means this, 'Let him who has the Pax bless himself with it before giving it out of his hands,' and means nothing more than this: 'Charity begins at Home,' or--put more boldly still, 'Look out for Number I.'" "Now, see here," said the housekeeper, "you have been too moderate, Peers, you have not looked out sufficiently for Number I. Leave the next comer to me. No doubt that the Dean will send to you, in like manner as the Archdeacon sent to-day." "As you like, Maren, but keep the children in the background. Charity that thinketh no ill, is an uncommon virtue." Next morning early there arrived at the parsonage a waggon laden with sides of bacon, smoked beef, a hogshead of prime ale, a barrel of claret, and several sacks of wheat. It had scarcely been unloaded when a couple of milch cows arrived; half an hour later came a drove of sheep. Peter Nielsen disposed of everything satisfactorily about the house and glebe. His eye twinkled, he rubbed his hands, and said to himself with a chuckle, "He who blesses, blesses first himself." In the course of the morning a rider drew up at the house door. Maren flattened her nose at the little window of the guest-room, and scrutinized the arrival before admitting him. Then she nodded her head, and whispered to the priest to disappear. A moment later she opened the door, and ushered a stout red-faced ecclesiastic into the room. "Is the Reverend Pastor at home?" he asked, bowing to Maren Grubbe; "I have come to see him on important business." "He is at the present moment engaged with a sick parishioner. He will be here in a quarter of an hour. He left word before going out, that should your reverence arrive before his return--" "What! I was expected!" "The venerable the Archdeacon sent a deputation to see my master yesterday, and he thought it probable that a deputation from the very Reverend the Dean would arrive to-day." "Indeed! So Hartwig Juel has stolen a march on us." "Hartwig Juel had on a visit some little while ago made promises to my master of a couple of cows, a herd of sheep, some ale, wine, wheat, and so on, and he took advantage of the occasion to send all these things to us." "Indeed! Hartwig Juel's practice is sharp." "Thomas Lange will make up no doubt for dilatoriness." "Humph! and Olaf Petersen, has he sent?" "His deputation will, doubtless, come to-morrow, or even this afternoon." The Canon folded his hands over his ample paunch, and looked hard at Maren Grubbe. She was attired in her best. Her cheeks shone like quarendon apples, as red and glossy; full of health--with a threat of temper, just as a hot sky has in it indications of a tempest. Her eyes were dark as sloes, and looked as sharp. She was past middle age, but ripe and strong; for all that. The fat Canon sat looking at her, twirling his thumbs like a little windmill, over his paunch, without speaking. She also sat demurely with her hands flat on her knees, and looked him full and firm in the face. "I have been thinking," said the Canon, "how well a set of silver chains would look about that neck, and pendant over that ample bosom." "Gold would look better," said Maren, and shut her mouth again. "And a crimson silk kerchief--" "Would do," interrupted the housekeeper, "for one who has not expectations of a crimson silk skirt." "Quite so." A pause, and the windmills recommenced working. Presently squeals were heard in the back premises. One of the children had fallen and hurt itself. "Cats?" asked the Canon. "Cats," answered Maren. "Quite so," said the Canon. "I am fond of cats.' "So am I," said Maren. Then ensued an uproar. The door burst open, and in tumbled little Jens with one child in his arms, the other clinging to the seat of his pantaloons. These same articles of clothing had belonged to the Reverend Peter Nielsen, till worn out, when at the request of Maren, they had been given to her and cut down in length for Jens. In length they answered. The waistband was under the arms, indeed, but the legs were not too long. In breadth and capacity they were uncurtailed. "I cannot manage them, mother," said the boy. "It is of no use making me nurse. Besides, I want to see the stranger." "These children," said Maren, looking firmly in the face of the Canon, "call me mother, but they are the offspring of my sister, whose husband was lost last winter at sea. Poor thing, she was left with fourteen, and I--" She put her apron to her eyes and wept. "O, noble charity!" said the fat priest enthusiastically. "You--I see it all--you took charge of the little orphans. You sacrifice your savings for them, your time is given to them. Emotion overcomes me. What is their name?" "Katts." "Cats?" "John Katts, and little Kristine and Sissely Katts." "And the worthy pastor assists in supporting these poor orphans?" "Yes, in spite of his poverty. And now we are on this point, let me ask you if you have not been struck with the meanness of this parsonage house. I can assure you, there is not a decent room in it, upstairs the chambers are open to the rafters, unceiled." "My worthy woman," said the Canon, "I will see to this myself. Rely upon it, if the Dean becomes Bishop, he will see that the manses of his best clergy are put into thorough repair." "I should prefer to see the repairs begun at once," said Maren. "When the Dean becomes Bishop he will have so much to think about, that he might forget our parsonage house." "Madam," said the visitor, as he rose, "they shall be executed at once. When I see the charity shown in this humble dwelling, by pastor and housekeeper alike, I feel that it demands instantaneous acknowledgment." Then in came Peter Nielsen, and said, "I have not sufficient cattle-sheds. Sheep yards are also needed." "They shall be erected." Then the Canon caught up little Kirsten and little Sissel, and kissed their dirty faces. Maren's radiant countenance assured the Canon that the cause of Thomas Lange was won with Maren Grubbe. He took the parish priest by the hand, pressed it, and said in a low tone, "_Qui pacem habet, se primum pacat_. You understand me?" "Perfectly," answered Peter Nielsen, with a smile. Next morning early there arrived at Roager a party of masons from Ribe, ready to pull down the old parsonage and build one more commodious and extensive. The pastor went over the plans with the master mason, suggested alterations and enlargements, and then, with a chuckle, he muttered to himself, "That is an excellent saying, _Qui pacem habet, se primum pacat_." Then looking up, he saw before him an ascetic, hollow-eyed, pale-faced priest. "I am Olaf Petersen," said the new comer. "I thought best to come over and see you myself; I think the true condition of the Church ought to be set before you, and that you should consider the spiritual welfare of the poor sheep in the Ribe fold, and give them a chief pastor who will care for the sheep and not for the wool." "I have got a flock of sheep already," said Peter Nielsen, coldly. "Hartwig Juel sent it me." "I think," continued Olaf, "that you should consider the edification of the spiritual building." "I am going to have a new parsonage erected," said Peter Nielsen, stiffly; "Thomas Lange has seen to that." "The Bishop needed for this diocese," Olaf Petersen went on, "should combine the harmlessness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent." "If he does that," said Nielsen, roughly, "he will be half knave and half fool. Let us have the wisdom, that is what we want now; and one of the first maxims of wisdom in Church and State is, _Qui pacem habet, se primum pacat_. You take me?" Olaf sighed, and shook his head. "Do you see this plan," said Peter Nielsen. "I am going to have a byre fashioned on that, with room for a dozen oxen. I have but two cows; stables for two horses, I have not one; a waggon shed, I am without a wheeled conveyance. I shall have new rooms, and have no furniture to put in them. Now, to stock and furnish farm and parsonage will cost much money. I have not a hundred shillings in the world. What am I to do? The man who would be Bishop of Ribe should consider the welfare of one of the most influential, learned, and moral of the priests in the diocese, and do what he can to make him comfortable. Before we choose a cow we go over her, feel her, examine her parts; before we purchase a horse we look at the teeth and explore the hoofs, and try the wind. When we select a bishop we naturally try the stuff of which he is made, if liberal, generous, open-handed, amiable. You understand me?" Olaf sighed, and drops of cold perspiration stood on his brow. A contest was going on within. Simony was a mortal sin. Was there a savour of simony in offering a present to the man in whose hands the choice of a chief pastor lay? He feared so. But then--did not the end sometimes justify the means? As these questions rose in his mind and refused to be answered, something heavy fell at his feet. His hand had been plucking at his purse, and in his nervousness he had detached it from his girdle, and had let it slip through his fingers. He did not look down. He seemed not to notice his loss, but he moved away without another word, with bent head and troubled conscience. When he was gone, Peter Nielsen bowed himself, picked up the pouch, counted the gold coins in it, laughed, rubbed his hands, and said, "He who blesses, blesses first himself." Next day a litter stayed at the parsonage gate, and out of it, with great difficulty, supported on the arms of two servants, came the aged Jep Mundelstrup. He entered the guest-room and was accommodated with a seat. When he got his breath, he said, extending a roll of parchment to the incumbent of Roager, "You will not fail to remember that it was at _my_ suggestion that the choice of a bishop was left with you. You are deeply indebted to me. But for me you would not have been visited and canvassed by the Dean, the Arch-deacon, and the Ascetic, either in person or by their representatives. You will please to remember that I was nominated, but seeing so many others proposed, I withdrew my name. I think you will allow that this exhibited great humility and shrinking from honour. In these worldly, self-seeking days such an example deserves notice and reward. I am old, and perhaps unequal to the labours of office, but I think I ought to be considered; although I did formally withdraw my candidature, I am not sure that I would refuse the mitre were it pressed on me. At all events it would be a compliment to offer it me and I might refuse it. _Qui pacem habet, se primum pacat._ You will not regret the return courtesy." * * * * * Boom! Boom! Boom! The cathedral bell was summoning all Ribe to the minster to be present at the nomination of its bishop. All Ribe answered the summons. The cathedral stands on a hill called the Mount of Lilies, but the mount is of so slight an elevation that it does not protect the cathedral from overflow, and a spring tide with N.W. wind has been known to flood both town and minster and leave fishes on the sacred floor. The church is built of granite, brick and sandstone; originally the contrast may have been striking, but weather has smudged the colours together into an ugly brown-grey. The tower is lofty, narrow, and wanting a spire. It resembles a square ruler set up on end; it is too tall for its base. The church is stately, of early architecture with transepts, and the choir at their intersection with the nave, domed over, and a small semi-circular apse beyond, for the altar. The nave was crowded, the canons occupied the stalls in their purple tippets edged with crimson; purple, because the chapter of a cathedral; crimson edged, because the founder of the See was a martyr. Fifteen, and the Dean, sixteen in all, were in their places. On the altar steps, in the apse, in the centre, sat Peter Nielsen in his old, worn cassock, without surplice. On the left side of the altar stood the richly-sculptured Episcopal throne, and on the seat was placed the jewelled mitre, over the arm the cloth of gold cope was cast, and against the back leaned the pastoral crook of silver gilt, encrusted with precious stones. When the last note of the bell sounded, the Dean rose from his stall, and stepping up to the apse, made oath before heaven, the whole congregation and Peter Nielsen, that he was prepared to abide by the decision of this said Peter, son of Nicolas, parish priest of Roager. Amen. He was followed by the Archdeacon, then by each of the canons to the last. Then mass was said, during which the man in whose hands the fortunes of the See reposed, knelt with unimpassioned countenance and folded hands. At the conclusion he resumed his seat, the crucifix was brought forth and he kissed it. A moment of anxious silence. The moment for the decision had arrived. He remained for a short while seated, with his eyes fixed on the ground, then he turned them on the anxious face of the Dean, and after having allowed them to rest scrutinisingly there for a minute, he looked at Hartwig Juel, then at Olaf Petersen, who was deadly white, and whose frame shook like an aspen leaf. Then he looked long at Jep Mundelstrup and rose suddenly to his feet. The fall of a pin might have been heard in the cathedral at that moment. He said--and his voice was distinctly audible by every one present--"I have been summoned here from my barren heath, into this city, out of a poor hamlet, by these worthy and reverend fathers, to choose for them a prelate who shall be at once careful of the temporal and the spiritual welfare of the See. I have scrupulously considered the merits of all those who have been presented to me as candidates for the mitre. I find that in only one man are all the requisite qualities combined in proper proportion and degree--not in Thomas Lange," the Dean's head fell on his bosom, "nor in Hartwig Juel," the Archdeacon sank back in his stall; "nor in Olaf Petersen," the man designated uttered a faint cry and dropped on his knees, "nor in Jep Mundelstrup--but in myself. I therefore nominate Peter, son of Nicolas, commonly called Nielsen, Curate of Roager, to be Bishop of Ribe, twenty-ninth in descent from Liafdag the martyr. _Qui pacem habet, se primum pacat._ Amen. He who has to bless, blesses first himself." Then he sat down. For a moment there was silence, and then a storm broke loose. Peter sat motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, motionless as a rock round which the waves toss and tear themselves to foam. Thus it came about that the twenty-ninth bishop of Ribe was Peter Nielsen. FOOTNOTE: [15] In Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland, clerical celibacy was never enforced before the Reformation. Now and then a formal prohibition was issued by the bishops, but it was generally ignored. The clergy were married, openly and undisguisedly. The Wonder-Working Prince Hohenlohe. In the year 1821, much interest was excited in Germany and, indeed, throughout Europe by the report that miracles of healing were being wrought by Prince Leopold Alexander of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst at Würzburg, Bamberg, and elsewhere. The wonders soon came to an end, for, after the ensuing year, no more was heard of his extraordinary powers. At the time, as might be expected, his claims to be a miracle-worker were hotly disputed, and as hotly asserted. Evidence was produced that some of his miracles were genuine; counter evidence was brought forward reducing them to nothing. The whole story of Prince Hohenlohe's sudden blaze into fame, and speedy extinction, is both curious and instructive. In the Baden village of Wittighausen, at the beginning of this century, lived a peasant named Martin Michel, owning a farm, and in fairly prosperous circumstances. His age, according to one authority, was fifty, according to another sixty-seven, when he became acquainted with Prince Hohenlohe. This peasant was unquestionably a devout, guileless man. He had been afflicted in youth with a rupture, but, in answer to continuous and earnest prayer, he asserted that he had been completely healed. Then, for some while he prayed over other afflicted persons, and it was rumoured that he had effected several miraculous cures. He emphatically and earnestly repudiated every claim to superior sanctity. The cures, he declared, depended on the faith of the patient, and on the power of the Almighty. The most solemn promises had been made in the gospel to those who asked in faith, and all he did was to act upon these evangelical promises. The Government speedily interfered, and Michel was forbidden by the police to work any more miracles by prayer or faith, or any other means except the recognised pharmacopoeia. He had received no payment for his cures in money or in kind, but he took occasion through them to impress on his patients the duty of prayer, and the efficacy of faith. By some means he met Prince Alexander Hohenlohe, and the prince was interested and excited by what he heard, and by the apparent sincerity of the man. A few days later the prince was in Würzburg, where he called on the Princess Mathilde Schwarzenberg, a young girl of seventeen who was a cripple, and who had already spent a year and a half at Würzburg, under the hands of the orthopædic physician Heine, and the surgeon Textor. She had been to the best medical men in Vienna and Paris, and the case had been given up as hopeless. Then Prince Schwarzenberg placed her under the treatment of Heine. She was so contracted, with her knees drawn up to her body, that she could neither stand nor walk. Prince Hohenlohe first met her at dinner, on June 18, 1821, and the sight of her distortion filled him with pity. He thought over her case, and communicated with Michel, who at his summons came to Würzburg. As Würzburg is in Bavaria, the orders of the Baden Government did not extend to it, and the peasant might freely conduct his experiments there. Prince Alexander called on the Princess at ten o'clock in the morning of June 20, taking with him Michel, but leaving him outside the house, in the court. Then Prince Hohenlohe began to speak to the suffering girl of the power of faith, and mentioned the wonders wrought by the prayers of Michel. She became interested, and the Prince asked her if she would like to put the powers of Michel to the test, warning her that the man could do nothing unless she had full and perfect belief in the mercy of God. The Princess expressed her eagerness to try the new remedy and assured her interrogator that she had the requisite faith. Thereupon he went to the window, and signed to the peasant to come up. What follows shall be given in the Princess's own words, from her account written a day or two later:--"The peasant knelt down and prayed in German aloud and distinctly, and, after his prayer, he said to me, 'In the Name of Jesus, stand up. You are whole, and can both stand and walk!' The peasant and the Prince then went into an adjoining room, and I rose from my couch, without assistance, in the name of God, well and sound, and so I have continued to this moment." A much fuller and minuter account of the proceedings was published, probably from the pen of the governess, who was present at the time; but as it is anonymous we need not concern ourselves with it. The news of the miraculous recovery spread through the town; Dr. Heine heard of it, and ran to the house, and stood silent and amazed at what he saw. The Princess descended the stone staircase towards the garden, but hesitated, and, instead of going into the garden, returned upstairs, leaning on the arm of Prince Hohenlohe. Next day was Corpus Christi. The excitement in the town was immense, when the poor cripple, who had been seen for more than a year carried into her carriage and carried out of it into church, walked to church, and thence strolled into the gardens of the palace. On the following day she visited the Julius Hospital, a noble institution founded by one of the bishops of Würzburg. On the 24th she called on the Princess Lichtenstein, the Duke of Aremberg, and the Prince of Baar, and moreover, attended a sermon preached by Prince Hohenlohe in the Haugh parish church. Her recovery was complete. Now, at first sight, nothing seems more satisfactorily established than this miracle. Let us, however, see what Dr. Heine, who had attended her for nineteen months, had to say on it. We cannot quote his account in its entirety, as it is long, but we will take the principal points in it:--"The Princess of Schwarzenberg came under my treatment at the end of October, 1819, afflicted with several abnormities of the thorax, with a twisted spine, ribs, &c. Moreover, she could not rise to her feet from a sitting posture, nor endure to be so raised; but this was not in consequence of malformation or weakness of the system, for when sitting or lying down she could freely move her limbs. She complained of acute pain when placed in any other position, and when she was made to assume an angle of 100° her agony became so intense that her extremities were in a nervous quiver, and partial paralysis ensued, which, however, ceased when she was restored to her habitual contracted position. "The Princess lost her power of locomotion when she was three years old, and the contraction was the result of abscesses on the loins. She was taken to France and Italy, and got so far in Paris as to be able to hop about a room supported on crutches. But she suffered a relapse on her return to Vienna in 1813, and thenceforth was able neither to stand nor to move about. She was placed in my hands, and I contrived an apparatus by which the angle at which she rested was gradually extended, and her position gradually changed from horizontal to vertical. At the same time I manipulated her almost daily, and had the satisfaction by the end of last April to see her occupy an angle of 50°, without complaining of suffering. By the close of May further advance was made, and she was able to assume a vertical position, with her feet resting on the ground, but with her body supported, and to remain in this position for four or five hours. Moreover, in this situation I made her go through all the motions of walking. The extremities had, in every position, retained their natural muscular powers and movements, and the contraction was simply a nervous affection. I made no attempt to force her to walk unsupported, because I would not do this till I was well assured such a trial would not be injurious to her. "On the 30th of May I revisited her, after having been unable, on account of a slight indisposition, to see my patients for several days. Her governess then told me that the Princess had made great progress. She lay at an angle of 80°. The governess placed herself at the foot of the couch, held out her hands to the Princess, and drew her up into an upright position, and she told me that this had been done several times of late during my enforced absence. Whilst she was thus standing I made the Princess raise and depress her feet, and go through all the motions of walking. Immediately on my return home I set to work to construct a machine which might enable her to walk without risk of a fall and of hurting herself. On the 19th of June, in the evening, I told the Princess that the apparatus was nearly finished. Next day, a little after 10 A.M., I visited her. When I opened her door she rose up from a chair in which she was seated, and came towards me with short, somewhat uncertain steps. I bowed myself, in token of joy and thanks to God. "At that moment a gentleman I had never seen before entered the room and exclaimed, 'Mathilde! you have had faith in God!' The Princess replied, 'I have had, and I have now, entire faith.' The gentleman said, 'Your faith has saved and healed you. God has succoured you.' Then I began to suspect that some strange influence was at work, and that something had been going on of which I was not cognizant. I asked the gentleman what was the meaning of this. He raised his right hand to heaven, and replied that he had prayed and thought of the Princess that morning at mass, and that Prince Wallerstein was privy to the whole proceeding. I was puzzled and amazed. Then I asked the Princess to walk again. She did so, and shortly after I left, and only then did I learn that the stranger was the Prince of Hohenlohe. "Next month, on July 21, her aunt, the Princess Eleanor of Schwarzenberg, came with three of the sisters of Princess Mathilde to fetch her away and to take her back to her father. Her Highness did me the honour of visiting me along with the Princesses on the second day after their arrival, to thank me for the pains I had taken to cure the Princess Mathilde. Before they left, Dr. Schäfer, who had attended her at Ratisbon, Herr Textor, and myself were allowed to examine the Princess. Dr. Schäfer found that the condition of the thorax was mightily improved since she had been in my hands. I, however, saw that her condition had retrograded since I had last seen her on June 20, and it was agreed that the Princess was to occupy her extension-couch at night, and by day wear the steel apparatus for support I had contrived for her. At the same time Dr. Schäfer distinctly assured her and the Princess, her aunt, that under my management the patient had recovered the power of walking _before_ the 19th of June." This account puts a different complexion on the cure, and shows that it was not in any way miraculous. The Prince and the peasant stepped in and snatched the credit of having cured the Princess from the doctor, to whom it rightly belonged. Before we proceed, it will be well to say a few words about this Prince Alexander Hohenlohe. The Hohenlohe family takes its name from a bare elevated plateau in Franconia. About the beginning of the 16th century it broke into two branches; the elder is Hohenlohe-Neuenstein, the younger is Hohenlohe-Waldenburg. The elder branch has its sub-ramifications--Hohenlohe-Langenburg, which possesses also the county of Gleichen; and the Hohenlohe-Oehringen and the Hohenlohe-Kirchberg sub-branches. The second main branch of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg has also its lateral branches, as those of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein and Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst; the last of these being Catholic. Prince Leopold Alexander was born in 1794 at Kupferzell, near Waldenburg, and was the eighteenth child of Prince Karl Albrecht and his wife Judith, Baroness Reviczky. His father never became reigning prince, from intellectual incapacity, and Alexander lost him when he was one year old. He was educated for the Church by the ex-Jesuit Riel, and went to school first in Vienna, then at Berne; in 1810 he entered the Episcopal seminary at Vienna, and finished his theological studies at Ellwangen in 1814. He was ordained priest in 1816, and went to Rome. Dr. Wolff, the father of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, in his "Travels and Adventures," which is really his autobiography, says (vol i. p. 31):-- "Wolff left the house of Count Stolberg on the 3rd April, 1815, and went to Ellwangen, and there met again an old pupil from Vienna, Prince Alexander Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, afterwards so celebrated for his miracles--to which so many men of the highest rank and intelligence have borne witness that Wolff dares not give a decided opinion about them. But Niebuhr relates that the Pope said to him himself, speaking about Hohenlohe in a sneering manner, '_Questo_ far dei miracoli!' _This_ fellow performing miracles! "It may be best to offer some slight sketch of Hohenlohe's life. His person was beautiful. He was placed under the direction of Vock, the Roman Catholic parish priest at Berne. One Sunday he was invited to dinner with Vock, his tutor, at the Spanish ambassador's. The next day there was a great noise in the Spanish embassy, because the mass-robe, with the silver chalice and all its appurtenances, had been stolen. It was advertised in the paper, but nothing could be discovered, until Vock took Prince Hohenlohe aside, and said to him, 'Prince, confess to me; have you not stolen the mass-robe?' He at once confessed it, and said that he made use of it every morning in practising the celebration of the mass in his room; which was true." (This was when Hohenlohe was twenty-one years old.) "He was afterwards sent to Tyrnau, to the ecclesiastical seminary in Hungary, whence he was expelled, on account of levity. But, being a Prince, the Chapter of Olmütz, in Moravia, elected him titulary canon of the cathedral; nevertheless, the Emperor Francis was too honest to confirm it. Wolff taught him Hebrew in Vienna. He had but little talent for languages, but his conversation on religion was sometimes very charming; and at other times he broke out into most indecent discourses. He was ordained priest, and Sailer[16] preached a sermon on the day of his ordination, which was published under the title of 'The Priest without Reproach.' On the same day money was collected for building a Roman Catholic Church at Zürich, and the money collected was given to Prince Hohenlohe, to be remitted to the parish priest of Zürich (Moritz Mayer); but the money never reached its destination. Wolff saw him once at the bed of the sick and dying, and his discourse, exhortations, and treatment of these sick people were wonderfully beautiful. When he mounted the pulpit to preach, one imagined one saw a saint of the Middle Ages. His devotion was penetrating, and commanded silence in a church where there were 4,000 people collected. Wolff one day called on him, when Hohenlohe said to him, 'I never read any other book than the Bible. I never look in a sermon-book by anybody else, not even at the sermons of Sailer.' But Wolff after this heard him preach, and the whole sermon was copied from one of Sailer's, which Wolff had read only the day before. "With all his faults, Hohenlohe cannot be charged with avarice, for he give away every farthing he got, perhaps even that which he obtained dishonestly. They afterwards met at Rome, where Hohenlohe lodged with the Jesuits, and there it was said he composed a Latin poem. Wolff, knowing his incapacity to do such a thing, asked him boldly, 'Who is the author of this poem?' Hohenlohe confessed at once that it was written by a Jesuit priest. At that time Madame Schlegel wrote to Wolff: 'Prince Hohenlohe is a man who struggles with heaven and hell, and heaven will gain the victory with him.' Hohenlohe was on the point of being made a bishop at Rome, but, on the strength of his previous knowledge of him, Wolff protested against his consecration. Several princes, amongst them Kaunitz, the ambassador, took Hohenlohe's part on this occasion; but the matter was investigated, and Hohenlohe walked off from Rome without being made a bishop. In his protest against the man, Wolff stated that Hohenlohe's pretensions to being a canon of Olmütz were false; that he had been expelled the seminary of Tyrnau; that he sometimes spoke like a saint, and at others like a profligate." And now let us return to Würzburg, and see the result of the cure of Princess Schwarzenberg. The people who had seen the poor cripple one day carried into her carriage and into church, and a day or two after saw her walk to church and in the gardens, and who knew nothing of Dr. Heine's operations, concluded that this was a miracle, and gave the credit of it quite as much to Prince Hohenlohe as to the peasant Michel. The police at once sent an official letter to the Prince, requesting to be informed authoritatively what he had done, by what right he had interfered, and how he had acted. He replied that he had done nothing, faith and the Almighty had wrought the miracle. "The instantaneous cure of the Princess is a _fact_, which cannot be disputed; it was the result of a living faith. That is the truth. It happened to the Princess according to her faith." The peasant Michel now fell into the background, and was forgotten, and the Prince stood forward as the worker of miraculous cures. Immense excitement was caused by the restoration of the Princess Schwarzenberg, and patients streamed into Würzburg from all the country round, seeking health at the hands of Prince Alexander. The local papers published marvellous details of his successful cures. The blind saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard. Among the deaf who recovered was His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Bavaria, three years later King Ludwig I., grandfather of the late King of Bavaria. Unfortunately we have not exact details of this cure, but a letter of the Crown Prince written shortly after merely states that he heard _better_ than before. Now the spring of 1821 was very raw and wet, and about June 20 there set in some dry hot weather. It is therefore quite possible that the change of weather may have had to do with this cure. However, we can say nothing for certain about it, as no data were published, merely the announcement that the Crown Prince had recovered his hearing at the prayer of Prince Hohenlohe. Here are some better-authenticated cases, as given by Herr Scharold, an eye-witness; he was city councillor and secretary. "The Prince had dined at midday with General von D----. All the entrances to the house from two streets were blocked by hundreds of persons, and they said that he had already healed four individuals crippled with rheumatism in this house. I convinced myself on the spot that one of these cases was as said. The patient was the young wife of a fisherman, who was crippled in the right hand, so that she could not lift anything with it, or use it in any way; and all at once she was enabled to raise a heavy chair, with the hand hitherto powerless, and hold it aloft. She went home weeping tears of joy and thankfulness. "The Prince was then entreated to go to another house, at another end of the town, and he consented. There he found many paralysed persons. He began with a poor man whose left arm was quite useless and stiff. After he had asked him if he had perfect faith, and had received a satisfactory answer, the Prince prayed with folded hands and closed eyes. Then he raised the kneeling patient; and said, 'Move your arm.' Weeping and trembling in all his limbs the man did as he was bid; but as he said that he obeyed with difficulty, the Prince prayed again, and said, 'Now move your arm again.' This time the man easily moved his arm forwards, backwards, and raised it. The cure was complete. Equally successful was he with the next two cases. One was a tailor's wife, named Lanzamer. 'What do you want?' asked the Prince, who was bathed in perspiration. Answer: 'I have had a paralytic stroke, and have lost the use of one side of my body, so that I cannot walk unsupported.' 'Kneel down!' But this could only be effected with difficulty, and it was rather a tumbling down of an inert body, painful to behold. I never saw a face more full of expression of faith in the strongly marked features. The Prince, deeply moved, prayed with great fervour, and then said, 'Stand up!' The good woman, much agitated, was unable to do so, in spite of all her efforts, without the assistance of her boy, who was by her, crying, and then her lame leg seemed to crack. When she had reached her feet, he said, 'Now walk the length of the room without pain.' She tried to do so, but succeeded with difficulty, yet with only a little suffering. Again he prayed, and the healing was complete; she walked lightly and painlessly up and down, and finally out of the room; and the boy, crying more than before, but now with joy, exclaimed, 'O my God! mother can walk, mother can walk!' Whilst this was going on, an old woman, called Siebert, wife of a bookbinder, who had been brought in a sedan-chair, was admitted to the room. She suffered from paralysis and incessant headaches that left her neither night nor day. The first attempt made to heal her failed. The second only brought on the paroxysm of headache worse than ever, so that the poor creature could hardly keep her feet or open her eyes. The Prince began to doubt her faith, but when she assured him of it, he prayed again with redoubled earnestness. And, all at once, she was cured. This woman left the room, conducted by her daughter, and all present were filled with astonishment." This account was written on June 26. On June 28 Herr Scharold wrote a further account of other cures he had witnessed; but those already given are sufficient. That this witness was convinced and sincere appears from his description, but how far valuable his evidence is we are not so well assured. A curious little pamphlet was published the same year at Darmstadt, entitled, "Das Mährchen vom Wunder," that professed to be the result of the observations of a medical man who attended one or two of these _séances_. Unfortunately the pamphlet is anonymous, and this deprives it of most of its authority. Another writer who attacked the genuineness of the miracles was Dr. Paulus, in his "Quintessenz aus den Wundercurversuchen durch Michel und Hohenlohe," Leipzig, 1822; but this author also wrote anonymously, and did not profess to have seen any of the cures. On the other hand, Scharold and a Dr. Onymus, and two or three priests published their testimonies as witnesses to their genuineness, and gave the names and particulars of those cured. Those who assailed the Prince and his cures dipped their pens in gall. It is only just to add that they cast on his character none of the reflections for honesty which Dr. Wolff flung on him. The author of the Darmstadt pamphlet, mentioned above, says that when he was present the Prince was attended by two sergeants of police, as the crowd thronging on him was so great that he needed protection from its pressure. He speaks sneeringly of him as spending his time in eating, smoking, and miracle-working, when not sleeping, and says he was plump and good-looking, "A girl of eighteen, who was paralysed in her limbs, was brought from a carriage to the feet of the prophet. After he had asked her if she believed, and he had prayed for about twelve seconds, he exclaimed in a threatening rather than gentle voice, 'You are healed!' But I observed that he had to thunder this thrice into the ear of the frightened girl, before she made an effort to move, which was painful and distressing; and, groaning and supported by others, she made her way to the rear. 'You will be better shortly--only believe!' he cried to her. I, who was looking on, observed her conveyed away as much a cripple as she came. "The next case was a peasant of fifty-eight, a cripple on crutches. Without his crutches he was doubled up, and could only shuffle with his feet on the ground. After the Prince had asked the usual questions and had prayed, he ordered the kneeling man to stand up, his crutches having been removed. As he was unable to do so, the miracle-worker seemed irritated, and repeated his order in an angry tone. One of the policemen at the side threw in 'Up! in the name of the Trinity,' and pulled him to his feet. The man seemed bewildered. He stood, indeed, but doubled as before, and the sweat streamed from his face, and he was not a ha'porth better than previously; but as he had come with crutches, and now stood without them, there arose a shout of 'A miracle!' and all pressed round to congratulate the poor wretch. His son helped him away. 'Have faith and courage!' cried to him the Prince; and the policeman added, 'Only believe, and rub in a little spirits of camphor!' Many pressed alms into the man's hand, and he smiled; this was regarded as a token of his perfect cure. I saw, however, that his knees were as stiff as before, and that the rogue cast longing eyes at his crutches, which had been taken away, but which he insisted on having back. No one thought of asking how it fared with the poor wretch later, and, as a fact, he died shortly after. "The next to come up was a deaf girl of eighteen. The wonder-worker was bathed in perspiration, and evidently exhausted with his continuous prayer night and day. After a few questions as to the duration of her infirmity, the Prince prayed, then signed a cross over the girl, and, stepping back from her, asked her questions, at each in succession somewhat lowering his tone; but she only heard those spoken as loudly as before the experiment was made, and she remained for the most part staring stupidly at the wonder-worker. To cut the matter short, he declared her healed. I took the mother aside soon after, and inquired what was the result. She assured me that the girl heard no better than before. "In her place came a stone-deaf man of twenty-five. The result was very similar; but as the Prince, when bidding him depart healed, made a sign of withdrawal with his hand, the man rose and departed, and this was taken as evidence that he had heard the command addressed to him." The author gives other cases that he witnessed, not one of which was other than a failure, though they were all declared to be cures. On June 29 the Prince practised his miracle-working at the palace, in the presence of the Crown Prince and of Prince Esterhazy, the Austrian ambassador who was on his way to London to attend the coronation of George IV. in July. The attempts were probably as great failures as those described in the Darmstadt pamphlet. The Prince was somewhat discouraged at the invitation of the physicians attached to the Julius Hospital; he had visited that institution the day before, and had experimented on twenty cases, and was unsuccessful in every one. Full particulars of these were published in the "Bamberger Briefe," Nos. 28-33. We will give only a very few:-- "1. Barbara Uhlen, of Oberschleichach, aged 39, suffering from dropsy. The Prince said to her, 'Do you sincerely believe that you can be helped and are helped?' The sick woman replied, 'Yes. I had resolved to leave the hospital, where no good has been done to me, and to seek health from God and the Prince.' He raised his eyes to heaven and prayed; then assured the patient of her cure. Her case became worse rapidly, instead of better. "7. Margaretta Löhlein, of Randersacher, aged 56. Suffering from dropsy owing to disorganisation of the liver. Another failure. Shortly after the Prince left, she had to be operated on to save her from suffocation. "10. Susanna Söllnerin, servant maid of Aub, aged 22, had already been thirteen weeks in hospital, suffering from roaring noises in the head and deafness. The Prince, observing the fervour of her faith, cried out, 'You shall see now how speedily she will be cured!' Prayers, blessing, as before, and--as before, no results. "11. George Forchheimer, butcher, suffering from rheumatism. One foot is immovable, and he can only walk with the assistance of a stick. During the prayer of the Prince the patient wept and sobbed, and was profoundly agitated. The Prince ordered him to stand up and go without his stick. His efforts to obey were unavailing; he fell several times on the ground, though the Prince repeated over him his prayers." These are sufficient as instances; not a single case in the hospital was more successfully treated by him. On July 5 Prince Hohenlohe went to Bamberg, where he was eagerly awaited by many sick and credulous persons. The Burgomaster Hornthal, however, interfered, and forbade the attempt at performing miracles till the authorities at Baireuth had been instructed of his arrival, and till a commission had been appointed of men of judgment, and physicians to take note of the previous condition of every patient who was submitted to him, and of the subsequent condition. Thus hampered the Prince could do nothing; he failed as signally as in the Julius Hospital at Würzburg, and the only cases of cures claimed to have been wrought were among a mixed crowd in the street to whom he gave a blessing from the balcony of his lodging. Finding that Bamberg was uncongenial, he accepted a call to the Baths of Brückenau, and thence news reached the incredulous of Bamberg and Würzburg that extraordinary cures had been wrought at the prayers of the Prince. As, however, we have no details respecting these, we may pass them over. Hohenlohe, who had no notion of hiding his light under a bushel, drew up a detailed account of over a hundred cures which he claimed to have worked, had them attested by witnesses, and sent this precious document to the Pope, who, with good sense, took no notice of it; at least no public notice, though it is probable that he administered a sharp private reprimand, for Hohenlohe collapsed very speedily. From Brückenau the Prince went to Vienna, but was not favourably received there, so he departed to Hungary, where his mother's relations lived. Though he was applied to by sick people who had heard of his fame, he did not make any more direct attempts to heal them. He, however, gave them cards on which a day and hour were fixed, and a prayer written, and exhorted them to pray for recovery earnestly on the day and at the hour indicated, and promised to pray for them at the same time. But this was also discontinued, having proved inefficacious, and Hohenlohe relapsed into a quiet unostentatious life. He was appointed, through family interest, Canon of Grosswardein, and in 1829 advanced to be Provost of the Cathedral. His powers as a preacher long survived his powers of working miracles. He spent his time in good works, and in writing little manuals of devotion. In 1844 he was consecrated titular Bishop of Sardica _in partibus_, that is, without a See. He died at Vöslau, near Vienna, in 1849. That Hohenlohe was a conscious hypocrite we are far from supposing. He was clearly a man of small mental powers, very conceited, and wanting in judgment. We must not place too much reliance on the scandalous gossip of Dr. Wolff. Probably Hohenlohe's vanity received a severe check in 1821, when both the Roman See and the world united to discredit his miracles; and he had sufficient good sense to accept the verdict. FOOTNOTE: [16] Johann M. Sailer was a famous ex-Jesuit preacher, at this time Professor at the University of Landshut, afterwards Bishop of Ratisbon. He died, 1832. The Snail-Telegraph. The writer well remembers, as a child, the sense of awe not unmixed with fear, with which he observed the mysterious movements of the telegraph erected on church towers in France along all the main roads. Many a beautiful tower was spoiled by these abominable erections. There were huge arms like those of a windmill, painted black, and jointed, so as to describe a great number of cabalistic signs in the air. Indeed, the movements were like the writhings of some monstrous spider. Glanvil who wrote in the middle of the 17th century says, "To those that come after us, it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly into the remotest regions, as now a pair of boots to ride a journey. _And to confer, at the distance of the Indies, by sympathetic conveyances_, may be as usual to future times as to us is literary correspondence." He further remarks, "Antiquity would not have believed the almost incredible force of our cannons, and would as coldly have entertained the wonders of the telescope. In these we all condemn antique incredulity. And it is likely posterity will have as much cause to pity ours. But those who are acquainted with the diligent and ingenious endeavours of true philosophers will despair of nothing." In 1633 the Marquis of Worcester suggested a scheme of telegraphing by means of signs. Another, but similar scheme, was mooted in 1660 by the Frenchman Amonton. In 1763 Mr. Edgeworth erected for his private use a telegraph between London and Newmarket. But it was in 1789 that the Optical Telegraph came into practical use in France--Claude Chappe was the inventor. When he was a boy, he contrived a means of communication by signals with his brothers at a distance of two or three miles. He laid down the first line between Lille and Paris at a cost of about two thousand pounds, and the first message sent along it was the announcement of the capture of Lille by Condé. This led to the construction of many similar lines communicating with each other by means of stations. Some idea of the celerity with which messages were sent may be gained from the fact that it took only two minutes to reproduce in Paris a sign given in Lille at a distance of 140 miles. On this line there were 22 stations. The objections to this system lay in its being useless at night and in rainy weather. The French system of telegraph consisted of one main beam--the regulator, at the end of which were two shorter wings, so that it formed a letter Z. The regulator and its flags could be turned about in various ways, making in all 196 signs. Sometimes the regulator stood horizontally, sometimes perpendicularly. Lord Murray introduced one of a different construction in England in 1795 consisting of two rows of three octangular flags revolving on their axis. This gave 64 different signs, but was defective in the same point as that of Chappe. Poor Chappe was so troubled in mind because his claim to be the inventor of his telegraph was disputed, that he drowned himself in a well, 1805. Besides the fact that the optical telegraph was paralysed by darkness and storm, it was very difficult to manage in mountainous and well-wooded country, and required there a great number of stations. After that Sömmering had discovered at Munich in 1808 the means of signalling through the galvanic current obtained by decomposition of water, and Schilling at Canstadt and Ampère in Paris (1820) had made further advances in the science of electrology, and Oersted had established the deflexion of the magnetic needle, it was felt that the day of the cumbrous and disfiguring optical telegraph was over. A new power had been discovered, though the extent and the applicability of this power were not known. Gauss and Weber in 1833 made the first attempt to set up an electric telegraph; in 1837 Wheatstone and Morse utilised the needle and made the telegraph print its messages. In 1833 the telegraph of Gauss and Weber supplanted the optical contrivance on the line between Trèves and Berlin. The first line in America was laid from Washington to Baltimore in 1844. The first attempt at submarine telegraphy was made at Portsmouth in 1846, and in 1850 a cable was laid between England and France. It was precisely in this year when men's minds were excited over the wonderful powers of the galvanic current, and a wide prospect was opened of its future advantage to men, when, indeed, the general public understood very little about the principle and were in a condition of mind to accept almost any scientific marvel, that there appeared in Paris an adventurer, who undertook to open communications between all parts of the world without the expense and difficulty of laying cables of communication. The line laid across the channel in 1850 was not very successful; it broke several times, and had to be taken up again, and relaid in 1851. If it did not answer in conveying messages across so narrow a strip of water, was it likely to be utilized for Transatlantic telegraphy? The _Presse_, a respectable Paris paper, conducted by a journalist of note, M. de Girardin, answered emphatically, No. The means of communication was not to be sought in a chain. The gutta percha casing would decompose under the sea, and when the brine touched the wires, the cable would be useless. The Chappe telegraph was superseded by the electric telegraph which answered well on dry land, but fatal objections stood in the way of its answering for communication between places divided by belts of sea or oceans. Moreover, it was an intricate system. Now the tendency of science in modern times was towards simplification; and it was always found that the key to unlock difficulties which had puzzled the inventors of the past, lay at their hands. The electric telegraph was certainly more elaborate, complicated and expensive than the optical telegraph. Was it such a decided advance on it? Yes--in one way. It could be worked at all hours of night and day. But had the last word in telegraphy been spoken, when it was invented? Most assuredly not. Along with electricity and terrestrial magnetism, another power, vaguely perceived, the full utility of which was also unknown, had been recognised--animal magnetism. Why should not this force be used as a means for the conveyance of messages? M. Jules Allix after a long preamble in _La Presse_, in an article signed by himself, announced that a French inventor, M. Jacques Toussaint Benoît (de l'Hérault), and a fellow worker of Gallic origin, living in America, M. Biat-Chrétien, had hit on "a new system of universal intercommunication of thought, which operates instantaneously." After a long introduction in true French rhodomontade, tracing the progress of humanity from the publication of the Gospel to the 19th century, M. Allix continued, "The discovery of MM. Benoît and Biat depends on galvanism, terrestrial and animal magnetism, also on natural sympathy, that is to say, the base of communication is a sort of special sympathetic fluid which is composed of the union or blending of the galvanic, magnetic and sympathetic currents, by a process to be described shortly. And as the various fluids vary according to the organic or inorganic bodies whence they are derived, it is necessary further to state that the forces or fluids here married are: (_a_) The terrestrial-galvanic current, (_b_) the animal-sympathetic current, in this case derived from _snails_, (_c_) the adamic or human current, or animal-magnetic current in man. Consequently, to describe concisely the basis of the new system of intercommunication, we shall have to call the force, '_The galvano-terrestrial-magnetic-animal and adamic force!_'" Is not this something like a piece of Jules Verne's delicious scientific _hocus-pocus_? Will the reader believe that it was written in good faith? It was, there can be no question, written in perfect good faith. The character of _La Presse_, of the journalist, M. Jules Allix, would not allow of a hoax wilfully perpetrated on the public. We are quoting from the number for October 27th, 1850, of the paper. "According to the experiments made by MM. Benoît and Biat, it seems that snails which have once been put in contact, are always in sympathetic communication. When separated, there disengages itself from them a species of fluid of which the earth is the conductor, which develops and unrolls, so to speak, like the almost invisible thread of the spider, or that of the silk worm, which can be uncoiled and prolonged almost indefinitely in space without its breaking, but with this vital difference that the thread of the escargotic fluid is invisible as completely and the pulsation along it is as rapid as the electric fluid. "But, it may be objected with some plausibility, granted the existence in the snails of this sympathetic fluid, will it radiate from them in all directions, after the analogy of electric, galvanic and magnetic fluids, unless there be some conductor established between them? At first sight, this objection has some weight, but for all that it is more specious than serious." The solution of this difficulty is exquisitely absurd. We must summarise. At first the discoverers of the galvanic current thought it necessary to establish a return wire, to complete the circle, till it was found to be sufficient to carry the two ends of the wire in communication with the earth, when the earth itself completed the circle. There is no visible line between the ends underground, yet the current completes the circle through it. Moreover, it is impossible to think of two points without establishing, in idea, a line between them, indeed, according to Euclid's definition, a straight line is that which lies evenly between its extreme points, and a line is length without breadth or substance. So, if we conceive of two snails, we establish a line between them, an unsubstantial line, still a line along which the sympathetic current can travel. "Now MM. Benoît and Biat, by means of balloons in the atmosphere," had established beyond doubt that a visible tangible line of communication was only necessary when raised above the earth. "Consequently, there remains nothing more to be considered than the means, the apparatus, whereby the transmission of thought is effected. "This apparatus consists of a square box, in which is a Voltaic pile, of which the metallic plates, instead of being superposed, as in the pile of Volta, are disposed in order, attached in holes formed in a wheel or circular disc, that revolves about a steel axis. To these metallic plates used by Volta, MM. Benoît and Biat have substituted others in the shape of cups or circular basins, composed of zinc lined with cloth steeped in a solution of sulphate of copper maintained in place by a blade of copper riveted to the cup. At the bottom of each of these bowls, is fixed, by aid of a composition that shall be given presently, a living snail, whose sympathetic influence may unite and be woven with the galvanic current, when the wheel of the pile is set in motion and with it the snails that are adhering to it. "Each galvanic basin rests on a delicate spring, so that it may respond to every escargotic commotion. Now; it is obvious that such an apparatus requires a corresponding apparatus, disposed as has been described, and containing in it snails in sympathy with those in the other apparatus, so that the escargotic vibration may pass from one precise point in one of the piles to a precise point in the other and complementary pile. When these dispositions have been grasped the rest follows as a matter of course. MM. Benoît and Biat have fixed letters to the wheels, corresponding the one with the other, and at each sympathetic touch on one, the other is touched; consequently it is easy by this means, naturally and instantaneously, to communicate ideas at vast distances, by the indication of the letters touched by the snails. The apparatus described is in shape like a mariner's compass, and to distinguish it from that, it is termed the _pasilalinic--sympathetic compass_, as descriptive at once of its effects and the means of operation." But, who were these inventors, Benoît and Biat-Chrétien? We will begin with the latter. As Pontoppidon in his History of Norway heads a chapter, "Of Snakes," and says, "Of these there are none," so we may say of M. Biat-Chrétien; there was no such man; at least he never rose to the surface and was seen. Apparently his existence was as much a hallucination or creation of the fancy of M. Benoît, as was Mrs. Harris a creature of the imagination of Mrs. Betsy Gamp. Certainly no Biat-Chrétien was known in America as a discoverer. Jacques Toussaint Benoît (de l'Hérault) was a man who had been devoted since his youth to the secret sciences. His studies in magic and astrology, in mesmerism, and electricity, had turned his head. Together with real eagerness to pursue his studies, and real belief in them, was added a certain spice of rascality. One day Benoît, who had by some means made the acquaintance of M. Triat, founder and manager of a gymnasium in Paris for athletic exercises, came to Triat, and told him that he had made a discovery which would supersede electric telegraphy. The director was a man of common sense, but not of much education, certainly of no scientific acquirements. He was, therefore, quite unable to distinguish between true and false science. Benoît spoke with conviction, and carried away his hearer with his enthusiasm. "What is needed for the construction of the machine?" asked M. Triat. "Only two or three bits of wood," replied Benoît. M. Triat took him into his carpenter's shop. "There, my friend," he said, "here you have wood, and a man to help you." M. Triat did more. The future inventor of the instantaneous communication of thought was house-less and hungry. The manager rented a lodging for him, and advanced him money for his entertainment. Benoît set to work. He used a great many bits of wood, and occupied the carpenter a good part of his time. Other things became necessary as well as wood, things that cost money, and the money was found by M. Triat. So passed a twelvemonth. At the end of that time, which had been spent at the cost of his protector, Benoît had arrived at no result. It was apparent that, in applying to M. Triat, he had sought, not so much to construct a machine already invented, as to devote himself to the pursuit of his favourite studies. The director became impatient. He declined to furnish further funds. Then Benoît declared that the machine was complete. This machine, for the construction of which he had asked for two or three pieces of wood, was an enormous scaffold formed of beams ten feet long, supporting the Voltaic pile described by M. Allix, ensconced in the bowls of which were the wretched snails stuck to the bottom of the basins by some sort of glue, at intervals. This was the Pasilalinic-sympathetic compass. It occupied one end of the apartment. At the other end was a second, exactly similar. Each contained twenty-four alphabetic-sympathetic snails. These poor beasts, glued to the bottom of the zinc cups with little dribbles of sulphate of copper trickling down the sides of the bowls from the saturated cloth placed on them, were uncomfortable, and naturally tried to get away. They thrust themselves from their shells and poked forth their horns groping for some congenial spot on which to crawl, and came in contact with the wood on which was painted the letters. But if they came across a drop of solution of sulphate of copper, they went precipitately back into their shells. Properly, the two machines should have been established in different rooms, but no second room was available on the flat where Benoît was lodged, so he was forced to erect both vis-à-vis. That, however, was a matter wholly immaterial, as he explained to those who visited the laboratory. Space was not considered by snails. Place one in Paris, the other at the antipodes, the transmission of thought along their sympathetic current was as complete, instantaneous and effective as in his room on the _troisième_. In proof of this, Benoît undertook to correspond with his friend and fellow-worker Biat-Chrétien in America, who had constructed a similar apparatus. He assured all who came to inspect his invention that he conversed daily by means of the snails with his absent friend. When the machine was complete, the inventor was in no hurry to show it in working order; however M. Triat urged performance on him. He said, and there was reason in what he said, that an exhibition of the pasilalinic telegraph before it was perfected, would be putting others on the track, who might, having more means at their command, forestall him, and so rob him of the fruit of his labours. At last he invited M. Triat and M. Allix, as representative of an influential journal, to witness the apparatus in working order, on October 2nd. He assured them that since September 30, he had been in constant correspondence with Biat-Chrétien, who, without crossing the sea, would assist at the experiments conducted at Paris on Wednesday, October 2nd, in the lodging of M. Benoît. On the appointed day, M. Triat and M. Allix were at the appointed place. The former at once objected to the position of the two compasses, but was constrained to be satisfied with the reason given by the operator. If they could not be in different rooms, at least a division should be made in the apartment by means of a curtain, so that the operator at one compass could not see him at the other. But there was insuperable difficulty in doing this, so M. Triat had to waive this objection also. M. Jules Allix was asked to attend one of the compasses, whilst the inventor stood on the scaffold managing the other. M. Allix was to send the message, by touching the snails which represented the letters forming the words to be transmitted, whereupon the corresponding snail on M. Benoît's apparatus was supposed to thrust forth his horns. But, under one pretext or another, the inventor ran from one apparatus to the other, the whole time, so that it was not very difficult, with a little management, to reproduce on his animated compass the letters transmitted by M. Jules Allix. The transmission, moreover, was not as exact as it ought to have been. M. Jules Allix had touched the snails in such order as to form the word _gymnase_; Benoît on his compass read the word _gymoate_. Then M. Triat, taking the place of the inventor, sent the words _lumiere divine_ to M. Jules Allix, who read on his compass _lumhere divine_. Evidently the snails were bad in their orthography. The whole thing, moreover, was a farce, and the correspondence, such as it was, was due to the incessant voyages of the inventor from one compass to the other, under the pretext of supervising the mechanism of the two apparatuses. Benoît was then desired to place himself in communication with his American friend, planted before his compass on the other side of the Atlantic. He transmitted to him the signal to be on the alert. Then he touched with a live snail he held in his hand the four snails that corresponded to the letters of the name BIAT; then they awaited the reply from America. After a few moments, the poor glued snails began to poke out their horns in a desultory, irregular manner, and by putting the letters together, with some accommodation CESTBIEN was made out, which when divided, and the apostrophe added, made _C'est bien_. M. Triat was much disconcerted. He considered himself as hoaxed. Not so M. Allix. He was so completely satisfied, that on the 27th October, appeared the article from his pen which we have quoted. M. Triat then went to the inventor and told him point blank, that he withdrew his protection from him. Benoît entreated him not to throw up the matter, before the telegraph was perfected. "Look here!" said M. Triat; "nothing is easier than for you to make me change my intention. Let one of your compasses be set up in my gymnasium, and the other in the side apartment. If that seems too much, then let a simple screen be drawn between the two, and do you refrain from passing between them whilst the experiment is being carried on. If under these conditions you succeed in transmitting a single word from one apparatus to the other, I will give you a thousand francs a day whilst your experiments are successful." M. Triat then visited M. de Girardin who was interested in the matter, half believed in it, and had accordingly opened the columns of _La Presse_ to the article of M. Allix. M. de Girardin wished to be present at the crucial experiment, and M. Triat gladly invited him to attend. He offered another thousand francs so long as the compasses worked. "My plan is this," said M. de Girardin: "If Benoît's invention is a success, we will hire the _Jardin d'hiver_ and make Benoît perform his experiments in public. That will bring us in a great deal more than two thousand francs a day." Benoît accepted all the conditions with apparent alacrity; but, before the day arrived for the experiment, after the removal of the two great scaffolds to the gymnasiums--he had disappeared. He was, however, seen afterwards several times in Paris, very thin, with eager restless eyes, apparently partly deranged. He died in 1852! Alas for Benoît. He died a few years too soon. A little later, and he might have become a personage of importance in the great invasion of the table-turning craze which shortly after inundated Europe, and turned many heads as well as tables. The Countess Goerlitz. One of the most strange and terrible tragedies of this century was the murder of the Countess Goerlitz; and it excited immense interest in Germany, both because of the high position of the unfortunate lady, the mystery attaching to her death, and because the charge of having murdered her rested on her husband, the Count Goerlitz, Chamberlain to the Grand-Duke of Hesse, Privy Councillor, a man of fortune as well as rank, and of unimpeachable character. There was another reason why the case excited general interest: the solution remained a mystery for three whole years, from 1847 to 1850. The Count Goerlitz was a man of forty-six, a great favourite at the Court, and of fine appearance. He had married, in 1820, the daughter of the Privy Councillor, Plitt. They had no children. The Countess was aged forty-six when the terrible event occurred which we are about to relate. The Count and Countess lived in their mansion in the Neckarstrasse in Darmstadt--a large, palatial house, handsomely furnished. Although living under the same roof, husband and wife lived apart. She occupied the first floor, and he the parterre, or ground floor. They dined together. The cause of the unfriendly terms on which they lived was the fact that the Countess was wealthy, her family was of citizen origin, and had amassed a large fortune in trade. Her father had been ennobled by the Grand-Duke, and she had been his heiress. The Count, himself, had not much of his own, and his wife cast this fact in his teeth. She loved to talk of the "beggar nobility," who were obliged to look out for rich burghers' daughters to gild their coronets. The Count may have been hot of temper, and have aggravated matters by sharpness of repartee; but, according to all accounts, it was her miserliness and bitter tongue which caused the estrangement. There were but four servants in the house--the Count's valet, the coachman, a manservant of the Countess, and the cook. Every Sunday the Count Goerlitz dined at the palace. On Sunday, June 13, 1847, he had dined at the Grand-Duke's table as usual. As we know from the letters of the Princess Alice, life was simple at that Court. Hours were, as usual in South Germany, early. The carriage took the Count to dinner at the palace at 3 P.M., and he returned home in it to the Neckar Street at half-past six. When he came in he asked the servant of the Countess, a man named John Stauff, whether his wife was at home, as he wanted to see her. As a matter of fact, he had brought away from the dinner-table at the palace some maccaroons and bonbons for her, as she had a sweet tooth, and he thought the attention might please her. As John Stauff told him the Countess was in, he ascended the stone staircase. A glass door led into the anteroom. He put his hand to it and found it fastened. Thinking that his wife was asleep, or did not want to be disturbed, he went downstairs to his own room, which was under her sitting-room. There he listened for her tread, intending, on hearing it, to reascend and present her with the bonbons. As he heard nothing, he went out for a walk. The time was half-past seven. A little before nine o'clock he returned from his stroll, drew on his dressing-gown and slippers, and asked for his supper, a light meal he was wont to take by himself in his own room, though not always, for the Countess frequently joined him. Her mood was capricious. As he had the bonbons in his pocket, and had not yet been able to present them, he sent her man Stauff to tell her ladyship that supper was served, and that it would give him great satisfaction if she would honour him with her presence. Stauff came back in a few moments to say that the Countess was not at home. "Nonsense!" said the husband, "of course she is at home. She may, however, be asleep. I will go myself and find her." Thereupon he ascended the stairs, and found, as before, the glass door to the anteroom fastened. He looked in, but saw nothing. He knocked, and received no answer. Then he went to the bedroom door, knocked, without result; listened, and heard no sound. The Count had a key to the dressing-room; he opened, and went in, and through that he passed into the bed-chamber. That was empty. The bed-clothes were turned down for the night, but were otherwise undisturbed. He had no key to the anteroom and drawing-room. Then the Count went upstairs to the laundry, which was on the highest storey, and where were also some rooms. The Countess was particular about her lace and linen, and often attended to them herself, getting up some of the collars and frills with her own hands. She was not in the laundry. Evidently she was, as Stauff had said, not at home. The Count questioned the manservant. Had his mistress intimated her intention of supping abroad? No, she had not. Nevertheless, it was possible she might have gone to intimate friends. Accordingly, he sent to the palace of Prince Wittgenstein, and to the house of Councillor von Storch, to inquire if she were at either. She had been seen at neither. The Count was puzzled, without, however, being seriously alarmed. He bade Stauff call the valet, Schiller, and the coachman, Schämbs, who slept out of the house, and then go for a locksmith. Stauff departed. Presently the valet and coachman arrived, and, after, Stauff, without the locksmith, who, he said, was ill, and his man was at the tavern. The Count was angry and scolded. Then the coachman went forth, and soon came back with the locksmith's apprentice, who was set at once to open the locked doors in the top storey. The Countess was not in them. At the same time the young man noticed a smell of burning, but whence it came they could not decide. Thinking that this smell came from the kitchen on the first storey--that is, the floor above where the Count lived--they attacked the door of the kitchen, which was also locked. She was not there. Then the Count led the way to the private sitting-room of the Countess. As yet only the young locksmith had noticed the fire, the others were uncertain whether they smelt anything unusual or not. The key of the apprentice would not fit the lock of the Countess' ante-room, so he ran home to get another. Then the Count went back to his own apartment, and on entering it, himself perceived the smell of burning. Accordingly, he went upstairs again, to find that the coachman had opened an iron stove door in the passage, and that a thick pungent smoke was pouring out of it. We must enter here into an explanation. In many cases the porcelain stove of a German house has no opening into the room. It is lighted outside through a door into the passage. Several stoves communicate with one chimney. The Count and his servants ran out into the courtyard to look at the chimney stack to see if smoke were issuing from it. None was. Then they returned to the house. The apprentice had not yet returned. Looking through the glass door, they saw that there was smoke in the room. It had been unperceived before, for it was evening and dusk. At once the Count's valet, Schiller, smashed the plate glass, and through the broken glass smoke rolled towards them. The hour was half-past ten. The search had occupied an hour and a half. It had not been prosecuted with great activity; but then, no suspicion of anything to cause alarm had been entertained. If the Countess were at home, she must be in the sitting-room. From this room the smoke must come which pervaded the ante-chamber. The fire must be within, and if the Countess were there, she must run the danger of suffocation. Consequently, as the keys were not at hand, the doors ought to be broken open at once. This was not done. Count Goerlitz sent the servants away. Stauff he bade run for a chimney-sweep, and Schiller for his medical man, Dr. Stegmayer. The coachman had lost his head and ran out into the street, yelling, "Fire! fire!" The wife of Schiller, who had come in, ran out to summon assistance. The Count was left alone outside the glass door; and there he remained passive till the arrival of the locksmith's man with the keys. More time was wasted. None of the keys would open the door, and still the smoke rolled out. Then the apprentice beat the door open with a stroke of his hammer. He did it of his own accord, without orders from the Count. That was remembered afterwards. At once a dense, black, sickly-smelling smoke poured forth, and prevented the entrance of those who stood without. In the meantime, the coachman and others had put ladders against the wall, one to the window of the ante-room, the other to that of the parlour. Seitz, the apprentice, ran up the ladder, and peered in. The room was quite dark. He broke two panes in the window, and at once a blue flame danced up, caught the curtains, flushed yellow, and shot out a fiery tongue through the broken window. Seitz, who seems to have been the only man with presence of mind, boldly put his arm through and unfastened the valves, and, catching the burning curtains, tore them down and flung them into the street. Then he cast down two chairs which were flaming from the window. He did not venture in because of the smoke. In the meanwhile the coachman had broken the window panes of the ante-room. This produced a draught through the room, as the glass door had been broken in by Seitz. The smoke cleared sufficiently to allow of admission to the parlour door. This door was also found to be locked, and not only locked, but with the key withdrawn from it, as had been from the ante-chamber door. This door was also burst open, and then it was seen that the writing-desk of the Countess was on fire. That was all that could be distinguished at the first glance. The room was full of smoke, and the heat was so great that no one could enter. Water was brought in jugs and pails, and thrown upon the floor. The current of air gradually dissipated the smoke, and something white was observed on the floor near the burning desk. "Good heavens!" exclaimed the Count, "there she lies!" The Countess lay on the floor beside her writing-desk; the white object was her stockings. Among those who entered was a smith called Wetzell; he dashed forward, flung a pail of water over the burning table, caught hold of the feet of the dead body, and dragged it into the ante-room. Then he sought to raise it, but it slipped through his hands. A second came to his assistance, with the same result. The corpse was like melted butter. When he seized it by the arm, the flesh came away from the bone. The body was laid on a mat, and so transported into a cabinet. The upper portion was burnt to coal; one hand was charred; on the left foot was a shoe, the other was found, later, in another room. More water was brought, and the fire in the parlour was completely quenched. Then only was it possible to examine the place. The fire had, apparently, originated at the writing-desk or secretaire of the Countess; the body had lain before the table, and near it was a chair, thrown over. From the drawing-room a door, which was found open, led into the boudoir. This boudoir had a window that looked into a side street. In the ante-room were no traces of fire. In the drawing-room only the secretaire and the floor beneath it had been burnt. On a chiffonier against the wall were candlesticks, the stearine candles in them had been melted by the heat of the room and run over the chiffonier. In this room was also a sofa, opposite the door leading from the ante-chamber, some way from the desk and the seat of the fire. In the middle of the sofa was a hole fourteen inches long by six inches broad, burnt through the cretonne cover, the canvas below, and into the horse hair beneath. A looking-glass hung against the wall above; this glass was broken and covered with a deposit as of smoke. It was apparent, therefore, that a flame had leaped up on the sofa sufficiently high and hot to snap the mirror and obscure it. Left of the entrance-door was a bell-rope, torn down and cast on the ground. Beyond the parlour was the boudoir. It had a little corner divan. Its cover was burnt through in two places. The cushion at the back was also marked with holes burnt through. Above this seat against the wall hung an oil painting. It was blistered with heat. Near it was an étagère, on which were candles; these also were found melted completely away. In this boudoir was found the slipper from the right foot of the Countess. If the reader will consider what we have described, he will see that something very mysterious must have occurred. There were traces of burning in three distinct places--on the sofa, and at the secretaire in the parlour, and on the corner seat in the boudoir. It was clear also that the Countess had been in both rooms, for her one slipper was in the boudoir, the other on her foot in the drawing-room. Apparently, also, she had rung for assistance, and torn down the bell-rope. Another very significant and mysterious feature of the case was the fact that the two doors were found locked, and that the key was not found with the body, nor anywhere in the rooms. Consequently, the Countess had not locked herself in. Again:--the appearance of the corpse was peculiar. The head and face were burnt to cinder, especially the face, less so the back of the head. All the upper part of the body had been subjected to fire, as far as the lower ribs, and there the traces of burning ceased absolutely. Also, the floor was burnt in proximity to the corpse, but not where it lay. The body had protected the floor where it lay from fire. The police were at once informed of what had taken place, and the magistrates examined the scene and the witnesses. This was done in a reprehensibly inefficient manner. The first opinion entertained was that the Countess had been writing at her desk, and had set fire to herself, had run from room to room, tried to obtain assistance by ringing the bell, had failed, fallen, and died. Three medical men were called in to examine the body. One decided that this was a case of spontaneous combustion. The second that it was not a case of spontaneous combustion. The third simply stated that she had been burnt, but how the fire originated he was unable to say. No minute examination of the corpse was made. It was not even stripped of the half-burnt clothes upon it. It was not dissected. The family physician signed a certificate of "accidental death," and two days after the body was buried. Only three or, at the outside, four hypotheses could account for the death of the Countess. 1. She had caught fire accidentally, whilst writing at her desk. 2. She had died of spontaneous combustion. 3. She had been murdered. There is, indeed, a fourth hypothesis--that she had committed suicide; but this was too improbable to be entertained. The manner of death was not one to be reconciled with the idea of suicide. The first idea was that in the minds of the magistrates. They were prepossessed with it. They saw nothing that could militate against it. Moreover, the Count was Chamberlain at Court, a favourite of the sovereign and much liked by the princes, also a man generally respected. Unquestionably this had something to do with the hasty and superficial manner in which the examination was gone through. The magistrates desired to have the tragedy hushed up. A little consideration shows that the theory of accident was untenable. The candles were on the chiffonier, and no traces of candlesticks were found on the spot where the fire had burned. Moreover, the appearance of the secretaire was against this theory. The writing-desk and table consisted of a falling flap, on which the Countess wrote, and which she could close and lock. Above this table were several small drawers which contained her letters, receipted bills, and her jewelry. Below it were larger drawers. The upper drawers were not completely burnt; on the other hand, the lower drawers were completely consumed, and their bottoms and contents had fallen in cinders on the floor beneath, which was also burnt through to the depth of an inch and a half to two inches. It was apparent, therefore, that the secretaire had been set on fire from below. Moreover, there was more charcoal found under it than could be accounted for, by supposing it had fallen from above. Now it will be remembered that only the upper portion of the body was consumed. The Countess had not set fire to herself whilst writing, and so set fire to the papers on the desk. That was impossible. The supposition that she had died of spontaneous combustion was also entertained by a good many. But no well-authenticated case of spontaneous combustion is known. Professor Liebig, when afterwards examined on this case, stated that spontaneous combustion of the human body was absolutely impossible, and such an idea must be relegated to the region of myths. There remained, therefore, no other conclusion at which it was possible for a rational person to arrive who weighed the circumstances than that the Countess had been murdered. The Magisterial Court of the city of Darmstadt had attempted to hush-up the case. The German press took it up. It excited great interest and indignation throughout the country. It was intimated pretty pointedly that the case had been scandalously slurred over, because of the rank of the Count and the intimate relation in which he stood to the royal family. The papers did not shrink from more than insinuating that this was a case of murder, and that the murderer was the husband of the unfortunate woman. Some suspicion that this was so seems to have crossed the minds of the servants of the house. They recollected his dilatoriness in entering the rooms of the Countess; the time that was protracted in idle sending for keys, and trying key after key, when a kick of the foot or a blow of the hammer would have sufficed to give admission to the room where she lay. It was well known that the couple did not live on the best terms. To maintain appearances before the world, they dined and occasionally supped together. They rarely met alone, and when they did fell into dispute, and high words passed which the servants heard. The Countess was mean and miserly, she grudged allowing her husband any of her money. She had, however, made her will the year before, leaving all her large fortune to her husband for life. Consequently her death released him from domestic and pecuniary annoyances. On the morning after the death he sent for the agent of the insurance company with whom the furniture and other effects were insured and made his claim. He claimed, in addition to the value of the furniture destroyed, the worth of a necklace of diamonds and pearls which had been so injured by the fire that it had lost the greater part of its value. The pearls were quite spoiled, and the diamonds reduced in worth by a half. The agent refused this claim, as he contended that the jewelry was not included in the insurance, and the Count abstained from pressing it. To the Count the situation became at length intolerable. He perceived a decline of cordiality in his reception at Court, his friends grew cold, and acquaintances cut him. He must clear himself of the charge which now weighed on him. The death of the Countess had occurred on June 13, 1847. On October 6, that is four months later, Count Goerlitz appeared before the Grand-Ducal Criminal Court of Darmstadt, and produced a bundle of German newspapers charging him with having murdered his wife, and set fire to the room to conceal the evidence of his crime. He therefore asked to have the case re-opened, and the witnesses re-examined. Nothing followed. The Court hesitated to take up the case again, and throw discredit on the magistrates' decision in June. Again, on October 16, the Count renewed his request, and desired, if this were refused, that he and his solicitor might be allowed access to the minutes of the examination, that they might be enabled to take decided measures for the clearing of the Count's character, and the chastisement of those who charged him with an atrocious crime. On October 21, he received a reply, "that his request could not be granted, unless he produced such additional evidence as would show the Court that the former examination was defective." On October 25, the Count laid a mass of evidence before the Court which, he contended, would materially modify, if not absolutely upset the conclusion arrived at by the previous investigation. Then, at last, consent was given; but proceedings did not begin till November, and dragged on till the end of October in the following year, when a new law of criminal trial having been passed in the grand-duchy, the whole of what had gone before became invalid, save as preliminary investigation, and it was not till March 4, 1850--that is, not till _three years_ after the death of the Countess--that the case was thoroughly sifted and settled. Before the promulgation of the law of October, 1848, all trials were private, then trial by jury, and in public, was introduced. However, something had been done. In August 1848--that is, over a year after the burial of the Countess--the body was exhumed and submitted to examination. Two facts were then revealed. The skull of the Countess had been fractured by some blunt instrument; and she had been strangled. The condition in which the tongue had been found when the body was first discovered had pointed to strangulation, the state of the jaws when exhumed proved it. So much, then, was made probable. A murderer had entered the room, struck the Countess on the head, and when that did not kill her, he had throttled her. Then, apparently, so it was argued, he had burnt the body, and next, before it was more than half consumed, had placed it near the secretaire, and, finally, had set fire to the secretaire. He had set fire to the writing-desk to lead to the supposition that the Countess had set fire to herself whilst writing at it; and this was the first conclusion formed. That a struggle had taken place appeared from several circumstances. The bell-rope was torn down. Probably no servant had been in the house that Sunday evening when the bell rang desperately for aid. The seat flung over seemed to point to her having been surprised at the desk. One shoe was in the boudoir. The struggle had been continued as she fled from the sitting-room into the inner apartment. Now, only, were the fire-marks on the divan and sofa explicable. The Countess had taken refuge first on one, then on the other, after having been wounded, and her blood had stained them. The murderer had burnt out the marks of blood. She had fled from the sitting-room to the boudoir, and thence had hoped to escape through the next door into a corner room, but the door of that room was locked. The next point to be determined was, where had her body been burnt. locked | boudoir room | o|o ---------+---------- |a|o -| anteroom | parlour In the sitting-room, the boudoir, and a locked corner room were stoves. The walls of these rooms met, and in the angles were the stoves. They all communicated with one chimney. They were all heated from an opening in the anteroom, marked _a_, which closed with an iron door, and was covered with tapestry. The opening was large enough for a human being to be thrust through, and the fire-chamber amply large enough also for its consumption. Much time had passed since a serious examination was begun, and it was too late to think of finding evidence of the burning of the body in this place. The stoves had been used since, each winter. However, some new and surprising evidence did come to light. At five minutes past eight on the evening that the mysterious death took place, Colonel von Stockhausen was on the opposite side of the street talking to a lady, when his attention was arrested by a dense black smoke issuing suddenly from the chimney of the Count Goerlitz' palace. He continued looking at the column of smoke whilst conversing with the lady, uncertain whether the chimney were on fire or not, and whether he ought to give the alarm. When the lady left him, after about ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, he saw that smoke ceased to issue from the chimney. He accordingly went his way without giving notice of the smoke. So far every piece of evidence went to show that the Countess had been murdered. The conclusion now arrived at was this: she had been struck on the head, chased from room to room bleeding, had been caught, strangled, then thrust into the fire-chamber of the stove over a fire which only half consumed her; taken out again and laid before the secretaire, and the secretaire deliberately set fire to, and all the blood-marks obliterated by fire. That something of this kind had taken place was evident. Who had done it was not so clear. The efforts of the Count to clear himself had established the fact that his wife was murdered, but did not establish his innocence. Suddenly--the case assumed a new aspect, through an incident wholly unexpected and extraordinary. The result of inquiry into the case of the death of the Countess Goerlitz was, that the decision that she had come to her end by accident, given by the city magistrates, was upset, and it was made abundantly clear that she had been murdered. By whom murdered was not so clear. Inquiry carried the conclusion still further. She had been robbed as well as murdered. We have already described the writing-desk of the Countess. There were drawers below the flap, and other smaller drawers concealed by it when closed. In the smaller drawers she kept her letters, her bills, her vouchers for investments, and her jewelry. Among the latter was the pearl and diamond necklace, which she desired by her will might be sold, and the money given to a charitable institution. The necklace was indeed discovered seriously injured; but what had become of her bracelets, brooches, rings, her other necklets, her earrings? She had also a chain of pearls, which was nowhere to be found. All these articles were gone. No trace of them had been found in the cinders under the secretaire; moreover, the drawers in which she preserved them were not among those burnt through. In the first excitement and bewilderment caused by her death, the Count had not observed the loss, and the magistrates had not thought fit to inquire whether any robbery had been committed. A very important fact was now determined. The Countess had been robbed, and murdered, probably for the sake of her jewels. Consequently the murderer was not likely to be the Count. When the case was re-opened, at Count Goerlitz's repeated demand, an "Inquirent" was appointed by the Count to examine the case--that is, an official investigator of all the circumstances; and on November 2, 1847, in the morning, notice was given to the Count that the "Inquirent" would visit his mansion on the morrow and examine both the scene of the murder and the servants. The Count at once convoked his domestics and bade them be in the house next day, ready for examination. That same afternoon the cook, Margaret Eyrich by name, was engaged in the kitchen preparing dinner for the master, who dined at 4 P.M. At three o'clock the servant-man, John Stauff, came into the kitchen and told the cook that her master wanted a fire lit in one of the upper rooms. She refused to go because she was busy at the stove. Stauff remained a quarter of an hour there talking to her. Then he said it was high time for him to lay the table for dinner, a remark to which she gave an assent, wondering in her own mind why he had delayed so long. He took up a soup dish, observed that it was not quite clean, and asked her to wash it. She was then engaged on some sauce over the fire. "I will wash it, if you will stir the sauce," she said. "If I leave the pan, the sauce will be burnt." Stauff consented, and she went with the dish to the sink. Whilst thus engaged, she turned her head, and was surprised to see that Stauff had a small phial in his hand, and was pouring its contents into the sauce. She asked him what he was about; he denied having done anything, and the woman, with great prudence, said nothing further, so as not to let him think that her suspicions were aroused. Directly, however, that he had left the kitchen, she examined the sauce, saw it was discoloured, and on trying it, that the taste was unpleasant. She called in the coachman and the housekeeper. On consultation they decided that this matter must be further investigated. The housekeeper took charge of the sauce, and carried it to Dr. Stegmayer, the family physician, who at once said that verdigris had been mixed with it, and desired that the police should be communicated with. This was done, the sauce was analysed, and found to contain 15½ grains of verdigris, enough to poison a man. Thereupon Stauff was arrested. We see now that an attempt had been made on the life of the Count, on the day on which he had announced that an official inquiry into the murder was to be made in his house and among his domestics. Stauff, then, was apparently desirous of putting the Count out of the way before that inquiry was made. At this very time a terrible tragedy had occurred in France, and was in all the papers. The Duke of Praslin had murdered his wife, and when he was about to be arrested, the duke had poisoned himself. Did Stauff wish that the Count should be found poisoned that night, in order that the public might come to the conclusion he had committed suicide to escape arrest? It would seem so. John Stauff's arrest took place on November 3, 1847, four months and a half after the death of the Countess. He was, however, only arrested on a charge of attempting to poison the Count, and the further charge of having murdered the Countess was not brought against him till August 28, 1848. The body of the murdered woman, it will be remembered, was not exhumed and examined till August 11, 1848--eight months after the re-opening of the investigation! It is really wonderful that the mystery should have been cleared and the Count's character satisfactorily vindicated, with such dilatoriness of proceeding. One more instance of the stupid way in which the whole thing was managed. Although John Stauff was charged with the attempt to poison on November 3, 1847, he was not questioned on the charge till January 10, 1849, that is, till he had been fourteen months in prison. It will be remembered that the bell-rope in the Countess's parlour was torn down. It would suggest itself to the meanest capacity that here was a point of departure for inquiry. If the bell had been torn down, it must have pealed its summons for help through the house. Who was in the house at the time? If anyone was, why did he not answer the appeal? Inconceivable was the neglect of the magistrates of Darmstadt in the first examination--they did not inquire. Only several months later was this matter subjected to investigation. In the house lived the Count and Countess, the cook, who also acted as chambermaid to the Countess, Schiller, the valet to the Count, Schämbs, the coachman, and the Countess's own servant-man, John Stauff. Of these Schiller and Schämbs did not sleep in the house. June 13, the day of the murder, was a Sunday. The Count went as usual to the grand-ducal palace in his coach at 3 P.M. The coachman drove him; Stauff sat on the box beside the coachman. They left the Count at the palace and returned home. They were ordered to return to the palace to fetch him at 6 P.M. On Sundays, the Count usually spent his day in his own suite of apartments, and the Countess in hers. On the morning in question she had come downstairs to her husband with a bundle of coupons which she wanted him to cash for her on the morrow. He managed her fortune for her. The sum was small, only £30. At 2 P.M. she went to the kitchen to tell the cook she might go out for the afternoon, as she would not be wanted, and that she must return by 9 P.M. At three o'clock the cook left. The cook saw and spoke to her as she left. The Countess was then partially undressed, and the cook supposed she was changing her clothes. Shortly after this, Schiller, the Count's valet, saw and spoke with her. She was then upstairs in the laundry arranging the linen for the mangle. She was then in her morning cotton dress. Consequently she had not dressed herself to go out, as the cook supposed. At the same time the carriage left the court of the house for the palace. That was the last seen of her alive, except by John Stauff, and, if he was not the murderer, by one other. About a quarter past three the coach returned with Schämbs and Stauff on the box. The Count had been left at the palace. The coachman took out his horses, without unharnessing them, and left for his own house, at half-past three, to remain there till 5 o'clock, when he must return, put the horses in, and drive back to the palace to fetch the Count. A quarter of an hour after the coachman left, Schiller went out for a walk with his little boy. Consequently--none were in the house but the Countess and Stauff, and Stauff knew that the house was clear till 5 o'clock, when Schämbs would return to the stables. What happened during that time? At a quarter past four, the wife of Schiller came to the house with a little child, and a stocking she was knitting. She wanted to know if her husband had gone with the boy to Eberstadt, a place about four miles distant. She went to the back-door. It was not fastened, but on being opened rang a bell, like a shop door. Near it were two rooms, one occupied by Schiller, the other by Stauff. The wife went into her husband's room and found it empty. Then she went into that of Stauff. It also was empty. She returned into the entrance hall and listened. Everything was still in the house. She stood there some little while knitting and listening. Presently she heard steps descending the backstairs, and saw Stauff, with an apron about him, and a duster in his hand. She asked him if her husband had gone to Eberstadt, and he said that he had. Then she left the house. Stauff, however, called to her from the window to hold up the child to him, to kiss. She did so, and then departed. Shortly after five, Schämbs returned to the stable, put in the horses, and drove to the palace without seeing Stauff. He thought nothing of this, as Stauff usually followed on foot, in time to open the coach door for the Count. On this occasion, Stauff appeared at his post in livery, at a quarter to six. At half-past six both returned with their master to the house in Neckar Street. Accordingly, from half-past three to a quarter past four, and from half-past four to half-past five, Stauff was alone in the house with the Countess. But then, from a quarter to five to half-past five she was quite alone, and it was possible that the murder was committed at that time. The Count, it will be remembered, on his return, went upstairs and knocked at the door of the Countess' apartments, without meeting with a response. Probably, therefore, she was then dead. At seven o'clock the coachman went away, and Stauff helped the Count to take off his court dining dress, and put on a light suit. He was with him till half-past seven, when the Count went out for a walk. The Count returned at half-past eight; during an hour, therefore, Stauff was alone in the house with the Countess, or--her corpse. What occurred during that hour? Here two independent pieces of evidence come in to assist us in determining what took place. At five minutes past eight, Colonel von Stockhausen had seen the column of black smoke issue from the chimney of the house; it ascended, he said, some fifteen feet above the chimney, and was so dense that it riveted his attention whilst he was talking to a lady. At about a quarter-past eight the smoke ceased. The reader may remember that the window of the inner boudoir did not look into the Neckar Street, but into a small side street. Immediately opposite lived a widow lady named Kekule. On the evening in question, her daughter, Augusta, a girl of eighteen, came in from a walk, and went upstairs to the room the window of which was exactly opposite, though at a somewhat higher level than the window of the boudoir. Looking out of her window, Augusta Kekule saw to her astonishment a flickering light like a lambent flame in the boudoir. A blind was down, so that she could see nothing distinctly. She was, however, alarmed, and called her brother Augustus, aged twenty years, and both watched the flames flashing in the room. They called their mother also, and all three saw it flare up high, then decrease, and go out. The time was 8.15. On examination of the spot, it was seen that the window of Miss Kekule commanded the corner of the boudoir, where was the divan partly burnt through in several places. What was the meaning of these two appearances, the smoke and the flame? Apparently, from half-past seven to half-past eight the murderer was engaged in burning the body, and in effacing with fire the blood-stains on the sofas. During this time John Stauff was in the house, and, beside the Countess, alive or dead, John Stauff only. Stauff was now subjected to examination. He was required to account for his time on the afternoon and evening of Sunday, June 13. He said, that after his return from the palace, that is, about ten minutes past three, he went into his room on the basement, and ate bread and cheese. When told that the wife of Schiller stated she had seen him come downstairs, he admitted that he had run upstairs to fetch a duster, to brush away the bread crumbs from the table at which he had eaten. After the woman left, according to his own account, he remained in his room below till five o'clock, when the Countess came to the head of the stairs and called him. He went up and found her on the topmost landing; she went into the laundry, and he stood in the door whilst she spoke to him, and gave him some orders for the butcher and baker. She wore, he said, a black stuff gown. Whilst he was talking to her, Schämbs drove away to fetch the Count. He gave a correct account of what followed, up to the departure of the Count on his walk. After that, he said, he had written a letter to his sweetheart, and at eight went out to get his supper at an outdoor restaurant where he remained till half-past nine. He was unable to produce evidence of anyone who had seen him and spoken to him there; but, of course, much cannot be made of this, owing to the distance of time at which the evidence was taken from the event of the murder. According to his account, therefore, no one was in the house at the time when the smoke rose from the chimney, and the flame was seen in the boudoir. If we sum up the points determined concerning the murder of the Countess, we shall see how heavily the evidence told against Stauff. She had been attacked in her room, and after a desperate struggle, which went on in both parlour and boudoir, she had been killed. Her secretaire had been robbed. Her body had been burnt. The blood-stains had been effaced by fire. The secretaire had been set fire to; and, apparently, the body removed from where it had been partially consumed, and placed near it. Now all this must have taken time. It could only be done by one who knew that he had time in which to effect it undisturbed. John Stauff was at two separate times, in the afternoon and evening, alone in the house for an hour, knowing that during that time he would be undisturbed. If his account were true, the murder must have been committed during his brief absence with the coach, and the burning of the body, and setting fire to the room, done when he went out to get his supper. But--how could the murderer suppose he would leave the house open and unprotected at eight o'clock? Was it likely that a murderer and robber, after having killed the Countess and taken her jewels at six o'clock, would hang about till eight, waiting the chance of getting back to the scene of his crime unobserved, to attempt to disguise it? not knowing, moreover, how much time he would have for effecting his purpose? It was possible that this had been done, but it was not probable. Evidence was forthcoming from a new quarter that served to establish the guilt of Stauff. On October 6, 1847, an oilman, Henry Stauff, in Oberohmen, in Hesse Cassel, was arrested, because he was found to be disposing of several articles of jewelry, without being able to give a satisfactory account of where he got them. The jewelry consisted of a lump of molten gold, and some brooches, bracelets and rings. Henry Stauff had been a whitesmith in his youth, then he became a carrier, but in the last few years, since the death of his wife, he had sold knives, and been a knife-grinder. He was very poor, and had been unable to pay his rates. In July of 1847, however, his affairs seemed to have mended; he wore a silver watch, and took out a licence to deal in oil and seeds. When he applied for the patent, the burgomaster was surprised, and asked him how he could get stock to set up business, in his state of poverty. Thereupon, Henry Stauff opened his purse and showed that it contained a good amount of silver, and--with the coins was a gold ring with, apparently, a precious stone in it. The cause of his arrest was his offering the lump of gold to a silversmith in Cassel. It looked so much as if it was the melting up of jewelry, that the smith communicated with the police. On his arrest, Henry Stauff said he was the father of four children, two sons and two daughters; that his sons, one of whom was in the army, had sent him money, that his daughter in America had given him the jewelry, and that the gold he had had by him for several years, it had been given him by a widow, who was dead. The silver watch he had bought in Frankfort. Henry Stauff had a daughter at home, name Anna Margaretta, who often received letters from Darmstadt. One of these letters had not been stamped, and as she declined to pay double for it, it lay in the post-office till opened to be returned. Then it was found to be dated September 29, 1847, and to be from her brother, John Stauff. It simply contained an inclosure to her father; this was opened; it contained an angry remonstrance with him for not having done what he was required, and sent the money at once to the writer. Was it possible that this had reference to the disposal of the jewelry? On July 7, three weeks after the death of the Countess, Henry Stauff was at Darmstadt, where one son, Jacob, was in the army; the other, John, was in service with the Goerlitz family. This led the magistrates in Cassel to communicate with those in Darmstadt. On November 10, John Stauff was questioned with reference to his father. He said he had often sent him money. He was shown the jewelry, and asked if he recognised it. He denied having ever seen it, and having sent it to his father. The jewelry was shown to Count Goerlitz, and he immediately identified it as having belonged to his wife. A former lady's-maid of the Countess also identified the articles. The Count, and a maid, asserted that these articles had always been kept by the deceased lady in the small upper drawers of her secretaire. The Countess was vain and miserly, and often looked over her jewelry. She would, certainly, have missed her things had they been stolen before June 13. The articles had not been stolen since, found among the ashes, and carried off surreptitiously, for they showed no trace of fire. Here we must again remark on the extraordinary character of the proceedings in this case. The articles were identified and shown to John Stauff on November 10, 1847, but it was not till ten months after, on August 28, 1848, that he was told that he was suspected of the murder of the Countess, and of having robbed her of these ornaments. Another of the eccentricities of the administration of justice in Darmstadt consisted in allowing the father Henry, and his son John, to have free private communication with each other, whilst the latter was in prison, and thus allowing them to concoct together a plausible account of their conduct, with which, however, we need not trouble ourselves. On September 1, 1848, on the fourth day after Stauff knew that he was charged with the murder of the Countess, he asked to make his statement of what really took place. This was the account he gave. It will be seen that, from the moment he knew the charge of murder was brought against him, he altered his defence. He said, "On June 20, 1847," (that is, a week after the murder), "about ten o'clock in the evening, after the Count had partaken of his supper and undressed, he brought me a box containing jewelry, and told me he would give it to me, as I was so poor, and that it would place my father and me in comfortable circumstances. I then told the Count that I did not know what to do with these jewels, whereupon he exhorted me to send them to my father, and get him to dispose of them. He told me that he required me solemnly to swear that I would not tell anyone about the jewels. I hid the box in a stocking and concealed it in some bushes on the Bessungen road. Later I told my brother Jacob where they were, and bade him give them to my father on his visit to Darmstadt." When Stauff was asked what reason he could assign for the Count giving him the jewels, he said that the Count saw that he, John Stauff, suspected him of the murder, and he named several circumstances, such as observing blood on the Count's handkerchief on the evening of the murder, which had led him to believe that the Count was guilty, and the Count was aware of his suspicions. On March 4, 1850, began the trial of John Stauff for the murder of the Countess, for robbery, for arson, and for attempt to poison the Count. At the same time his father, Henry Stauff, and his brother, Jacob Stauff, were tried for concealment of stolen goods. The trial came to an end on April 11. As many as 118 witnesses were heard; among these was the Count Goerlitz, as to whose innocence no further doubts were entertained. John Stauff was at that time aged twenty-six, he was therefore twenty-four years old at the time of the murder. He had been at school at Oberohmen, where he had shown himself an apt and intelligent scholar. In 1844 he had entered the grand-ducal army, and in May 1846 had become servant in the Goerlitz house, as footman to the Countess. In his regiment he had behaved well; he had been accounted an excellent servant, and both his master and mistress placed confidence in him. Curiously enough, in the autumn of 1846, he had expressed a wish to a chambermaid of the Countess "that both the Countess and her pack of jewels, bracelets and all, might be burnt in one heap." When the maid heard of the death of the Countess in the following year, "Ah!" she said, "now Stauff's wish has been fulfilled to the letter." He was fond of talking of religion, and had the character among his fellow-servants of being pious. He was, however, deep in debt, and associated with women of bad character. Throughout the trial he maintained his composure, his lips closed, his colour pale, without token of agitation. But the man who could have stood by without showing emotion at the opening of the coffin of his mistress, at the sight of the half-burnt, half-decomposed remains of his victim, must have had powers of self-control of no ordinary description. During the trial he seemed determined to show that he was a man of some culture; he exhibited ease of manner and courtesy towards judges, jury, and lawyers. He never interrupted a witness, and when he questioned them, did so with intelligence and moderation. He often looked at the public, especially the women, who attended in great numbers, watching the effect of the evidence on their minds. When, as now and then happened, some ludicrous incident occurred, he laughed over it as heartily as the most innocent looker-on. The jury unanimously found him "guilty" on every count. They unanimously gave a verdict of "guilty" against his father and brother. Henry Stauff was sentenced to six months' imprisonment; Jacob Stauff to detention for three months, and John to imprisonment for life. At that time capital punishment could not be inflicted in Hesse. On June 3, he was taken to the convict prison of Marienschloss. On July 1, he appealed to the Grand-Duke to give him a free pardon, as he was innocent of the crimes for which he was sentenced. The appeal was rejected. Then he professed his intention of making full confession. He asked to see the Count. He professed himself a broken-hearted penitent, desirous of undoing, by a sincere confession, as much of the evil as was possible. We will give his confession in his own words. "When, at five o'clock, I went to announce to the Countess that I was about to go to the palace, I found both the glass door of the ante-room, and that into the sitting-room, open, and I walked in through them. I did not find the Countess in her parlour, of which the curtains were drawn. Nor was she in her boudoir. I saw the door into the little corner room ajar, so I presumed she was in there. The flap of her desk was down, so that I saw the little drawers, in which I knew she kept her valuables, accessible to my hand. Opportunity makes the thief. I was unable to resist the temptation to enrich myself by these precious articles. I opened one of the drawers, took out a gold bracelet, one of gold filigree, two of bronze, a pair of gold ear-rings, a gold brooch, and a triple chain of beads or Roman pearls; and pocketed these articles, which my father afterwards had, and, for the most part, melted up. "Most of these articles were in their cases. At that moment the Countess appeared on the threshold of her boudoir and rushed towards me. I do not remember what she exclaimed; fear for the consequences, and anxiety to prevent the Countess from making a noise and calling assistance, and thereby obtaining my arrest, prevailed in my mind, and I thought only how I might save myself. I grasped her by the neck, and pressed my thumbs into her throat. She struggled desperately. I was obliged to use all my strength to hold her. After a wrestle of between five and seven minutes, her eyes closed, her face became purple, and I felt her limbs relax. "When I saw she was dead I was overcome with terror. I let the body fall, whereby the head struck the corner of the left side of the secretaire, and this made a wound which began to bleed. Then I ran and locked both the doors, hid what I had taken in my bed, and left the house. On my way to the palace, I stepped into Frey's tavern and drank three glasses of wine. I was afraid I should arrive too late at the palace, where I appeared, however, at half-past five. The Count did not return till half-past six, as dinner that day lasted rather longer than usual. "When the Count went upstairs to see his wife and take her something good he had brought away with him from table, I was not uneasy at all, for I knew that he would knock and come away if he met with no response. So he did. He came down without being discomposed, and remarked that he fancied the Countess had gone out. At half-past seven he left the house. In the mean time I had been considering what to do, and had formed my plan. Now my opportunity had arrived, and I hastened to put it into execution. My plan was to efface every trace of my deed by fire, and to commit suicide if interrupted. "As the weather was chilly, the Count had some fire in his stove. I fetched the still glowing charcoal, collected splinters of firwood and other combustibles, and matches, and went upstairs with them. Only the wine sustained me through what I carried out. I took up the body. I put a chair before the open desk, seated the corpse on it, placed one arm on the desk, laid the head on the arm, so that the body reposed in a position of sleep, leaning on the flap of the desk. I threw the red hot charcoal down under the head, heaped matches, paper, and wood splinters over them; took one of the blazing bits of wood and threw it on the divan in the boudoir; locked both doors, and flung away the keys. "Then I went to my own room and lighted a fire in the stove, and put the jewel cases on the fire. The fire would not burn well, and thick smoke came into the room. Then I saw that the damper was closed. I opened that, and the smoke flew up the chimney; this is what Colonel von Stockhausen saw. There were a lot of empty match-boxes also in the stove, and these burnt with the rest." Such was the confession of Stauff. How far true, it is impossible to say. He said nothing about the bell-pull being torn down, nothing about the holes burnt in the sofa of the sitting-room. According to the opinion of some experimentalists, the way in which he pretended to have burnt the Countess would not account for the appearance of the corpse. His object was to represent himself as the victim of an over-mastering temptation--to show that the crime was wholly unpremeditated. This was the sole plea on which he could appeal for sympathy, and expect a relaxation of his sentence. That sentence was relaxed. In 1872 he obtained a free pardon from the Grand-Duke, on condition that he left the country and settled in America. Including his imprisonment before his trial, he had, therefore, undergone twenty-five years of incarceration. When released he went to America, where he probably still is. A War-and-Honey-Moon. In the history of Selenography, John Henry Maedler holds a distinguished place. He was the very first to publish a large map of the lunar surface; and his map was a good one, very accurate, and beautifully executed, in four sheets (1834-6). For elucidation of this map he wrote a book concerning the moon, entitled "The Universal Selenography." Not content with this, he published a second map of the moon in 1837, embodying fresh discoveries. Indeed as an astronomer, Maedler was a specialist. Lord Dufferin when in Iceland met a German naturalist who had gone to that inclement island to look for one moth. It is of the nature of Teutonic scientific men not to diffuse their interests over many branches of natural history or other pursuits, but to focus them on a single point. Maedler was comparatively indifferent to the planets, cold towards the comets, and callous to the attractions of the nebulæ. On the subject of the moon, he was a sheer lunatic. He died at Hanover in 1874 at the age of eighty, a moon gazer to the last. Indeed, he appeared before the public as the historian of that science in a work published at Brunswick, the year previous to his death. The study of astronomy, more than any other,--even than theology--detaches a man from the world and its interests. Indeed theology as a study has a tendency to ruffle a man, and make him bark and snap at his fellow men who use other telescopes than himself; it is not so with astronomy. This science exercises a soothing influence on those who make it their study, so that an Adams and a Le Verrier can simultaneously discover a Neptune without flying at each other's noses. Astronomy is certainly an alluring science; set an astronomer before a telescope, and an overwhelming attraction draws his soul away through the tube up into heaven, and leaves his body without mundane interests. An astronomer is necessarily a mathematician, and mathematics are the hardest and most petrifying of studies. The "humane letters," as classic studies are called, draw out the human interests, they necessarily carry men among men, but mathematics draw men away from all the interests of their fellows. The last man one expects to find in love, the last man in whose life one looks for a romantic episode, is a mathematician and astronomer. But as even Cæsar nods, so an astronomer may lapse into spooning. The life of Professor Maedler does not contain much of animated interest; but it had its poetic incident. The curious story of his courtship and marriage may be related without indiscretion, now that the old Selenographer is no more. Even the most prosaic of men have their time of poetry. The swan is said to sing only once--just before it dies. The man of business--the stockbroker, the insurance-company manager, the solicitor, banker, the ironmonger, butcher, greengrocer, postman, have all passed through a "moment," as Hegel would call it, when the soul burst through its rind of common-place and vulgar routine, sang its nightingale song, and then was hushed for ever after. It is said that there are certain flowers which take many years coming to the point of bloom, they open, exhale a flood of incense, and in an hour wither. It is so with many. Even the astronomer has his blooming time. Then, after the honeymoon, the flower withers, the song ceases, the sunshine fades, and folds of the fog of common-place settle deeper than before. Ivan Turgenieff, the Russian novelist, says of love, "It is not an emotion, it is a malady, attacking soul and body. It is developed without rule, it cannot be reckoned with, it cannot be overreached. It lays hold of a man, without asking leave, like a fever or the cholera. It seizes on its prey as a falcon on a dove, and carries it, where it wills. There is no equality in love. The so-termed free inclination of souls towards each other is an idle dream of German professors, who have never loved. No! of two who love, one is the slave, the other is the lord, and not inaccurately have the poets told of the chains of love." But love when it does lay hold of a man assumes some features congruent to his natural habit. It is hardly tempestuous in a phlegmatic temperament, nor is a man of sanguine nature liable to be much influenced by calculations of material advantages. That calculations should form a constituent portion of the multiform web of a mathematician's passion is what we might anticipate. It will be interesting to see in a German professor devoted to the severest, most abstract and super-mundane of studies, the appearance, course, and dying away of the "malady" of love. We almost believe that this case is so easy of analysis that the very _bacillus_ may be discovered. Before, however, we come to the story of Professor Maedler's love episode, we must say a word about his previous history. Maedler was born at Berlin on May 29th, 1794, in the very month of love, though at its extreme end. He began life as a schoolmaster, but soared in his leisure hours into a purer atmosphere than that of the schoolroom; he began to study the stars, and found them brighter and more interesting than the heads of his pupils. In 1828 William Beer, the Berlin banker, brother of the great composer, Meyerbeer, a Jew, built a small observatory in the suburbs of Berlin. He had made the acquaintance of Maedler, they had the same love of the stars, and they became close friends. The Beers were a gifted family, running out in different directions. Michael, a third brother, was a poet, and wrote tragedies, one or two of which occasionally reappear on the boards. The result of the nightly star gazings was an article on Mars when in opposition, with a drawing of the surface as it appeared to Beer and Maedler, through the telescope of the former. But Mars did not admit of much further scrutiny, it presented no more problems they were capable of solving, so they devoted themselves to the moon. A gourmand exists from dinner to dinner, that meal is the climax of his vitality, that past he lapses into inertness, indifference, quiescence. Full moon was the exciting moment of the periods in Maedler's life, which was divided, not like a gourmand's day, into periods of twenty-four hours, but into lunar months. When the moon began to show, Maedler began to live; his interest, the pulses of his life quickened as full moon approached, then declined and went to sleep when there was no lunar disc in the sky. From 1834 to 1836 he issued his great map of the moon, and so made his name. But beyond that, in the summer of 1833 he was employed by the Russian Government on a chronometrical expedition in the Baltic. When his map came out, he was at once secured by the Prussian Government as assistant astronomer to the observatory at Berlin, recently erected. In 1840 he became a professor, and was summoned to take charge of the observatory, and lecture on astronomy, in the Russian University of Dorpat. There he spent six uneventful years. He was unmarried, indifferent to female society, and as cold as his beloved moon. He was as solitary, as far removed from the ideas of love and matrimony, as the Man in the Moon. At last, one vacation time, he paid a long deferred visit to a friend, a Selenologist, at Gröningen, the University of the Kingdom of Hanover. Whilst smoking, drinking beer, and talking over the craters and luminous streaks in the moon, with his friend, who was also a professor, that gentleman drew his pipe from his mouth, blew a long spiral from between his lips, and then said slowly, "By the way, professor, are you aware that we have here, in this kingdom, not, indeed, in Gröningen, but in the town of Hanover, a lady, the wife of the Herr Councillor Witte, who is, like yourself, devoted to the moon; a lady, who spends entire nights on the roof of her house peering at the face of the moon through one end--the smaller--of her telescope, observing all the prominences, measuring their altitudes, and sounding all the cavities. Indeed, it is asserted that she studies the face and changes of the moon much more closely than the features and moods of her husband. Also, it is asserted, that when the moon is shining, the household duties are neglected, the dinners are bad, the maids--" "O dinners! maids! you need not consider them; there are always dinners and maids," said the Dorpat astronomer contemptuously, "but the moon is seen so comparatively rarely. The moon must be made much of when she shows. Everything must then be sacrificed to her." Dr. Maedler did not call the moon _she_, but _he_; however, we are writing in English, not in German, so we change the gender. The Astronomer Royal of the University of Gröningen went on, without noticing the interruption: "Frau von Witte has spent a good deal of her husband's money in getting the largest procurable telescope, and has built an observatory for it with a dome that revolves on cannon balls, on the top of her house. Whilst Herr von Witte slumbers and snores beneath, like a Philistine, his enlightened lady is aloft, studying the moon. The Frau Councilloress has done more than observe Luna, she has done more than you and Beer together, with your maps--she has modelled it." "Modelled it!--modelled the moon!--in what?" "In white wax." Professor Maedler's countenance fell. He had gained great renown, not in Germany only, but throughout Europe by his maps of the moon. Here was an unknown lady, as enthusiastic a devotee to the satellite as himself, who had surpassed him. "You see," continued the Hanoverian professor, "the idea is superb, the undertaking colossal. You have a fixed strong light, you make the wax moon to revolve on its axis, and you reproduce in the most surprising and exact manner, all the phases of the moon itself." This was indeed an idea. Maedler looked at his hands, his fingers. Would they be capable of modelling such a globe? Hardly, he had very broad coarse hands, and thick flat fingers, like paddles. He suddenly stood up. "What is the matter? Whither are you going?" asked his friend. "To Hanover, to Frau Witte, to see the wax moon." No persuasion would restrain him, he was in a selenological fever, he could not sleep, he could not eat, he could not read, he must see the wax moon. And now, pray observe the craft of Cupid. The professor was aged fifty-two. In vain had the damsels of Berlin and Dorpat set their caps at him. Not a blonde beauty of Saxon race with blue eyes had caught his fancy, not a dark Russian with large hazel eyes and thick black hair, had arrested his attention. His heart had been given to the cold, chaste Diana. It was, with him, the reverse of the tale of Endymion. He had written a treatise on the occultation of Mars, he had described the belts of Saturn, he had even measured his waist. Venus he had neglected, and now Cupid was about to avenge the slight passed on his mother. There was but one avenue by which access might be had to the professor's heart. The God of Love knew it, and resolved to storm the citadel through this avenue. Dr. Maedler packed his trunk himself in the way in which unmarried men and abstract thinkers do pack their portmanteaus. He bundled all his clothes in together, higglety-pigglety. The only bit of prudence he showed was to put the pomatum pot into a stocking. His collars he curled up in the legs of his boots. Copies of his astronomical pamphlets for presentation, lay in layers between his shirts. Then as the trunk would not close, the Professor of Astronomy sat down heavily on it, stood up, then sharply sat down on it again, and repeated this operation, till coats, trousers, linen, pamphlets, brushes and combs had been crushed together into one cohesive mass, and so the lock would fasten. No sooner was Dr. Maedler arrived at his inn in Hanover, and had dusted the collar of his coat, and revolved before the _garçon_ who went over him with a clothes brush, revolved like the moon he loved, than he sallied forth in quest of the house of the Wittes. There was no mistaking it--with the domed observatory on the roof. Dr. Maedler stood in the square, looking up at it. The sight of an observatory touched him; and now, hard and dry as he was, moisture came into his eyes, as he thought that there, on that elevated station, an admirable woman spent her nights in the contemplation of the moon. What was Moses on Pisgah, viewing the Promised Land, what was Simeon Stylites braving storm and cold, to this spectacle? Never before had the astronomer met with one of the weaker sex who cared a button for the moon, _qua_ moon, and not as a convenience for illumining lovers' meetings, or for an allusion in a valentine. Here was an heroic soul which surged, positively surged above the frivolities of her sex, one who aspired to be the rival of man in intelligence and love of scientific research. Professor Maedler sent in his card, and a letter of introduction from his friend at Gröningen, and was at once admitted. He had formed an ideal picture of the Selenographic lady, tall, worn with night watching, with an arched brow, large, clear eyes. He found her a fat little woman, with a face as round and as flat as that of the moon, not by any means pale, but red as the moon in a fog. The lady was delighted to make the acquaintance of so renowned an astronomer. She made him pretty speeches about his map, at the same time letting him understand that a map was all very well, but she knew of something better. Then she launched out into a criticism of his pamphlets on Mars and Saturn, on which, as it happened, he was then sitting. He had put a crumpled copy in each of his tail-coat pockets for an offering, and was now doubly crumpling them. Then she asked his opinion about the revolution and orbit of Biela's comet, which had been seen the preceding year. Next she carried him to Hencke's recently discovered planet, Astræa; after that she dashed away, away with him to the nebulæ, and sought to resolve them with his aid. Then down they whirled together through space to the sun, and the luminous red protuberances observable at an eclipse. Another step, and they were plunging down to earth, had reached it in safety, and were discussing Lord Rosse's recently erected telescope. It was like Dante and Beatrix, with this difference, that Maedler was not a poet, and Frau Witte was a married woman. The Professor was uneasy. Charming as is a telescope, delightful as is the sun, fascinating as Astræa may be, still, the moon, the moon was what he had come to discuss, and wax moon what he had come to see. So he exercised all his skill, and with great dialectic ability conducted his Beatrix away on another round. They gave the fixed stars a wide berth, dived in and out among the circling planets and planetoids without encountering one, avoided the comets, kept their feet off nebulous matter, and at last he planted his companion firmly on the moon, and when there, there he held her. To her words of commendation of his lunar map, he replied by expressing his astonishment at her knowledge of the several craters and so-called seas. Presently Frau Witte rose with a smile, and said, "Herr Professor, I may, perhaps, be allowed to exhibit a trifle on which I have been engaged for many years:--an independent work that I have compared with, but not copied from, your excellent selenic map." The doctor's heart fluttered; his eyes brightened; a hectic flush came into his cheeks. Frau Witte took a key and led the way to her study, where she threw open a mahogany cupboard, and exposed to view something very much like a meat cover. This also she removed, it was composed of the finest silk stretched on a frame, and exposed to view--the wax moon. The globe was composed of the purest white beeswax, it stood upon a steel needle that passed through it, and rested on pivots, so that the globe was held up and held firm, and could be easily made to revolve. Frau Witte closed the shutters, leaving open only one orifice through which the light could penetrate and fall on the wax ball. The doctor raised his hands in admiration. Never had he seen anything that so delighted him. The globe's surface had been most delicately manipulated. The mountains were pinched into peaks, the hollows indented to the requisite depth, the craters were rendered with extraordinary precision, the striæ being indicated by insertions of other tinted wax. A shadow hung sombre over the mysterious Sea of Storms. Professor Maedler returned to his hotel a prey to emotion. He inquired the address of a certain Rollmann, whom he had known in former years at Berlin, and who was now professor in the Polytechnic school at Hanover. Then he rushed off in quest of Rollmann. The Polytechnic Professor was delighted to see his friend, but disturbed at the condition of mind in which he found him. "What has brought you to Hanover, dear Professor?" he asked. "The moon! the moon! I have come after the moon." "The moon! How can that be? She shines over Dorpat as surely as over our roofs in Hanover." "I've just seen her." "Impossible. The moon is new. Besides, it is broad daylight." "New! of course she is new. Only made lately." Professor Rollman was puzzled. "The moon is certainly as old as the world, and even if we give the world so limited an age as four thousand years--" "I was not allowed to touch her, scarcely to breathe near her," interrupted Maedler. "My dear colleague, what is the matter with you? You are--what do you say, seen, touched, breathed on the moon? The distance of the moon from the earth is two hundred and forty thousand miles." "Not the old moon--I mean the other." "There is no other, that is, not another satellite to this world. I am well aware that Jupiter has four moons, two of which are smaller than the planet Mars. I know also that Mars--" "My dear Rollman, there is another--here in Hanover." "I give it up, I cannot understand." "Happy Hanover to possess such an unique treasure," continued the excited Maedler, "and such a woman as Frau Witte." "Oh! her wax moon!" said Rollmann, with a sigh of relief. "Of what else could I speak?" "So you have seen that. The old lady is very proud of her performance." "She has cause to be proud of it. It is simply superb." "And the sight of it has nearly sent you off your head!" "Rollmann! what will become of that model? Frau Councilloress Witte will not live for ever. She is old, puffy, and red, and might have apoplexy any day. Is her husband an astronomer?" "O dear no! he regards astronomy as as unprofitable a study as astrology. It is quite as expensive a pursuit, he says." "Merciful heavens! Suppose she were to predecease--he would have the moon, and be unable to appreciate it. He might let it get dusty, have the craters and seas choked; perhaps the mountain-tops knocked off. He must not have it." "It cannot be helped. The moon must take its chance." "It must not be. She _must_ outlive the Councillor." "If you can manage that--well." "But--supposing she does outlive him, she is not immortal. Some day she must die. Who will have the moon then?" "I suppose, her daughter." "What will the daughter do with it?" "Melt it up for waxing the floors." Professor Maedler uttered a cry of dismay. "The object is one of incalculable scientific value. Has the daughter no husband, a man of intelligence, to stay her hand?" "The daughter is unmarried. There was some talk of a theological candidate--" "A theological candidate! An embryo pastor! Just powers! These men are all obscurantists. He will melt up the moon thinking thereby to establish the authority of Moses." "That came to nothing. She is disengaged." Professor Maedler paced the room. Perspiration bedewed his brow. He wiped his forehead, more drops formed. Suddenly he stood still. "Rollmann," he said, in a hollow voice, "I must--I will have that moon, even if I have to marry the daughter to secure it." "By all means. Minna is a pleasant young lady." "Minna! Minna! is that her name?" asked the distracted professor; then, more coolly, "I do not care a rush what her name is. I want, not her, but the moon." "She is no longer in the bloom of early youth." "She is an exhausted world; a globe of volcanic cinder." "She is of real solid worth." "Solid--she is of solid wax--white beeswax." "If she becomes yours--" "I will exhibit her at my lectures to the students." "As you are so much older, some provision will have to be made in the event of your death." "I will leave her to the Dorpat museum, with directions to the curator to keep the dust off her." "My dear Professor Maedler, I am speaking of the young lady, _you_ of the moon." "Ah so! I had forgotten the incumbrance. Yes, I will marry the moon. I will carry her about with me, hug her in my arms, protect her most carefully from the fingers of the Custom House officers. I will procure an ukase from the Emperor to admit her unfingered over the frontier." "And Minna!" "What Minna?" "The young lady." "Ah so! She had slipped out of my reckoning. She shall watch the box whilst I sleep, and whilst she sleeps I will keep guard." "Be reasonable, Maedler. Do you mean, in sober earnest, to invite Minna Witte to be your wife?" "If I cannot get the moon any other way." "But you have not even seen her yet." "What does that matter? I have seen the moon." "And you are in earnest!" "I _will_ have the moon." "Then, of course, you will have to propose." "I propose!" "And, of course, to make love." "I make love!" Professor Maedler's colour died away. He stood still before his friend, his pocket-handkerchief in hand, and stared. "I have not the remotest idea how to do it." "You must try." "I've had no experience. I am going on to fifty-three. As well ask me to dance on the trapeze. It is not proper. It is downright indecent." "Then you must do without the wax moon." "I cannot do without the wax moon." "Then, there is no help for it, you must make love to and propose to the fair Minna." "Friend," said the Russian-imperial-professor-of-astronomy-of-the-University-of-Dorpat, as he clasped Rollmann's hand. "You are experienced in the ways of the world. I have lived in an observatory, and associated only with fixed stars, revolving moons, and comets. Tell me how to do it, and I will obey as a lamb." "You will have to sigh." "O! I can do that." "And ogle the lady." "Ogle!--when going fifty-three!" "Learn a few lines of poetry." "Yes, Milton's Paradise Lost. Go on." "Tell the young lady that your heart is consumed with love." "Consumed with love, yes, go on." "Squeeze her hand." "I cannot! That I cannot!" gasped Professor Maedler. "Look at my whiskers. They are grey. There is a point beyond which I cannot go. Rollmann, why may I not settle it all with the mother, and let you court the young lady for me by proxy." "No, no, you must do it yourself." "I would not be jealous. Consider, I care nothing for the young girl. It is the moon I want. That you shall not touch or breathe on." "My dear Maedler, you and I are sure to be invited to dine with the family on Sunday. After dinner we will take a stroll in the garden. During dinner mind and be attentive to Miss Minna, and feed her with honeyed words. When we visit the garden I will tackle the mother, as Mephistopheles engages Martha, and you, you gay Faust, will have to be the gallant to Minna." "My good Rollmann! I dislike the simile. It offends me. Consider my age, my whiskers, my position at the Dorpat University, my map of the moon in four sheets, my paper on the occultation of Mars." "Pay attention to me, if you want your wax globe. Frau Witte, the Councillor and I will sit drinking coffee in the arbour. You ask Minna to show you the garden. When you are gone I will begin at once with the mother, praise you, and say how comfortably you are provided for at Dorpat, laud your good qualities, and bring her to understand that you are a suitor for the hand of her daughter. Meanwhile press your cause with ardour." "With ardour! I shall not be able to get up any warmth." "Think of the wax moon! direct your raptures to that." "This is all very well," said Maedler fretfully, "but you have forgotten the main thing. I know you will make a mistake. You have asked for the hand of the daughter, and said nothing about the moon." "Do not be concerned." "But I am concerned. It would be a pretty mischief if I got the daughter's hand instead of the face of the moon." "I will manage that you have what you want. But the moon must not rise over the matrimonial scene till the preliminaries are settled. I will represent to the old lady what credit will accrue to her if her moon be exhibited and lectured on at the Dorpat University by so distinguished an astronomer as yourself. Then, be well assured, she will give you the wax moon along with her daughter." "Very well, I will do what I can. Only, further, explain to me the whole process, that I may learn it by heart. It seems to me as knotty to a beginner as Euler's proof of the Binomial Theorem." "It is very easy. Pay attention. You must begin to talk about the fascination which a domestic life exerts on you; you then say that the sight of such an united household as that in which you find yourself influences you profoundly." "I see. Causes a deflection in my perihelion. That deflection is calculable, the force excited calculable, the position of the attractive body estimable. I direct my telescope in the direction, and discover--Minna. Put astronomically, I can understand it." "But you must _not_ put it astronomically to her. Paint in glowing tints the charms of the domestic hearth--that is to say, of the stove. Touch sadly on your forlorn condition, your unloved heart--are you paying attention, or thinking of the moon?" "On the contrary, I was thinking of myself, from a planetary point of view. I see, a wife is a satellite revolving round her man. I see it all now. Jupiter has four." "Sigh; let the corners of your mouth droop. Throw, if you can, an emotional vibration into your tones, and say that hitherto life has been to you a school, where you have been set hard tasks; not a home. Here shake your head slowly, drop a tear if you can, and say again, in a low and thrilling voice, 'Not a home!' Now for the poetry. Till now, you add, you have looked into the starry vault--" "It is not a vault at all." "Never mind; say this. Till now you have looked into the starry vault for your heaven, and not dreamed that a heaven full of peaceful lights was twinkling invitingly about your feet. That is poetical, is it not? It must succeed." "Quite so, I should never have thought of it." "Then turn, and look into Miss Minna's eyes." "But suppose she is looking in another direction?" "She will not be. A lady is always ready to help a stumbling lover over the impediments in the way of a declaration. She will have her eyes at command, ready to meet yours." "Go on." "You will presently come to a rose tree. You must stop there and be silent. Then you must admire the roses, and beg Miss Minna to present you with one." "But I do not want any roses. What can I do with them? I am lodging at an hotel." "Never mind, you _must_ want one. When she has picked and offered it--" "But perhaps she will not." "Fiddlesticks! Of course she will. Then take the rose, press your lips to it, and burst forth into raptures." "Excuse me, how am I to do the raptures?" "Think of the wax moon, man. Exclaim, 'Oh that I might take the fair Minna, fairer than this rose, to my heart, as I apply this flower to my buttonhole!'" "Shall I say nothing about the wax moon?" "Not a word. Leave me to manage that." "Go on." "Then she will look down, confused, at the gravel, and stammer. Press her for a Yes or No. Promise to destroy yourself if she says No. Take her hand and squeeze it." "Must I squeeze it? About how much pressure to the square-foot should I apply?" "Then say, 'Come, let us go to your parents, and obtain their blessing.' The thing is done." "But suppose she were to say No?" Rollmann stamped with impatience. "I tell you she will not say No, now that the theological candidate has dropped through." "Well," said Professor Maedler, "I must go along with it, now I have made up my mind to it. But, on my word, as an exact reasoner, I had no idea of the difficulties men have to go through to get married. Why, the calculation of the deflections of the planets is nothing to it. And the Grand Turk, like Jupiter, has more satellites than one!" A few months after the incident above recorded Professor Maedler returned to Dorpat, not alone; with him was the Frau Professorinn--Minna. Everything had gone off in the garden as Rollmann had planned. The moon and Minna, or Minna and the moon, put it which way you will, were secured. When the Professor arrived at Dorpat with his wife, the students gave him an ovation after the German style, that is to say, they organized a Fackel-zug, or torch-light procession. Three hundred young men, some wearing white caps, some green caps, some red, and some purple, marched along the street headed by a band, bearing torches of twisted tow steeped in tar, blazing and smoking, or, to be more exact, smoking and blazing. Each corps was followed by a hired droschky, in which sat the captain and stewards of the white, red, green, or purple corps, with sashes of their respective colours. Behind the last corps followed the elephants, two and two. By elephants is not meant the greatest of quadrupeds, but the smallest esteemed of the students, those who belong to no corps. The whole procession gathered before the house of the Professor, and brandished their torches and cheered. Then the glass door opening on the balcony was thrown back, and the Professor John Henry Maedler appeared on the balcony leading forth his wife. The astronomer looked younger than he had been known to look for the last twenty years. His whiskers in the torchlight looked not grey, but red. The eyes, no longer blear with star-gazing, watered with sentiment. His expression was no longer that of a man troubled with integral calculus, but of a man in an ecstasy. He waved his hand. Instantly the cheers subsided. "My highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-honoured sirs," began the Professor, "this is a moment never to be forgotten. It sends a _fackel-zug_ of fiery emotion through every artery and vein. Highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-honoured sirs, I am not so proud as to suppose that this reception is accorded to me alone. It is an ovation offered to my highly-beloved-and-evermore-to-be-beloved-and-respected consort, Frau Minna Maedler, born Witte, the daughter of a distinguished lady, who, like myself, has laboured on Selenography, and loved Selenology. Highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-respected sirs, when I announce to you that I have returned to Dorpat to endow that most-eminent-and-ever-to-become-more-eminent-University with one of the most priceless treasures of art the world has ever seen, a monument of infinite patience and exact observation; I mean a wax moon; I am sure I need only allude to the fact to elicit your unbounded enthusiasm. But, highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-honoured sirs, allow me to assure you that my expedition to Hanover has not resulted in a gain to the highly eminent University of Dorpat only, but to me, individually as well. "That highly-eminent-and-evermore-to-become-more-eminent University is now enriched through my agency with a moon of wax, but I--I, sirs--excuse my emotion, I have also been enriched with a moon, not of wax, but of honey. The wax moon, gentlemen, may it last undissolved as long as the very-eminent-and-evermore-to-become-more-eminent University of Dorpat lasts. The honey moon, gentlemen, with which I have been blessed, I feel assured will expand into a lifetime, at least will last also undissolved as long as Minna and I exist." The Electress's Plot. The Elector Frederick Christian of Saxony reigned only a few weeks, from October 5th to December 13, 1763; in his forty-first year he died of small-pox. He never had enjoyed rude health. The mother of the unfortunate prince, Marie Josepha of Austria, was an exceedingly ugly, but prolific lady, vastly proud of her Hapsburg descent. The three first children followed each other with considerable punctuality, but the two first, both sons, died early. Frederick Christian was the third. The Electress, a few months before his birth, was hunting, when a deer that had been struck, turned to her, dragging its broken legs behind it. This produced a powerful impression on her mind; and when her son was born, he was found to be a cripple in his legs. His head and arms were well formed, but his spine was twisted, and his knees, according to the English ambassador, Sir Charles Williams--were drawn up over his stomach. He could not stand, and had to be lifted about from place to place. At the age of five-and-twenty he had been married to Maria Antonia, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria, afterwards the Emperor Charles VII. His brother, Francis Xavier, was a sturdy fellow, like his father, and the Electress mother tried very hard to get Frederick Christian to resign his pretentions in favour of his brother, and take holy orders. This he refused to do, and was then married to Maria Antonia, aged twenty-three. Her mother had also been an Austrian princess, Amalia, and also remarkable for her ugliness. The choice was not happy, it brought about a marriage between cousins, and an union of blood that was afflicted with ugliness and infirmity of body. Maria Antonia had not only inherited her mother's ugliness, but was further disfigured with small-pox. She was small of stature, but of a resolute will, and of unbounded ambition. English tourists liked her, they said that she laid herself out to make the Court of Dresden agreeable to them. Wraxall tells a good story of her, which shows a certain frankness, not to say coarseness in her conversation--a story we will not reproduce. She had already made her personality felt at the Bavarian Court. Shortly after the death of her father, in imitation of Louisa Dorothea, Duchess of Gotha, she had founded an "Order of Friendship, or the Society of the Incas." The founding of the Order took place one fine spring day on a gondola in the canal at Nymphenburg. Her brother, the Elector of Bavaria, was instituted a member, the Prince of Fürstenberg was made chancellor, and was given the custody of the seal of the confraternity which had as its legend "La fidelité mêne." The badge of the Order was a gold ring on the little finger of the left hand, with the inscription, "L'ordre de l'amitié--Maria Antonia." Each member went by a name descriptive of his character, or of that virtue he or she was supposed to represent. Thus the chancellor was called "Le Solide." Sir Charles Williams says that on the very first night of her appearance in Dresden she made an attempt to force herself into a position for which she had no right; to the great annoyance of the King of Poland (Augustus, Elector of Saxony). At Dresden, she favoured the arts, especially music and painting. She became the patroness of the family Mengs. She sang, and played on the piano, and indeed composed a couple of operas, "Thalestris" and "Il trionfo della fidelita," and the former was actually put on the stage. Sir Charles Williams in 1747 wrote that, in spite of her profession that in her eyes no woman ought to meddle in the affairs of state, he ventured to prophecy, she would rule the whole land in the name of her unfortunate husband. Nor was he wrong. The moment that her father-in-law died, she put her hand on the reins. She was not likely to meet with resistance from her husband, he was not merely a cripple in body, but was contracted in his intellect; he was amiable, but weak and ignorant. Sir Charles Williams says that he once asked at table whether it was not possible to reach England by land--_although_ it was an island. Frederick Christian began to reign on 5th October 1763, and immediately orders were given for the increase of the army to 50,000 men. Maria Antonia was bent on becoming a queen, and for this end she must get her husband proclaimed like his father, King of Poland. She was allied to all the Courts of Europe, her agreeable manners, her energy, gained her friends in all quarters. She felt herself quite capable of wearing a royal crown, and she wrote to all the courts to urge the claims of her husband, the Elector, when--the unfortunate cripple was attacked by small-pox, had a stroke, and died December 17th. Small-pox had carried off his ancestor John George IV., and in that same century it occasioned the death of his brother-in-law, Max Joseph of Bavaria, and of the Emperor Joseph I. He left behind him four sons, his successor, Frederick Augustus, and the three other princes, Charles, his mother's favourite, Anthony, and Maximilian Joseph, the third of whom died the same year as his father. He had also two daughters. The death of her husband was a severe blow to the ambition of the Electress; her eldest son, Frederick Augustus, was under age, and the reins of government were snatched from her hands and put into those of the uncle of the young Elector, Xavier, who had been his mother's favourite, and in favour of whom his elder brother had been urged to resign his pretensions. Xavier was appointed administrator of Saxony, and acted as such for five years. When, at the age of eighteen, Frederick Augustus III. assumed the power, he endeavoured to fulfil his duties with great diligence and conscientiousness, and allowed of no interference. He had, indeed, his advisers, but these were men whom he selected for himself from among those who had been well tried and who had proved themselves trusty. The Electress-mother had, during the administration of Prince Xavier, exercised some little authority; she now suddenly found herself deprived of every shred. Her son was too firm and self-determined to admit of her interference. Moody and dissatisfied, she left Dresden and went to Potsdam to Frederick II., in 1769, apparently to feel the way towards the execution of a plan that was already forming in her restless brain. She does not seem to have met with any encouragement, and she then started for Italy, where she visited Rome in 1772, and sought Mengs out, whose artistic talents had been fostered under her care. Under the administration of Prince Xavier, the Electress Dowager had received an income of sixty thousand dollars; after her son had mounted the throne, her appanage was doubled, more than doubled, for she was granted 130,000 dollars, and in addition her son gave her a present of 500,000 dollars. This did not satisfy her, for she had no notion of cutting her coat according to her cloth, she would everywhere maintain a splendid court. Moreover, she was bitten with the fever of speculation. The year before her son came of age and assumed the power, she had erected a great cotton factory at Grossenhain, but as it brought her in no revenue, and cost her money besides, she was glad to dispose of it in 1774. The visitor to Dresden almost certainly knows the Bavarian tavern at the end of the bridge leading into Little Dresden. It is a tavern now mediævalised, with panelled walls, bull's eye glass in the windows, old German glass and pottery--even an old German kalendar hanging from the walls, and with a couple of pretty Bavarian Kellnerins in costume, to wait on the visitor. There also in the evening Bavarian minstrels jodel, and play the zither. This Bavarian tavern was established by the Electress Mother, who thought that the Saxons did not drink good or enough beer, and must be supplied with that brewed in her native land. But this speculation also failed, and her capital of five hundred thousand dollars was swallowed up to the last farthing, and to meet her creditors she was obliged to pawn her diamond necklace and the rest of her jewels. This happened in Genoa. When her allowance came in again she redeemed her jewelry, but in 1775 had to pawn it again in Rome. Unable to pay her debts, and in distress for money, she appealed repeatedly, but in vain, to her son. Frederick Augustus was, like his father, of feeble constitution, and moreover, as he himself complained later on in life, had been at once spoiled and neglected in his youth; and he was unable through weakness to ascend a height. He did not walk or ride, but went about in a carriage. The January (1769) after he came to the Electoral crown, he married Amelia Augusta of Zweibrücken, sister of Max Joseph, afterwards first King of Bavaria. She was only seventeen at the time. The favourite son of his mother was Charles. This prince had been hearty and in full possession of his limbs in his early age, but when he reached the years of eleven or twelve, he became crippled and doubled up like his father. Wraxal says that beside him Scarron would have passed as a beauty. He was so feeble and paralysed that he could only be moved about on a wheeled chair. He died in 1781. His elder brother, the Elector, though not a vigorous man, was not a cripple. One of the attendant gentry on the Electress Mother, in Rome, was the Marquis Aloysius Peter d'Agdolo, son of the Saxon Consul in Venice, Colonel of the Lifeguard, and Adjutant General to Prince Xavier whilst he was Administrator. Agdolo advised the Electress Mother to raise money to meet her difficulties by selling to her son, the Elector, her claims on the Bavarian inheritance. Her brother, Maximilian Joseph, was without children; and the nearest male claimant to the Electoral Crown of Bavaria was the Count Palatine of Sulzbach, only remotely connected. It was, therefore, quite possible that Bavaria might fall to a sister. Now on the death of her brother, the Dowager Electress of Saxony certainly intended to advance her claims against any remote kinsman hailing through a common ancestor two centuries ago. But whether she would be able to enforce her claim was another matter. She might sell it to her son, who would have the means of advancing his claim by force of arms and gold. This was in 1776. Maria Antonia was delighted with the scheme and at once hastened to Munich to put it in execution, taking with her all her diamonds which she had managed to redeem from pawn. Whilst she was on her way to Munich, Agdolo was despatched to Dresden, to open the negociation with her son, not only for the transference of her rights on Bavaria, but also for the pawning of her diamonds, to her son. She had urgent need of money, and in her extremity she conceived an audacious scheme to enable her at the same time to get hold of the money, and to retain her rights on Bavaria. The plan was this:--As soon as she had got the full payment from the Elector for the resignation of her claims in his favour, she had resolved suddenly to proclaim to the world that he was no son at all of the late Elector Frederick Christian--that he was a bastard, smuggled into the palace and passed off as the son of the Elector, much as, according to Whig gossip, James the Pretender was smuggled into the palace of James II. in a warming pan, and passed off as of blood royal, when he was of base origin. Frederick Augustus thus declared to be no son of the House of Saxony, the Electoral crown would come to her favourite son Charles, who was a cripple. The Elector was not deformed--evidence against his origin; Charles was doubled up and distorted--he was certainly the true son of the late Elector, and the legitimate successor. If Maria Antonia should succeed--she would rule Saxony in the name, and over the head of her unfortunate son Charles, and her rights on Bavaria would not have been lost or made away with. Arrived in Munich, she confided the whole plan to her ladies-in-waiting. She told them her hopes, her confidence in Agdolo, who was gone to Dresden to negociate the sale, and who was thoroughly aware of her intentions. Agdolo, as all the ladies knew, was a great rascal. He had been pensioned by Prince Xavier with six hundred dollars per annum, and he had what he received from the Electress Mother as her gentleman-in-waiting. He was married to the Princess Lubomirska, widow of Count Rutowska, had quarrelled with her, and they lived separate, but he had no scruple to receive of an insulted wife an annual allowance. All these sources of income were insufficient to meet his expenses; and no one who knew him doubted for a moment that he would lend himself to any intrigue which would promise him wealth and position. The plot of the Dowager Electress was a risky one--but, should it succeed, his fortune was assured. At Dresden he was well received by the Elector; and Frederick Augustus at once accepted the proposition of his mother. He consented to purchase Maria Antonia's resignation in his favour of her claims on the allodial inheritance of the family on the extinction of the Bavarian Electoral house in the male line, and to pay all her debts, and to find a sum sufficient to redeem the diamonds, which were represented as still in pawn at Rome. Maria Antonia and her confidant appeared to be on the eve of success, when the plan was upset, from a quarter in which they had not dreamed of danger. Among the ladies of the court of the Dowager Electress was one whose name does not transpire, who seems to have entertained an ardent passion for Agdolo. He, however, disregarded her, and paid his attentions to another of the ladies. Rage and jealousy consumed the heart of this slighted beauty, and when the Electress Mother confided to her the plan she had formed, the lady-in-waiting saw that her opportunity had arrived for the destruction of the man who had slighted her charms. She managed to get hold of her mistress' keys and to make a transcript of her papers, wherein the whole plan was detailed, also of copies of her letters to Agdolo, and of the Marquis's letters to her. When she had these, she at once despatched them--not to the Elector of Saxony, but to Frederick II. at Berlin, who stood in close relations of friendship with the Elector of Saxony. She had reckoned aright. Such tidings, received through the Court of Prussia, would produce a far deeper impression on Frederick Augustus, than if received from her unknown and insignificant self. It is possible also that she may have known of her mistress having been at Berlin and there thrown out hints of something of the sort, so that Frederick II. would at once recognise in this matured plan the outcome of the vague hints of mischief poured out at Potsdam a few years before. All was going on well at Berlin. Adolphus von Zehmen, Electoral Treasurer, had already started for Munich, furnished with the requisite sums. He was empowered to receive the deed of relinquishment from the Dowager Electress, and also her diamond necklace, which, in the meantime, was to be brought by a special courier from Rome. Maria Antonia, on her side, had constituted Councillor Hewald her plenipotentiary; she wrote to say that he would transact all the requisite negociation with the Treasurer Zehmen, and that the diamond necklace had arrived and was in his hands. Agdolo received orders from the Electress Mother on no account to leave Dresden till the middle of September, 1776, lest his departure should arouse suspicion. The conduct of the Marquis was not in any way remarkable, he moved about among old friends with perfect openness, often appeared in Court, and was satisfied that he was perfectly safe. He was not in the least aware that all his proceedings were watched and reported on, not by order of the Elector, but of his own mistress, who received regular reports from this emissary as to the behaviour and proceedings of the Marquis, so that she was able to compare with this private report that sent her by Agdolo, and so satisfy herself whether he was acting in her interest, or playing a double game. This bit of cunning on her part, was not surprising, considering what a man Agdolo was, and, as we shall see, it proved of great advantage to her, but in a way she least expected. The Marchese d'Agdolo had paid his farewell visit to the Elector, and received leave to depart. Frederick Augustus had not the remotest suspicion that his mother was playing a crooked part, and he seemed heartily satisfied with the negociation, and made the Marquis a present. On September 15, 1776, Agdolo was intending to start from Dresden, on his return to Munich, and the evening before leaving he spent at the house of a friend, Ferber, playing cards. Little did he suspect that whilst he was winning one stake after another at the table, the greatest stake of all was lost. That evening, whilst he was playing cards, a courier arrived from Berlin, in all haste, and demanded to see the Elector in person, instantly, as he had a communication of the utmost importance to make from Frederick II. He was admitted without delay, and the whole of his mother's plot was detailed before the astonished Elector. "The originals of these transcripts," said the courier, "are in the hands of the Marchese d'Agdolo, let him be arrested, and a comparison of the documents made." The Privy Council was at once assembled, and the papers received from Frederick II. were laid before it. The members voted unanimously that the Marquis should be arrested, and General Schiebell was entrusted with the execution of the decree. No surprise was occasioned by the entry of General Schiebell into the house of Ferber. It was a place of resort of the best society in Dresden; but when the General announced that he had come to make an arrest, many cheeks lost their colour. "In the name of his Serene Highness the Elector," said the General, "I make this man my prisoner," and he laid his hand on the shoulder of Agdolo, who had served under him in the Seven Years' War. He was taken at once to his own lodgings, where his desks and boxes--already packed for departure--were opened, and all his papers removed. The same night, under a strong guard, he was transported at 10 o'clock, to Königstein. In that strong fortress and state prison, perched on an isolated limestone crag, the rest of his life was to be spent in confinement. But the Marchese, like a crafty Italian, had made his preparations against something of the sort; for among his papers was found a communication addressed by him to the Elector, revealing the whole plot. It was undated. If the search of his rooms and the discovery of his papers had been made earlier, the Elector might have believed that the man had really intended to betray his mistress, but, he had postponed the delivery of the communication too late.[17] A few days later, the Marchese received a sealed letter from the Elector; and he was treated in his prison without undue severity; his pension was not withdrawn; and the Elector seems never to have quite made up his mind whether Agdolo really intended to make him aware of the plot at the last minute, or to go on with the plan after his mistress's orders. After some years, when Agdolo began to suffer in his chest, he was allowed to go to the baths of Pirna, under a guard. His wife never visited him in prison. She died, however, only two years later, in 1778, at the age of fifty-six. Agdolo lived on for twenty-three years and a half, and died August 27, 1800. All his papers were then sent to Frederick Augustus III., who read them, dissolved into tears, and burnt them. We must return for a moment to Munich. No sooner had the emissary of the Electress Mother heard of the news of the arrest of Agdolo, than he hastened to Munich with post horses as hard as he could fly over the roads. Maria Antonia, when she heard the news, at once made fresh dispositions. She sent word that same night to Hewald to make off, and in another half hour he had disappeared with the diamonds. Next day the completion of the resignation of claims was to be made. The Electress Mother requested the Treasurer Zehmen to go to the dwelling of her Councillor Hewald, who, as we can understand, was not to be found anywhere. Herr von Zehmen was much surprised and disconcerted, and the Dowager Electress affected extreme indignation and distress, charging her plenipotentiary with having robbed her of her diamonds, and bolted with them. Then she took to her bed, and pretended to be dangerously ill. Next day the news reached Zehmen of what had occurred at Dresden, and with the news came his recall. She saw the treasurer before his departure, and implored him to get both Agdolo and Hewald arrested and punished, because, as she declared, they had between them fabricated a wicked plot for her robbery and ruin. Hewald went to Frankfort with the jewels, where he was stopped and taken by an officer of Frederick Augustus, and brought on Jan. 27, 1777, to Dresden. He was sent to the Königstein, but was released in 1778. In 1777 died the Elector of Bavaria, but his sister was unable to obtain any recognition of her claims; and she died 23rd April, 1780, without any reconciliation with the eldest son. Next year died her favourite son, the cripple, Charles. FOOTNOTE: [17] This is supposed to have been the contents of the packet addressed to the Elector, the contents have never been revealed. Suess Oppenheim. On December the sixteenth, 1733, Charles Alexander, Duke of Würtemberg, entered Stuttgart in state. It was a brilliant though brief winter day. The sun streamed out of a cloudless heaven on the snowy roofs of the old town, and the castle park trees frosted as though covered with jewels. The streets were hung with tapestries, crimson drapery, and wreaths of artificial flowers. Peasants in their quaint costume poured in from all the country round to salute their new prince. From the old castle towers floated the banners of the Duchy and the Empire--for Würtemberg three stag-horns quartered with the Hohenstauffen black lions. The Duke was not young: he was hard on fifty--an age when a man has got the better of youthful impetuosity and regrets early indiscretions--an age at which, if a man has stuff in him, he is at his best. The land of Würtemberg is a favoured and smiling land. At the period of which we write, it was not so ample as the present kingdom, but fruitful, favoured, and called the Garden of the Empire. For twenty years this Duchy had been badly governed; the inhabitants had been cruelly oppressed by the incompetent Duke Eberhardt Ludwig, or rather by his favourites. The country was burdened with debt; the treasury was exhausted. It had, as it were, lain under winter frost for twenty years and more, and now though on a winter day laughed and bloomed with a promise of spring. And every good Würtemberger had a right to be glad and proud of the new duke, who had stormed Belgrade under Prince Eugene, and was held to be one of the bravest, noblest minded, and most generous of the German princes of his time. As he rode through the streets of Stuttgart all admired his stately form, his rich fair hair flowing over his shoulders, his bright commanding eye, and the pleasant smile on his lip; every Würtemberger waved his hat, and shouted, and leaped with enthusiasm. Now at last the Garden of Germany would blossom and be fruitful under so noble a duke. But in the same procession walked, not rode, another man whom none regarded--a handsome man with dark brown hair and keen olive eyes, a sallow complexion, and a finely moulded Greek nose. He had a broad forehead and well arched brows. He was tall, and had something noble and commanding in his person and manner. But his most remarkable feature was the eye--bright, eager, ever restless. This man, whom the Würtembergers did not observe, was destined to play a terrible and tragic part in their history--to be the evil genius of the duke and of the land. His name was Joseph Suess Oppenheim. Joseph's mother, Michaela, a Jewess, had been a woman of extraordinary beauty, the only child of the Rabbi Salomon of Frankfort. She had been married when quite young to the Rabbi Isachar Suess Oppenheim, a singer. Joseph was born at Heidelberg in 1692, and was her child by the Baron George of Heydersdorf, a soldier who had distinguished himself in the Turkish war, and with whom she carried on a guilty intrigue. From his father Joseph Suess derived a dignified, almost military bearing, and his personal beauty from his mother. The Baron's romance with the lovely Jewess came to an end in 1693, when he held the castle of Heidelberg against the French. He surrendered after a gallant defence; too soon, however, as the court-martial held on him decided; and he was sentenced to death, but was pardoned by the Emperor Leopold, with the loss of all his honours and offices, and he was banished the Empire. Suess had a sister who married a rich Jew of Vienna, but followed her mother in laxity of morals, and, after having wasted a good fortune in extravagance, fell back on her mother and brother for a maintenance. He had a brother who became a factor at the court of Darmstadt. They lived on bad terms with each other, and were engaged in repeated lawsuits with one another. This brother abjured Judaism, was baptised, and assumed the name of Tauffenberg. Joseph Suess was connected, or nominally connected, through Isachar, his reputed though not his real father, with the great and wealthy Jewish family of Oppenheim. The branch established in Vienna had become rich on contracts for the army, and had been ennobled. One member failed because the Emperor Leopold I. owed him many millions of dollars and was unable to pay. Joseph began life in the office of the court bankers and army contractors of his family at Vienna. Here it was that he obtained his first ideas of how money could be raised through lotteries, monopolies, and imposts of all kinds. But though Joseph was put on the road that led to wealth, in the Oppenheim house at Vienna, he missed his chance there, and was dismissed for some misconduct or other, the particulars of which we do not know. Then, in disgrace and distress, he came to Bavaria, where he served a while as barber's assistant. Probably through the influence of some of the Oppenheims, Joseph was introduced into the court of the family of Thurn and Taxis, which had acquired vast wealth through the monopoly of the post-office. Thence he made his way into an office of the palatine court at Mannheim. This was a period in which the German princes were possessed with the passion of imitating the splendour and extravagance of Louis XIV. Everyone must have his Versailles, must crowd his court with functionaries, and maintain armies in glittering and showy uniforms. Germany, to the present day, abounds in vast and magnificent palaces, for the most part in wretched repair, if not ruinous. The houses of our English nobility are nothing as compared in size with these palaces of petty princes, counts, and barons. To build these mansions, and when built to fill them with officials and servants, to keep up their armies, and to satisfy the greed of their mistresses, these German princes needed a good deal of money, and were ready to show favour to any man who could help them to obtain it--show where to bore to tap fresh financial springs. All kinds of new methods of taxation were had recourse to, arousing the bitter mockery of the oppressed. The tobacco monopoly was called the nose-tax; it was felt to be oppressive only by the snuff-takers and smokers; and perhaps the stamp on paper only by those who wrote; but the boot and shoe stamp imposed by one of the little princes touched everyone but those who went barefoot. Joseph Suess introduced the stamp on paper into the palatinate. He did not invent this duty, which had been imposed elsewhere; but he obtained the concession of the impost, and sold it to a subfactor for 12,000 florins, and with the money invested in a speculation in the coinage of Hesse-Darmstadt. All the little German princes at this time had their own coinage, down to trumpery little states of a few miles in diameter, as Waldeck, Fulda, Hechingen, and Montfort; and Germany was full to overflow of bad money, and barren of gold and silver. Suess, in his peregrinations, had obtained a thorough insight into the mysteries of this branch of business. He not only thoroughly understood the practical part of the matter--the coinage--but also where the cheapest markets were, in which to purchase the metals to be coined. Now that he had some money at his command, he undertook to farm the coinage of Hesse-Darmstadt; but almost immediately undersold it, with a profit to himself of 9,000 florins. He took other contracts for the courts, and soon realised a comfortable fortune. Even the Archbishop of Cologne called in his aid, and contributed to enrich him, in his efforts to get a little more for himself out of the subjects of his palatinate. In the summer of 1732 Joseph Suess visited the Blackforest baths of Wildbad, for the sake of the waters. At the same time Charles Alexander of Würtemberg and his wife were also undergoing the same cure. Oppenheim's pleasant manners, his handsome face, and his cleverness caught the fancy of Charles Alexander, and he appointed him his agent and steward; and as the Prince was then in want of money, Suess lent him a trifle of 2,000 florins. Charles Alexander had not at this time any assurance that he would ascend the ducal throne of Würtemberg, though it was probable.[18] The reigning Duke, Eberhardt Louis, had, indeed, just lost his only son; but it was not impossible that a posthumous grandson might be born. Charles Alexander was first-cousin of the Duke. It is said that Suess on this occasion foretold the future greatness of the Prince, and pretended to extract his prophecy from the Cabala. It is certain that Charles Alexander was very superstitious, and believed in astrology, and it is by no means improbable that Suess practised on his credulity. He had at his disposal plenty of means of learning whether the young Princess of Würtemberg was likely soon to become a mother--her husband had died in November--and he was very well aware that the old Duke was failing. The loan made by Suess came acceptably to Prince Charles Alexander just as a Jewish banker, Isaac Simon of Landau, with whom he had hitherto dealt, had declined to make further advances. When the Prince returned to Belgrade, where he resided as stadtholder of Servia, under the Emperor, he was fully convinced that he had discovered in Suess an able, intelligent, and devoted servant. His wife was a princess of Thurn and Taxis, and it is possible that Suess, who had been for some time about that court at Ratisbon, had used her influence, and his acquaintance with her family affairs, to push his interests with the Prince, her husband. On October 31, 1733, died the old Duke Eberhardt Louis, and Charles Alexander at once hastened from Belgrade to Vienna, where, in an interview with the Emperor, without any consultation with the Estates, or consideration for the treasury of Würtemberg, he promised Leopold a contingent of 12,000 men to aid in the war against France. Then he went on to Stuttgart. Poor Würtemberg groaned under the burdens that had been imposed on it; the favourites had been allowed to do with it what they liked; and Charles Alexander's first public declaration on entering his capital was: "From henceforth I will reign over you immediately, and myself see to the reform of every grievance, and put away from my people every burden which has galled its shoulders. If my people cry to me, my ears shall be open to hear their call. I will not endure the disorder which has penetrated everywhere, into every department of the State; my own hand shall sweep it away." And as a token of his sincerity he ordered every office-holder in Church and State to put on paper and present to him a schedule of every payment that had been made, by way of fee and bribe, to obtain his office. This was published on December 28, 1733. The older and wiser heads were shaken; the Duke, they said, was only heaping trouble on his shoulders; let the past be buried. He replied, "I must get to the bottom of all this iniquity. I must get inured to work." But the hero of Belgrade had all his life been more accustomed to the saddle than the desk, and to command in battle--a much simpler matter--than to rule in peace. The amount of grievances brought before him, the innumerable scandals, peculations, bewildered him. The people were wild with enthusiasm, but the entire bureaucracy was filled with sullen and dogged opposition. Würtemberg enjoyed a constitution more liberal than any other German principality. The old Duke Eberhardt with the Beard, who died in 1496, by his will contrived for the good government of his land by providing checks against despotic rule by the dukes his successors. On the strength of this testament the Estates deposed his successor. The provisions of this will were ratified in the Capitulation of Tübingen, in 1514, and every duke on assuming the reins of government was required to swear to observe the capitulation. Duke Charles Alexander took the oath without perhaps very closely examining it, and found out after it was taken that he was hampered in various ways, and was incapacitated from raising the body of men with which he had undertaken to furnish the Emperor, independent of the consent of the Parliament. It may here be said that there was no hereditary house of nobles in Würtemberg; the policy of the former dukes had been to drive the hereditary petty nobles out of the country, and to create in their place a clique of court officials absolutely dependent on themselves. By the constitution, no standing army was to be maintained, and no troops raised without the consent of the Estates; the tenure of property was guaranteed by the State, all serfage was abolished, and no taxes could be imposed or monopolies created without the consent of the Estates. The Estates consisted of fourteen prelates, pastors invested with dignities which entitled them to sit in the House, and seventy deputies--some elected by the constituencies, others holders of certain offices, who sat _ex officio_. The Estates had great power; indeed the Duke could do little but ask its consent to the measures he proposed, and to swallow humble pie at refusal. It not only imposed the taxes, but the collectors were directly responsible to the Estates for what was collected, and paid into its hands the sum gathered. Moreover, any agreement entered into between the Duke and another prince was invalid unless ratified by the Estates. When Duke Charles Alexander, who had been accustomed to the despotic command of an army as field-marshal, found how his hands were tied and how he was surrounded by impediments to free action on all sides, he was very angry, and quarrelled with the Ministers who had presented the capitulation to him for signature. He declared that the paper presented for him to sign had not been read to him in full, or had the obnoxious passages folded under that he should not see them, or that they had been added after his signature had been affixed. He became irritable, not knowing how to keep his promise with the Emperor, and disgusted to find himself a ruler without real authority. Now, as it was inconvenient to call the Assembly together on every occasion when something was wanted, a permanent committee sat in Stuttgart, consisting of two parts. This committee acted for the Estates and were responsible to it. Wanting advice and help, unwilling to seek that of the reliable Ministers--and there were some honest and patriotic--the Duke asked Joseph Suess to assist him, and Suess was only too delighted to show him a way out of his difficulties. The redress of grievances was thrust aside, abuses were left uncorrected, and the Duke's attention was turned towards two main objects--the establishment of a standing army, and the upsetting of the old constitution. Würtemberg was then a state whose limits were not very extensive, nor did they lie within a ring fence. The imperial cities of Reutlingen, Ulm, Heilsbronn, Weil, and Gmünd were free. It might not be convenient for the Emperor to pay with hard cash for the troops the Duke had promised to furnish, but he might allow of the incorporation of these independent and wealthy cities in the duchy. Moreover, it was a feature of the times for the princes to seek to conquer fresh districts and incorporate them. France had recently snatched away Mompelgard from Würtemberg, and Charles Alexander recovered it. The duchy had suffered so severely from having been overrun by French troops that the Estates acquiesced, though reluctantly, in the Duke's proposal that a standing army should be maintained. Having obtained this concession, Suess instructed him how to make it a means of acquiring money, by calling men to arms who would be thankful to purchase their discharge. The army soon numbered 18,000 soldiers. His general-in-chief was Remchingen, a man who had served with him in the Imperial army and was devoted to his interests. The Duke placed his army under officers who were none of them Würtembergers. At the head of an army officered by his own creatures, the Duke hoped to carry his next purpose--the abrogation of the capitulation, and the conversion of the State from a constitutional to a despotic monarchy. Suess now became the Duke's most confidential adviser, and, guided by him, Charles Alexander got rid of all his Ministers and courtiers who would not become the assistants in this policy, and filled their places with creatures of his own, chief of whom was a fellow named Hallwachs. In order to paralyse the Assembly the Duke did not summon it to meet, and managed to pack the committee with men in his interest; for, curiously enough, the committee was not elected by the delegates, but itself elected into the vacancies created in it. By means of the committee the Duke imposed on the country in 1736 a double tax, and the grant of a thirtieth of all the fruits; and this was to last "as long as the necessities of the case required it." Suess himself was careful to keep in the background. He accepted no office about court, became Minister of no branch of the State; but every Minister and officer was nominated by him and devoted to him. Towards these creatures of his own he behaved with rudeness and arrogance, so that they feared him almost more than the Duke. If the least opposition was manifested, Suess threatened the gallows or the block, forfeiture of goods, and banishment; and as the Duke subscribed every order Suess brought him, it was well known that his threats were not idle. Suess employed Weissensee, a pastor, the prelate of Hirsau, as his court spy. This worthless man brought to the favourite every whisper that passed within his hearing among the courtiers of the Duke, everything that was said in the committee, and advised whether the adhesion of this or that man was doubtful. Suess so completely enveloped the Duke in the threads of the web he spun about him, that Charles Alexander followed his advice blindly, and did nothing without consulting him. In 1734 Suess farmed the coinage of Würtemberg, with great profit to himself, and, having got it into his own hands, kept it there to the end. But there is this to be said for his coinage, that it was far better than that of all the other states of Germany; so that the Würtemberg silver was sought throughout Germany. There was nothing fraudulent in this transaction, and though at his trial the matter was closely investigated, no evidence of his having exceeded what was just could be produced against him. It was quite another matter with the "Land Commission," a well-intentioned institution with which the Duke began his reign. Charles Alexander was overwhelmed with the evidence sent in to him of bribery under the late Duke, and, unable to investigate the cases himself, he appointed commissioners to do so, and of course these commissioners were nominated by Suess. The commission not only examined into evidence of bribery in the purchase of offices, but also into peculation and neglect of duty in the discharge of offices. Those against whom evidence was strong were sentenced to pay a heavy fine, but were not necessarily deprived. Those, on the other hand, who had acquired their offices honourably and had discharged their functions conscientiously were harassed by repeated trials, terrified with threats, and were forced to purchase their discharge at a sum fixed according to an arbitrary tariff. Those who proved stubborn, or did not see at what the commissioners aimed, were subjected to false witnesses, found guilty, and fined. These fines amounted in some instances to £2,000. After the commission had exhausted the bureaucracy, and money was still needed, private individuals became the prey of their inquisitorial and extortive action. Any citizen who was reported to be rich was summoned before the tribunal to give an account of the manner in which he had obtained his wealth; his private affairs were investigated, his books examined, and his trial protracted till he was glad to purchase his dismissal for a sum calculated according to his income as revealed to the prying eyes of the inquisitors. But as this did not suffice to fill the empty treasury, recurrence was had to the old abuse which the Land Commission had been instituted to inquire into and correct. Every office was sold, and to increase the revenue from this source fresh offices were created, fresh titles invented, and all were sold for ready money. Every office in Church as well as State was bought; indeed, a sort of auction was held at every vacancy, and the office was knocked down to the highest bidder. This sort of commerce had been bad enough under the late Duke, but it became fourfold as bad now under the redresser of abuses, for what had before been inchoate was now organised by Suess into a system. Not only were the offices sold, but after they had been entered upon, the tenant was expected to pay a second sum, entitled the gratuity, which was to go, it was announced, towards a sustentation fund for widows and orphans and the aged. It is needless to say that none of this money ever reached widows, orphans, or aged. A special bureau of gratuities was organised by decree of the Duke, and filled with men appointed by Suess, who paid into his hands the sums received; and he, after having sifted them, and retained what he thought fit, shook the rest into the ducal treasury. This bureau was founded by ducal rescript in 1736. Side by side with the Office of Gratuities came the Fiscal Office into being, whose function it was to revise the magisterial and judicial proceedings of the courts of justice. This also was filled by Suess with his creatures. The ground given to the world for its establishment was the correction of judicial errors and injustices committed by the courts of law. It was the final court of revision, before which every decision went before it was carried into effect. Legal proceedings, moreover, were long and costly, and the Fiscal Court undertook to interfere when any suit threatened to be unduly protracted to the prejudice of justice. But the practical working of the Fiscal Court was something very different. It interfered with the course of justice, reversing judgments, not according to equity, but according to the bribes paid into the hands of the board. In a very short time the sources of justice were completely poisoned by it, and no crime, however great and however clearly established, led to chastisement if sufficient money were paid into the hands of the court of revision. The whole country was overrun with spies, who denounced as guilty of imaginary crimes those who were rich, and such never escaped without leaving some of their gold sticking to the hands of the fiscal counsellors. As usual with Joseph Suess, he endeavoured to keep officially clear of this court, as he had of the Office of Gratuities, and of all others. But the Duke nominated him assistant counsellor. Suess protested, and endeavoured to shirk the honour; but as the Duke refused to release him, he took care never once to attend the court, and when the proceedings and judgments were sent him for his signature he always sent them back unsigned; and he never was easy till relieved of the unacceptable title. For Suess was a clever rogue. In every transaction that was public, and of which documentary evidence was producible that he had been mixed up with it, he acted with integrity; but whenever he engaged on a proceeding which might render him liable to be tried in the event of his falling into disfavour, he kept himself in the background and acted through his agents; so that when, eventually, he was tried for his treasonable and fraudulent conduct, documentary evidence incriminating him was wholly wanting. After the death of the Duke, it was estimated from the records of the two courts that they had in the year 1736-7 squeezed sixty-five thousand pounds out of the small and poor duchy. Suess had constituted himself jeweller to the Duke, who had a fancy for precious stones, but knew nothing of their relative values. When Suess offered him a jewel he was unable to resist the temptation of buying it, and very little of the money of the Bureau of Gratuities ever reached him; he took the value out in stones at Suess' estimation. When some of his intimates ventured to suggest that the Jew was deceiving him as to the worth of the stones, Duke Charles Alexander shrugged his shoulders and said with a laugh, "It may be so, but I can't do without that coujon" (_cochon_).[19] . At the beginning of 1736 a new edict for wards was issued by the Duke, probably on Suess' suggestion, whereby he constituted a chancery which should act as guardian to all orphans under age, managing their property for them, and was accountable to none but the Duke for the way in which it dealt with the trust. Then a commission was instituted to take charge of all charitable bequests in the duchy; and by this means Suess got the fingering of property to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds, for which the State paid to the Charities at the rate of three per cent. Then came the imposition of duties and taxes. Salt was taxed, playing-cards, groceries, leather, tobacco, carriages, even the sweeping of chimneys. A gazette was issued containing decrees of the Duke and official appointments, and every officer and holder of any place, however insignificant, under Government was compelled to subscribe to this weekly paper, the profits of which came to the Duke and his adviser. Then came a property and income tax; then in quick succession one tormenting edict after another, irritating and disturbing the people, and all meaning one thing--money. Lotteries were established by order of the Duke. Suess paid the Duke £300 for one, and pocketed the profits, which were considerable. At the court balls and masquerades Suess had his roulette tables in an adjoining room, and what fell to the _croupier_ went into his pocket.[20] At last his sun declined. The Duke became more and more engrossed in his ideas of upsetting the constitution by means of his army, and listened more to his general, Remchingen, than to Suess. He entered into a compact with the elector of Bavaria and with the Bishops of Würzburg and Bamberg to send him troops to assist him in his great project, and, as a price for this assistance, promised to introduce the Roman Catholic religion into Würtemberg. The enemies of Suess, finding that he was losing hold of the Duke, took advantage of a precious stone which the Jew had sold him for a thousand pounds, and which proved to be worth only four hundred, to open the eyes of Charles Alexander to the character of the man who had exercised such unbounded influence over him. Suess, finding his power slipping from him, resolved to quit the country. The Duke stopped him. Suess offered five thousand pounds for permission to depart; it was refused. Charles Alexander was aware that Suess knew too many court secrets to be allowed to quit the country. Moreover, the necessities of the Duke made him feel that he might still need the ingenuity of Suess to help him to raise money. As a means of retaining him he granted him a so-called "absolutorium"--a rescript which made him responsible to no one for any of his actions in the past or in the future. Furnished with this document, the Jew consented to remain, and then the Duke required of him a loan of four thousand pounds for the expenses of a journey he meditated to Danzig to consult a physician about a foot from which he suffered. The "absolutorium" was signed in February 1737. On March 12 following, Charles Alexander started on his journey from Stuttgart, but went no farther than his palace at Ludwigsburg. Although the utmost secrecy had been maintained, it had nevertheless transpired that the constitution was to be upset as soon as the Duke had left the country. He had given sealed orders to his general, Remchingen, to this effect. The Bavarian and Würtemberg troops, to the number of 19,000 men, were already on the march. The Würtemberg army was entirely officered by the Duke's own men. Orders had been issued to forbid the Stuttgart Civil Guard from exercising and assembling, and ordering that a general disarmament of the Civil Guard and of the peasants and citizens should be enforced immediately the Duke had crossed the frontier. All the fortresses in the duchy had been provided with abundance of ammunition and ordnance. At Ludwigsburg the Duke halted to consult an astrologer as to the prospect of his undertaking. Suess laughed contemptuously at the pretences of this man, and, pointing to a cannon, said to Charles Alexander, "This is your best telescope." The sealed orders were to be opened on the 13th, and on that day the stroke was to be dealt. Already Ludwigsburg was full of Würzburg soldiers. A courier of the Duke with a letter had, in a drunken squabble, been deprived of the dispatch; this was opened and shown to the Assembly, which assembled in all haste and alarm. It revealed the plot. At once some of the notables hastened to Ludwigsburg to have an interview with their prince. He received them roughly, and dismissed them without disavowing his intentions. The consternation became general. The day was stormy; clouds were whirled across the sky, then came a drift of hail, then a gleam of sun. At Ludwigsburg, the wind blew in whole ranges of windows, shivering the glass. The alarm-bells rang in the church towers, for fire had broken out in the village of Eglosheim. The Assembly sent another deputation to Ludwigsburg, consisting of their oldest and most respected members. They did not arrive till late, and unable to obtain access through the front gates, crept round by the kitchen entrance, and presented themselves unexpectedly before the Duke at ten o'clock at night, as he was retiring to rest from a ball that had been given. Dancing was still going on in one of the wings, and the strains of music entered the chamber when the old notables of Würtemberg, men of venerable age and high character, forced their way into the Duke's presence. Charles Alexander had but just come away from the ball-room, seated himself in an arm-chair, and drunk a powerful medicine presented him by his chamberlain, Neuffer, in a silver bowl. Neuffer belonged to a family which had long been influential in Würtemberg, honourable and patriotic. Scarce had the Duke swallowed this draught when the deputation appeared. He became livid with fury, and though the interview took place with closed doors the servants without heard a violent altercation, and the Duke's voice raised as if he were vehemently excited. Presently the doors opened and the deputation came forth, greatly agitated, one of the old men in his hurry forgetting to take his cap away with him. Scarcely were they gone when Neuffer dismissed the servants, and himself went to a further wing of the palace. The Duke, still excited, suddenly felt himself unwell, ran into the antechamber, found no one there, staggered into a third, then a fourth room, tore open a window, and shouted into the great court for help; but his voice was drowned by the band in the illumined ball-room, playing a valse. Then giddiness came over the Duke, and he fell to the ground. The first to arrive was Neuffer, and he found him insensible. He drew his knife and lanced him. Blood flowed. The Duke opened his eyes and gasped, "What is the matter with me? I am dying!" He was placed in an armchair, and died instantly. That night not a window in Stuttgart had shown light. The town was as a city of the dead. Everyone was in alarm as to what would ensue on the morrow, but in secret arms were being distributed among the citizens and guilds. They would fight for their constitution. Suddenly, at midnight, the news spread that the Duke was dead. At once the streets were full of people, laughing, shouting, throwing themselves into each other's arms, and before another hour the windows were illuminated with countless candles.[21] Not a moment was lost. Duke Charles Rudolf of Würtemberg-Neuenstadt was invested with the regency, and on March 19, General Remchingen was arrested and deprived of his office. For once Suess' cleverness failed him. Relying on his "absolutorium," he did not fly the country the moment he heard of the death of the Duke. He waited till he could place his valuables in safety. He waited just too long, for he was arrested and confined to his house. Then he did manage to escape, and got the start of his enemies by an hour, but was recognised and stopped by a Würtemberg officer, and reconducted to Stuttgart, where he was almost torn to pieces by the infuriated populace, and with difficulty rescued from their hands. On March 19, he was sent to the fortress of Hohenneuffen; but thence he almost succeeded in effecting his escape by bribing the guards with the diamonds he had secreted about his person. At first Suess bore his imprisonment with dignity. He was confident, in the first place, that the "absolutorium" would not be impeached, and in the second, that there was no documentary evidence discoverable which could incriminate him. But as his imprisonment was protracted, and as he saw that the country demanded a victim for the wrongs it had suffered, his confidence and self-respect left him. Nevertheless, it was not till the last that he was convinced that his life as well as his ill-gotten gains would be taken from him, and then he became a despicable figure, entreating mercy, and eagerly seeking to incriminate others in the hopes of saving his own wretched life thereby. There were plenty of others as guilty as Suess--nay, more so, for they were natives of Würtemberg, and he an alien in blood and religion. But these others had relations and friends to intercede for them, and all felt that Suess was the man to be made a scape-goat of, because he was friendless. The mode of his execution was barbarous. His trial had been protracted for eleven months; at length, on February 4, 1738, he was led forth to execution--to be hung in an iron cage. This cage had been made in 1596, and stood eight feet high, and was four feet in diameter. It was composed of seventeen bars and fourteen cross-bars, and was circular. The gallows was thirty-five feet high. The wretched man was first strangled in the cage, hung up in it like a dead bird, and then the cage with him in it was hoisted up to the full height of the gallows-tree. His wealth was confiscated. Hallwachs and the other rascals who had been confederated with him in plundering their country were banished, but were allowed to depart with all their plunder. Remchingen also escaped; when arrested, he managed to get rid of all compromising papers, which were given by him to a chimney-sweep sent to him down the chimney by some of the agents of the Bishop of Würzburg. Such is the tragic story of the life of Suess Oppenheim, a man of no ordinary abilities, remarkable shrewdness, but without a spark of principle. But the chief tragedy is to be found in the deterioration of the character of Duke Charles Alexander, who, as Austrian field-marshal and governor of Servia, had been the soul of honour, generous and beloved; who entered on his duchy not only promising good government, but heartily desiring to rule well for his people's good; and who in less than four years had forfeited the love and respect of his subjects, and died meditating an act which would have branded him as perjured--died without having executed one of his good purposes, and so hated by the people who had cheered him on his entry into the capital, that, by general consent, the mode of his death was not too curiously and closely inquired into. FOOTNOTES: [18] There was some idea of a younger brother being elected. [19] In three years Suess gained a profit of 20,000 florins out of the sale of jewellery alone. [20] The Duke, at Suess's instigation, wrote to the Emperor to get the Jew factotum ennobled, but was refused. [21] On the following night a confectioner set up a transparency exhibiting the Devil carrying off the Duke. Ignatius Fessler. On December 15th, 1839, in his eighty-fourth year, died Ignatius Fessler, Lutheran Bishop, at St. Petersburg, a man who had gone through several phases of religious belief and unbelief, a Hungarian by birth, a Roman Catholic by education, a Capuchin friar, then a deist, almost, if not quite, an atheist, professor of Oriental languages in the university of Lemberg, finally Lutheran Bishop in Finland. He was principally remarkable as having been largely instrumental in producing one of the most salutary reforms of the Emperor Joseph II. His autobiography published by him in 1824, when he was seventy years old, affords a curious picture of the way in which Joseph carried out those reforms, and enables us to see how it was that they roused so much opposition, and in so many cases failed to effect the good that was designed. Fessler, in his autobiography, paints himself in as bright colours as he can lay on, but it is impossible not to see that he was a man of little principle, selfish and heartless. The autobiography is so curious, and the experiences of Fessler so varied, the times in which he lived so eventful, and the book itself so little known, that a short account of his career may perhaps interest, and must be new to the generality of readers. Ignatius Fessler was the son of parents in a humble walk of life resident in Hungary, but Germans by extraction. Ignatius was born in the year 1754, and as the first child, was dedicated by his mother to God. It was usual at that time for such children to be dressed in ecclesiastical habits. Ignatius as soon as he could walk was invested in a black cassock. His earliest reading was in the lives of the saints and martyrs, but at his first Communion his mother gave him a Bible. That book and Thomas à Kempis were her only literature. Long-continued prayer, daily reading of religious books, and no others, moulded the opening mind of her child. Exactly the same process goes on in countless peasant houses in Catholic Austria and Germany and Switzerland at the present day. No such education, no such walling off of the mind from secular influences is possible in England or France. The first enthusiasm of the child was to become a saint, his highest ambition to be a hermit or a martyr. At the age of seven he was given to be instructed by a Jesuit father, and was shortly after admitted to communion. At the age of nine Ignatius could read and speak Latin, and then he read with avidity Cardinal Bona's _Manductio ad Coelum_. His education was in the hands of the Carmelites at Raab. Dr. Fessler records his affectionate remembrance of his master, Father Raphael. Ignatius lounged, and was lazy. "Boy!" said the Father, "have done with lounging or you will live to be no good, but the laughing stock of old women. Look at me aged seventy, full of life and vigour, that comes of not being a lounger when a boy." From the Carmelite school Ignatius passed into that of the Jesuits. His advance was rapid; but his reading was still in Mystical Theology and his aim the attainment of the contemplative, ecstatic life of devotion. So he reached his seventeenth year. Then his mother took him to Buda, to visit his uncle who was lecturer on Philosophy in the Capuchin Convent. The boy declared his desire to become a Franciscan. His mother and uncle gave their ready consent, and he entered on his noviciate, under the name of Francis Innocent. "The name Innocent became me well--really, at that time, I did not know the difference between the sexes." In 1774, when aged twenty, he took the oaths constituting him a friar. All the fathers in the convent approved, except one old man, Peregrinus, who remonstrated gravely, declaring that he foresaw that Fessler would bring trouble on the fraternity. Father Peregrinus was right, Fessler was one to whom the life and rules and aim of the Order could never be congenial. He had an eager, hungry mind, an insatiable craving for knowledge, and a passion for books. The Capuchins were, and still are, recruited from the lowest of the people, ignorant peasants with a traditional contempt for learning, and their teachers embued with the shallowest smattering of knowledge. Fessler, being devoid of means, could not enter one of the cultured Orders, the Benedictines or the Jesuits. Moreover, the Franciscan is, by his vow, without property, he must live by begging, a rule fatal to self-respect, and fostering idleness. S. Francis, the founder, was a scion of a mercantile class, and the beggary which he imposed on his Order, was due to his revolt against the money-greed of his class. But it has been a fruitful source of mischief. It deters men with any sense of personal dignity from entering the Order, and it invites into it the idle and the ignorant. The Franciscan Order has been a fruitful nursery of heresies, schisms and scandals. Now old Father Peregrinus had sufficient insight into human nature to see and judge that a man of pride, intellectual power, and culture of mind, would be as a fish on dry land in the Capuchin fraternity. He was not listened to. Fessler was too young to know himself, and the fathers too eager to secure a man of promise and ability. "The guardian, Coelestine, an amiable man, took a liking to me. He taught me to play chess, and he played more readily with me than with any of the rest, which, not a little, puffed up my self-esteem. The librarian, Leonidas, was an old, learned, obliging man, dearly loving his flowers. I fetched the water for him to his flower-beds, and he showed me his gratitude by letting me have the run of the library." The library was not extensive, the books nearly all theological, and the volume which Fessler was most attracted by was Barbanson's "Ways of Divine Love." In 1775, Fessler made the acquaintance of a Calvinist Baron, who lent him Fleury's "Ecclesiastical History." This opened the young man's eyes to the fact that the Church was not perfect, that the world outside the Church was not utterly graceless. He read his New Testament over seven times in that year. Then his Calvinist friend lent him Muratori's "Treatise on the Mystical Devotions of the Monks." His confidence was shaken. He no longer saw in the Church the ideal of purity and perfect infallibility; he saw that Mystical Theology was a geography of cloud castles. What profit was there in it? To what end did the friars live? To grow cabbages, make snuff-boxes, cardboard cases, which they painted--these were their practical labours; the rest of their time was spent in prayer and meditation. Then the young friar got hold of Hofmann-Waldau's poems, and the sensuousness of their pictures inflamed his imagination at the very time when religious ecstasy ceased to attract him. What the result might have been, Fessler says, he trembles to think, had he not been fortified by Seneca. It is curious to note, and characteristic of the man, that he was saved from demoralisation, not by the New Testament, which did not touch his heart, but by Seneca's moral axioms, which convinced his reason. The Franciscans are allowed great liberty. They run over the country collecting alms, they visit whom they will, and to a man without principle, such liberty offers dangerous occasions. Fessler now resolved to leave an Order which was odious to him. "Somewhat tranquillized by Seneca, I now determined to shake myself loose from the trammels of the cloister, without causing scandal. The most easy way to do this was for me to take Orders, and get a cure of souls or a chaplaincy to a nobleman." He had no vocation for the ministry; he looked to it merely as a means of escape from uncongenial surroundings. On signifying his desire to become a priest, he was transferred to Gross Wardein, there to pass the requisite course of studies. At Wardein he gained the favour of the bishop and some of the canons, who lent him books on the ecclesiastical and political history of his native land. He also made acquaintance with some families in the town, a lady with two daughters, with the elder of whom he fell in love. He had, however, sufficient decency not to declare his passion. It was otherwise with a young Calvinist tailor's widow, Sophie; she replied to his declaration very sensibly by a letter, which, he declares, produced a lasting effect upon him. In 1776 he was removed to Schwächat to go through a course of Moral Theology. His disgust at his enforced studies, which he regarded as the thrashing of empty husks, increased. He was angry at his removal from the friends he had made at Wardein. Vexation, irritation, doubt, threw him into a fever, and he was transferred to the convent in the suburbs of Vienna, where he could be under better medical care. The physician who attended him soon saw that his patient's malady was mental. Fessler opened his heart to him, and begged for the loan of books more feeding to the brain than the mystical rubbish in the convent library. The doctor advised him to visit him, when discharged as cured from the convent infirmary, instead of at once returning to Schwächat. This he did, and the doctor introduced him to two men of eminence and influence, Von Eybel and the prelate Rautenstrauch, a Benedictine abbot, the director of the Theological Faculties in the Austrian Monarchy. This latter promised Fessler to assist him in his studies, and urged him to study Greek and Hebrew, also to widen the circle of his reading, to make acquaintance with law, history, with natural science and geography, and undertook to provide him with the requisite books. On his return to Schwächat, Fessler appealed to the Provincial against his Master of Studies whom he pronounced to be an incompetent pedant. At his request he was moved to Wiener-Neustadt. There he found the lecturer on Ecclesiastical Studies as superficial as the man from whom he had escaped. This man did not object to Fessler pursuing his Greek and Hebrew studies, nor to his taking from the library what books he liked. The young candidate now borrowed and devoured deistical works, Hobbes, Tindal, Edelmann, and the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. He had to be careful not to let these books be seen, accordingly he hid them under the floor in the choir. After midnight, when matins had been sung, instead of returning to bed with the rest, he remained, on the plea of devotion, in the church, seated on the altar steps, reading deistical works by the light of the sanctuary lamp, which he pulled down to a proper level. He now completely lost his faith, not in Christianity only, but in natural religion as well. Nevertheless, he did not desist from his purpose of seeking orders. He was ordained deacon in 1778, and priest in 1779. "On the Sunday after Corpus Christi, I celebrated without faith, without unction, my first mass, in the presence of my mother, her brother, and the rest of my family. They all received the communion from my hand, bathed in tears of emotion. I, who administered to them, was frozen in unbelief." The cure of souls he desired was not given him, no chaplaincy was offered him. His prospect of escape seemed no better than before. He became very impatient, and made himself troublesome in his convent. As might have been suspected, he became restive under the priestly obligations, as he had been under the monastic rule. It is curious that, late in life, when Fessler wrote his memoirs, he showed himself blind to the unworthiness of his conduct in taking on him the most sacred responsibilities to God and the Church, when he disbelieved in both. He is, however, careful to assure us that though without faith in his functions, he executed them punctually, hearing confessions, preaching and saying mass. But his conduct is so odious, his after callousness so conspicuous, that it is difficult to feel the smallest conviction of his conscientiousness at any time of his life. As he made himself disagreeable to his superiors at Neustadt, he was transferred to Mödling. There he made acquaintance with a Herr Von Molinari and was much at his house, where he met a young Countess Louise. "I cannot describe her stately form, her arching brows, the expression of her large blue eyes, the delicacy of her mouth, the music of her tones, the exquisite harmony that exists in all her movements, and what affects me more than all--she speaks Latin easily, and only reads serious books." So wrote Fessler in a letter at the time. He read Ovid's Metamorphoses with her in the morning, and walked with her in the evening. When, at the end of October, the family went to Vienna, "the absence of that noble soul," he wrote, "filled me with the most poignant grief." The Molinari family were bitten with Jansenism, and hoped to bring the young Capuchin to their views. Next year, in the spring of 1781, they returned to Mödling. "This year passed like the former; in the convent I was a model of obedience, in the school a master of scholastic theology: in Molinari's family a humble disciple of Jansen, in the morning a worshipper of the muse of Louise, in the evening an agreeable social companion,"--in heart--an unbeliever in Christianity. A letter written to an uncle on March 12th, 1782, must be quoted verbatim, containing as it does a startling discovery, which gave him the opportunity so long desired, of breaking with the Order:-- "Since the 23rd February, I sing without intermission after David, in my inmost heart, 'Praise and Glory be to God, who has delivered my enemies into my hand!' Listen to the wonderful way in which this has happened. On the night of the 23rd to 24th of February, after eleven o'clock, I was roused from sleep by a lay-brother. 'Take your crucifix,' said he 'and follow me.' "'Whither?' I asked, panic struck. "'Whither I am about to lead you.' "'What am I to do?' "'I will tell you, when you are on the spot.' "'Without knowing whither I go, and for what purpose, go I will not.' "'The Guardian has given the order; by virtue of holy obedience you are bound to follow whither I lead.' "As soon as holy obedience is involved, no resistance can be offered. Full of terror, I took my crucifix and followed the lay-brother, who went before with a dark lantern. Passing the cell of one of my fellow scholars, I slipped in, shook him out of sleep, and whispered in Latin twice in his ear, 'I am carried off, God knows whither. If I do not appear to-morrow, communicate with Rautenstrauch.' "Our way led through the kitchen, and beyond it through a couple of chambers; on opening the last, the brother said, 'Seven steps down.' My heart contracted, I thought I was doomed to see the last of day-light. We entered a narrow passage, in which I saw, half way down it, on the right, a little altar, on the left some doors fastened with padlocks. My guide unlocked one of these, and said, 'Here is a dying man, Brother Nicomede, a Hungarian, who knows little German, give him your spiritual assistance. I will wait here. When he is dead, call me.' "Before me lay an old man on his pallet, in a worn-out habit, on a straw palliasse, under a blanket; his hood covered his grey head, a snow-white beard reached to his girdle. Beside the bedstead was an old straw-covered chair, a dirty table, on which was a lamp burning. I spoke a few words to the dying man, who had almost lost his speech; he gave me a sign that he understood me. There was no possibility of a confession. I spoke to him about love to God, contrition for sin, and hope in the mercy of heaven; and when he squeezed my hand in token of inward emotion, I pronounced over him the General Absolution. The rest of the while I was with him, I uttered slowly, and at intervals, words of comfort and hope of eternal blessedness. About three o'clock, after a death agony of a quarter-of-an-hour, he had passed out of the reach of trouble. "Before I called the lay-brother, I looked round the prison, and then swore over the corpse to inform the Emperor of these horrors. Then I summoned the lay-brother, and said, coldly, 'Brother Nicomede is gone.' "'A good thing for him, too,' answered my guide, in a tone equally indifferent. "'How long has he been here?' "'Two and fifty years.' "'He has been severely punished for his fault.' "'Yes, yes. He has never been ill before. He had a stroke yesterday, when I brought him his meal.' "'What is the altar for in the passage?' "'One of the fathers says mass there on all festivals for the lions, and communicates them. Do you see, there is a little window in each of the doors, which is then opened, and through it the lions make their confession, hear mass, and receive communion.' "'Have you many lions here?' "'Four, two priests and two lay-brothers to be attended on.' "'How long have they been here?' "'One for fifty, another for forty-two, the third for fifteen, and the last for nine years.' "'Why are they here?' "'I don't know.' "'Why are they called lions?' "'Because I am called the lion-ward.' "I deemed it expedient to ask no more questions. I got the lion-ward to light me to my cell, and there in calmness considered what to do. "Next day, or rather, that same day, Feb. 24th, I wrote in full all that had occurred, in a letter addressed to the Emperor, with my signature attached. Shortly after my arrival in Vienna I had made the acquaintance of a Bohemian secular student named Bokorny, a trusty man. On the morning of Feb. 25th, I made him swear to give my letter to the Emperor, and keep silence as to my proceeding. "At 8 o'clock he was with my letter in the Couriers' lobby of the palace, where there is usually a crowd of persons with petitions awaiting the Emperor. Joseph took my paper from my messenger, glanced hastily at it, put it apart from the rest of the petitions, and let my messenger go, after he had cautioned him most seriously to hold his tongue. "The blow is fallen; what will be the result--whether anything will come of it, I do not yet know." For many months no notice was taken of the letter. It was not possible for the Emperor to take action at once, for a few days later Pius VI. arrived in Vienna on a visit to Joseph. Joseph II. was an enthusiastic reformer; he had the liveliest regard for Frederick the Great, and tried to copy him, but, as Frederick said, Joseph always began where he ought to leave off. He had no sooner become Emperor (1780) than he began a multitude of reforms, with headlong impetuosity. He supposed that every abuse was to be rooted up by an exercise of despotic power, and that his subjects would hail freedom and enlightenment with enthusiasm. Regardless of the power of hereditary association, he arbitrarily upset existing institutions, in the conviction that he was promoting the welfare of his subjects. He emancipated the Jews, and proclaimed liberty of worship to all religious bodies except the Deists, whom he condemned to receive five-and-twenty strokes of the cane. He abolished the use of torture, and reorganised the courts of justice. The Pope, alarmed at the reforming spirit of Joseph, and the innovations he was introducing into the management of the Church, crossed the Alps with the hope that in a personal interview he might moderate the Emperor's zeal. He arrived only a few days after Joseph had received the letter of Ignatius Fessler, which was calculated to spur him to enact still more sweeping reforms, and to steel his heart against the papal blandishments. Nothing could have come to his hands more opportunely. In Vienna, in St. Stephen's, the Pope held a pontifical mass. The Emperor did not honour it by his presence. By order of Joseph, the back door of the papal lodging was walled up, that Pius might receive no visitors unknown to the Emperor, and guards were placed at the entrance, to scrutinize those who sought the presence of the Pope. Joseph lost dignity by studied discourtesy; and Kaunitz, his minister, was allowed to be insulting. The latter received the Pope when he visited him, in his dressing-gown, and instead of kissing his hand, shook it heartily. Pius, after spending five weeks in Vienna without affecting anything, was constrained to depart. Fessler saw him thrice, once, when the Pope said mass in the Capuchin Church, he stood only three paces from him. "Never did faith and unbelief, Jansenism and Deism, struggle for the mastery in me more furiously than then; tears flowed from my eyes, excited by my emotion, and at the end of the mass, I felt convinced that I had seen either a man as full of the burning love of God as a seraph, or the most accomplished actor in the world." Of the sincerity and piety of Pius VI. there can be no question. He was a good man, but not an able man. "At the conclusion he turned to us young priests, asked of each his name, length of time in the Order, and priesthood, about our studies, and exhorted us, in a fatherly tone, to be stout stones in the wall of the house of Israel, in times of trouble present and to come." Before Pius departed, he gave his blessing to the people from the balcony of the Jesuit Church. "The Pope was seated on a throne under a gold-embroidered canopy. Fifty thousand persons must have been assembled below. Windows were full of heads, every roof crowded. The Pope wore his triple-crowned tiara, and was attended by three cardinals and two bishops in full pontificals. He intoned the form of absolution, in far-reaching voice, which was taken up by the court choir of four hundred voices. When this was done, Pius rose from his throne, the tiara was removed from his head, he stepped forward, raised eyes and arms to heaven, and in a pure ecstasy of devotion poured forth a fervent prayer. Only sighs and sobs broke occasionally the perfect silence which reigned among the vast throng of kneeling persons in the great square. The Pope seemed rather to be raised in ecstasy from his feet, than to stand. The prayer lasted long, and the bishops put their hands to stay up his arms; it was like Moses on the mountain top, with the rod of God in his hand, supported by Aaron and Hur, as he prayed for his people striving below with Amalek. At last this second Moses let his arms fall, he raised his right hand, and blessed the people in the name of the Triune God. At the Amen, the cannon of the Freiung boomed, and were answered by all the artillery on the fortifications of the city." The Pope was gone, and still no notice taken of the petition. Molinari spoke to Fessler, who was very hot about reform, and had drawn up a scheme for the readjustment of the Church in the Empire, which he sent to some of the ministers of the Emperor. "My friend," said Molinari, "to pull down and to rebuild, to destroy and to re-create, are serious matters, only to be taken in hand by one who has an earnest vocation, and not to be made a means for self-seeking." Fessler admits that there was truth in the reproach, he was desirous of pushing himself into notice, and he cared for the matter of "the lions," only because he thought they would serve his selfish purpose. Joseph now issued an order that no member of a monastic order was to be admitted to a benefice who had not passed an examination before the teachers of the Seminaries. The superiors of the Capuchins forbade their candidates going into these examinations. Fessler stirred up revolt, and he and some others, acting under his advice, demanded to be admitted to examination. His superior then informed him that he was not intended by the Order to take a cure of souls, he was about to be appointed lecturer on Philosophy in one of the convents in Hungary. In order to prevent his removal, and to force the Order to an open rupture with him, Fessler had recourse to a most unseemly and ungenerous act. Whilst in Vienna, he had made the acquaintance of an unmarried lady, the Baroness E. He had assisted her in her studies, giving her instructions usually by letter. His acquaintance, Von Eybel, had written a book or tract, which had made a great stir, entitled, "Who is the Pope?" Fessler wrote another, entitled, "Who is the Emperor?" He sent a copy to the publisher, but retained the original MS. Fessler now wrote under a feigned name, and in a disguised hand, a letter to Father Maximus, guardian of the convent, charging himself with carrying on a guilty correspondence with the Baroness E., and with the composition of an inflammatory and anti-religious pamphlet, "Who is the Emperor?" Maximus at once visited the Baroness, and showed her the letter. The lady in great indignation produced the entire correspondence, and handed the letters to him. Maximus put them in the hands of the Lector of the convent, who visited Fessler, and asked him if he acknowledged the authorship of "these scandalous letters." "Scandalous, they are not," answered Fessler. "_Impius, cum in profundum venerit, contemnit_," roared the friar. "They are not only scandalous, but impious. Look at this letter on platonic love. Is that a fit letter for such as you to write to a lady?" In consequence of these letters, and the MS. of the pamphlet being found upon him, Fessler was denounced to the Consistorial Court of the Archbishop. He was summoned before it at the beginning of August, when he was forced to admit he had been wont to kiss the lady to whom he wrote on platonic love, and the Consistory suspended him from the exercise of his priestly functions for a month. "I and the Lector returned to the convent silent, as if strangers. When we arrived, the friars were at table. I do not know how I got to my place; but after I had drunk my goblet of wine, all was clearer about me. I seemed to hear the voice of Horace calling to me from heaven, _Perfer et obdura!_ and in a moment my self-respect revived, and I looked with scorn on the seventy friars hungrily eating their dinner." Of his own despicable conduct, that he had richly deserved his punishment, Fessler never seems to have arrived at the perception. He was, indeed, a very pitiful creature, arousing disgust and contempt in a well-ordered mind; and his Memoirs only deserve notice because of the curious insight they afford into the inner life of convents, and because he was the means of bringing great scandals to light, and in assisting Joseph II. in his work of reform. At the beginning of September, 1782, Fessler was the means of bringing a fresh scandal before the eyes of the Emperor. During the preceding year, a saddler in Schwächat had lost his wife, and was left, not only a widower, but childless. His niece now kept house for him, and was much afraid lest her uncle should marry again, and that thus she should not become his heir. She consulted a Capuchin, Father Brictius. Fessler had been in the Schwächat convent, and knew the man. Soon after, the niece assured her uncle that the ghost of her aunt had appeared to her, and told her she was suffering in Purgatory. For her release, she must have ten masses said, and some wax candles burnt. The saddler was content to have his old woman "laid" at this price. But, after the tenth mass, the niece declared she had seen her aunt again, and that the spirit had appeared to her in the presence of Father Brictius, and told her, that what troubled her most of all was the suspicion she was under, that her husband purposed marrying again; and she assured him, that were he so to do, he would lose his soul, in token whereof, she laid her hand on the cover of the niece's prayer-book, and left the impression burnt into it. Father Brictius carried the scorched book all round the neighbourhood, the marks of thumb and five fingers were clearly to be seen, burnt into the wooden cover. Great was the excitement, and on all sides masses for souls were in demand. Some foolish pastors even preached on the marvel. It happened that a Viennese boy was apprenticed to a tinker at Schwächat; and the boy came home every Saturday evening, to spend the day with his parents, at Vienna. He generally brought Fessler some little presents or messages from his friends at Schwächat. One day, the boy complained to Fessler that he had been severely beaten by his master. On being asked the reason, he replied, that he had been engaged with the tinker making an iron hand, and that he had spoiled it. Shortly after this, the rumour of the miraculous hand laid on the prayer-book, reached the convent. Fessler put the circumstances together, and suspected he was on the track of a fraud. He went at once to one of the ministers of the Emperor, and told him what he knew. An imperial commission was issued, the tinker, the saddler's niece, and Father Brictius, were arrested, cross-questioned, and finally, confessed the trick. The tinker was sent to prison for some months, the woman, for some weeks, and the Franciscan was first imprisoned, and then banished the country. An account of the fraud was issued, by Government authority, and every parish priest was ordered to read it to his parishioners from the pulpit. The Capuchins at Vienna, after this, were more impatient than before to send Fessler to Hungary, and he was forced to appeal to the Emperor to prevent his removal. Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, in the beginning of October--seven months after Fessler had sent the Emperor an account of the prison in the convent, and when he despaired of notice being taken of it--some imperial commissioners visited the convent, and demanded in the name of the Emperor to be shown all over it. At the head of the Commission was Hägelin, to whom Fessler had told his suspicions about the iron hand. The commissioners visited all the cells, and the infirmary, then asked the Guardian thrice on his honour, and in the name of the Emperor, whether there was a prison in the convent. Thrice the Guardian replied that there was not. "Let us now visit the kitchen," said Hägelin, and in spite of the protests and excuses of the Guardian, he insisted on being taken there. Beyond the kitchen was the wash-house. The commissioners went further, and found a small locked door. They insisted on its being opened. Then the Guardian turned pale and nearly fainted. The door was thrown open, the cells were unlocked, and the lay brothers ordered to bring the prisoners into the refectory. There the commissioners remained alone with the unfortunates to take down their depositions. It was found that three, Fathers Florentine, and Paternus, and the lay brother, Nemesian, were out of their minds. The "lion-ward" was summoned to answer for them. From his account, it transpired that Nemesian had gone out of his mind through religious enthusiasm; he was aged seventy-one, and had been fifty years in the dungeon. Father Florentine was aged seventy-three, he had been in confinement for forty-two years for boxing the Guardian's ears in a fit of temper. Father Paternus was locked up because he used to leave his convent without permission, and when rebuked would not give up his independent conduct. He had been fifteen years in prison. His confinement had bereft him of his senses. As the remaining two were in full possession of their faculties, the "lion-ward" was now dismissed. The lay brother Barnabas said he had been a shopkeeper's servant in Vienna, he had fallen in love with his master's daughter. As his master refused to have him as his son-in-law, out of despair he had gone into the Capuchin Order. During his noviciate, the master died; the master of the novices stopped the letter informing him of this, and he took the vows, to discover, when too late, that the girl loved him, and was ready to take him. In his mad rage, he flung his rosary at the feet of the Guardian, declaring he would never confess to, or receive the communion from the hands of a father of this accursed Order. He had been nine years in prison, and was thirty-eight years old. Father Thuribius had been caught reading Wieland, Gellert, Rabener, &c.; they had been taken from him. He got hold of other copies, they were taken away a second time. A third time he procured them, and when discovered, fought with his fists for their retention. He had been repeatedly given the cat o' nine tails, and had been locked up five months and ten days. His age was twenty-eight. The commissioners at once suspended the Provincial and the Guardian till further notice, and the five unfortunates were handed over to the care of the Brothers of Charity. That same day, throughout the entire monarchy, every monastery and nunnery was visited by imperial commissioners. At the same time, the Emperor Joseph issued an order that Fessler was on no account to be allowed to leave Vienna, and that he took him under his imperial protection against all the devices of his monastic enemies. "Now came the sentence on the Guardian and the Provincial from the Emperor. They were more severely punished than perhaps they really deserved. I felt for their sufferings more keenly, because I was well aware that I had been moved to report against them by any other motive rather than humanity; and even the consequences of my revelation, the setting at liberty of a not inconsiderable number of unfortunate monks and nuns throughout the Austrian Empire, could not set my conscience at rest. Only the orders made by the Emperor rendering it impossible to repeat such abuses, brought me any satisfaction. The monastic prisons were everywhere destroyed. Transgression of rules was henceforth to be punished only by short periods of seclusion, and cases of insanity were to be sent to the Brothers of Charity, who managed the asylums." If Joseph II. had but possessed commonsense as well as enthusiasm, he would have left his mark deeper on his country than he did. Fessler laid before him the schedule of studies in the Franciscan Convents. Joseph then issued an order (6th April, 1782), absolutely prohibiting the course of studies in the cloisters. When Fessler saw that the Guardian of his convent was transgressing the decree, he appealed against him to the Emperor, and had him dismissed. Next year Joseph required all the students of the Capuchin Order to enter the seminaries, and pass thence through the Universities. But, unfortunately, Joseph had taken a step to alienate from him the bishops and secular clergy, as well as the monks and friars. He arbitrarily closed all the diocesan seminaries, and created seminaries of his own for the candidates for Orders, to which he appointed the professors, thus entirely removing the education of the clergy from the hands of the Church. When the Bishop of Goritz expressed his dissatisfaction, Joseph suppressed his see and banished him. The professors he appointed to the universities, to the chairs which were attended by candidates for Orders, were in many cases free-thinkers and rationalists. The professor of Biblical Exegesis at Vienna was an ex-Jesuit, Monsperger, "His religious system," says Fessler, who attended his course, "was simply this,--a wise enjoyment of life, submission to the inevitable, and prudence of conduct. That was all. He had no other idea of Church than a reciprocal bond of rights and duties. In his lectures he whittled all the supernatural out of the Old Testament, and taught his pupils to regard the book as a collection of myths, romance, and contradictions. His lectures brought me back from my trifling with Jansenism to the point I had been at four years before under the teaching of Hobbes, Tindal, and the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. I resolved to doubt everything supernatural and divine, without actually denying such thing.--Strange! I resolved to disbelieve, when I never had believed." On Feb. 6th, 1784, he received the Emperor's appointment to the professorships of Biblical Exegesis and Oriental languages in the University of Lemberg. On the 20th Feb., on the eve of starting for Lemberg, for ever to cast off the hated habit of S. Francis, and to shake off, as much as he dare, the trammels of the priesthood, Fessler was in his cell at midnight, counting the money he had received for his journey. "To the right of me, on the table was a dagger, given me as a parting present by the court secretary, Grossinger. I was thinking of retiring to rest, when my cell door was burst open, and in rushed Father Sergius, a great meat-knife in his hand, shouting, _Moriere hoeretice!_ he struck at my breast. In an instant I seized my dagger, parried the blow, and wounded my assailant in the hand. He let the knife fall and ran away. I roused the Guardian, told him what had occurred, and advised what was to be done. Sergius, armed with two similar knives, had locked himself into his cell. At the command of the Guardian six lay-brothers burst open the door, and beat the knives from his hands with sticks, then dragged him off to the punishment-cell, where they placed him under watch. Next morning I went with the Guardian, as I had advised, to the president of the Spiritual Commission, the Baron von Kresel, to inform him that Father Sergius had gone raving mad, and to ask that he might be committed to the custody of the Brothers of Mercy. This was at once granted; and I left the Guardian to instruct the fanatic how to comport himself in the hospital as a lunatic, so as not to bring his superiors into further difficulties." The first acquaintance Fessler made in Lemberg, was a renegade Franciscan friar, who had been appointed Professor of Physic, "He was a man of unbounded ambition and avarice, a political fanatic, and a complete atheist." Joseph afterwards appointed this man to be mitred abbot of Zazvár. He died on the scaffold in 1795, executed for high treason. The seminarists of the Catholic and of the Uniat Churches as well as the pupils from the religious Orders were obliged to attend Fessler's lectures. These were on the lines of these of Monsperger. Some of the clergy in charge of the Seminarists were so uneasy at Fessler's teaching that they stood up at his lectures and disputed his assertions; but Fessler boasts that after a couple of months he got the young men round to his views, and they groaned, hooted and stamped down the remonstrants. He published at this time two works, _Institutiones linguarum orientalium_, and a Hebrew anthology for the use of the students. In the latter he laid down certain canons for the interpretation of the Old Testament, by means of which everything miraculous might be explained away. It was really intolerable that the candidates for orders should be forcibly taught to disbelieve everything their Church required them to hold. In his inspection of the monasteries, in the suppression of many, Joseph acted with justice, and the conscience of the people approved, but in this matter of the education of the clergy he violated the principles of common justice, and the consequence was such wide-spread irritation, that Joseph for a moment seemed inclined to give way. That Joseph knew the rationalism of Fessler is certain. The latter gives a conversation he had with the Emperor, in which they discussed the "Ruah," the Spirit of God, which moved on the face of the waters, as said in the first chapter of Genesis. Fessler told him that he considered "the expression to be a Hebrew superlative, and to mean no more than that a violent gale was blowing. Possibly," he added, "Moses may have thought of the Schiva in the Hindoo Trimurti; for he was reared in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, who were an Ethiopic race, which was in turn an Indian colony." Dr. Fessler's Ethnology was faulty, whatever may be thought of his Theology. After having given this explanation to the Emperor, Fessler boldly asked him for a bishopric--he who loathed his priesthood and disbelieved in revealed religion! Joseph did not give him a mitre, but made him Professor of Doctrinal Theology and Catholic Polemics as well as of Biblical Exegesis. This did not satisfy the ambitious soul of Fessler, he was bent on a mitre. He waited with growing impatience. He sent his books to Joseph. He did his utmost to force himself into his notice. But the desired mitre did not come. Fessler complains that scandalous stories circulated about him whilst at Lemberg, and these possibly may have reached the imperial ears. He asserts, and no doubt with perfect truth, that these were unfounded. He had made himself bitter enemies, and they would not scruple to defame him. He boasts that at Lemberg he contracted no Platonic alliances; he had no _attachements de coeur_ there at all. The Emperor seemed to have forgotten him, to have cast aside his useful tool. Filled with the bitterness of defeated ambition, in 1788 he wrote a drama, entitled James II., a covert attack on his protector, Joseph II., whom he represented as falling away in his enthusiasm for reform, and succumbing to the gathering hostility of Obscurantists and Jesuits. This was not the case, but Joseph was in trouble with his refractory subjects in the Low Countries, who would not have his seminaries and professors, who subscribed for the support of the ousted teachers, and rioted at the introduction of the new professors to the University of Louvain. The play was put into rehearsal, but the police interfered, and it was forbidden. Fessler either feared or was warned that he was about to be arrested, and he escaped over the frontier into Prussian Silesia. Joseph II. died in 1790, broken in spirit by his failures. Fessler, after his escape from Austria, became a salaried reader and secretary to the Count of Carolath, whose wife was a princess of Saxe-Meiningen. After a while he married a young woman of the middle class; he seems to have doubted whether they would be happy together, after he had proposed, accordingly he wrote her a long epistle, in the most pedantic and dictorial style, informing her of what his requirements were, and warning her to withdraw from the contemplated union, if she were not sure she would come up to the level of the perfect wife. The poor creature no doubt wondered at the marvellous love letter, but had no hesitation in saying she would do her duty up to her lights. The result was not happy. They led together a cat-and-dog life for ten years. She was a homely person without intellectual parts, and he was essentially a book-worm. He admits that he did not shine in society, and leaves it to be understood that the loss was on the side of inappreciative society, but we can not help suspecting that he was opinionated, sour, and uncouth. All these qualities were intensified in the narrow circle of home. After ten years of misery he divorced his wife on the ground of mutual incompatibility. For a livelihood he took up Freemasonry, and went about founding lodges. There were three rogues at that period who worked Freemasonry for their own ends, the Darmstadt Court Chaplain, Starck, a Baron von Hundt, and a certain Becker, who called himself Johnson, and pretended to be a delegate from the mysterious, unknown head of the Society in Aberdeen. They called themselves Masons of the Strict Observance, but were mere swindlers. After a while, Freemasonry lost its attractions for Fessler, probably it ceased to pay, and then he left Breslau, and wandered into Prussia. He wrote a novel called "Marcus Aurelius," glorifying that emperor, for whom he entertained great veneration, and did other literary work, which brought him in a little money. Then he married again, a young, beautiful and gifted woman, with a small property. He was very happy in his choice, but less happy in the speculation in which he invested her money and that of her sisters. It failed, and they were reduced to extreme poverty. What became of the sisters we do not know. Fessler with his wife and children went into Russia, and sponged for some time on the Moravian Brothers, who treated him with great kindness, and lent him money, "Which," he says, in his autobiography, "I have not yet been able to pay back altogether." He lost some of his children. Distress, pecuniary embarrassments, and sickness, softened his heart, and perhaps with that was combined a perception that if he could get a pastorate he would be provided for;[22] this led to a conversion, which looks very much as if it were copied from the famous conversion of St. Augustine. It possibly was, to some extent, sincere; he recovered faith in God, and joined the Lutheran community. Then he had his case and attainments brought under the notice of the Czar, who was, at the time, as Fessler probably knew, engaged in a scheme for organising the Lutheran bodies in Finland into a Church under Episcopal government. He chose Fessler to be bishop of Saratow, and had him consecrated by the Swedish bishops, "Who," says Fessler, "like the Anglican bishops, have preserved the Apostolic succession." He makes much of this point, a curious instance of the revival in his mind of old ideas imbibed in his time of Catholicity. . According to his own account, he was a bishop quite on the Apostolic model, and worked very hard to bring his diocese into order. His ordination was in 1820. In 1833, the Saratow consistory was dissolved, and he retired to St. Petersburg, where he was appointed general superintendent of the Lutheran community in the capital. He married a third time, but says very little of the last wife. He concludes with this estimate of his own character, which is hardly that at which a reader of his autobiography would arrive. "Earnestness and cheerfulness, rapid decision, and unbending determination, manly firmness and childlike trueheartedness--these are the ever recurring fundamental characteristics of my nature. Add to these a gentle mysticism, to surround the others with colour and unite them in harmony. Sometimes it may be that dissonances occur, it may be true that occasionally I thunder with powerful lungs in my house, as if I were about to wreck and shatter everything, but that is called forth only by what is wrong. In my inmost being calm, peace, and untroubled cheerfulness reign supreme. Discontent, wrath, venom and gall, have not embittered one moment of my life."[23] FOOTNOTES: [22] He had, however, just received a pension from the Czar, so that he was relieved from abject poverty. [23] "Of myself," he says, "I must confess that I have heard great and famous preachers, true Bourdaloues, Massillons, Zollikofers, &c, in Vienna, Carolath, Breslau, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Hanover, and have been pleased with the contents, arrangement, and delivery of their sermons; but never once have I felt my heart stirred with religious emotion. On the contrary, on the 25th March, 1782, when Pius VI. said mass in the Capuchin Church, and on the 31st March, when he blessed the people, I trembled on the edge of conviction and religious faith, and was only held back by my inability to distinguish between religion and the Church system. Still more now does the Sermon on the Mount move me, and for the last 23 years the divine liturgical prayer in John xvii., does not fail to stir my very soul." THE END. _S. Cowan & Co., Printers, Perth._ ADVERTISEMENTS MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST OF NEW AND FORTHCOMING WORKS. _By the Author of_ "DONOVAN," "WE TWO," _&c._ Derrick Vaughan, Novelist. By EDNA LYALL. Post 8vo, 2s. 6d. _Twenty-fourth Thousand._ Our English Villages: their Story and their Antiquities. By P. H. DITCHFIELD, M.A., F.R.H.S., Rector of Barkham, Berks. Post 8vo, 2s. 6d. _Illustrated._ _By the Author of_ "MEHALAH," "JOHN HERRING," _&c._ Historic Oddities and Strange Events. By S. BARING GOULD, M.A. First Series. 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4544	----	(www.ccel.org) collection. HTML version by Al Haines. The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises Printed by Henry Pepwell MDXXI Edited with an introduction and notes by Edmund G. Gardner M.A. 1910 The Frontispiece is taken from B.M. MS. Faustina, B. VI. "Stiamo nella cella del cognoscimento di noi; cognoscendo, noi per noi non essere, e la bonta di Dio in noi; ricognoscendo l'essere, e ogni grazia che e posta sopra l'essere, da lui."--St. Catherine of Siena. "Tergat ergo speculum suum, mundet spiritum suum, quisquis sitit videre Deum suum. Exterso autem speculo et diu diligenter inspecto, incipit ei quaedam divini luminis claritas interlucere, et immensus quidam insolitae visionis radius oculis ejus apparere. Hoc lumen oculos ejus irradiaverat, qui dicebat: Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine; dedisti laetitiam in corde meo. Ex hujus igitur luminis visione quam admiratur in se, mirum in modum accenditur animus, et animatur ad videndum lumen, quod est supra se."--Richard of St. Victor. CONTENTS I. A very Devout Treatise, named Benjamin, of the Mights and Virtues of Man's Soul, and of the Way to True Contemplation, compiled by a Noble and Famous Doctor, a man of great holiness and devotion, named Richard of Saint Victor The Prologue Cap. I. How the Virtue of Dread riseth in the Affection Cap. II. How Sorrow riseth in the Affection Cap. III. How Hope riseth in the Affection Cap. IV. How Love riseth in the Affection Cap. V. How the Double Sight of Pain and Joy riseth in the Imagination Cap. VI. How the Virtues of Abstinence and Patience rise in the Sensuality Cap. VII. How Joy of Inward Sweetness riseth in the Affection Cap. VIII. How Perfect Hatred of Sin riseth in the Affection Cap. IX. How Ordained Shame riseth and groweth in the Affection Cap. X. How Discretion and Contemplation rise in the Reason II. Divers Doctrines Devout and Fruitful, taken out of the Life of that Glorious Virgin and Spouse of Our Lord, Saint Katherin of Seenes III. A Short Treatise of Contemplation taught by Our Lord Jesu Christ, or taken out of the Book of Margery Kempe, Ancress of Lynn IV. A Devout Treatise compiled by Master Walter Hylton of the Song of Angels V. A Devout Treatise called the Epistle of Prayer VI. A very necessary Epistle of Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul VII. A Devout Treatise of Discerning of Spirits, very necessary for Ghostly Livers INTRODUCTION FROM the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century may be called the golden age of mystical literature in the vernacular. In Germany, we find Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1277), Meister Eckhart (d. 1327), Johannes Tauler (d. 1361), and Heinrich Suso (d. 1365); in Flanders, Jan Ruysbroek (d. 1381); in Italy, Dante Alighieri himself (d. 1321), Jacopone da Todi (d. 1306), St. Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), and many lesser writers who strove, in prose or in poetry, to express the hidden things of the spirit, the secret intercourse of the human soul with the Divine, no longer in the official Latin of the Church, but in the language of their own people, "a man's own vernacular," which "is nearest to him, inasmuch as it is most closely united to him."[1] In England, the great names of Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349), of Walter Hilton (d. 1396), and of Mother Juliana of Norwich, whose Revelation of Divine Love professedly date from 1373, speak for themselves. The seven tracts or treatises before us were published in 1521 in a little quarto volume: "Imprynted at London in Poules chyrchyarde at the sygne of the Trynyte, by Henry Pepwell. In the yere of our lorde God, M.CCCCC.XXI., the xvi. daye of Nouembre." They may, somewhat loosely speaking, be regarded as belonging to the fourteenth century, though the first and longest of them professes to be but a translation of the work of the great Augustinian mystic of an earlier age. St. Bernard, Richard of St. Victor, and St. Bonaventura--all three very familiar figures to students of Dante's Paradiso--are the chief influences in the story of English mysticism. And, through the writings of his latter-day followers, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, Richard of St. Victor is, perhaps, the most important of the three. Himself either a Scot or an Irishman by birth, Richard entered the famous abbey of St. Victor, a house of Augustinian canons near Paris, some time before 1140, where he became the chief pupil of the great mystical doctor and theologian whom the later Middle Ages regarded as a second Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor. After Hugh's death (1141), Richard succeeded to his influence as a teacher, and completed his work in creating the mystical theology of the Church. His masterpiece, De Gratia Contemplationis, known also as Benjamin Major, in five books, is a work of marvellous spiritual insight, unction, and eloquence, upon which Dante afterwards based the whole mystical psychology of the Paradiso.2 In it Richard shows how the soul passes upward through the six steps of contemplation--in imagination, in reason, in understanding--gradually discarding all sensible objects of thought; until, in the sixth stage, it contemplates what is above reason, and seems to be beside reason, or even contrary to reason. He teaches that there are three qualities of contemplation, according to its intensity: mentis dilatatio, an enlargement of the soul's vision without exceeding the bounds of human activity; mentis sublevatio, elevation of mind, in which the intellect, divinely illumined, transcends the measure of humanity, and beholds the things above itself, but does not entirely lose self-consciousness; and mentis alienatio, or ecstasy, in which all memory of the present leaves the mind, and it passes into a state of divine transfiguration, in which the soul gazes upon truth without any veils of creatures, not in a mirror darkly, but in its pure simplicity. This master of the spiritual life died in 1173. Amongst the glowing souls of the great doctors and theologians in the fourth heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas bids Dante mark the ardent spirit of "Richard who in contemplation was more than man."[3] Benjamin, for Richard, is the type of contemplation, in accordance with the Vulgate version of Psalm lxvii.: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu: "There is Benjamin, a youth, in ecstasy of mind"--where the English Bible reads: "Little Benjamin their ruler."[4] At the birth of Benjamin, his mother Rachel dies: "For, when the mind of man is rapt above itself, it surpasseth all the limits of human reasoning. Elevated above itself and rapt in ecstasy, it beholdeth things in the divine light at which all human reason succumbs. What, then, is the death of Rachel, save the failing of reason?"[5] The treatise here printed under the title Benjamin is based upon a smaller work of Richard's, a kind of introduction to the Benjamin Major, entitled: Benjamin Minor; or: De Praeparatione animi ad Contemplationem. It is a paraphrase of certain portions of this work, with a few additions, and large omissions. Among the portions omitted are the two passages that, almost alone among Richard's writings, are known to the general reader--or, at least, to people who do not claim to be specialists in mediaeval theology. In the one, he speaks of knowledge of self as the Holy Hill, the Mountain of the Lord:-- "If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, let its first and principal study be to know itself. Full knowledge of the rational spirit is a great and high mountain. This mountain transcends all the peaks of all mundane sciences, and looks down upon all the philosophy and all the science of the world from on high. Could Aristotle, could Plato, could the great band of philosophers ever attain to it?"[6] In the other, still adhering to his image of the mountain of self-knowledge, he makes his famous appeal to the Bible, as the supreme test of truth, the only sure guard that the mystic has against being deluded in his lofty speculations:-- "Even if you think that you have been taken up into that high mountain apart, even if you think that you see Christ transfigured, do not be too ready to believe anything you see in Him or hear from Him, unless Moses and Elias run to meet Him. I hold all truth in suspicion which the authority of the Scriptures does not confirm, nor do I receive Christ in His clarification unless Moses and Elias are talking with Him."[7] On the other hand, the beautiful passage with which the version closes, so typical of the burning love of Christ, shown in devotion to the name of Jesus, which glows through all the writings of the school of the Hermit of Hampole, is an addition of the translator:-- "And therefore, what so thou be that covetest to come to contemplation of God, that is to say, to bring forth such a child that men clepen in the story Benjamin (that is to say, sight of God), then shalt thou use thee in this manner. Thou shalt call together thy thoughts and thy desires, and make thee of them a church, and learn thee therein for to love only this good word Jesu, so that all thy desires and all thy thoughts are only set for to love Jesu, and that unceasingly as it may be here; so that thou fulfil that is said in the psalm: 'Lord, I shall bless Thee in churches'; that is, in thoughts and desires of the love of Jesu. And then, in this church of thoughts and desires, and in this onehead of studies and of wills, look that all thy thoughts, and all thy desires, and all thy studies, and all thy wills be only set in the love and the praising of this Lord Jesu, without forgetting, as far forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy frailty will suffer; evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel, patiently abiding the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be ravished above itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the beholding of God and ghostly things; so that it be fulfilled in thee that is written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu; that is: 'There is Benjamin, the young child, in ravishing of mind."'[8] The text printed by Pepwell differs slightly from that of the manuscripts, of which a large number have been preserved. Among others, it is found in the Arundel MS. 286, and the Harleian MSS. 674, 1022, and 2373. It has been published from the Harl. MS. 1022 by Professor C. Horstman, who observes that "it is very old, and certainly prior to Walter Hilton."[9] It is evidently by one of the followers of Richard Rolle, dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century. External and internal evidence seems to point to its being the work of the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing. This is not the place to tell again the wonderful story of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), one of the noblest and most truly heroic women that the world has ever seen. Her life and manifold activities only touched England indirectly. The famous English captain of mercenaries, Sir John Hawkwood, was among the men of the world who, at least for a while, were won to nobler ideals by her letters and exhortations. Two of her principal disciples, Giovanni Tantucci and William Flete, both Augustinian hermits, were graduates of Cambridge; the latter, an Englishman by birth, was appointed by her on her deathbed to preside over the continuance of her work in her native city, and a vision of his, concerning the legitimacy of the claims of Urban the Sixth to the papal throne, was brought forward as one of the arguments that induced England, on the outbreak of the Great Schism in the Church (1378), to adhere to the Roman obedience for which Catherine was battling to the death. A letter which she herself addressed on the same subject to King Richard the Second has not been preserved. About 1493, Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free translation, by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the addition of certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin biography of St. Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of Capua, the famous master-general and reformer of the order of St. Dominic (d. 1399). He followed this up, in 1519, by an English rendering by Brother Dane James of the Saint's mystical treatise the Dialogo: "Here begynneth the Orcharde of Syon; in the whiche is conteyned the reuelacyons of seynt Katheryne of Sene, with ghostly fruytes and precyous plantes for the helthe of mannes soule."[10] This was not translated from St. Catherine's own vernacular, but from Friar Raymond's Latin version of the latter, first printed at Brescia in 1496. From the first of these two works, the Lyf, are selected the passages--the Divers Doctrines devout and fruitful--which Pepwell here presents to us; but it seems probable that he was not borrowing directly from Caxton, as an almost verbally identical selection, with an identical title, is found in the British Museum, MS. Reg. 17 D.V., where it follows the Divine Cloud of Unknowing. Margery Kempe is a much more mysterious personage. She has come down to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de Worde:-- "Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of Lynn." And at the end:-- "Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn. Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde." The only known copy is preserved in the University of Cambridge. It is undated, but appears to have been printed in 1501.[11] With a few insignificant variations, it is the same as was printed twenty years later by Pepwell, who merely inserts a few words like "Our Lord Jesus said unto her," or "she said," and adds that she was a devout ancress. Tanner, not very accurately, writes: "This book contains various discourses of Christ (as it is pretended) to certain holy women; and, written in the style of modern Quietists and Quakers, speaks of the inner love of God, of perfection, et cetera."[12] No manuscript of the work is known to exist, and absolutely no traces can be discovered of the "Book of Margery Kempe," out of which it is implied by the Printer that these beautiful thoughts and sayings are taken. There is nothing in the treatise itself to enable us to fix its date. It is, perhaps, possible that the writer or recipient of these revelations is the "Margeria filia Johannis Kempe," who, between 1284 and 1298, gave up to the prior and convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, all her rights in a piece of land with buildings and appurtenances, "which falls to me after the decease of my brother John, and lies in the parish of Blessed Mary of Northgate outside the walls of the city of Canterbury."[13] The revelations show that she was (or had been) a woman of some wealth and social position, who had abandoned the world to become an ancress, following the life prescribed in that gem of early English devotional literature, the Ancren Riwle.14 It is clearly only a fragment of her complete book (whatever that may have been); but it is enough to show that she was a worthy precursor of that other great woman mystic of East Anglia: Juliana of Norwich. For Margery, as for Juliana, Love is the interpretation of revelation, and the key to the universal mystery:[15]-- "Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think continually in His love." "If thou wear the habergeon or the hair, fasting bread and water, and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt not please Me so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and suffrest Me to speak in thy soul." "Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart." "In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better please God than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were possible that I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the compassion that I have of thee." And, from the midst of her celestial contemplations, rises up the simple, poignant cry of human suffering: "Lord, for Thy great pain have mercy on my little pain." We are on surer ground with the treatise that follows, the Song of Angels.[16] Walter Hilton--who died on March 24, 1396--holds a position in the religious life and spiritual literature of England in the latter part of the fourteenth century somewhat similar to that occupied by Richard Rolle in its earlier years. Like the Hermit of Hampole, he was the founder of a school, and the works of his followers cannot always be distinguished with certainty from his own. Like his great master in the mystical way, Richard of St. Victor, Hilton was an Augustinian, the head of a house of canons at Thurgarton, near Newark. His great work, the Scala Perfectionis, or Ladder of Perfection, "which expoundeth many notable doctrines in Contemplation," was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494, and is still widely used for devotional reading. A shorter treatise, the Epistle to a Devout Man in Temporal Estate, first printed by Pynson in 1506, gives practical guidance to a religious layman of wealth and social position, for the fulfilling of the duties of his state without hindrance to his making profit in the spiritual life. These, with the Song of Angels, are the only printed works that can be assigned to him with certainty, though many others, undoubtedly from his pen, are to be found in manuscripts, and a complete and critical edition of Walter Hilton seems still in the far future.[17] The Song of Angels has been twice printed since the edition of Pepwell.[18] In profoundly mystical language, tinged with the philosophy of that mysterious Neo-Platonist whom we call the pseudo-Dionysius, it tells of the wonderful "onehead," the union of the soul with God in perfect charity:-- "This onehead is verily made when the mights of the soul are reformed by grace to the dignity and the state of the first condition; that is, when the mind is firmly established, without changing and wandering, in God and ghostly things, and when the reason is cleared from all worldly and fleshly beholdings, and from all bodily imaginations, figures, and fantasies of creatures, and is illumined by grace to behold God and ghostly things, and when the will and the affection is purified and cleansed from all fleshly, kindly, and worldly love, and is inflamed with burning love of the Holy Ghost." But to this blessed condition none may attain perfectly here on earth. The writer goes on to speak of the mystical consolations and visitations granted to the loving soul in this life, distinguishing the feelings and sensations that are mere delusions, from those that truly proceed from the fire of love in the affection and the light of knowing in the reason, and are a very anticipation of that ineffable "onehead" in heaven. The three remaining treatises--the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul, and the Treatise of Discerning of Spirits[19]--are associated in the manuscripts with four other works: the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, the Epistle of Privy Counsel, a paraphrase of the Mystical Theology of Dionysius entitled Dionise Hid Divinity, and the similar translation or paraphrase of the Benjamin Minor of Richard of St. Victor already considered.[20] These seven treatises are all apparently by the same hand. The Divine Cloud of Unknowing has been credited to Walter Hilton, as likewise to William Exmew, or to Maurice Chauncy, Carthusians of the sixteenth century, whereas the manuscripts are at least a hundred years earlier than their time; but it seems safer to attribute the whole series to an unknown writer of the second part of the fourteenth century, who "marks a middle point between Rolle and Hilton."[21] The spiritual beauty of the three here reprinted--and, more particularly, of the Epistle of Prayer, with its glowing exposition of the doctrine of Pure Love--speaks for itself. They show us mysticism brought down, if I may say so, from the clouds for the practical guidance of the beginner along this difficult way. And, in the Epistle of Discretion, we find even a rare touch of humour; where the counsellor "conceives suspiciously" of his correspondent's spiritual stirrings, lest "they should be conceived on the ape's manner." Like St. Catherine of Siena, though in a less degree, he has the gift of vision and the faculty of intuition combined with a homely common sense, and can illustrate his "simple meaning" with a smile. I have borrowed a phrase from St. Catherine, "The Cell of Self-Knowledge," la cella del cognoscimento di noi, as the title of this little volume. Knowledge of self and purity of heart, the mystics teach, are the indispensable conditions for the highest mystical elevation. Knowledge of self, for Richard of St. Victor, is the high mountain apart upon which Christ is transfigured; for Catherine of Siena, it is the stable in which the pilgrim through time to eternity must be born again. "Wouldest thou behold Christ transfigured?" asks Richard; "ascend this mountain; learn to know thyself."[22] "Thou dost see," writes Catherine, speaking in the person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace within your souls."[23] The soul is a mirror that reflects the invisible things of God, and it is by purity of heart alone that this mirror is made clear. "Therefore," writes Richard of St. Victor, "let whoso thirsts to see his God, wipe his mirror, purify his spirit. After he hath thus cleared his mirror and long diligently gazed into it, a certain clarity of divine light begins to shine through upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to appear before his eyes. This light irradiated the eyes of him who said: Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us; Thou hast put gladness in my heart. From the vision of this light which it sees with wonder in itself, the mind is wondrously inflamed and inspired to behold the light which is above itself."[24] Pepwell's volume has been made the basis of the present edition of these seven treatises; but, in each case, the text has been completely revised. The text of the Benjamin, the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of Discretion, and the Treatise of Discerning of Spirits, has been collated with that given by the Harleian MSS. 674 and 2373; and, in most cases, the readings of the manuscripts have been adopted in preference to those of the printed version. The Katherin has been collated with Caxton's Lyf; the Margery Kempe with Wynkyn de Worde's precious little volume in the University Library of Cambridge; and the Song of Angels with the text published by Professor Horstman from the Camb. MS Dd. v. 55. As the object of this book is not to offer a Middle English text to students, but a small contribution to mystical literature, the orthography has been completely modernised, while I have attempted to retain enough of the original language to preserve the flavour of mediaeval devotion. EDMUND G. GARDNER. I. HERE FOLLOWETH A VERY DEVOUT TREATISE, NAMED BENJAMIN, OF THE MIGHTS AND VIRTUES OF MAN'S SOUL, AND OF THE WAY TO TRUE CONTEMPLATION, COMPILED BY A NOBLE AND FAMOUS DOCTOR, A MAN OF GREAT HOLINESS AND DEVOTION, NAMED RICHARD OF SAINT VICTOR A TREATISE NAMED BENJAMIN THE PROLOGUE A GREAT clerk that men call [25] Richard of Saint Victor, in a book that he maketh of the study of wisdom, witnesseth and saith that two mights are in a man's soul, given of the Father of Heaven of whom all good cometh. The one is reason, the other is affection; through reason we know, and through affection we feel or love. Of reason springeth right counsel and ghostly wits; and of affection springeth holy desires and ordained[26] feelings. And right as Rachel and Leah were both wives unto Jacob, right so man's soul through light of knowing in the reason, and sweetness of love in the affection, is spoused unto God. By Jacob is understanden God, by Rachel is understanden reason, by Leah is understanden affection. Each of these wives, Rachel and Leah, took to them a maiden; Rachel took Bilhah, and Leah took Zilpah. Bilhah was a great jangler, and Zilpah was ever drunken and thirsty. By Bilhah is understanden imagination, the which is servant unto reason, as Bilhah was to Rachel; by Zilpah is understanden sensuality, the which is servant unto affection, as Zilpah was to Leah. And so much are these maidens needful to their ladies, that without them all this world might serve them of nought. For why, without imagination reason may not know, and without sensuality affection may not feel. And yet imagination cryeth so inconveniently[27] in the ears of our heart that, for ought that reason her lady may do, yet she may not still her. And therefore it is that oft times when we should pray, so many divers fantasies of idle and evil thoughts cry in our hearts, that on no wise we may by our own mights drive them away. And thus it is well proved that Bilhah is a foul jangler. And also the sensuality is evermore so thirsty, that all that affection her lady may feel,[28] may not yet slake her thirst. The drink that she desireth is the lust of fleshly, kindly, and worldly delights,[29] of the which the more that she drinketh the more she thirsteth; for why, for to fill the appetite of the sensuality, all this world may not suffice; and therefore it is that oft times when we pray or think on God and ghostly things, we would fain feel sweetness of love in our affection,[30] and yet we may not, for are we so busy to feed the concupiscence of our sensuality; for evermore it is greedily asking, and we have a fleshly compassion thereof. And thus it is well proved that Zilpah is evermore drunken and thirsty. And right as Leah conceived of Jacob and brought forth seven children, and Rachel conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children, and Bilhah conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children, and Zilpah conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children; right so the affection conceiveth through the grace of God, and bringeth forth seven virtues; and also the sensuality conceiveth through the grace of God, and bringeth forth two virtues; and also the reason conceiveth through the grace of God, and bringeth forth two virtues; and also the imagination conceiveth through the grace of God, and bringeth forth two virtues, or two beholdings. And the names of their children and of their virtues shall be known by this figure that followeth: Husband: Jacob temporally, God spiritually. Wives to Jacob: Leah, that is to say, Affection; Rachel, that is to say, Reason. Maid to Leah is Zilpah, that is to understand, Sensuality; and Bilhah maiden to Rachel, that is to understand, Imagination. The sons of Jacob and Leah are these seven that followeth: Reuben signifieth dread of pain; Simeon, sorrow of sins; Levi, hope of forgiveness; Judah, love of righteousness; Issachar, joy in inward sweetness; Zebulun, hatred of sin; Dinah, ordained shame. The sons of Jacob and Zilpah, servant of Leah, are these: Gad, abstinence; Asher, patience. The sons of Jacob and of Rachel are these: Joseph, discretion; Benjamin, contemplation. The sons of Jacob and Bilhah, servant to Rachel, are these: Dan, sight of pain to come; and Naphtali, sight of joy to come. In this figure it is shewed apertly of Jacob and of his wives, and their maidens, and all their children. Here it is to shew on what manner they were gotten, and in what order:-- First, it is to say of the children of Leah; for why, it is read that she first conceived. The children of Leah are nought else to understand but ordained affections or feelings in a man's soul; for why, if they were unordained, then were they not the sons of Jacob. Also the seven children of Leah are seven virtues, for virtue is nought else but an ordained and a measured feeling in a man's soul. For then is man's feeling in soul ordained when it is of that thing that it should be; then it is measured when it is so much as it should be. These feelings in a man's soul may be now ordained and measured, and now unordained and unmeasured; but when they are ordained and measured, then are they accounted among the sons of Jacob.[31] CAPITULUM I HOW THE VIRTUE OF DREAD RISETH IN THE AFFECTION THE first child that Leah conceived of Jacob was Reuben, that is, dread; and therefore it is written in the psalm: "The beginning of wisdom is the dread of our Lord God."[32] This is the first felt virtue in a man's affection, without the which none other may be had. And, therefore, whoso desireth to have such a son, him behoveth busily and oft also behold the evil that he hath done. And he shall, on the one party, think on the greatness of his trespass, and, on another party, the power of the Doomsman.[33] Of such a consideration springeth dread, that is to say Reuben, that through right is cleped "the son of sight."[34] For utterly is he blind that seeth not the pains that are to come, and dreadeth not to sin. And well is Reuben cleped the son of sight; for when he was born, his mother cried and said: "God hath seen my meekness."[35] And man's soul, in such a consideration of his old sins and of the power of the Doomsman, beginneth then truly to see God by feeling of dread, and also to be seen of God by rewarding of pity. CAPITULUM II HOW SORROW RISETH IN THE AFFECTION WHILE Reuben waxeth, Simeon is born; for after dread it needeth greatly that sorrow come soon. For ever the more that a man dreadeth the pain that he hath deserved, the bitterlier he sorroweth the sins that he hath done. Leah in the birth of Simeon cried and said: "Our Lord hath heard me be had in despite."[36] And therefore is Simeon cleped "hearing";[37] for when a man bitterly sorroweth and despiseth his old sins, then beginneth he to be heard of God, and also for to hear the blessed sentence of God's own mouth: "Blessed be they that sorrow, for they shall be comforted."[38] For in what hour the sinner sorroweth and turneth from his sin, he shall be safe.[39] Thus witnesseth holy Scripture. And also by Reuben he is meeked,[40] and by Simeon he is contrite and hath compunction of tears; but, as witnesseth David in the psalm: "Heart contrite and meeked God shall not despise";[41] and without doubt such sorrow bringeth in true comfort of heart. CAPITULUM III HOW HOPE RISETH IN THE AFFECTION BUT, I pray thee, what comfort may be to them that truly dread and bitterly sorrow for their old sins, ought but a true hope of forgiveness? the which is the third son of Jacob, that is Levi, the which is cleped in the story "a doing to."[42] For when the other two children, dread and sorrow, are given of God to a man's soul, without doubt he this third, that is hope, shall not be delayed, but he shall be lone to;[43] as the story witnesseth of Levi, that, when his two brethren, Reuben and Simeon, were given to their mother Leah, he, this Levi, was done to. Take heed of this word, that he was "done to" and not given. And therefore it is said that a man shall not presume of hope of forgiveness before the time that his heart be peeked in dread and contrite in sorrow; without these two, hope is presumption, and where these two are, hope is done to; and thus after sorrow cometh soon comfort, as David telleth in the psalm that "after the muchness of my sorrow in my heart," he saith to our Lord, "Thy comforts have gladded my soul."[44] And therefore it is that the Holy Ghost is called Paracletus, that is, comforter, for oft times he vouchethsafe to comfort a sorrowful soul. CAPITULUM IV HOW LOVE RISETH IN THE AFFECTION FROM now forth beginneth a manner of homeliness for to grow between God and a man's soul; and also on a manner a kindling of love, in so much that oft times he feeleth him not only be visited of God and comforted in His coming, but oft times also he feeleth him filled with an unspeakable joy. This homeliness and this kindling of love first felt Leah, when, after that Levi was born, she cried with a great voice and said: "Now shall my husband be coupled to me."[45] The true spouse of our soul is God, and then are we truly coupled unto Him, when we draw near Him by hope and soothfast love. And right as after hope cometh love, so after Levi was Judah born, the fourth son of Leah. Leah in his birth cried and said: "Now shall I shrive to our Lord."[46] And therefore in the story is Judah cleped "Shrift."[47] Also man's soul in this degree of love offereth it clearly to God, and saith thus: "Now shall I shrive to our Lord." For before this feeling of love in a man's soul, all that he doth is done more for dread than for love; but in this state a man's soul feeleth God so sweet, so merciful, so good, so courteous, so true, and so kind, so faithful, so lovely and so homely, that he leaveth nothing in him--might, wit, conning,[48] or will--that he offereth not it clearly, freely, and homely unto Him. This shrift is not only of sin, but of the goodness of God. Great token of love it is when a man telleth to God that He is good. Of this shrift speaketh David full oft times in the psalter, when he saith: "Make it known to God, for He is good."[49] Lo, now have we said of four sons of Leah. And after this she left bearing of children till another time; and so man's soul weeneth that it sufficeth to it when it feeleth that it loveth the true goods.[50] And so it is enough to salvation, but not to perfection. For it falleth to a perfect soul both to be inflamed with the fire of love in the affection, and also to be illumined with the light of knowing in the reason. CAPITULUM V HOW THE DOUBLE SIGHT OF PAIN AND JOY RISETH IN THE IMAGINATION THEN when Judah waxeth, that is to say, when love and desire of unseen true goods is rising and waxing in a man's affection; then coveteth Rachel for to bear some children; that is to say, then coveteth reason to know these things that affection feeleth; for as it falleth to the affection for to love, so it falleth to the reason for to know. Of affection springeth ordained and measured feelings; and of reason springeth right knowings[51] and clear understandings. And ever the more that Judah waxeth, that is to say love, so much the more desireth Rachel bearing of children, that is to say, reason studieth after knowing. But who is he that woteth not how hard it is, and nearhand impossible to a fleshly soul the which is yet rude in ghostly studies, for to rise in knowing of unseeable[52] things, and for to set the eye of contemplation in ghostly things? For why, a soul that is yet rude and fleshly, knoweth nought but bodily things, and nothing cometh yet to the mind but only seeable[53] things. And, nevertheless, yet it looketh inward as it may; and that that it may not see yet clearly by ghostly knowing, it thinketh by imagination. And this is the cause why Rachel had first children of her maiden than of herself. And so it is that, though all a man's soul may not yet get the light of ghostly knowing in the reason, yet it thinketh it sweet to hold the mind on God and ghostly things in the imagination. As by Rachel we understand reason, so by her maiden Bilhah we understand imagination. And, therefore, reason sheweth that it is more profitable for to think on ghostly things, in what manner so it be; yea, if it be in kindling of our desire with some fair imagination; than it is for to think on vanities and deceivable things of this world. And, therefore, of Bilhah were born these two: Dan and Naphtali. Dan is to say sight of pains to come; and Naphtali, sight of joys to come. These two children are full needful and full speedful unto a working soul; the one for to put down evil suggestions of sins; and the other for to raise up our wills in working of good and in kindling of our desires. For as it falleth to Dan to put down evil suggestions of sin by sight of pains to come, so it falleth to the other brother Naphtali to raise up our wills in working of good, and in kindling of holy desires by sight of joys to come. And therefore holy men, when they are stirred to any unlawful thing, by inrising of any foul thought, as oft they set before their mind the pains that are to come; and so they slaken their temptation in the beginning, ere it rise to any foul delight in their soul. And as oft as their devotion and their liking in God and ghostly things cease and wax cold (as oft times it befalleth in this life, for corruption of the flesh and many other skills),[54] so oft they set before their mind the joy that is to come. And so they kindle their will with holy desires, and destroy their temptation in the beginning, ere it come to any weariness or heaviness of sloth. And for that[55] with Dan we damn unlawful thoughts, therefore he is well cleped in the story "Doom."[56] And also his father Jacob said of him thus: "Dan shall deem his folk."[57] And also it is said in the story that, when Bilhah brought forth Dan, Rachel said thus: "Our Lord hath deemed me";[58] that is to say: "Our Lord hath evened me unto my sister Leah." And thus saith reason, when the imagination hath gotten the sight of pains to come, that our Lord hath evened her with her sister affection; and she saith thus, for she hath the sight of pains to come in her imagination, of the which she had dread and sorrow in her feeling. And then after came Naphtali, that is to say, the sight of joys to come. And in his birth spake Rachel and said: "I am made like to my sister Leah";[59] and therefore is Naphtali cleped in the story "Likeness."[60] And thus saith reason that she is made like to her sister affection. For there as she had gotten hope and love of joy to come in her feeling, she hath now gotten sight of joy to come in her imagination. Jacob said of Naphtali that he was "a hart sent out, giving speeches of fairhead."[61] So it is that, when we imagine of the joys of heaven, we say that it is fair in heaven. For[62] wonderfully kindleth Naphtali our souls with holy desires, as oft as we imagine of the worthiness and the fairhead of the joys of heaven. CAPITULUM VI HOW THE VIRTUES OF ABSTINENCE AND PATIENCE RISE IN THE SENSUALITY WHEN Leah saw that Rachel her sister made great joy of these two bastards born of Bilhah her maiden, she called forth her maiden Zilpah, to put to her husband Jacob; that she might make joy with her sister, having other two bastards gotten of her maiden Zilpah. And thus it is seemly in man's soul for to be, that from the time that reason hath refrained the great jangling of imagination, and hath put her to be underlout[63] to God, and maketh her to bear some fruit in helping of her knowing, that right so the affection refrain the lust and the thirst of the sensuality, and make her to be underlout to God, and so to bear some fruit in helping of her feeling. But what fruit may she bear, ought but that she learn to live temperately in easy things, and patiently in uneasy things? These are they, the children of Zilpah, Gad and Asher: Gad is abstinence, and Asher is patience. Gad is the sooner born child, and Asher the latter; for first it needeth that we be attempered in ourself with discreet abstinence, and after that we bear outward disease[64] in strength of patience. These are the children that Zilpah brought forth in sorrow; for in abstinence and patience the sensuality is punished in the flesh; but that that is sorrow to the sensuality turneth to much comfort and bliss to the affection. And therefore it is that, when Gad was born, Leah cried and said: "Happily"[65]; and therefore Gad is cleped in the story "Happiness," or "Seeliness."[66] And so it is well said that abstinence in the sensuality is happiness[67] in the affection. For why, ever the less that the sensuality is delighted in her lust, the more sweetness feeleth the affection in her love. Also after when Asher was born, Leah said: "This shall be for my bliss";[68] and therefore was Asher called in the story "Blessed."[69] And so it is well said that patience in the sensuality is bliss in the affection. For why, ever the more disease that the sensuality suffereth, the more blessed is the soul in the affection. And thus by abstinence and patience we shall not only understand a temperance in meat and drink, and suffering of outward tribulation, but also [in] all manner of fleshly, kindly,[70] and worldly delights, and all manner of disease, bodily and ghostly, within or without, reasonable or unreasonable, that by any of our five wits torment or delight the sensuality. On this wise beareth the sensuality fruit in help of affection, her lady. Much peace and rest is in that soul that neither is drunken in the lust of the sensuality, nor grutcheth[71] in the pain thereof. The first of these is gotten by Gad and the latter by Asher. Here it is to wete that first was Rachel's maiden put to the husband or the maiden of Leah; and this is the skill why. For truly, but if the jangling of the imagination, that is to say, the in-running of vain thoughts, be first refrained, without doubt the lust of the sensuality may not be attempered. And therefore who so will abstain him from fleshly and worldly lusts, him behoveth first seldom or never think any vain thoughts.[72] And also never in this life may a man perfectly despise the ease of the flesh, and not dread the disease, but if he have before busily beholden the meeds and the torments that are to come. But here it is to wete how that, with these four sons of these two maidens, the city of our conscience is kept wonderfully from all temptations. For all temptation either it riseth within by thought, or else without by some of our five wits. But within shall Dan deem and damn evil thoughts by sight of pain; and without shall Gad put against[73] false delights by use of abstinence. Dan waketh[74] within, and Gad without; and also their other two brethren helpen them full much: Naphtali maketh peace within with Dan, and Asher biddeth Gad have no dread of his enemies. Dan feareth the heart with ugsomeness of hell, and Naphtali cherisheth it with behighting[75] of heavenly bliss. Also Asher helpeth his brother without, so that, through them both, the wall of the city is not broken. Gad holdeth out ease, and Asher pursueth disease. Asher soon deceiveth his enemy, when he bringeth to mind the patience of his father[76] and the behighting of Naphtali, and thus oft times ever the more enemies he hath, the more matter he hath of overcoming. And therefore it is that, when he hath overcome his enemies (that is to say, the adversities of this world), soon he turneth him to his brother Gad to help to destroy his enemies. And without fail, from that he be come, soon they turn the back, and flee. The enemies of Gad are fleshly delights; but truly, from the time that a man have patience in the pain of his abstinence, false delights find no woning stead[77] in him. CAPITULUM VII HOW JOY OF INWARD SWEETNESS RISETH IN THE AFFECTION THUS when the enemy fleeth and the city is peased,[78] then beginneth a man to prove what the high peace of God is that passeth man's wit. And therefore it is that Leah left bearing of children unto this time that Gad and Asher were born of Zilpah, her maiden. For truly, but if it be so that a man have refrained the lust and the pain of his five wits in his sensuality by abstinence and patience, he shall never feel inward sweetness and true joy in God and ghostly things in the affection. This is that Issachar, the fifth son of Leah, the which in the story is cleped "Meed."[79] [And well is this joy of inward sweetness cleped "meed"];[80] for this joy is the taste of heavenly bliss, the which is the endless meed of a devout soul, beginning here. Leah, in the birth of this child, said: "God hath given me meed, for that I have given my maiden to my husband in bearing of children."[81] And so it is good that we make our sensuality bear fruit in abstaining it from all manner of fleshly, kindly, and worldly delight, and in fruitful suffering of all fleshly and worldly disease; therefore our Lord of His great mercy giveth us joy unspeakable and inward sweetness in our affection, in earnest[82] of the sovereign joy and meed of the kingdom of heaven. Jacob said of Issachar that he was "a strong ass dwelling between the terms."[83] And so it is that a man in this state, and that feeleth the earnest of everlasting joy in his affection, is as "an ass, strong and dwelling between the terms"; because that, be he never so filled in soul of ghostly gladness and joy in God, yet, for corruption of the flesh in this deadly life, him behoveth bear the charge of the deadly body, as hunger, thirst, and cold, sleep, and many other diseases; for the which he is likened to an ass as in body; but as in soul he is strong for to destroy all the passions and the lusts of the flesh by patience and abstinence in the sensuality, and by abundance of ghostly joy and sweetness in the affection. And also a soul in this state is dwelling between the terms of deadly life and undeadly life. He that dwelleth between the terms hath nearhand forsaken deadliness, but not fully, and hath nearhand gotten undeadliness, but not fully; for whiles that him needeth the goods of this world, as meat and drink and clothing, as it falleth to each man that liveth, yet his one foot is in this deadly life; and for great abundance of ghostly joy and sweetness that he feeleth in God, not seldom but oft, he hath his other foot in the undeadly life. Thus I trow that saint Paul felt, when he said this word of great desire: "Who shall deliver me from this deadly body?"[84] And when he said thus: "I covet to be loosed and to be with Christ."[85] And thus doth the soul that feeleth Issachar in his affection, that is to say, the joy of inward sweetness, the which is understanden by Issachar. It enforceth it to forsake this wretched life, but it may not; it coveteth to enter the blessed life, but it may not; it doth that it may, and yet it dwelleth between the terms. CAPITULUM VIII HOW PERFECT HATRED OF SIN RISETH IN THE AFFECTION AND therefore it is that after Issachar Zebulun is born, that is to say, hatred of sin. And here it is to wete why that hatred of sin is never perfectly felt in a man's affection, ere the time that ghostly joy of inward sweetness be felt in the affection, and this is the skill: for ere this time was never the true cause of hatred felt in the affection. For the feeling of ghostly joy teacheth a man what sin harmeth the soul. And all after that the harm in the soul is felt much or little, thereafter is the hatred measured, more or less, unto the harming. But when a soul, by the grace of God and long travail, is come to feeling of ghostly joy in God, then it feeleth that sin hath been the cause of the delaying thereof. And also when he feeleth that he may not alway last in the feeling of that ghostly joy, for the corruption of the flesh, of the which corruption sin is the cause; then he riseth with a strong feeling of hatred against all sin and all kind of sin. This feeling taught David us to have, where he saith in the psalm: "Be ye wroth and will ye not sin";[86] that is thus to mean: Be ye wroth with the sin, but not with the kind.[87] For kind stirreth to the deed, but not to sin. And here it is to wete that this wrath and this hatred is not contrary to charity, but charity teacheth how it shall be had both in a man's self and in his even Christian;[88] for a man should [not] hate sin [so that he destroy his kind, but so that he destroy the sin and the appetite of sin] in his kind. And, as against our even Christian, we ought to hate sin in him, and to love him; and of this hatred speaketh David in the psalm, where he saith thus: "With perfect hatred I hated them."[89] And in another psalm he saith that "he had in hatred all wicked ways."[90] Thus it is well proved that, ere Zebulun was born, Judah and Issachar were both born. For but if a man have had charity and ghostly joy in his feeling first, he may in no wise feel this perfect hatred of sin in his affection. For Judah, that is to say, charity, teacheth us how we shall hate sin in ourself and in our brethren; and Issachar, that is to say, ghostly feeling of joy in God, teacheth us why we shall hate sin in ourself and in our brethren. Judah biddeth us hate sin and love the kind; and Issachar biddeth us destroy the sin and save the kind; and thus it falleth for to be that the kind may be made strong in God and in ghostly things by perfect hatred and destroying of sin. And therefore is Zebulun cleped in the story "a dwelling stead of strength."[91] And Leah said in his birth: "My husband shall now dwell with me";[92] and so it is that God, that is the true husband of our soul, is dwelling in that soul, strengthening it in the affection with ghostly joy and sweetness in His love, that travaileth busily to destroy sin in himself and in others by perfect hatred of the sin and all the kind of sin. And thus it is said how Zebulun is born. CAPITULUM IX HOW ORDAINED SHAME RISETH AND GROWETH IN THE AFFECTION BUT though all that a soul through grace feel in it perfect hatred of sin, whether it may yet live without sin? Nay, sikerly;[93] and therefore let no man presume of himself, when the Apostle saith thus: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourself, and soothfastness is not in us."[94] And also saint Austin saith that he dare well say that there is no man living without sin.[95] And I pray thee, who is he that sinneth not in ignorance? Yea, and oft times it falleth that God suffereth those men to fall full grievously by the which He hath ordained other men's errors to be righted, that they may learn by their own falling how merciful they shall be in amending of others. And for that oft times men fall grievously in those same sins that they most hate, therefore, after hatred of sin, springeth ordained shame in a man's soul; and so it is that after Zebulun was Dinah born. As by Zebulun hatred of sin, so by Dinah is understanden ordained shame of sin. But wete thou well: he that felt never Zebulun, felt never yet Dinah. Evil men have a manner of shame, but it is not this ordained shame. For why, if they had perfect shame of sin, they should not so customably do it with will and advisement;[96] but they shame more with a foul cloth on their body, than with a foul thought in their soul. But what so thou be that weenest that thou hast gotten Dinah, think whether thee would shame as much if a foul thought were in thine heart, as thee would if thou were made to stand naked before the king and all his royalme; and sikerly else wete it thou right well that thou hast not yet gotten ordained shame in thy feeling, if so be that thou have less shame with thy foul heart than with thy foul body, and if thou think more shame with thy foul body in the sight of men than with thy foul heart in the sight of the King of heaven and of all His angels and holy saints in heaven. Lo, it is now said of the seven children of Leah, by the which are understanden seven manner of affections in a man's soul, the which may be now ordained and now unordained, now measured and now unmeasured; but when they are ordained and measured, then are they virtues; and when they are unordained and unmeasured, then are they vices. Thus behoveth a man have children[97] that they be not only ordained, but also measured. Then are they ordained when they are of that thing that they should be, and then are they unordained when they are of that thing that they should not be; and then are they measured when they are as much as they should be, and then are they unmeasured when they are more than they should be. For why, overmuch dread bringeth in despair, and overmuch sorrow casteth a man in to bitterness and heaviness of kind,[98] for the which he is unable to receive ghostly comfort. And overmuch hope is presumption, and outrageous love is but flattering and faging,[99] and outrageous gladness is dissolution and wantonness, and untempered hatred of sin is woodness.[100] And on this manner, they are unordained and unmeasured, and thus are they turned in to vices, and then lose they the name of virtues, and may not be accounted amongst the sons of Jacob, that is to say, God: for by Jacob is understanden God, as it is shewed in the figure before. CAPITULUM X HOW DISCRETION AND CONTEMPLATION RISE IN THE REASON Thus it seemeth that the virtue of discretion needeth to be had, with the which all others may be governed; for without it all virtues are turned in to vices. This is Joseph, that is the late born child, but yet his father loveth him more than them all. For why, without discretion may neither goodness be gotten nor kept, and therefore no wonder though that virtue be singularly loved, without which no virtue may be had nor governed. But what wonder though this virtue be late gotten, when we may not win to the perfection of discretion without much custom and many travails of these other affections coming before? For first behoveth us to be used in each virtue by itself, and get the proof of them all serely,[101] ere we may have full knowing of them all, or else can deem sufficiently of them all. And when we use us busily in these feelings and beholdings before said, oft times we fall and oft times we rise. Then, by our oft falling, may we learn how much wariness us behoveth have in the getting and keeping of these virtues. And thus sometime, by long use, a soul is led into full discretion, and then it may joy in the birth of Joseph. And before this virtue be conceived in a man's soul, all that these other virtues do, it is without discretion. And therefore, in as much as a man presumeth and enforceth him in any of these feelings beforesaid, over his might and out of measure, in so much the fouler he falleth and faileth of his purpose. And therefore it is that, after them all and last, is Dinah born; for often, after a foul fall and a failing, cometh soon shame. And thus after many failings and failings, and shames following, a man learneth by the proof that there is nothing better than to be ruled after counsel, the which is the readiest getting of discretion. For why, he that doth all things with counsel, he shall never forthink[102] it; for better is a sly man than a strong man; yea, and better is list than lither strength,[103] and a sly man speaketh of victories. And here is the open skill why that neither Leah nor Zilpah nor Bilhah might bear such a child, but only Rachel; for, as it is said before, that of reason springeth right counsel, the which is very discretion, understanden by Joseph, the first son of Rachel; and then at the first bring we forth Joseph in our reason when all that we are stirred to do, we do it with counsel. This Joseph shall not only know what sins we are most stirred unto, but also he shall know the weakness of our kind, and after that either asketh, so shall he do remedy, and seek counsel at wiser than he, and do after them, or else he is not Joseph, Jacob's son born of Rachel. And also by this foresaid[104] Joseph a man is not only learned to eschew the deceits of his enemies, but also oft a man is led by him to the perfect knowing of himself; and all after that a man knoweth himself, thereafter he profiteth in the knowing of God, of whom he is the image and the likeness. And therefore it is that after Joseph is Benjamin born. For as by Joseph discretion, so by Benjamin we understand contemplation. And both are they born of one mother, and gotten of one father. For through the grace of God lightening our reason, come we to the perfect knowing of ourself and of God, that is to say, after that it may be in this life. But long after Joseph is Benjamin born. For why, truly but if it so be that we use us busily and long in ghostly travails, with the which we are learned to know ourself, we may not be raised in to the knowing and contemplation of God. He doth for nought that lifteth up his eye to the sight of God, that is not yet able to see himself. For first I would that a man learned him to know the unseeable[105] things of his own spirit, ere he presume to know the unseeable things of the spirit of God; and he that knoweth not yet himself and weeneth that he hath gotten somedeal knowing of the unseeable things of God, I doubt it not but that he is deceived; and therefore I rede that a man seek first busily for to know himself, the which is made to the image and the likeness of God as in soul. And wete thou well that he that desireth for to see God, him behoveth to cleanse his soul, the which is as a mirror in the which all things are clearly seen, when it is clean; and when the mirror is foul, then mayst thou see nothing clearly therein; and right so it is of thy soul, when it is foul, neither thou knowest thyself nor God. As when the candle brenneth, thou mayst then see the self candle[106] by the light thereof, and other things also; right so, when thy soul brenneth in the love of God, that is, when thou feelest continually thine heart desire after the love of God, then, by the light of His grace that He sendeth in thy reason, thou mayst see both thine own unworthiness and His great goodness. And therefore cleanse thy mirror and proffer thy candle to the fire; and then, when thy mirror is cleansed and thy candle brenning, and it so be that thou wittily behold thereto, then beginneth there a manner of clarity of the light of God for to shine in thy soul, and a manner of sunbeam that is ghostly to appear before thy ghostly sight, through the which the eye of thy soul is opened to behold God and godly things, heaven and heavenly things, and all manner of ghostly things. But this sight is but by times, when God will vouchsafe for to give it to a working[107] soul, the whiles it is in the battle of this deadly life; but after this life it shall be everlasting. This light shone in the soul of David, when he said thus in the psalm: "Lord, the light of Thy face is marked upon us; Thou hast given gladness within mine heart."[108] The light of God's face is the shining of His grace, that reformeth in us His image that hath been disfigured with the darkness of sin; and therefore a soul that brenneth in desire of His sight,[109] if it hope for to have that that it desireth, wete it well it hath conceived Benjamin. And, therefore, what is more healfull[110] than the sweetness of this sight, or what softer thing may be felt? Sikerly, none; and that woteth Rachel full well. For why, reason saith that, in comparison of this sweetness, all other sweetness is sorrow, and bitter as gall before honey. Nevertheless, yet may a man never come to such a grace by his own slight.[111] For why, it is the gift of God without desert of man. But without doubt, though it be not the desert of man, yet no man may take such grace without great study and brenning desires coming before; and that woteth Rachel full well, and therefore she multiplieth her study, and whetteth her desires, seeking desire upon desire;[112] so that at the last, in great abundance of brenning desires and sorrow of the delaying of her desire, Benjamin is born, and his mother Rachel dieth;[113] for why, in what time that a soul is ravished above itself by abundance of desires and a great multitude of love, so that it is inflamed with the light of the Godhead, sikerly then dieth all man's reason. And therefore, what so thou be that covetest to come to contemplation of God, that is to say, to bring forth such a child that men clepen in the story Benjamin (that is to say, sight of God), then shalt thou use thee in this manner. Thou shalt call together thy thoughts and thy desires, and make thee of them a church, and learn thee therein for to love only this good word Jesu, so that all thy desires and all thy thoughts are only set for to love Jesu, and that unceasingly as it may be here; so that thou fulfill that is said in the psalm: "Lord, I shall bless Thee in churches";[114] that is, in thoughts and desires of the love of Jesu. And then, in this church of thoughts and desires, and in this onehead of studies and of wills, look that all thy thoughts, and all thy desires, and all thy studies, and all thy wills be only set in the love and the praising of this Lord Jesu, without forgetting, as far forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy frailty will suffer; evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel, patiently abiding the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be ravished above itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the beholding of God and ghostly things:[115] so that it be fulfilled in thee that is written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolesentulus in mentis excessu;[116] that is: "There is Benjamin, the young child, in ravishing of mind." The grace of Jesu keep thee evermore.[117] Amen DEO GRATIAS II. HERE FOLLOWETH DIVERS DOCTRINES DEVOUT AND FRUITFUL, TAKEN OUT OF THE LIFE OF THAT GLORIOUS VIRGIN AND SPOUSE OF OUR LORD, SAINT KATHERIN OF SEENES. AND FIRST THOSE WHICH OUR LORD TAUGHT AND SHEWED TO HERSELF, AND SITH THOSE WHICH SHE TAUGHT AND SHEWED UNTO OTHERS THE first doctrine of our Lord is this: "Knowest thou not, daughter, who thou art and who I am? If thou know well these two words, thou art and shalt be blessed. Thou art she that art nought; and I am He that am ought.[118] If thou have the very knowledge of these two things in thy soul, thy ghostly enemy shall never deceive thee, but thou shalt eschew graciously all his malice;[119] and thou shalt never consent to any thing that is against My commandments and precepts, but all grace, all truth, and all charity thou shalt win without any hardness." The second doctrine of our Lord is this: "Think on Me, and I shall think on thee." In declaring of which doctrine she was wont to say that: "A soul which is verily united to God perceiveth not, seeth not, nor loveth not herself, nor none other soul, nor hath no mind of no creature but only on God." And these words she expoundeth more expressly, and saith thus: "Such a soul seeth herself, that she is very nought of herself, and knoweth perfectly that all the goodness, with all the mights of the soul, is her Maker's. She forsaketh utterly herself and all creatures, and hideth herself fully in her Maker, our Lord Jesu; in so much that she sendeth fully and principally all her ghostly and bodily workings in to Him; in whom she perceiveth that she may find all goodness, and all perfection of blessedness. And, therefore, she shall have no will to go out from such inward knowledge of Him for nothing.[120] And of this unity of love, that is increased every day in such a soul, she is transformed in a manner in to our Lord, that she may neither think, nor understand, nor love, nor have no mind but God, or else in God. For she may not see herself, nor none other creature, but only in God; nor she may not love herself, nor none other, but only in God; nor she may have no mind of herself nor of none other, but only in God, nor she may have no mind but only of her Maker. And therefore," she said, "we shall have none other business but only to think how we may please Him, unto whom we have committed all our governance both in body and soul." The third doctrine of our Lord is this; in obtaining of virtue and ghostly strength: "Daughter, if thou wilt get unto thee virtue and also ghostly strength,[121] thou must follow Me. Albeit that I might by My godly virtue have overcome all the power of the fiends by many manner ways of overcoming, yet, for to give you ensample by My manhood, I would not overcome him but only by taking of death upon the Cross, that ye might be taught thereby, if ye will overcome your ghostly enemies, for to take the Cross as I did; the which Cross shall be to you a great refreshing in all your temptations, if ye have mind of the pains that I suffered thereon.[122] And certainly the pains of the Cross may well be called refreshing of temptations, for the more pain ye suffer for My love, the more like ye be to Me. And if ye be so like to Me in passion, needs ye must be like to Me in joy.[123] Therefore for My love, daughter, suffer patiently bitter things, and not sweet things; and doubt in no wise, for thou shalt be strong enough for to suffer all things patiently." The first doctrine of this glorious virgin is this: "A soul which is verily mete[124] to God, as much as it hath of the love of God, so much it hath of the hate of her own sensuality. For of the love of God naturally cometh hate of sin, the which is done against God. The soul, therefore, considering that the root and beginning of sin reigneth in the sensuality, and there principally is rooted, she is moved and stirred highly and holily with all her mights against her own sensuality; not utterly to destroy the root, for that may not be, as long as the soul dwelleth in the body living in this life, but ever there shall be left a root, namely of small venial sins. And because she may not utterly destroy the root of sin thus in her sensuality, she conceiveth a great displeasaunce against her sensuality, of the which displeasaunce springeth an holy hate and a despising of the sensuality, by the which the soul is ever well kept from her ghostly enemies. There is nothing that keepeth the soul so strong and so sure as doth such an holy hate. And that felt well the Apostle, when he said: Cum infirmor, tonc fortior sum et potens;[125] that is: When I am sick and feeble in my sensuality by hate of sin, then am I stronger and mightier in my soul. Lo, of such hate cometh virtue, of such feebleness cometh strength, and of such displeasaunce cometh pleasaunce. This holy hate maketh a man meek, and to feel meek things of himself. It maketh him patient in adversity, temperate in prosperity, and setteth him in all honesty of virtue, and maketh him to be loved both of God and man. And where this holy hate is not, there is inordinate love, which is the stinking canal of all sin, and root[126] of all evil concupiscence. Do therefore," she saith, "your business to put away such inordinate love of your own self, out of your hearts, and plant therein holy hate of sin. For certain that is the right way to perfection, and amendment of all sin." Here is a common answer which she used to say to the fiends: "I trust in my Lord Jesu Christ, and not in myself." Here is a rule how we shall behave us in time of temptation: "When temptation," she saith, "ariseth in us, we should never dispute nor make questions; for that is," she saith, "that the fiend most seeketh of us for to fall in questions with him. He trusteth so highly in the great subtlety of his malice, that he should overcome us with his sophistical reasons. Therefore a soul should never make questions, nor answer to the questions of the fiend, but rather turn her to devout prayer, and commend her to our Lord that she consent not to his subtle demands; for by virtue of devout prayer, and steadfast faith, we may overcome all the subtle temptations of the fiend." Here is a good conceit of this holy maid to eschew the temptations of the fiend: "It happeneth," she said, "that otherwhile[127] the devout fervour of a soul loving our Lord Jesu, either by some certain sin, or else by some new subtle temptations of the fiend, waxeth dull and slow, and otherwhile it is brought to very coldness;[128] in so much that some unwitty folks, considering that they be destitute from the ghostly comfort the which they were wont to have, leave[129] therefore the ghostly exercise that they were wont to use of prayer, of meditations, of reading, of holy communications, and of penance doing; whereby they be made more ready to be overcome of the fiend. For he desireth nothing else of Christ's knights, but that they should put away their armour by the which they were wont to overcome their enemies. A wise knight of our Lord Jesu should not do so. But thus, the more he feeleth[130] himself dull and slow, or cold in devotion, the rather he should continue in his ghostly exercise, and not for to make them less, but rather increase them." Here is another doctrine of this holy maid, the which she used to say to herself in edifying of others: "Thou vile and wretched creature, art thou worthy any manner of comfort in this life? Why hast thou not mind of thy sins? What supposest thou of thyself, wretched sinner? Is it not enough to thee, trowest thou not, that thou art escaped by the mercy of our Lord from everlasting damnation? Therefore thou shouldest be well apaid,[131] wretch, though thou suffer all the pains and darkness of thy soul all the days of thy life. Why art thou, then, heavy and sorrowful to suffer such pains, sith by God's grace thou shalt escape endless pains with Christ Jesu without any doubt, and be comforted endlessly, if thou bear these pains patiently. Whether hast thou chosen to serve our Lord only for the comfort that thou mayst have of Him in this life? Nay, but for the comfort that thou shalt have of Him in the bliss of heaven. Therefore arise up now, and cease never of thy ghostly exercise that thou hast used, but rather increase to them more." Here is an answer by the which she had a final victory of the fiend, after long threats of intolerable pains: "I have chosen pain for my refreshing, and therefore it is not hard to me to suffer them, but rather delectable for the love of my Saviour, as long as it pleaseth His Majesty that I shall suffer them." Here is a doctrine of the said virgin, how we should use the grace of our Lord: "Who so could use the grace of our Lord, he should ever have the victory of all things that falleth to him. For as often," she said, "as any new thing falleth to a man, be it of prosperity or adversity, he should think in himself thus: Of this will I win somewhat. For he that can do so, shall soon be rich in virtue." Here followeth notable doctrines of this holy maid, taken of her sermon which she made to her disciples before her passing, and the first was this: "What so ever he be that cometh to the service of God, if he will have God truly, it is needful to him that he make his heart naked from all sensible love, not only of certain persons but of every creature what that ever he be, and then he should stretch up his soul to our Lord and our Maker, simply, with all the desire of his heart. For an heart may not wholly be given to God, but if it be free from all other love, open and simple without doubleness." And so she affirmed of herself, that it was her principal labour and business from her young age unto that time, ever for to come to that perfection. Also she said that she knew well that to such a state of perfection, in the which all the heart is given to God, a soul may not come perfectly without meditation of devout prayer, and that the prayer be grounded in meekness, and that it come not forth and proceed by any trust of any manner of virtue of him that prayeth, but alway he should know himself to be right nought. For she said that that was ever her business, to give herself to the exercise of prayer, so for to win the continual habit of prayer; for she did see well that by prayer all virtues are increased, and made mighty and strong; and, without prayer, they wax feeble and defail.[132] Wherefore she induced her disciples that they should busy them to prayer perseverauntly; and therefore she told them of two manner of prayers:[133] Vocal and Mental. Vocal prayers, she said, should be kept certain hours in the night and in the day ordained by holy Church; but mental prayer should ever be had, in act or in habit of the soul. Also she said that, by the light of quick faith, she saw clearly and conceived in her soul that what that ever befell to her, or to any others, all cometh from God, not for hate but for great love that He hath to His creatures; and by[134] this quick faith she conceived in herself a love and a readiness to obey as well to the precepts of her sovereigns,[135] as to the commandments of God, ever thinking that their precepts should come from God, either for need of herself, or else for increase of virtue in her soul. Also she said, for to get and purchase purity of soul, it were right necessary that a man kept himself from all manner of judgments of his [neighbour, and from all idle speaking of his][136] neighbour's deeds; for in every creature we should behold only the will of God. And therefore she said that in no wise men should deem[137] creatures; that is, neither despise them by their doom[138] nor condemn them, all be it that they see them do open sin before them; but rather they should have compassion on them and pray for them, and despise them not, nor condemn them. Also she said that she had great hope and trust in God's providence; for, she said, she knew well[139] by experience that the Divine providence was and is a passing great thing, for it wanteth never to them that hopeth in it. DEO GRATIS III. HERE BEGINNETH A SHORT TREATISE OF CONTEMPLATION TAUGHT BY OUR LORD JESU CHRIST, OR TAKEN OUT OF THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE, ANCRESS OF LYNN SHE desired many times that her head might be smitten off with an axe upon a block for the love of our Lord Jesu. Then said our Lord Jesu in her mind: "I thank thee, daughter, that thou wouldest die for My love; for as often as thou thinkest so, thou shalt have the same meed in heaven, as if thou suffredest the same death, and yet there shall no man slay thee. "I assure thee in thy mind, if it were possible for Me to suffer pain again, as I have done before, Me were lever to suffer as much pain as ever I did for thy soul alone, rather than thou shouldest depart from Me everlastingly. "Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think continually in His love." Then she asked our Lord Jesu Christ, how she should best love Him. And our Lord said: "Have mind of thy wickedness, and think on My goodness. "Daughter, if thou wear the habergeon or the hair,[140] fasting bread and water, and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt[141] not please Me so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and suffrest Me to speak in thy soul. "Daughter, for to bid many beads, it is good to them that can not better do, and yet it is not perfect.[142] But it is a good way toward perfection. For I tell thee, daughter, they that be great fasters, and great doers of penance, they would that it should be holden the best life.[143] And they that give them unto many devotions, they would have that the best life. And those that give much almesse, they would that it were holden the best life. And I have often told thee, daughter, that thinking, weeping, and high contemplation is the best life in earth, and thou shalt have more merit in heaven for one year thinking in thy mind than for an hundred year of praying with thy mouth; and yet thou wilt not believe Me, for thou wilt bid many beads.[144] "Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart. "Daughter, if thou wilt be high with Me in heaven, keep Me alway in thy mind as much as thou mayst, and forget not Me at thy meat; but think alway that I sit in thine heart and know every thought that is therein, both good and bad. "Daughter, I have suffered many pains for thy love; therefore thou hast great cause to love Me right well, for I have bought thy love full dear." "Dear Lord," she said, "I pray Thee, let me never have other joy in earth, but mourning and weeping for Thy love; for me thinketh, Lord, though I were in hell, if I might weep there and mourn for Thy love as I do here, hell should not noye[145] me, but it should be a manner of heaven. For Thy love putteth away all manner of dread of our ghostly enemy; for I had lever be there, as long as Thou wouldest, and please Thee, than to be in this world and displease Thee; therefore, good Lord, as Thou wilt, so may[146] it be." She had great wonder that our Lord would become man, and suffer so grievous pains, for her that was so unkind a creature to Him. And then, with great weeping, she asked our Lord Jesu how she might best please Him; and He answered to her soul, saying: "Daughter, have mind of thy wickedness, and think on My goodness." Then she prayed many times and often these words: "Lord, for Thy great goodness, have mercy on my great wickedness, as certainly as I was never so wicked as Thou art good, nor never may be though I would; for Thou art so good, that Thou mayst no better be; and, therefore, it is great wonder that ever any man should be departed from Thee without end." When she saw the Crucifix, or if she saw a man had a wound, or a beast, or if a man beat a child before her, or smote a horse or another beast with a whip, if she might see it or hear it, she thought she saw our Lord beaten or wounded, like as she saw in the man or in the beast. The more she increased in love and in devotion, the more she increased in sorrow and contrition, in lowliness[147] and meekness, and in holy dread of our Lord Jesu, and in knowledge of her own frailty. So that if she saw any creature be punished or sharply chastised, she would think that she had been more worthy to be chastised than that creature was, for her unkindness against God. Then would she weep for her own sin, and for compassion of that creature. Our Lord said to her: "In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better please God than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were possible that I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the compassion that I have of thee." Our merciful Lord Jesu Christ drew this creature unto His love, and to the mind of His passion, that she might not endure to behold a leper, or another sick man, specially if he had any wounds appearing on him. So she wept as if she had seen our Lord Jesu with His wounds bleeding; and so she did, in the sight of the soul; for, through the beholding of the sick man, her mind was all ravished in to our Lord Jesu, that she had great mourning and sorrowing that she might not kiss the leper when she met them in the way, for the love of our Lord: which was all contrary to her disposition in the years of her youth and prosperity, for then she abhorred them most. Our Lord said: "Daughter, thou hast desired in thy mind to have many priests in the town of Lynn, that might sing and read night and day for to serve Me, worship Me, and praise Me, and thank Me for the goodness that I have done to thee in earth; and therefore, daughter, I promise thee that thou shalt have meed and reward in heaven for the good wills and good desires, as if thou haddest done them in deed. "Daughter, thou shalt have as great meed and as great reward with Me in heaven, for thy good service and thy good deeds that thou hast done in thy mind, as if thou haddest done the same with thy bodily wits withoutforth.[148] "And, daughter, I thank thee for the charity that thou hast to all lecherous men and women; for thou prayest for them and weepest for them many a tear, desiring that I should deliver them out of sin, and be as gracious to them as I was to Mary Magdalene, that they might have as much grace to love Me as Mary Magdalene had; and with this condition thou wouldest that everich[149] of them should have twenty pounds a year to love and praise Me; and, daughter, this great charity which thou hast to them in thy prayer pleaseth Me right well. And, daughter, also I thank thee for the charity which thou hast in thy prayer, when thou prayest for all Jews and Saracens, and all heathen people that they should come to Christian faith, that My name might be magnified in them. Furthermore, daughter, I thank thee for the general charity that thou hast to all people that be now in this world, and to all those that are to come unto the world's end; that thou wouldest be hacked as small as flesh to the pot for their love, so that I would by thy death save them all from damnation, if it pleased Me. And, therefore, daughter, for all these good wills and desires, thou shalt have full meed and reward in heaven, believe it right well and doubt never a deal." She said: "Good Lord, I would be laid naked upon an hurdle for Thy love, all men to wonder on me and to cast filth and dirt on me, and be drawen from town to town every day my life time, if Thou were pleased thereby, and no man's soul hindered. Thy will be fulfilled and not mine." "Daughter," He said, "as oftentimes as thou sayest or thinkest: Worshipped be all the holy places in Jerusalem, where Christ suffered bitter pain and passion in: thou shalt have the same pardon as if thou were there with thy bodily presence, both to thyself and to all those that thou wilt give to.[150] "The same pardon that was granted thee aforetime, it was confirmed on Saint Nicholas day, that is to say, playne[151] remission; and it is not only granted to thee, but also to all those that believe, and to all those that shall believe unto the world's end, that God loveth thee, and shall thank God for thee. If they will forsake their sin, and be in full will no more to turn again thereto, but be sorry and heavy for that they have done, and will do due penance therefore, they shall have the same pardon that is granted to thyself; and that is all the pardon that is in Jerusalem,[152] as was granted thee when thou were at Rafnys."[153] That day that she suffered no tribulation for our Lord's sake, she was not merry nor glad, as that day when she suffered tribulation. Our Lord Jesus said unto her: "Patience is more worth than miracles doing. Daughter, it is more pleasure to Me that thou suffer despites, scorns, shames, reproofs, wrongs, and diseases, than if thine head were stricken off three times a day every day in seven year." "Lord," she said, "for Thy great pain have mercy on my little pain." When she was in great trouble, our Lord said: "Daughter, I must needs comfort thee, for now thou hast the right way to heaven. By this way came I and all My disciples; for now thou shalt know the better what sorrow and shame I suffered for thy love, and thou shalt have the more compassion when thou thinkest on My passion." "O my dear worthy Lord," said she, "these graces Thou shouldest shew to religious men and to priests." Our Lord said to her again: "Nay, nay, daughter, for that I love best that they love not, and that is shames, reproofs, scorns, and despites of the people; and therefore they shall not have this grace; for, daughter, he that dreadeth the shames of this world may not perfectly love God." Here endeth a short treatise of a devout ancress called Margery Kempe of Lynn IV. HERE FOLLOWETH A DEVOUT TREATISE COMPILED BY MASTER WALTER HYLTON OF THE SONG OF ANGELS DEAR brother in Christ, I have understanding by thine own speech, and also by telling of another man, that thou yearnest and desirest greatly for to have more knowledge and understanding than thou hast of angel's song and heavenly sound; what it is, and on what wise it is perceived and felt in a man's soul, and how a man may be siker that it is true and not feigned; and how it is made by the presence of the good angel, and not by the inputting of the evil angel. These things thou wouldest wete of me; but, soothly, I cannot tell thee for a surety the soothfastness of this matter; nevertheless somewhat, as me thinketh, I shall shew thee in a short word. Wete thou well that the end and the sovereignty of perfection standeth in very onehead[154] of God and of a man's soul by perfect charity. This onehead, then, is verily made when the mights of the soul are reformed by grace to the dignity and the state of the first condition; that is, when the mind is stabled sadly,[155] without changing and vagation,[156] in God and ghostly things, and when the reason is cleared from all worldly and fleshly beholdings, and from all bodily imaginations, figures, and fantasies of creatures, and is illumined by grace to behold God and ghostly things, and when the will and the affection is purified and cleansed from all fleshly, kindly, and worldly love, and is inflamed with brenning love of the Holy Ghost. This wonderful onehead may not be fulfilled[157] perfectly, continually, and wholly in this life, for the corruption of the flesh, but only in the bliss of heaven. Nevertheless, the nearer that a soul in this present life may come to this onehead, the more perfect it is. For the more that it is reformed by grace to the image and the likeness of its Creator here on this wise; the more joy and bliss shall it have in heaven. Our Lord God is an endless being without changing, almighty without failing, sovereign wisdom, light, soothness without error or darkness; sovereign goodness, love, peace, and sweetness. Then the more that a soul is united, fastened, conformed, and joined to our Lord, the more stable and mighty it is, the more wise and clear, good and peaceable, loving and more virtuous it is, and so it is more perfect. For a soul that hath by the grace of Jesu, and long travail of bodily and ghostly exercise, overcome and destroyed concupiscences, and passions, and unskilful stirrings[158] within itself, and without in the sensuality, and is clothed all in virtues, as in meekness and mildness, in patience and softness, in ghostly strength and righteousness, in continence, in wisdom, in truth, hope and charity; then it is made perfect, as it may be in this life. Much comfort it receiveth of our Lord, not only inwardly in its own privy substance,[159] by virtue of the onehead to our Lord that lieth in knowing and loving of God, in light and ghostly brenning of Him, in transforming of the soul in to the Godhead; but also many other comforts, savours, sweetnesses, and wonderful feelings on sere[160] or sundry manners, after that our Lord vouchethsafe to visit His creatures here in earth, and after that the soul profiteth and waxeth in charity. Some soul, by virtue of charity that God giveth it, is so cleansed, that all creatures, and all that he heareth, or seeth, or feeleth by any of his wits, turneth him to comfort and gladness; and the sensuality receiveth new savour and sweetness in all creatures.[161] And right as beforetime the likings in the sensuality were fleshly, vain, and vicious, for the pain of the original sin; right so now they are made ghostly and clean, without bitterness and biting of conscience. And this is the goodness of our Lord, that sith the soul is punished in the sensuality, and the flesh is partner of the pain, that afterward the soul be comforted in the sensuality, and the flesh be fellow of joy and comfort with the soul, not fleshly, but ghostly, as he was fellow in tribulation and pain. This is the freedom and the lordship, the dignity, and the worship that a man[162] hath over all creatures, the which dignity he may so recover by grace here, that every creature savour to him as it is. And that is, when by grace he seeth, he heareth, he feeleth only God in all creatures. On this manner of wise a soul is made ghostly in the sensuality by abundance of charity, that is, in the substance of the soul. Also, our Lord comforteth a soul by angel's song. What that song is, it may not be described by no bodily likeness, for it is ghostly, and above all manner of imagination and reason. It may be felt and perceived in a soul, but it may not be shewed. Nevertheless, I shall speak thereof to thee as me thinketh. When a soul is purified by the love of God, illumined by wisdom, stabled by the might of God, then is the eye of the soul opened to behold ghostly things, as virtues and angels and holy souls, and heavenly things.[163] Then is the soul able because of cleanness to feel the touching, the speaking of good angels. This touching and speaking, it is ghostly and not bodily.[164] For when the soul is lifted and ravished out of the sensuality, and out of mind of any earthly things, then in great fervour of love and light (if our Lord vouchsafe) the soul may hear and feel heavenly sound, made by the presence of angels in loving of God. Not that this song of angels is the sovereign joy of the soul; but for the difference that is between a man's soul in flesh and an angel, because of uncleanness, a soul may not hear it, but by ravishing in love, and needeth for to be purified well clean, and fulfilled of much charity, or[165] it were able for to hear heavenly sound. For the sovereign and the essential joy is in the love of God by Himself and for Himself, and the secondary is in communing and beholding of angels and ghostly creatures. For right as a soul, in understanding of ghostly things, is often times touched and moved through bodily imagination by working of angels; as Ezekiel the prophet did see in bodily imagination the soothfastness of God's privities;[166] right so, in the love of God, a soul by the presence of angels is ravished out of mind of all earthly and fleshly things in to an heavenly joy, to hear angel's song and heavenly sound, after that the charity is more or less.[167] Now, then, me thinketh that there may no soul feel verily angel's song nor heavenly sound, but he be in perfect charity; though all that are in perfect charity have not felt it, but only that soul that is so purified in the fire of love that all earthly savour is brent out of it, and all mean letting[168] between the soul and the cleanness of angels is broken and put away from it. Then soothly may he sing a new song, and soothly he may hear a blessed heavenly sound, and angel's song without deceit or feigning. Our Lord woteth there that soul is that, for abundance of brenning love, is worthy to hear angel's song. Who so then will hear angel's song, and not be deceived by feigning of himself, nor by imagination, nor by the illusion of the enemy, him behoveth for to have perfect charity; and that is when all vain love and dread, vain joy and sorrow, is cast out of the heart, so that it love nothing but God, nor dread nothing but God, nor joyeth, nor sorroweth nothing but in God, or for God. Who so might by the grace of God go this way, he should not err. Nevertheless, some men are deceived by their own imagination, or by the illusion of the enemy in this manner.[169] Some man, when he hath long travailed bodily and ghostily in destroying of sins and getting of virtues, and peradventure hath gotten by grace a somedeal[170] rest, and a clarity in conscience, anon he leaveth prayers, readings of holy scriptures, and meditations of the passion of Christ, and the mind of his wretchedness; and, or[171] he be called of God, he gathereth his own visits by violence to seek and to behold heavenly things, or his eye be made ghostly by grace, and overtravaileth by imaginations his wits, and by indiscreet travailing turneth the brains in his head, and forbreaketh[172] the mights and the wits of the soul and of the body. And then, for feebleness of the brain, him thinketh that he heareth wonderful sounds and songs; and that is nothing else but a fantasy, caused of troubling of the brain; as a man that is in a frenzy him thinketh that he heareth and seeth that none other man doth; and all is but vanity and fantasies of the head, or else it is by working of the wicked enemy that feigneth such sounds in his hearing. For if a man have any presumption in his fantasies and in his workings, and thereby falleth in to indiscreet imagination, as it were in a frenzy, and is not ordered nor ruled of grace, nor comforted by ghostly strength, the devil entereth in, and by his false illuminations, and by his false sounds, and by his false sweetnesses, he deceiveth a man's soul. And of this false ground springeth errors, and heresies, false prophecies, presumptions, and false reasonings, blasphemings, and slanderings, and many other mischiefs. And, therefore, if thou see any man ghostly occupied fall in any of these sins and these deceits, or in frenzies, wete thou well that he never heard nor felt angel's song nor heavenly sound. For, soothly, he that heareth verily angel's song, he is made so wise that he shall never err by fantasy, nor by indiscretion, nor by no slight[173] of working of the devil. Also, some men feel in their hearts as it were a ghostly sound, and sweet songs in divers manners; and this is commonly good, and sometime it may turn to deceit. This sound is felt on this wise. Some man setteth the thought of his heart only in the name of Jesu, and steadfastly holdeth it thereto, and in short time him thinketh that that name turneth him to great comfort and sweetness, and him thinketh that the name soundeth in his heart delectably, as it were a song; and the virtue of this liking is so mighty, that it draweth in all the wits of the soul thereto. Who so may feel this sound and this sweetness verily in his heart, wete thou well that it is of God,[174] and, as long as he is meek, he shall not be deceived. But this is not angel's song; but it is a song of the soul by virtue of the name and by touching of the good angel.[175] For when a soul offereth him to Jesu truly and meekly, putting all his trust and his desire in Him, and busily keepeth Him in his mind, our Lord Jesu, when He will, pureth[176] the affection of the soul, and filleth it, and feedeth it with sweetness of Himself, and maketh His name in the feeling of the soul[177] as honey, and as song, and as any thing that is delectable; so that it liketh the soul evermore for to cry Jesu, Jesu. And not only he hath comfort in this, but also in psalms and hymns, and anthems of holy Church, that the heart singeth them sweetly, devoutly, and freely, without any travail of the soul, or bitterness in the same time,[178] and notes that holy Church useth. This is good, and of the gift of God, for the substance of this feeling lies in the love of Jesu, which is fed and lightened[179] by such manner of songs. Nevertheless, in this manner of feeling, a soul may be deceived by vain glory; not in that time that the affection singeth to Jesu, and loveth Jesu in sweetness of Him, but afterward, when it ceaseth and the heart keeleth[180] of the love of Jesu, then entereth in vain glory. Also some man is deceived on this wise: he heareth well say that it is good to have Jesu in his mind, or any other good word of God; then he straineth his heart mightily to that name, and by a custom he hath it nearhand alway in his mind; and, nevertheless, he feeleth not thereby in his affection sweetness, nor light of knowing in his reason, but only a naked mind of God,[181] or of Jesu, or of Mary, or of any other good word. Here may be deceit, not for it is evil for to have Jesu in mind on this wish but if he this feeling and this mind, that is only his own working by custom, hold it a special visitation of our Lord,[182] and think it more than it is. For wete thou well that a naked mind or a naked imagination of Jesu, or of any ghostly thing, without sweetness of love in the affection, or without light of knowing in reason, it is but a blindness, and a way to deceit, if a man hold it in his own sight more than it is. Therefore I hold it siker[183] that he be meek in his own feeling, and hold this mind in regard nought, till he may, by custom and using of this mind, feel the fire of love in his affection, and the light of knowing in his reason. Lo, I have told thee in this matter a little, as me thinketh; not affirming that this sufficeth, nor that this is the soothfastness in this matter. But if thou think it otherwise, or else any other man savour by grace the contrary hereto, I leave this saying, and give stead to him; it sufficeth to me for to live in truth[184] principally, and not in feeling. EXPLICIT V. HERE AFTER FOLLOWETH A DEVOUT TREATISE CALLED THE EPISTLE OF PRAYER GHOSTLY friend in God, as touching thine asking of me, how thou shalt rule thine heart in the time of thy prayer, I answer unto thee thus feebly as I can. And I say that me thinketh that it should be full speedful unto thee at the first beginning of thy prayer, what prayer so ever it be, long or short, for to make it full known unto thine heart, without any feigning, that thou shalt die at the end of thy prayer.[185] And wete thou well that this is no feigned thought that I tell thee, and see why; for truly there is no man living in this life that dare take upon him to say the contrary: that is to say, that thou shalt live longer than thy prayer is in doing. And, therefore, thou mayst think it safely, and I counsel thee to do it. For, if thou do it, thou shalt see that, what for the general sight that thou hast of thy wretchedness, and this special sight of the shortness of time of amendment, it shall bring in to thine heart a very working of dread. And this working shalt thou feel[186] verily folden in thine heart, but if it so be (the which God forbid) that thou flatter and fage[187] thy false fleshly blind heart with leasings[188] and feigned behightings, that thou shalt longer live.[189] For though it may be sooth in thee in deed that thou shalt live longer, yet it is ever in thee a false leasing for to think it before, and for to behight[190] it to thine heart. For why, the soothfastness of this thing is only in God, and in thee is but a blind abiding of His will, without certainty of one moment, the which is as little or less than a twinkling of an eye. And, therefore, if thou wilt pray wisely as the prophet biddeth when he saith in the psalm: Psallite sapienter;191 look that thou get thee in the beginning this very working of dread. For, as the same prophet saith in another psalm: Initium sapientiae timor Domini;192 that is: "The beginning of wisdom is the dread of our Lord God." But for that there is no full sikerness standing[193] upon dread only, for fear of sinking in to over much heaviness, therefore shalt thou knit to thy first thought this other thought that followeth. Thou shalt think steadfastly that if thou may, through the grace of God, distinctly pronounce the words of that prayer, and win to the end thereof, or if thou die before thou come to the end, so that thou do that in thee is, that then it shall be accepted of thee unto God, as a full aseeth[194] of all thy recklessness from the beginning of thy life unto that moment. I mean thus: standing that thou hast before time, after thy conning and thy conscience, lawfully amended thee after the common ordinance of holy Church in confession; this short prayer, so little as it is, shall be accepted of thee unto God for thy full salvation, if thou then didst die, and to the great increase of thy perfection, if thou didst live longer. This is the goodness of God, the which, as the prophet saith, forsaketh none that truly trusteth in Him with will of amendment;[195] and sith that all amendment standeth in two--that is, in leaving of evil and doing of good--means to get these two are none readier than the ghostly working of these two thoughts touched before. For what reaveth from a soul[196] more readily the affection of sinning, than doth a true working of dread of death? And what moveth a soul[197] more fervently to working of good, than doth a certain hope in the mercy and the goodness of God, the which is brought in by this second thought? For why, the ghostly feeling of this second thought, when it is thus truly joined to the first, shall be to thee a sure staff of hope to hold thee by in all thy good doings. And by this staff thou mayst sikerly climb in to the high mount of perfection, that is to say, to the perfect love of God; though all this beginning be imperfect, as thou shalt hear after. For, what for the general sight that thou hast of the mercy and of the goodness of God, and this special experience that thou feelest of His mercy and His goodness in this acceptation of this little short service for so long recklessness, as it were in a full aseeth of so much recklessness (as it is said before), it may not be but that thou shalt feel a great stirring of love unto Him that is so good and so merciful unto thee--as the steps of thy staff, hope, plainly sheweth unto thee in the time of thy prayer, if thou do it duly as I have told thee before.[198] The ghostly experience of the proof of this working standeth all in a reverent affection that a man hath to God in the time of his prayer, caused of this dread in the ground of this work, and of this stirring of love, the which is brought in by the ghostly steps of this staff hope, touched before. For why, reverence is nought else but dread and love medled together with a staff of certain hope, Me thinketh that the proof of this working is devotion; for devotion is nought else, as saint Thomas the doctor saith, but a readiness of man's will to do those things that longeth to the service of God.[199] Each man prove in himself, for he that doth God's service in this manner, he feeleth how ready that his will is thereto. Me thinketh that saint Bernard accordeth to this working, where he saith that all things should be done swiftly and gladly. And see why: swiftly for dread, and gladly for hope, and lovely trust in His mercy. [And what more? Sikerly, I had lever have his meed that lasteth in such doing, though all he never did bodily penance in this life, but only that that is enjoined to him of holy Church, than of all the penance-doers that have been in this life from the beginning of the world unto this day without this manner of doing. I say not that the naked thinking of these two thoughts is so meedful; but that reverent affection, to the which bringing in these two thoughts are sovereign means on man's party, that is it that is so meedful as I say.[200]] And this is only it by itself, without any other manner of doing (as is fasting, waking, sharp wearing, and all these other), the which only by itself pleaseth almighty God, and deserveth to have meed of Him. And it were impossible any soul to have meed of God without this, and all after the quantity of this shall stand the quantity of meed; for whoso hath much of this, much meed shall he have, and whoso hath less of this, less meed shall he have. And all these other things, as is fasting, waking, sharp wearing, and all these other, they are needful[201] in as much as they are helply to get this, so that without this they are nought. And this without them is sometime sufficient at the full by itself, and it is often times full worthily had and come to of full many without any of the others. All this I say for that I would by this knowing that thou charged and commended each thing after that it is: the more, "the more," and the less, "the less"; for oft times unknowing is cause of much error. And oft times unknowing maketh men to charge more and commend more bodily exercise (as is fasting, waking, sharp wearing, and all these others) than they do ghostly exercise in virtues or in this reverent affection touched before. And, therefore, in more declaration of the meed and the worthiness of this reverent affection, I shall say a little more than I yet have said, so that, by such declaring, thou mayst be better learned in this working than thou yet art. All this manner of working beforesaid of this reverent affection, when it is brought in by these two thoughts of dread and of hope coming before, may well be likened to a tree that were full of fruit; of the which tree, dread is that party that is within in the earth, that is, the root. And hope is that party that is above the earth, that is, the body[202] with the boughs. In that that hope is certain and stable, it is the body; in that it stirreth men to works of love, it is the boughs; but this reverent affection is evermore the fruit, and then, evermore as long as the fruit is fastened to the tree,[203] it hath in party a green smell of the tree; but when it hath been a certain time departed from the tree and is full ripe, then it hath lost all the taste of the tree, and is king's meat [that was before but knave's meat].[204] In this time it is that this reverent affection is so meedful as I said. And, therefore, shape thee for to depart this fruit from the tree, and for to offer it up by itself to the high King of heaven; and then shalt thou be cleped God's own child, loving Him with a chaste love for Himself, and not for His goods.[205] I mean thus: though all that the innumerable good deeds, the which almighty God of His gracious goodness hath shewed to each soul in this life, be sufficient causes at the full and more, to each soul to love Him for, with all his mind, with all his wit, and with all his will; yet if it might be, that may no wise be, that a soul were as mighty, as worthy, and as witty as all the saints and angels that are in heaven gathered in one, and had never taken this worthiness of God,[206] or to whom that God had never shewed kindness in this life; yet this soul, seeing the loveliness of God in Himself, and the abundance thereof, should be ravished over his might for to love God, till the heart brast; so lovely and so liking, so good and so glorious He is in Himself. O how wonderful a thing and how high a thing is the love of God for to speak of, of the which no man may speak perfectly to the understanding of the least party thereof, but by impossible ensamples, and passing the understanding of man! And thus it is that I mean when I say loving Him with a chaste love for Himself, and not for His goods;[207] not as if I said (though all I well said) much for His goods, but without comparison more for Himself. For, if I shall more highly speak in declaring of my meaning of the perfection and of the meed of this reverent affection, I say that a soul touched in affection by the sensible presence of Gods as He is in Himself, and in a perfect soul illumined in the reason, by the clear beam of everlasting light, the which is God, for to see and for to feel the loveliness[208] of God in Himself, hath for that time and for that moment lost all the mind of any good deed or of any kindness that ever God did to him in this life--so that cause for to love God for feeleth he or seeth he none in that time, other than is God Himself. So that though all it may be said in speaking of the common perfection, that the great goodness and the great kindness that God hath shewed to us in this life are high and worthy causes for to love God for; yet having beholding to the point and the prick of perfection (to the which I purpose to draw thee in my meaning, and in the manner of this writing), a perfect lover of God, for dread of letting[209] of his perfection, seeketh now, that is to say, in the point of perfection, none other cause for to love God for, but God Himself; so that by this meaning I say, that chaste love is to love God for Himself and not for His goods. And therefore, following the rule of mine ensample, shape thee to depart the fruit from the tree, and for to offer it up by itself unto the King of heaven, that thy love be chaste; for evermore as long as thou offrest Him this fruit green and hanging on the tree, thou mayst well be likened to a woman that is not chaste, for she loveth a man more for his goods than for himself. And see why that I liken thee thus; for it seemeth that dread of thy death and shortness of time, with hope of forgiveness of all thy recklessness, maketh thee to be in God's service so reverent as thou art. And if it so be, soothly then hath thy fruit a green smell of the tree; and though all it pleaseth God in party, nevertheless, yet it pleaseth Him not perfectly, and that is for thy love is not yet chaste. Chaste love is that when thou askest of God neither releasing of pain, nor increasing of meed, nor yet sweetness in His love in this life; but if it be any certain time that thou covetest sweetness as for a refreshing of thy ghostly mights, that they fail not in the way; but thou askest of God nought but Himself, and neither thou reckest nor lookest after whether thou shalt be in pain or in bliss, so that thou have Him that thou lovest--this is chaste love, this is perfect love.[210] And therefore shape thee for to depart the fruit from the tree; that is to say, this reverent affection from the thoughts of dread and of hope coming before; so that thou mayst offer it ripe and chaste unto God by itself, not caused of any thing beneath Him, or medled with Him[211] (yea, though all it be the chief),[212] but only of Him, by Himself; and then it is so meedful as I say that it is. For it is plainly known without any doubt unto all those that are expert in the science of divinity and of God's love, that as often as a man's affection is stirred unto God without mean (that is, without messenger of any thought in special causing that stirring), as oft it deserveth everlasting life. And for that that a soul that is thus disposed (that is to say, that offreth the fruit ripe, and departed from the tree) may innumerable times in one hour be raised in to God suddenly without mean, therefore more than I can say it deserveth, through the grace of God, the which is the chief worker, to be raised in to joy. And therefore shape thee for to offer the fruit ripe and departed from the tree. Nevertheless, the fruit upon the tree, continually offered as man's frailty will suffer, deserveth salvation; but the fruit ripe and departed from the tree, suddenly offered unto God without mean, that is perfection. And here mayst thou see that the tree is good, though all that I bid thee depart the fruit therefrom, for more perfection; and therefore I set it in thy garden; for I would that thou should gather the fruit thereof, and keep it to thy Lord. And for that that I would that thou knew what manner of working it is that knitteth man's soul to God, and that maketh it one with Him in love and accordance of will,[213] after the word of saint Paul saying thus: Qui adhaeret Duo unus spiritus est cum illo;214 that is to say: "Who so draweth near to God," as it is by such a reverent affection touched before, "he is one spirit with God." That is, though all that God and he be two and sere[215] in kind, nevertheless yet in grace they are so knit together that they are but one in spirit;[216] and all this is for onehead of love and accordance of will; and in this onehead is the marriage made between God and the soul, the which shall never be broken, though all that the heat and the fervour of this work cease for a time, but by a deadly sin. In the ghostly feeling of this onehead may a loving soul both say and sing (if it list) this holy word that is written in the book of songs in the Bible: Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi;217 that is: "My loved unto me and I unto Him"; understanden that God shall be knitted with the ghostly glue of grace on His party, and the lovely consent in gladness of spirit on thy party. And therefore climb up by this tree, as I said in the beginning; and when thou comest to the fruit (that is, to the reverent affection, the which ever will be in thee if thou think heartily the other two thoughts before, and fage[218] not thyself with no lie, as I said), then shalt thou take good keep[219] of that working that is made in thy soul that time, and shape thee, in as much as thou mayst through grace, for to meek thee under the height of thy God, so that thou mayst use thee in that working other times by itself, without any climbing thereto by any thought. And, sikerly, this is it the which is so meedful as I said, and ever the longer that it is kept from the tree (that is to say, from any thought), and ever the ofter that it is done suddenly, lustily, and likingly, without mean, the sweeter it smelleth, and the better it pleaseth the high King of heaven. And ever when thou feelest sweetness and comfort in thy doing, then He breaketh this fruit and giveth thee part of thine own present. And that that thou feelest is so hard, and so straitly stressing thine heart without comfort in the first beginning, that bemeaneth[220] that the greenness of the fruit hanging on the tree, or else newly pulled, setteth thy teeth on edge. Nevertheless yet it is speedful to thee. For it is no reason that thou eat the sweet kernel, but if thou crack first the hard shell and bite of the bitter bark. Nevertheless, if it so be that thy teeth be weak (that is to say, thy ghostly mights), then it is my counsel that thou seek slights, for better is list than lither strength.[221] Another skill there is why that I set this tree in thy garden, for to climb up thereby. For though all it be so that God may do what He will, yet, to mine understanding, it is impossible any man to attain to the perfection of this working without these two means, or else other two that are according to them coming before. And yet is the perfection of this work sudden, without any mean. And, therefore, I rede[222] thee that these be thine, not thine in propriety, for that is nought but sin,[223] but thine given graciously of God, and sent by me as a messenger though I be unworthy; for wete thou right well that every thought that stirreth thee to the good,[224] whether it come from within by thine angel messenger, or from without by any man messenger, it is but an instrument of grace given, sent and chosen of God Himself for to work within in thy soul. And this is the skill why that I counsel thee to take these two thoughts before all others. For as man is a mingled thing of two substances, a bodily and a ghostly, so it needeth for to have two sere[225] means to come by to perfection;[226] sith it so is that both these substances shall be oned in undeadliness at the uprising in the last day; so that either substance be raised to perfection in this life, by a mean accordant thereto. And that is dread to bodily substance, and hope to the ghostly. And thus it is full seemly and according to be, as me thinketh; for as there is nothing that so soon will ravish the body from all affection of earthly things, as will a sensible dread of the death; so there is nothing that so soon nor so fervently will raise the affection of a sinner's soul, unto the love of God, as will a certain hope of forgiveness of all his recklessness. And therefore have I ordained thy climbing by these two thoughts; but if it so be that thy good angel teach thee within thy ghostly conceit, or any other man, any other two that are more according to thy disposition than thee thinketh these two be, thou mayst take them, and leave these safely without any blame. Nevertheless to my conceit (till I wete more) me thinketh that these should be full helply unto thee, and not much unaccording to thy disposition, after that I feel in thee. And therefore, if thou think that they do thee good, then thank God heartily, and for God's love pray for me. Do then so, for I am a wretch, and thou wotest not how it standeth with me. No more at this time, but God's blessing have thou and mine. Read often, and forget it not; set thee sharply to the proof; and flee all letting and occasion of letting, in the name of our Lord Jesu Christ. AMEN. FINIS VI. HERE FOLLOWETH ALSO A VERY NECESSARY EPISTLE OF DISCRETION IN STIRRINGS OF THE SOUL GHOSTLY friend in God, that same grace and joy that I will to myself, will I to thee at God's will. Thou askest me counsel of silence and of speaking, of common dieting and of singular fasting, of dwelling in company and only woning[227] by thyself. And thou sayest thou art in great were[228] what thou shalt do; for, as thou sayest, on the one party thou art greatly tarried with speaking, with common eating, as other folk do, and with common woning in company. And, on the other party, thou dreadest to be straitly still,[229] singular in fasting, and only in woning, for deeming of more holiness in thee than thou hast,[230] and for many other perils; for oft times now these days they are deemed for most holy, and fall in to many perils, that most are in silence, in singular fasting, and in only woning. And sooth it is that they are most holy, if grace only be the cause of that silence, of that singular fasting, and of that only woning, the kind[231] but suffering and only consenting; and if it be otherwise, then that is but peril on all sides, for it is full perilous to strain the kind to any such work of devotion, as is silence or speaking, common dieting or singular fasting, woning in company or in onliness.[232] I mean, passing the course and the common custom of kind and degree, but if it be led thereto by grace; and, namely, to such works the which in themself are indifferent, that is to say, now good, and now evil, now with thee, now against thee, now helping, and now letting. For it might befall that, if thou followed thy singular stirring, straitly straining thee to silence, to singular fasting, or to only woning, that thou shouldest oft times be still when time were to speak, oft times fast when time were to eat, oft times be only when time were to be in company. Or if thou give thee to speaking always when thee list, to common eating, or to companious woning,[233] then peradventure thou shouldest sometime speak when time[234] were to be still, sometime eat when time were to fast, sometime be in company when time were to be only; and thus mightest thou lightly fall in to error, in great confusion, not only of thine own soul but also of others. And, therefore, in eschewing of such errors, thou askest of me (as I have perceived by thy letters) two things: the first is my conceit of thee, and thy stirring; and the other is my counsel in this case, and in all such others when they come. As to the first, I answer and I say that I dread full much in this matter and such others to put forth my rude conceit, such as it is, for two skills.[235] And one is this: I dare not lean to my conceit, affirming it for fast and true. The other is thine inward disposition, and thine ableness that thou hast unto all these things that thou speakest of in thy letter, which be not yet so fully known unto me, as it were speedful that they were, if I should give full counsel in this case. For it is said of the Apostle: Nemo novit quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est; "No man knoweth which are the privy dispositions of man, but the spirit of the same man, the which is in himself";[236] and, peradventure, thou knowest not yet thine own inward disposition thyself, so fully as thou shalt do hereafter, when God will let thee feel it by the proof, among many failings and risings. For I knew never yet no sinner that might come to the perfect knowing of himself and of his inward disposition, but if he were learned of it before in the school of God, by experience of many temptations, and by many failings and risings; for right as among the waves and the floods and the storms of the sea, on the one party, and the peaceable wind and the calms and the soft weathers of the air on the other party, the sely[237] ship at the last attains to the land and the haven; right so, among the diversity of temptations and tribulations that falleth to a soul in this ebbing and flowing life (the which are ensampled by the storms and the floods of the sea) on the one party, and among the grace and the goodness of the Holy Ghost, the manyfold visitation, sweetness and comfort of spirit (the which are ensampled by the peaceable wind and the soft weathers of the air) on the other party, the sely soul, at the likeness of a ship, attaineth at the last to the land of stableness, and to the haven of health; the which is the clear and the soothfast knowing of himself, and of all his inward dispositions, through the which knowing he sitteth quietly in himself, as a king crowned in his royalme, mightily, wisely, and goodly governing himself and all his thoughts and stirrings, both in body and in soul. Of such a man it is that the wise man saith thus: Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem, quoniam cum probatus fuerit, accipiet coronam vitae, quam repromisit Deus diligentibus se: "He is a blissful man that sufferingly beareth temptation; for, from he have been proved, he shall take the crown of life, the which God hath hight to all those that love Him."[238] The crown of life may be said on two manners. One for ghostly wisdom, for full discretion, and for perfection of virtue: these three knitted together may be cleped[239] a crown of life, the which by grace may be come to here in this life. On another manner the crown of life may be said, that it is the endless joy that each true soul shall have, after this life, in the bliss of heaven, and, sikerly, neither of these two crowns may a man take, but if he before have been well proved in suffering of noye[240] and of temptation, as this text saith: Quoniam cum probatus fuerit, accipiet coronam vitae; that is: "From that he have been proved, then shall he take the crown of life";[241] as who saith (according to mine understanding touched before): But if a sinner have been proved before in divers temptations, now rising, now falling, falling by frailty, rising by grace, he shall never else take of God in this life ghostly wisdom in clear knowing of himself and of his inward dispositions, nor full discretion in counselling and teaching of others, nor yet the third, the which is the perfection of virtue in loving of his God and of his brethren. All these three--wisdom, discretion, and perfection of virtue-are but one, and they may be cleped the crown of life. In a crown are three things: gold is the first; precious stones are the second; and the turrets of the flower-de-luce, raised up above the head, those are the third. By gold, wisdom; by the precious stones, discretion; and by the turrets of the flower-de-luce I understand the perfection of virtue. Gold environeth the head, and by wisdom we govern our ghostly work on every side; precious stones giveth light in beholding of men, and by discretion we teach and counsel our brethren; the turrets of the flower-de-luce giveth two side branches spreading one to the right side and another to the left, and one even up above the head, and by perfection of virtues (the which is charity) we give two side branches of love, the which are spreading, one to the right side to our friends, and one to the left side to our enemies, and one even up unto God, above man's understanding, the which is the head of the soul. This is the crown of life the which by grace may be gotten here in this life; and, therefore, bear thee low in thy battle, and suffer meekly thy temptations till thou have been proved. For then shalt thou take either the one crown, or the other, or both, this here, and the other there; for who so hath this here, he may be full siker of the other there; and full many there are that are full graciously proved here, and yet come never to this that may be had here in this life. The which (if they meekly continue and patiently abide the will of our Lord) shall full worthily and abundantly receive the other there, in the high bliss of heaven. Thee thinketh this crown fair that may be had here; yea, bear thee as meekly as thou mayst by grace, for in comparison of the other there, it is but as one noble to a world full of gold. All this I say to give thee comfort and evidence of strength in thy ghostly battle, the which thou hast taken on hand in the trust of our Lord, and all this I say to let thee see how far thou art yet from the true knowing of thine inward disposition, and thereafter to give thee warning, not over soon to give stead[242] nor to follow the singular stirrings of thy young heart, for dread of deceit. All this I say for to show unto thee my conceit that I have of thee and of thy stirrings, as thou hast asked of me; for I conceive of thee that thou art full able and full greatly disposed to such sudden stirrings of singular doings,[243] and full fast to cleave unto them when they be received; and that is full perilous. I say not that this ableness and this greedy disposition in thee, or in any other that is disposed as thou art, though all it be perilous, that it is therefore evil in itself; nay, so say I not, God forbid that thou take it so; but I say that it is full good in itself, and a full great ableness to full great perfection, yea, and to the greatest perfection that may be in this life; I mean, if that a soul that is so disposed will busily, night and day, meek it[244] to God and to good counsel, and strongly rise and martyr itself, with casting down of the own wit and the own will in all such sudden and singular stirrings, and say sharply that it will not follow such stirrings, seem they never so liking,[245] so high nor so holy, but if it have thereto the witness[246] and the consents of some ghostly teachers--I mean such as have been of long time expert in singular living. Such a soul, for ghostly continuance thus in this meekness, may deserve, through grace and the experience of this ghostly battle thus with itself, for to take the crown of life touched before. And as great an ableness to good as is this manner of disposition in a soul that is thus meeked as I say, as perilous it is in another soul, such one that will suddenly, without advisement of counsel, follow the stirrings of the greedy heart, by the own wit and the own will; and therefore, for God's love, beware with this ableness and with this manner of disposition (that I speak of), if it be in thee as I say. And meek thee continually to prayer and to counsel. Break down thine own wit and thy will in all such sudden and singular stirrings, and follow them not over lightly, till thou wete whence they come, and whether they be according for thee or not. And as touching these stirrings of the which thou askest my conceit and my counsel, I say to thee that I conceive of them suspiciously, that is, that[247] they should be conceived on the ape's manner. Men say commonly that the ape doth as he seeth others do; forgive me if I err in my suspicion, I pray thee. Nevertheless, the love that I have to thy soul stirreth me by evidence that I have of a ghostly brother of thine and of mine, touched with those same stirrings of full great[248] silence, of full singular fasting, and of full only woning, on ape's manner, as he granted unto me after long communing with me, and when he had proved himself and his stirrings. For, as he said, he had seen a man in your country, the which man, as it is well known, is evermore in great silence, in singular fasting, and in only dwelling; and certes, as I suppose fully, they are full true stirrings those that that man hath, caused all only of grace, that he feeleth by experience within, and not of any sight or heard say that he hath of any other man's silence without-the which cause if it were, it should be cleped apely, as I say in my simple meaning. And therefore beware, and prove well thy stirrings, and whence they come; for how so thou art stirred, whether from within by grace, or from without on ape's manner, God wote, and I not. Nevertheless this may I say thee in eschewing of perils like unto this: look that thou be no ape, that is to say, look that thy stirrings to silence or to speaking, to fasting or to eating, to onliness or to company, whether they be come from within of abundance of love and of devotion in the spirit and not from without by the windows of thy bodily wits, as thine ears, and thine eyes. For, as Jeremiah saith plainly, by such windows cometh in death: Mors intrat per fenestras.249 And this sufficeth, as little as it is, for answer to the first, where thou askest of me, what is my conceit of thee, and of these stirrings that thou speakest of to me in thy letter. And touching the second thing, where thou askest of me my counsel in this case, and in such other when they fall, I beseech almighty Jesu (as He is cleped the angel of great counsel) that He of His mercy be thy counsellor and thy comforter in all thy noye and thy nede, and order me with His wisdom to fulfil in party by my teaching, so simple as it is, the trust of thine heart, the which thou hast unto me before many others--a simple lewd[250] wretch as I am, unworthy to teach thee or any other, for littleness of grace and for lacking of conning. Nevertheless, though I be lewd, yet shall I somewhat say, answering to thy desire at my simple conning, with a trust in God that His grace shall be learner and leader when conning of kind and of clergy defaileth.[251] Thou wotest right well thyself that silence in itself nor speaking, also singular fasting nor common dieting, onliness nor company, all these nor yet any of them be not the true end of our desire; but to some men (and not to all) they are means helping to the end, if they be done lawfully and with discretion, and else are they more letting than furthering. And therefore plainly[252] to speak, nor plainly to be still, plainly to eat, nor plainly to fast, plainly to be in company, or plainly to be only, think I not to counsel thee at this time; for why, perfection standeth not in them. But this counsel may I give thee generally, to hold thee by in these stirrings, and in all other like unto these; evermore where thou findest two contraries, as are these--silence and speaking, fasting and eating, onliness and company, common clothing of Christian religion and singular habits of divers and devised brotherhoods, with all such other what so they be, the which in themself are but works of kind[253] and of men. For thou hast it by kind and by statute of thine outer man now for to speak and now for to be still, now for to eat and now for to fast, now for to be in company and now to be only, now to be common in clothing and now to be in singular habit, ever when thee list, and when thou seest[254] that any of them should be speedful and helply to thee in nourishing of the heavenly grace working within in thy soul; but if it be so (which God forbid), that thou or any other be so lewd and so blinded in the sorrowful temptations of the midday devil, that ye bind you by any crooked avow to any such singularities, as it were under colour of holiness feigned under such an holy thraldom,[255] in full and final destroying of the freedom of Christ, the which is the ghostly habit of the sovereign holiness that may be in this life, or in the other, by the witness of saint Paul saying thus: Ubi spiritus Domini, ibi libertas: "There where the spirit of God is, there is freedom."[256] And thereto when thou seest that all such works in their use may be both good and evil; I pray thee leave them both, for that is the most ease for thee for to do, if thou wilt be meek, and leave the curious beholding and seeking in thy wits to look whether is better. But do thou thus: set the one on the one hand, and the other on the other, and choose thee a thing the which is hid between them; the which thing, when it is had, giveth thee leave in freedom of spirit to begin and to cease in holding any of the others at thine own full list, without any blame. But now thou askest me, what is that thing. I shall tell thee what I mean that it is: It is God; for whom thou shouldest be still, if thou shouldest be still; and for whom thou shouldest speak if thou shouldest speak; and for whom thou shouldest fast, if thou shouldest fast; and for whom thou shouldest eat, if thou shouldest eat; and for whom thou shouldest be only, if thou shouldest be only; and for whom thou shouldest be in company, if thou shouldest be in company. And so forth of all the remenant, what so they be. For silence is not God, nor speaking is not God; fasting is not God, nor eating is not God; onliness is not God, nor company is not God; nor yet any of all the other such two contraries. He is hid between them, and may not be found by any work of thy soul, but all only by love of thine heart. He may not be known by reason, He may not be gotten by thought, nor concluded by understanding; but He may be loved and chosen with the true lovely will of thine heart.[257] Choose thee Him, and thou art silently speaking, and speakingly silent, fastingly eating, and eatingly fasting, and so forth of all the remenant. Such a lovely choosing of God, thus wisely lesinge[258] and seeking Him out with the true will of a clean heart, between all such two leaving them both, when they come and proffer them to be the point and the prick of our ghostly beholding, is the worthiest tracing and seeking of God that may be gotten or learned in this life. I mean for a soul that will be contemplative; yea, though all that a soul that thus seeketh see nothing that may be conceived with the ghostly eye of reason; for if God be thy love and thy meaning, the choice and the point of thine heart, it sufficeth to thee in this life (though all thou see never more of Him with the eyes of thy reason all thy life time). Such a blind shot with the sharp dart of longing love may never fail of the prick, the which is God, as Himself saith in the book of love, where He speaketh to a languishing soul and a loving, saying thus: Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, amica mea, et sponsa mea, vulnerasti cor meum, in uno oculorum tuorum: "Thou hast wounded mine heart, my sister, my leman, and my spouse, thou hast wounded mine heart in one of thine eyes."[259] Eyes of the soul they are two: Reason and Love. By reason we may trace how mighty, how wise, and how good He is in His creatures, but not in Himself; but ever when reason defaileth, then list, love, live and learn, to play,[260] for by love we may feel Him, find Him, and hit Him, even in Himself. It is a wonderful eye, this love, for of a loving soul it is only said of our Lord: "Thou hast wounded mine heart in one of thine eyes"; that is to say, in love that is blind to many things, and seeth but that one thing that it seeketh, and therefore it findeth and feeleth, hitteth and woundeth the point and the prick that it shooteth at, well sooner than it should if the sight were sundry in beholding of many things, as it is when the reason ransacketh and seeketh among all such sere[261] things as are these: silence and speaking, singular fasting and common eating, onliness or company, and all such other; to look whether is better. Let be this manner of doing, I pray thee, and let as thou wist not that there were any such means (I mean ordained for to get God by); for truly no more there is, if thou wilt be very contemplative and soon sped of thy purpose. And, therefore, I pray thee and other like unto thee, with the Apostle saying thus: Videte vocationem vestram, et in ea vocatione qua vocati estis state:262 "See your calling, and, in that calling that ye be called, stand stiffly and abide in the name of Jesu." Thy calling is to be very contemplative, ensampled by Mary Magdalene. Do then as Mary did, set the point of thine heart upon one thing: Porro unum est necessarium: "For one thing is necessary,"[263] the which is God. Him wouldest thou have, Him seekest thou, Him list thee to love, Him list thee to feel,[264] Him list thee hold thee by, and neither by silence nor by speaking, by singular fasting nor by common eating, by onliness nor by companious woning, by hard wearing nor by easy; for sometime silence is good, but that same time speaking were better; and againward sometime speaking is good, but that same time silence were better; and so forth of all the remenant, as is fasting, eating, onliness, and company; for sometime the one is good, but the other is better, but neither of them is at any time the best. And, therefore, let be good all that is good, and better all that is better,[265] for both they will defail and have an end; and choose thee the best with Mary, thy mirror, that never will defail: Maria (inquit optimam) optimam partem elegit, quae non auferetur ab ea.266 The best is almighty Jesu, and He said that Mary, in ensample of all contemplatives, had chosen the best, the which should never be taken from her; and therefore, I pray thee, with Mary leave the good and the better, and choose thee the best. Let them be, all such things as are these: silence and speaking, fasting and eating, onliness and company, and all such other, and take no keep to them; thou wotest not what they mean, and, I pray thee, covet not to wit; and if thou shall at any time think or speak of them, think then and say that they are so high and so worthy things of perfection, for to conne[267] speak, or for to conne be still, for to conne fast, and for to conne eat, for to conne be only, and to conne be in company, that it were but a folly and a foul presumption to such a frail wretch as thou art, for to meddle thee of so great perfection. For why, for to speak, and for to be still, for to eat, and for to fast, for to be only, and for to be in company, ever when we will, may we have by kind; but for to conne do all these, we may not but by grace. And, without doubt, such grace is never gotten by any mean of such strait silence, of such singular fasting, or of such only dwelling that thou speakest of, the which is caused from without by occasion of hearing and of seeing of any other man's such singular doings. But if ever this grace shall be gotten, it behoveth to be learned of God from within, unto whom thou hast listily leaned many a day before with all the love of thine heart, utterly voiding from thy ghostly beholding[268] all manner of sight of any thing beneath Him; though all that some of those things that I bid thee thus void, should seem in the sight of some men a full worthy mean to get God by. Yea, say what men say will, but do thou as I say thee, and let the proof witness. For to him that will be soon sped of his purpose ghostly, it sufficeth to him for a mean, and him needeth no more, but the actual mind of good God only, with a reverent stirring of lasting love; so that mean unto God gettest thou none but God. If thou keep whole thy stirring of love that thou mayst feel by grace in thine heart, and scatter not thy ghostly beholding therefrom then that same that thou feelest shall well conne[269] tell thee when thou shalt speak and when thou shalt be still, and it shall govern thee discreetly in all thy living without any error, and teach thee mistily[270] how thou shalt begin and cease in all such doing of kind with a great and sovereign discretion. For if thou mayst by grace keep it in custom and in continual working, then, if it be needful or speedful to thee for to speak, for to commonly eat, or for to bide in company, or for to do any such other thing that longeth to the common true custom of Christian men, and of kind, it shall first stir thee full softly to speak or to do that other common thing of kind, what so it be. And then, if thou do it not, it shall strike as sore as a prick on thine heart and pain thee full sore, and let thee have no peace[271] but if thou do it. And, on the same manner, if thou be in speaking, or in any such other work that is common to the course of kind, if it be needful and speedful to thee to be still, and for to set thee to the contrary, as is onliness to company, fasting to eating, and all such other the which are works of singular holiness, it will stir thee to them; so that thus, by experience of such a blind stirring of love unto God, a contemplative soul cometh sooner to that grace of discretion for to conne speak, and for to conne be still, for to conne eat, and for to conne fast, for to conne be in company, and for to conne be only,[272] and all such other, than by any such singularities as thou speakest of, taken by the stirrings of man's own wit and his will within in himself, or yet by the ensample of any other man's doing without, what so it be. For why, such strained doings under the stirrings of kind, without touching[273] of grace, is a passing pain without any profit; but if it be to them that are religious, or that have them by enjoining of penance, where profit riseth only because of obedience, and not by any such straitness of doing without; the which is painful to all that it proveth. But lovely and listily to will to love[274] God is great and passing ease, true ghostly peace, and earnest of the endless rest. And, therefore, speak when thee list, and leave when thee list, eat when thee list, and fast when thee list, be in company when thee list, and be by thyself when thee list, so that[275] God and grace be thy leader. Let fast who fast will, and be only who will, and let hold silence who so will, but hold thee by God that doth beguile no man; for silence and speaking, onliness and company, fasting and eating, all may beguile thee. And if thou hear of any man that speaketh, or of any that is still, of any that eateth or of any that fasteth, or of any that is in company or else by himself, think thou, and say, if thee list, that they conne do as they should do, but if the contrary shew in apert.[276] But look that thou do not as they do (I mean for that they do so) on ape's manner; for neither thou canst, nor peradventure thou art not disposed as they are. And, therefore, leave to work after other men's dispositions and work after thine own, if thou mayst know what it is. And unto the time that thou mayst know what it is, work after those men's counsel that know their own disposition, but not after their disposition;[277] for such men should give counsel in such cases, and else none. And this sufficeth for an answer to all thy letter, as me thinketh; the grace of God be ever more with thee, in the name of Jesu. AMEN. FINIT EPISTOLA VII. HERE FOLLOWETH A DEVOUT TREATISE OF DISCERNING OF SPIRITS, VERY NECESSARY FOR GHOSTLY LIVERS FOR because that there be divers kinds of spirits, therefore it is needful to us discreet knowing of them; sith it so is that we be taught of the apostle saint John not to believe to all spirits.[278] For it might seem to some that are but little in conning, and namely of ghostly things, that each thought that soundeth in man's heart should be the speech of none other spirit but only of man's own spirit. And that it is not so, both belief and witness of holy scripture proveth apertly; for "I shall hear," saith the prophet David, "not what I speak myself, but what my Lord God speaketh in me";[279] and another prophet saith, that an angel spake in him.[280] And also we be taught in the psalm that the wicked spirits sendeth evil thoughts in to men; and over this, that there is a spirit of the flesh not good, the apostle Paul sheweth apertly, where he saith, that some men are full blown or inflate with the spirit of their flesh.[281] And also that there is the spirit of the world, he declareth plainly, where he maketh joy in God, not only for himself, but also for his disciples, that they had not taken that spirit of the world, but that that is sent of God, the which is the Holy Ghost.[282] And these two spirits of the flesh and also of the world are, as it were, servants or sergeants of that cursed spirit, the foul fiend of hell; so that the spirit of wickedness is lord of the spirit of the flesh, and also of the spirit of the world. And which of these three spirits that speaketh to our spirit, we should not believe them. For why, they speak never but that anon, by their speaking, they lead to the loss both of body and of soul. And which spirit it is that speaketh to our spirit, the speech of that same spirit that speaketh shall fully declare; for ever more the spirit of the flesh speaketh soft things and easy to the body; the spirit of the world vain things and covetise[283] of worship; and the spirit of malice of the fiend speaketh fell things and bitter. Wherefore, as oft times as any thought smiteth on our hearts of meat, of drink, and of sleep, of soft clothing, of lechery, and of all other such things the which longeth to the business of the flesh, and maketh our heart for to brenne[284] as it were in a longing desire after all such things; be we full siker that it is the spirit of the flesh that speaketh it. And therefore put we him away, in as much as we goodly may by grace, for he is our adversary. As oft times as any thought smiteth on our hearts of vain joy of this world, kindling in us a desire to be holden fair, and to be favoured, to be holden of great kin and of great conning, to be holden wise and worthy, or else to have great degree and high office in this life--such thoughts and all other the which would make a man to seem high and worshipful, not only in the sight of others, but also in the sight of himself--no doubt but it is the spirit of the world that speaketh all these, a far more perilous enemy than is the spirit of the flesh, and with much more business he should be put off. And oft times it befalleth that these two servants and sergeants of the foul fiend, the spirit and prince of wrath[285] and of wickedness, are either by grace and by ghostly slight of a soul stiffly put down and trodden down under foot; or else, by quaintise[286] of their malicious master, the foul fiend of hell, they are quaintly withdrawn, for he thinketh himself for to rise with great malice and wrath, as a lion running felly to assail the sickness of our sely souls; and this befalleth as oft as the thought of our heart stirreth us, not to the lust of our flesh, nor yet to the vain joy of this world, but it stirreth us to murmuring, to grutching,[287] to grievance, and to bitterness of soul, to pain and to impatience, to wrath, to melancholy, and to evil will, to hate, to envy, and to all such sorrows. It maketh us to bear us heavily, if ought be done or said unto us, not so lovely, nor so wisely[288] as we would it were; it raiseth in us all evil suspicion, if ought be shewed in sign, in countenance, in word, or in work, that might by any manner be turned to malice or to heaviness of heart; it maketh us as fast[289] to take it to us. To these thoughts, and to all such that would put us out of peace and restfulness of heart, we should none otherwise againstand,[290] but as we would the self fiend of hell, and as much we should flee therefrom as from the loss of our soul. No doubt but both the other two thoughts, of the spirit of the flesh and also of the spirit of the world, work and travail in all that they can to the loss of our soul, but most perilously the spirit of malice; for why, he is by himself, but they not without him. For if a man's soul be never so clean of fleshly lust, and of vain joy of this world, and if it be defouled with this spirit of malice, of wrath, and of wickedness, not againstanding all the other cleanness before, yet it is losable. And if a soul be never so much defouled with the lust of the flesh, and vain joy of the world, and it may by grace keep it in peace and in restfulness of heart unto the even Christian,[291] though all it be full hard for to do (lasting the custom of the other two),[292] yet it is less losable, not againstanding all the other filth of the flesh and of the world touched before. And, therefore, though all that our lusty[293] thoughts of our flesh be evil, for they reave from the soul the life of devotion, and though all that the vain joy of the world be worse, for it reaveth us from the true joy that we should have in contemplation of heavenly things, ministered and taught to us by the angels of heaven. For who so lustily desireth to be worshipped, favoured, and served of men here in earth, they deserve to forego the worship, the favour, and service of angel in ghostly contemplation of heaven and of heavenly things, all their lifetime; the which contemplation is better and more worthy in itself than is the lust and the liking of devotion. And for this bitterness I clepe the spirit of malice, of wrath, and of wickedness the worst spirit of them all; and why? Certes, for it reaveth us the best thing of all, and that is charity, the which is God. For who so lacketh peace and restfulness of heart, him lacketh the lively presence of the lovely sight of the high peace of heaven, good gracious God His own dear self. This witnesseth David in the psalm, where he saith, that the place of God is made in peace, and His dwelling place in Sion.[294] Sion is as much to say as the sight of peace; the sight of the soul is the thought of that same soul; and, certes, in that soul that most is occupied in thoughts of peace hath God made His dwelling place.[295] And thus saith Himself by the prophet, when he saith: "Upon whom shall my spirit rest, but upon the meek and the restful."[296] And, therefore, who so will have God continually dwelling in him, and live in love and in sight of the high peace of the Godhead, the which is the highest and the best party of contemplation that may be had in this life, be he busy night and day to put down, when they come, the spirit of the flesh and the spirit of the world, but most busily the spirit of malice, of wrath, and of wickedness, for he is the foulest and the worst filth[297] of all. And it is full needful and speedful to know his quaintise, and not for to unknow his doleful deceits. For sometime he will, that wicked cursed wight, change his likeness in to an angel of light, that he may under colour of virtue do more dere;[298] but yet then, if we look more redely,[299] it is but seed of bitterness and of discord that that he sheweth, seem it never so holy nor never so fair at the first shewing. Full many he stirreth unto singular holiness passing the common statute and custom of their degree, as is fasting, sharp wearing, and many other devout observances and outward doings, in open reproving of other men's defaults, the which they have not of office for to do. All such and many other he stirreth them for to do, and all under colour of devotion and of charity; not for he is delighted in any deed of devotion and of charity, but for he loveth dissension and slander, the which is evermore caused by such unseemly singularities; for where so ever that any one or two are in any devout congregation, the which any one or two useth any such outward singularities, then in the sight of fools all the remenant are slandered by them; but, in the sight of the wise man, they slander themselves. But for because that fools are more than wise men, therefore for favour of fools such singular doers ween that they be wise, when (if it were wisely determined) they and all their fautors[300] should be seen apert fools, and darts shot of the devil, to slay true simple souls under colour of holiness and charity. And thus many deceits can the fiend bring in on this manner. Who so will not consent, but meeketh him truly to prayer and to counsel, shall graciously be delivered of all these deceits.[301] But it is sorrow for to say, and more for to feel, that sometime[302] our own spirit is so overcome peradventure with each of these three spirits, of the flesh, of the world, and of the fiend, and so brought into danger, bounden in bondage, in thraldom and in service of them all, that sorrow it is to wit. In great confusion and loss of itself, it doth now the office of each one of them itself in itself. And this befalleth when, after long use, and customable consenting unto them when they come, at the last it is made so fleshly, so worldly, and so malicious, so wicked, and so froward, that now plainly of itself, without suggestion of any other spirit, it gendereth and bringeth forth in itself, not only lusty thoughts of the flesh, and vain thoughts of the world, but that worst of all these, as are bitter thoughts and wicked, in backbiting and deeming, and evil suspicion of others. And when it is thus with our spirit, then, I trow, it may not lightly be known when it is our own spirit that speaketh, or when it heareth any of the other three spirits speaking in it as it is touched before. But what maketh it matter[303] who speaketh, when it is all one and the same thing that is spoken? What helpeth to know the person of him that speaketh, when it is siker and certain that all is evil and perilous that is spoken? If it be thine enemy, consent not to him, but meek thee to prayer and to counsel, and so mayst thou mightily withstand thine enemy. If it be thine own spirit, reprove him bitterly, and sighingly sorrow that ever thou fell in[304] so great wretchedness, bondage, and thraldom of the devil. Shrive thee of thy customed consents, and of thine old sins, and so mayst thou come (by grace) to recover thy freedom again; and by the gracious freedom mayst thou soon come to, wisely for to know, and soothfastly for to feel by the proof, when it is thine own spirit that speaketh these evils, or it be these other evil spirits that speaketh them in thee. And so may this knowing be a sovereign mean and help of againstanding, for often times unknowing is cause of much error, and, againward, knowing is cause of much truth; and to this manner of knowing mayst thou win thus as I say to thee. If thou be in doubt or in were[305] of these evil thoughts when they come, whether that they be the speech of thine own spirit, or of any of the others of thine enemies; look then busily by the witness of thy counsel and thy conscience, if thou have been shriven and lawfully amended after the doom[306] of thy confessor, of all the consents that ever thou consented to that kind of sin, that thy thought is aware of. And if thou have not been shriven shrive thee then, as truly as thou mayst, by grace and by counsel; and then wete thou right well that all the thoughts that come to thee after thy shrift, stirring thee oft times to the same sins, they are the words of other spirits than thine own (I mean some of the three touched before). And thou for none such thoughts, be they never so thick, so foul, nor so many (I mean for their first coming in), but if it be for recklessness of againstanding,[307] art no blame worthy. And not only releasing of purgatory that thou hast deserved for the same sins done before, what so they be, thou mayst deserve, if thou stiffly againstand them, but also much grace in this life, and much meed in the bliss of heaven. But all those evil thoughts coming in to thee, stirring thee to any sin, after that thou hast consented to that same sin, and before that thou hast sorrow for that consent, and art in will to be shriven thereof, it is no peril to thee to take them to thyself,[308] and for to shrive thee of them, as of thoughts of thine own spirit; but for to take to thyself all other thoughts, the which thou hast by very proof, as it is shewed before, by the speeches of other spirits than of thyself, therein lieth great peril, for so mightest thou lightly misrule thy conscience, charging a thing for sin the which is none; and this were great error, and a mean to the greatest peril. For if it were so that each evil thought and stirring to sin were the work and the speech of none other spirit, but only of man's own spirit; then it would follow by that that a man's own spirit were a very fiend, the which is apertly false and a damnable woodness;[309] for though all it be so that a soul may, by frailty and custom of sinning, fall in to so much wretchedness, that it taketh on itself by bondage of sin the office of the devil, stirring itself to sin ever more and more, without any suggestion of any other spirit (as it is said before), yet it is not therefore a devil in kind, but it is a devil in office, and may be cleped devilish, for it is in the doing like to the devil, [that is to say, a stirrer of itself unto sin, the which is the office of the devil].[310] Nevertheless yet, for all this thraldom to sin and devilishness in office, it may by grace of contrition, of shrift, and of amending, recover the freedom again, and be made saveable--yea, and a full special God's saint in this life, that before was full damnable and full cursed in the living.[311] And, therefore, as great a peril as it is a soul that is fallen in sin, not for to charge his conscience therewith, nor for to amend him thereof, as great a peril it is, and, if it may be said, a greater, a man for to charge his conscience with each thought and stirring of sin that will come in him; for, by such nice charging of conscience, might he lightly run in to error of conscience, and so be led in to despair all his life time. And the cause of all this is lacking of knowing of discretion of spirits, the which knowing may be gotten by very experience; who so redely will look soon after that a soul have been truly cleansed by confession as it is said before. For fast after confession a soul is, as it were, a clean paper leaf, for ableness that it hath to receive what that men will write thereupon. Both they do press[312] for to write on the soul, when it is clean in itself made by confession: God and His angel on the one party, and the fiend and his angel on the other party; but it is in the free choice of the soul to receive which that it will. The receipt of the soul is the consent of the same soul. A new thought and a stirring to any sin, the which thou hast forsaken before in thy shrift, what is it else but the speech of one of the three spirits the which are thine enemies (touched before), proffering to write on thy soul the same sin again? The speech of thyself, is it not; for why, there is no such thing written in thy soul, for all it is wasted away before in thy shrift, and thy soul left naked and bare; nothing left thereupon, but a frail and a free consent, more inclining to the evil, for custom therein, than it is to the good, but more able to the good than to the evil, for cleanness of the soul and virtue of the sacrament of shrift; but, of itself, it hath nought then, where through it may think or stir itself to good or to evil; and, therefore, it followeth that what thought that cometh then in it, whether that it be good or evil, it is not of itself, but the consent to the good or to the evil, whether that it be, that is ever more the work of the same soul. And all after the worthiness and the wretchedness of this consent, thereafter it deserveth pain or bliss. If this consent be to evil, then as fast it hath, by cumbrance of sin, the office of that same spirit that first made him suggestion of that same sin; and if it be to the good, then as fast it hath, by grace, the office of that same spirit that first made him stirring[313] to that same good. For as oft as any healful thought cometh in our mind, as of chastity, of soberness, of despising of the world, of wilful poverty, of patience, of meekness, and of charity, without doubt it is the spirit of God that speaketh, either by Himself or else by some of His angels--that is to say, either His angels of this life, the which are true teachers, or else His angels of His bliss, the which are true stirrers and inspirers of good. And as it is said of the other three evil spirits, that a soul, for long use and customable consenting unto them, may be made so fleshly, so worldly, and so malicious, that it taketh upon it the office of them all; right so it is againward[314] that a soul, for long use and custom in goodness, may be made so ghostly by cleanness of living and devotion of spirit against the spirit of the flesh, and so heavenly against the spirit of the world, and so godly by peace and by charity, and by restfulness of heart, against the spirit of malice, of wrath, and of wickedness, that it hath them now of office all such good thoughts to think when him list, without forgetting, in as great perfection as the frailty of this life will suffer. And thus it may be seen how that each thought that smiteth on our hearts, whether that it be good or evil, it is not evermore the speech of our own spirit, but the consent to the thought, what so ever it be, that is ever of our own spirit. Jesu grant us His grace, to consent to the good and againstand the evil. Amen. FINIS. DEO GRATIAS INDEX OF NAMES & SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES Ancren Riwle, The, xx, 28 n Aquinas, St. Thomas, xiii, 81, 84 n, 86 n Asher, symbolism of, 6, 16-19 Augustine, St., xii, 25 Benjamin, symbolism of, xvi, xvii, 6, 29-33 Bernard, St., xii, 81 Bilhah, symbolism of, 4-6, 13-16 Bonaventura, St., xii Catherine of Siena, St., xi, xvii-xix, xxv-xxvii, 35-47, 52 n, 107 n Caxton, xviii, xix Chaucer, 17 n, 52 n, 56 n, 95 n, 120 n Chauncy, Maurice, xxiv Dan, symbolism of, 6, 13, 14, 18 Dante, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 38 n, 88 n, 91 n Dinah, symbolism of, 6, 25 Dionysius, xxiii, xxiv Divine Cloud of Unknowing, The, Author of, xii, xvii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 3, 32, 33, 77-132 Eckhart, Meister, xi Exmew, William, xxiv Flete, William, xvii, xviii, 52 n Gad, symbolism of, 6, 16-19 Genesis, 8-11, 14-17, 20, 24, 32 Hawkwood, John, xvii Hilton (Hylton), Walter, xi, xii, xxii-xxv, 61-73, 104 n, 124 n Hugel, F. von, 84 n, 86 n Hugh of St. Victor, xii Imitatione Christi, De, xxiii n, 65 n Isaiah, 124 Issachar, symbolism of, 6, 20-24 Jacob, symbolism of, 3-7, 10, 27, 29 Jacopone da Todi, xi James, Dane, xviii James, Epistle of, 98, 99 Jeremiah, 103, 104 John, St., Epistles of, 25, 119 Joseph, symbolism of, 6, 27-30 Judah, symbolism of, 6, 10-12 Juliana of Norwich, xi, xxi, 65 n, 123 n Kempe, Margery, xix-xxi, 49-59 Langland, Piers the Plowman, 79 n, 89 n Layamons Brut, 28 n Leah, symbolism of, 3-11, 14, 15-20, 24, 26, 29 Levi, symbolism of, 6, 9, 10 Luke, St., 110 Margery, see Kempe Matthew, St., 8 Mechthild of Magdeburg, xi Naphtali, symbolism of, 6, 13-15, 18, 19 Paul, St., Epistles, 21, 40, 41, 88, 97, 106, 109, 119, 120 Pepwell, xiv, xix Proverbs, 28 n Psalms, The, xiv, xvi, xxvi, 9, 10, 11, 23, 31, 33, 78, 79, 119, 124 Pynson, xxii Rachel, symbolism of, 3-6, 12-15, 18, 27, 32 Raymund of Capua, xviii, xix Reuben, symbolism of, 6, 7-9 Richard of St. Victor, xii-xv, xxii, xxv, xxvi, 3, 4 n, 19 n Richard Rolle of Hampole, xi, xii, xvi, xvii, xxiii n, xxv, 71 n Robert of Brunne, Chronicle of, 124 n Ruysbroeck, Jan, xi Shelley, xv n Simeon, symbolism of, 6, 8, 9 Song of Solomon, 88, 108 Suso, Heinrich, xi Tantucci, Giovanni, xvii Tyrrell, George, xxi n Wyclif, 16 n, 79 n, 112 n Wynkyn de Worde, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxvii Zebulun, symbolism of, 6, 22-25 Zechariah, 119 Zilpah, symbolism of, 4-6, 15-17, 20 Footnotes: [1] Dante, convivio, i. 12. [2] Cf. the Letter to Can Grande (Epist. x. 28), where Dante, like St. Thomas Aquinas before him, refers to the Benjamin Major as "Richardus de Sancto Victore in libro De Contemplatione." [3]Par. x. 131, 132. [4] Ps. lxviii. 27. [5] Benjamin Minor, cap. 73. [6] Benjamin Minor, cap. 75. Cf. Shelley, The Triumph of Life: "Their lore taught them not this: to know themselves." This passage of Richard is curiously misquoted and its meaning perverted in Haureau, Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique, i. pp. 513, 514, in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xvi., and elsewhere. [7] Benjamin Minor, cap. 81. [8] Cf. below, pp. 32, 33. [9] Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, edited by C. Horstman, vol. i. pp. 162-172. [10] Sene, Senis, or Seenes, "Siena," from the Latin Senae (Catharina de Senis). [11] Cf. E. Gordon Duff, Hand-Lists of English Printers, 1501-1556, i. p. 24. [12] Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica p. 452. [13] Quietaclacmium Margerie filie Johannis Kempe de domibus in parochia de Northgate. Brit. Mus., Add MS. 25,109. [14] She was, however, apparently less strictly enclosed than was usual for an ancress. [15] Cf. G. Tyrrell, Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love shewed to Mother Juliana of Norwich, Preface, p. v. [16] In the British Museum copy of Pepwell's volume, ff. 1-2 of the Epistle of Prayer and f. 1 of the Song of Angels are transposed. [17] Cf. C. T. Martin, in Dictionary of National Biography, vol. ix. For Hilton's alleged authorship of the De Imitatione Christi, see J. E. G. de Montmorency, Thomas a Kempis, his Age and Book, pp. 141-169. [18] Edited by G. G. Perry, under the title The Anehede of Godd with mannis saule, as the work of Richard Rolle, in English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole (Early English Text Society, 1866), pp. 14-19; and, in two texts, by C. Horstman, op. cit., vol. i. pp. 175-182. [19] In the MSS. this is called: A pystyll of discrecion in knowenge of spirites; or: A tretis of discrescyon of spirites. [20] All in Harl. MS. 674, and other MSS. The Divine Cloud of Unknowing, and portions of the Epistle, Book, or Treatise, of Privy Counsel have been printed, in a very unsatisfactory manner, in The Divine Cloud with notes and a Preface by Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B. Edited by Henry Collins. London, 1871. [21] D. M. M'Intyre, The Cloud of Unknowing, in the Expositor, series vii. vol. 4 (1907). Dr. Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, p. 336, regards these treatises as the work of "a school of mystics gathered about the writer of the Hid Divinity." Neither of these authors includes the translation of the Benjamin Minor, which, however, appears to me undoubtedly from the same hand as that of the Divine Cloud. [22] Benjamin Minor, cap. 78. [23] Dialogo cap. 151. [24] Benjamin Minor, cap. 72. [25] The MSS. have: "men clepen." [26] So the MSS., which agrees with the Latin, ordinati affectus (Benjamin Minor, cap. 3); Pepwell has "ardent feelings." [27] So Pepwell, which accords with the Latin: cum tante importunitate. The MSS. read: "unconningly," i.e. ignorantly. [28] So Harl. MS. 674 and Pepwell; Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "forthe," i.e. offer. The Latin is: "Et Zelphae quidem sitim dominae suae copia tanta omnino extinguere non potest" (Benjamin Minor, cap. 6). [29] The Latin has simply: "vinum quod Zelpha sitit, gaudium est voluptatis" (ibid.). [30] Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "in our soul." [31] Pepwell gives the modern equivalent, "ordinate" and "inordinate," for "ordained" and "unordained," throughout. [32] Ps. cxi. 10 (Vulgate cx.). [33] Pepwell adds: "and high Judge." [34] Filius visionis. [35] Gen. xxix. 32 (Vidit Dominus humilitatem meam, Vulgate). [36] Gen. xxix. 33. [37] Exauditio. [38] Matt. v. 4. [39] Ezek. xxxiii. 14. [40] Made humble. [41] Ps. li. 17 (Vulgate l.). [42] Additus, vel Additio. [43] Added. Cf. Gen. xxix. 34. [44] Ps. xciv. 19 (Vulgate xciii.). [45] Gen. xxix. 34. [46] Gen. xxix. 35 (Vulgate): Modo confitebor Domino. [47] Confitens. [48] Learning. [49] Ps. cvi. 1, cvii. 1 (cv., cvi., Vulgate). [50] Pepwell reads: "the true goodness of God." [51] Pepwell reads: "conning." [52] Latin Invisibilium: Pepwell has "unseasable." [53] Pepwell has "feble." [54] Reasons. [55] Because. [56] Judicium (Pepwell adds: "or judgment"). [57] Gen. xlix. 16: "Dan shall judge his people." [58] Gen. xxx. 6. [59] Gen. xxx. 8: "Comparavit me Deus cum sorore mea, et invalui" (Vulgate). [60] In the Latin, "Comparalio vel conversio." [61] Gen. xlix. 21: "Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words" (Nephthali cervus emissus at dams eloquia pulchritudinis, Vulgate). [62] Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "full." [63] Underloute, participle of Underluten (O.E. Underlutan), "to stoop beneath," or "submit to." Cf. Wycliffe's Bible, Gen. xxxvii. 8: "Whether thow shalt be oure kyng, oither we shal be undirloute to thi bidding?" [64] Discomfort. [65] Dixit: Feliciter. Gen. xxx. 11 (Vulgate). [66] Felicitas. Harl. MS. 674 adds: "whether thou wilt." [67] The MSS. have: "selyness." [68] Gen. xxx. 13 (Vulgate): Hoc pro beatitudine mea. [69] Beatus. [70] Natural. [71] Murmurs, complains. Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale, ed. Skeat SS 30: "After bakbyting cometh grucching or murmuracion; and somtyme it springeth of impacience agayns God, and somtyme agayns man. Agayns God it is, whan a man gruccheth agayn the peynes of helle, or agayns poverte, or los of catel or agayn reyn or tempest; or elles gruccheth that shrewes han prosperitee, or elles for that goode men han adversitee." [72] Pepwell adds: at the least willingly. [73] Pepwell reads: "put down." [74] Watches. [75] Promises. Latin: fovet promissis. [76] A curious mistranslation: "Sed Aser hosti suo facile illudit dum partem quam tuetur, alta patientiae rupe munitam conspicit" (Benjamin Minor, cap. 33). [77] Dwelling-place. [78] Pacified. Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "the cite of conscience is made pesebule." [79] Merces. [80] So Harl. MS. 674; omitted in Harl, MS. 1022 and by Pepwell. [81] Gen. xxx. 18. [82] The MSS. read: "erles." [83] Gen. xlix, 14: "Issachar asinus fortis accubans interterminos" (Vulgate). [84] Rom. vii. 24. [85] Phil. i. 23. [86] Ps iv. 5. Harl. MS. 674 has: "Wraththes and willeth not synne, or thus: Beeth wrothe and synnith not." [87] Human nature in our fellow-man. [88] Fellow-Christian. The words in square brackets are omitted in Harl. MS. 674. [89] Ps. cxxxix. (Vulgate cxxxviii. ) 21. [90] Ps. cxix. (Vulgate cxviii.) 104. [91] Habitaculum fortitudinis. [92] Gen. xxx. 20. [93] Assuredly. Pepwell sometimes modernises this word, but not invariably. [94] 1 John i. 8. [95] Cf. St. Augustine's various writings against the Pelagians, e.g. Epist. clvii. (Opera, ed. Migne, tom. ii. coll. 374 et seq.), Ad Hilarium. [96] Deliberate intention. [97] Warnes in the MSS. [98] Disposition. [99] Coaxing, beguiling. Harl. MS. 674 reads: "glosing." [100] Madness. [101] In particular. Pepwell has: "surely." [102] Regret. [103] Better is art than evil strength. A proverbial expression. Cf. Layamons Brut, 17210 (ed Madden, ii. p. 297); Ancren Riwle (ed. Morton), p. 268 (where it is rendered: "Skilful prudence is better than rude force"). Cf. Prov. xxi. 22. [104] The MSS. have: "ilke." [105] Invisibilia. [106] So Pepwell and Harl. MS. 674. Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "see thiself and the candell." [107] Pepwell reads: "waking." [108] Ps. iv. 6-7. [109] Harl. MS. 674 reads: "light." [110] Salutary. [111] Skill. [112] So Pepwell. Harl. MS. 674 reads: "each desire on desire." Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, has: "hekand desire unto desire." [113] Gen. xxxv. 18. [114] Ps. xxvi. (Vulgate xxv.) 12. [115] So Harl. MSS. 1022 and 2373; Pepwell and harl. MS. 674 read: "godly." [116] Ps. lxviii. 27 (Vulgate lxvii. 28). [117] So Harl. MS. 2373; omitted in Harl. MS. 674. Pepwell has instead: "To the which us bring our blessed Benjamin, Christ Jesu, Amen." Harl. MS. 1022 ends: "Jesus Jesu, Mercy, Jesu, grant Mercy, Jesu." The whole of this concluding paragraph, which is an addition of the translator, differs considerably in Pepwell. [118]So Pepwell and MS. Reg. 17 D.V.; Caxton has: "Thou art she that art not, and I am he that am"; which is nearer to the Latin. [119]Caxton reads: "I escape gracyously all his snares." [120]Cf. Dante, Par. xxxiii. 100-105:-- "A quella luce cotal si diventa, Che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto, E impossibil che mai si consenta; Pero che il ben, ch'e del volere obbietto, Tutto s'accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella E difettivo cio che li e perfetto." "Such at that light does one become, that it were impossible ever to consent to turn from it for sight of ought else, For the good, that is the object of the will, is wholly gathered therein, and outside it that is defective which there is perfect." [121]So Pepwell: Caxton has: "yf thou wilt gete the vertu of ghostely strength." [122]Pepwell and the MS. add: "and temptations" (Caxton: "of temptacyons"); which is clearly out of place. Cf. Legenda, SS 104 (Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis, tom. iii.). [123]2 Cor. i. 7. [124]Mated. Caxton has: "vertuously y-mette." Cf. Legenda, SS 101: "Talis anima sic Deo conjuncta." [125]2 Cor. xii. 10. [126] "And the cause and the rote" (Caxton). [127]Sometimes. [128]Caxton has: "It happed she sayde that other whyle deuoute feruour of a sowle leuyng oure lorde Jhesu other by somme certeyne synne, or ellys by newe sotyll temptacyons of the fende wexyth dull and slowe, and other whyle it is y-brought to veray coldenesse." Pepwell and the MS. are entirely corrupt: "It happeneth (she sayth) that otherwhyle a synner whiche is leuynge our Lord Jhesu by some certeyn synne, or ellys by some certeyn temptacyons of the fende," &c. The original of the passage runs thus: "Frequenter enim (ut inquiebat) contingit animae Deum amanti quod fervor mentalis, vel ex divina providentia, vel ex aliquali culpa, vel ex haustis adinventionibus inimici, tepescit, et quandoque quasi ad frigiditatem usque deducitur" (Legenda SS 107). [129]So Caxton; Pepwell has: "leaving." [130]Caxton has: "seeth"; the Latin text: quantumcumque videat seu sentiat. [131]Requited. [132]So the MS.; Pepwell reads: "were feble and fayle"; and Caxton: "wexed feble and defayled." [133]Caxton reads: "prayng" (praying). [134]So Caxton: Pepwell and MS. have: "in." [135]Latin, Praelatorum suorum (i.e. of her ecclesiastical superiors), Legenda, SS 361. [136]Omitted in Pepwell and in MS. [137]Judge. Cf. above, p. 14. [138]Judgment. [139] "Also she sayd that she hadde alwaye grete hope and truste in Goddes prouydence, and to this same truste she endured her dysciples seyng unto theym that she founde and knewe" (Caxton). [140]The habergeon or the hair-shirt, the former term being applied to an instrument of penance as well as to a piece of armour. Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale (ed. Skeat, SS 97): "Thanne shaltow understonde, that bodily peyne stant in disciplyne or techinge, by word or by wrytinge, or in ensample. Also in weringe of heyres or of stamin, or of haubergeons on hir naked flesh, for Cristes sake, and swiche manere penances. But war thee wel that swiche manere penances on thy flesh ne make nat thyn herte bitter or angry or anoyed of thy-self; for bettre is to caste awey thyn heyre, than for to caste away the sikernesse of Jesu Crist. And therfore seith seint Paul: 'Clothe yow, as they that been chosen of God, in herte of misericorde, debonairetee, suffraunce, and swich manere of clothinge'; of whiche Jesu Crist is more apayed than of heyres, or haubergeons, or hauberkes." [141]Wynkyn de Worde has: "sholde." [142]Wynkyn de Worde has: "profyte." [143]Cf. St. Catherine of Siena, Letter to William Flete (ed. Gigli, 124): "There are some who give themselves perfectly to chastising their body, doing very great and bitter penance, in order that the sensuality may not rebel against the reason. They have set all their desire more in mortifying the body than in slaying their own will. These are fed at the table of penance, and are good and perfect, but unless they have great humility, and compel themselves to consider the will of God and not that of men, they oft times mar their perfection by making themselves judges of those who are not going by the same way that they are going." [144]Perhaps, simply, "say many prayers"--without any special reference to the rosary. [145]Annoy. [146]Wynkyn de Worde has: "mote." [147]Wynkyn de Worde has: "lownesse." [148]With-out-forth=outwardly. Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale, (ed. Skeat, SS 10): "And with-inne the hertes of folk shal be the bytinge conscience, and with-oute-forth shal be the world al brenninge." [149]Everyche=each one. [150]According to the legend, certain "indulgences," to be gained by all who visited the Holy Places at Jerusalem, were first granted by Pope St. Sylvester at the petition of Constantine and St. Helena. There seems no evidence as to the real date at which these special indulgences were instituted. Cf. Amort, De origine, progressu, valore, ac frauctu Indulgentiarum, Augsburg, 1735, pars i. pp. 217 et seq. [151]Plenary. [152]All the indulgences attached to the Holy Places. [153]Probably Racheness in the parish of South Acre, where "there was a leper hospital, with church or chapel dedicated to St. Bartholomew, of early foundation" (Victoria History of the County of Norfolk, ii. p. 450). [154]In true union. [155]Established firmly. [156]Wandering. [157]So Horstman. Pepwell reads: "With this wonderful onehede ne may none be fuifilled." [158]Unreasonable impulses. [159]Secret nature. Cf. Mother Juliana, Revelations of Divine Love, xiv. cap. 46: "And our kindly substance is now blessedfully in God." [160]Divers. [161]Cf. De Imitatione Christi, ii. 4: "If thine heart were right, then every creature would be a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine. There is no creature so small and vile, as not to represent the goodness of God." [162]Horstman reads: "a mans saule." [163]So Horstman: Pepwell reads: "as virtues in angels and in holy souls and in heavenly things." [164]Pepwell omits the "not." [165]Before. [166]The truth of God's hidden mysteries. [167]According to the measure of its love. [168]All intervening hindrance. [169]Horstman reads: "matter." [170]A little. [171]Before. [172]Overtaxes. [173]Craft. [174]Horstman reads: "wete he wele." [175]This passage is defective in Pepwell. [176]MS. Dd. v. 55, ed. Horstman, has: "purges." [177]Pepwell has: "in feeling of the sound." [178]MS. Dd. v. 55, ed. Horstman, reads: "toune" (i.e. tone). [179]Illumined. [180]Cools down grows cold. Also construed with "from." Cf. Richard Rolle Psalter (ed. H. R. Bramley, p. 156): "He gars sa many kele fra godis luf." [181]A mere abstract thought of God. [182]Construe: "But if he hold this feeling and this mind (that is only his own working by custom) to be a special visitation." [183]Surer, safer. [184]Pepwell adds "and in faith." [185]The MSS. add: "And bot if thou spede thee the rather or thou come to the ende of thy prayer." [186]Pepwell reads: "find." [187]Coax, beguile. [188]Falsehoods. [189]The MSS. read: "behetynges of lenger leuyng." [190]Promise. 191Ps. xlvi. 8 (Vulgate), xlvii. 7 (A.V.): "Sing ye praises with understanding." 192Ps. cxi. 10 (cx. 10 Vulgate). [193]So Pepwell; Harl. MS. 674 reads: "Bot forthi that there is no sekir stonding." [194]Pepwell adds in explanation: "or amends"; i.e. satisfaction. Cf. Langland, Piers the Plowman, B. xvii. 237: "And if it suffice noughte for assetz"; and Wyclif, Pistil on Cristemasse Day (Select English Works, ed. T. Arnold, ii. p. 237): "And thus, sith aseeth muste be maad for Adams synne." [195]Ps. xxxiv. 22 (Vulgate xxxiii. 23). [196]The MSS. read: "fro a lyf." [197]The MSS. read: "a lyf." [198]So Harl. MS. 674. Pepwell reads: "Also the steps of thy staff Hope plainly will shew unto thee if thou do it duly, as I have told thee before, or not." [199]Summa Theologica, II.-ii. Q. 82, A. I: "Devotio nihil aliud esse videtur, quam voluntas quaedam prompte tradendi se ad ea, quae pertinent ad Dei famulatum." [200]The whole passage included in square brackets is omitted in Pepwell, but is identical in the two MSS. [201]So Harl. MS. 2373; Harl. MS. 674 reads: "medeful." [202]The trunk. [203]Pepwell inserts: "it is but churl's meat, for." [204]Not in Pepwell. [205]Pepwell reads: "and for nothing else." [206]Had never received it from Him. [207]Pure Love, or Charity, which "attains to God Himself, that it may abide in Him, not that any advantage may accrue to us from Him" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.-ii. Q. 23, A. 6). For the whole doctrine of "Pure Love or Disinterested Religion," cf. F. von Hugel, The Mystical Element of Religion, ii. pp. 152-181. [208]So both MSS.; Pepwell reads: "blessedness." [209]Hindering or marring. [210]Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.-ii. Q. 27, A. 3; and F. von Hugel, op. cit., ii. p. 167. [211]In the Divine Essence. [212]So Harl. MS. 674, I take "it" as the beatitude of man which is God Himself. [213]Cf. Dante, Par. xxxiii, 143-145:-- "Ma gia volgeva il mio disiro e il velle, Si come rota ch' egualmente e mossa, L'Amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle." "But already my desire and will, even as a wheel that is equally moved, were being turned by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars." [214]1 Cor. vi. 17. [215]Pepwell adds: "or sundry." [216]So Pepwell and Harl. MS. 2373; Harl. MS, 674 reads: "they ben one spirit." [217]Cant. ii. 16. [218]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "glose." Pepwell adds: "or flatter." [219]Heed. [220]Pepwell adds: "or betokeneth." Cf. Langland, Piers the Plowman, A. i. 1: "What this mountein bemeneth." [221]Cf. above, p. 28 note. [222]Pepwell adds: "or counsel." [223]Of thyself thou hast nought but sin. [224]So the MSS.: Pepwell has: "to God." [225]Pepwell changes to "divers." [226]Cf. Dante, De Monarchia, iii. 16: "Man alone of beings holds a mid-place between corruptible and incorruptible; wherefore he is rightly likened by the philosophers to the horizon which is between two hemispheres. For man, if considered after either essential part, to wit soul and body is corruptible if considered only after the one, to wit the body, but if after the other, to wit the soul, he is incorruptible. . . . If man then, is a kind of mean between corruptible and incorruptible things, since every mean savours of the nature of the extremes, it is necessary that man should savour of either nature. And since every nature is ordained to a certain end, it follows that there must be a twofold end of man, so that like as he alone amongst all beings partakes of corruptibility and incorruptibilty, so he alone amongst all beings should be ordained for two final goals of which the one should be his goal as a corruptible being, and the other as an incorruptible" (P. H. Wicksteed's translation). [227]Pepwell modernises this throughout to "dwelling alone." [228]Pepwell substitutes "doubt." Cf. Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, 2686: "Thryes doun she fil in swiche a were." [229]Pepwell adds: "in keeping of silence." [230]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "more holiness than thou art worthy." [231]Nature. [232]Solitude. [233]Pepwell has: "company." [234]Pepwell reads: "better." [235]Causes. [236]1 Cor. ii. 11. [237]Simple. [238]Jas. i. 12. [239]The MSS. usually read "cleped" for "called." [240]Pepwell modernizes to "trouble." [241]Jas. i. 12. [242]To give place to. [243]Such impulses to exceptional practices. [244]Humble itself. [245]Pleasant. [246]Pepwell reads: "wits." [247]Lest. [248]Pepwell reads: "strait." [249]Jer. ix. 21: "Quia ascendit mors per fenestras nostras" (Vulgate). Pepwell reads: "as saint Jerome saith"! Cf. Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection, I. pt. iii. cap 9: "Lift up thy lanthorn, and thou shalt see in this image five windows, by which sin cometh into thy soul, as the Prophet saith: Death cometh in by our windows. These are the five senses by which thy soul goeth out of herself, and fetcheth her delight and seeketh her feeding in earthly things, contrary to the nobility of her own nature. As by the eye to see curious and fair things and so of the other senses. By the unskilful using of these senses willingly to vanities, thy soul is much letted from the sweetness of the spiritual senses within; and therefore it behoveth thee to stop these windows, and shut them, but only when need requireth to open them" (ed. Dalgairns, p. 115). [250]Ignorant. [251]Where natural and acquired knowledge alike fall shorts. [252]Fully. [253]Nature. [254]Pepwell has: "when thou dost feel." [255]Pepwell inserts: "I mean except the solemn vows of holy religion." [256]2 Cor. iii. 17. [257]Cf. St. Catherine of Siena, Letter 308 (ed. Gigli): "Love harmonises the three powers of our soul, and binds them together. The will moves the understanding to see, when it wishes to love; when the understanding perceives that the will would fain love, if it is a rational will, it places before it as object the ineffable love of the eternal Father, who has given us the Word, His own son, and the obedience and humility of the son, who endured torments, inuries, mockeries, and insults with meekness and with such great love. And thus the will, with ineffable love, follows what the eye of the understanding has beheld; and with its strong hand, it stores up in the memory the treasure that it draws from this love." [258]Losing. [259]Cant. iv. 9. [260]To exercise love. [261]Divers. [262]1 Cor. i. 26, vii. 20; Eph. iv. 1. [263]Luke x. 42. [264]Pepwell inserts "Him list thee to see, and." [265]Pepwell reads: "Let be good and all that is good, and better with all that is better." [266]Luke x. 42. [267]To know how to speak, etc. [268]Banishing from thy soul's vision. [269]Be able to. [270]Pepwell reads: "privily." Cf. Wyclif (Select English Works, ed. cit., i. p. 149): "And after seith Crist to his apostles, that thes thingis he seide bifore to hem in proverbis and mystily." [271]Pepwell reads: "rest." [272]Pepwell modernises "conne" to "learn to" throughout this passage. [273]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "stirring"; the other MS, as Pepwell. [274]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "have." [275]Pepwell reads: "else." [276]Manifestly, i.e. unless they clearly show that they do not know how to act as they should. Pepwell has: "in a part." [277]i.e. take their advice, but do not simply imitate them. I follow the MSS. in preference to Pepwell, who reads: "Work after no men's counsel, but sith that know well their own disposition; for such men should," etc. [278]1 John iv. 1-6. [279]Ps. lxxxv. 8 (Vulgate lxxxiv. 9). [280]Zech. i. 9-19. [281]Col. ii. 18. [282]1 Thess. i. 2-9. [283]Pepwell adds: "or ambition." Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale, ed. Skeat, SS 18: "and coveitise of hynesse by pryde of herte." [284]Burns. [285]So Harl. MS. 674; Pepwell has: "war." [286]Crafty device. [287]Cf. above, p. 17 note. [288]Pepwell has: "gladly." [289]Pepwell reads "ever ready." [290]Withstand, resist. [291]Cf. Mother Juliana, Revelations of Divine Love, i. cap. 9: "In general I am, I hope, in onehead of charity with all my even Christian, for in this onehead standeth the life of all mankind that shall be saved." [292]If it is still guilty of the other two. [293]Pepwell adds: "and voluptuous." [294]Ps. cxxxii. (Vulgate cxxxi. ) 13. [295]Cf. Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection, II. pt. ii. cap. 3: "Jerusalem is, as much as to say, a sight of peace, and betokeneth contemplation in perfect love of God; for contemplation is nothing else but a sight of God, which is very peace." [296]Probably Isa. lvii. 15. [297]Pepwell reads: "most folly." [298]Pepwell adds: "or harm." Cf. The Chronicle of Robert of Brunne, 8905-6: "Now may ye lyghtly bere the stones to schip wythouten dere." [299]Advisedly. [300]Partisans, abettors. [301]The MSS. read: "doles." [302]Pepwell reads: "But it is more sorrow to feel of our own spirit's deceits. For sometime our own spirit." [303]The MSS. read: "Bot what thar reche"; what need to care. [304]Pepwell reads: "didst feel in there." [305]Cf. above, p. 95, note. [306]Pepwell adds: "and judgment." [307]Unless because of carelessness in resisting them when they first come. [308]To regard thyself as responsible. [309]Madness. [310]Not in Harl. MS. 674. [311]Pepwell reads: "a full damnable and a full cursed fiend in his living." [312]Pepwell adds: "and desire much." [313]Pepwell reads: "suggestion." [314]On the other hand. 
56101	----	SWEET ROCKET BOOKS BY MARY JOHNSTON SWEET ROCKET MICHAEL FORTH FOES SIR MORTIMER HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1817 SWEET ROCKET _by_ MARY JOHNSTON AUTHOR OF "SIR MORTIMER" "MICHAEL FORTH" "TO HAVE AND TO HOLD" "FOES" ETC. [Illustration: Logo] Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London SWEET ROCKET Copyright, 1920, by Mary Johnston Printed in the United States of America Published October, 1920 SWEET ROCKET I The woman driving turned the phaeton from the highway into a narrow road. Almost immediately the forest through which they had been passing for a mile or more deepened. It was now a rich woodland, little cut, seldom touched by fire. Apparently the road knew little use. Narrow and in part grass-grown, soft from yesterday's rain, dimmed by many trees, now it bent and now it ran straight, a dun streak, cut always in front by that ancient, exquisite screen of bough and leaf. The highway dropped out of sight and mind. The woman to whom this countryside was new, sitting beside the woman driving, drew a breath of pleasure. "Oh, smell it! It goes over you like balm!" "It washes the travel stains away. Take off your hat." The other obeyed, turning and placing it upon the back seat beside a large and a small traveling bag. She drew off her gloves, too, then, straightening herself, sighed again with happiness. "How deep it goes ... and quiet! It's thousands of miles away!" "Hundreds of thousands, and right at hand!" Leaves were beginning to turn. Maples had lighted fires, hickories were making gold, dogwood and sumac dyeing with crimson. Ironweed, yet blooming, blotched the roadside with purple. Joe-pye lifted heads of ashy pink, goldenrod started forth, in places farewell-summer made a low mist of lilac. The road dipped into a dell. The gray horse, the phaeton, crossed a brown streamlet, sliding, murmuring. Mint filled the air. The road lifted and ran on again into mystery. Blackbirds flew across, a woodpecker tapped and tapped, a squirrel ran up an oak. But for all of faint, stealthy rustle, perpetual low sound and small movements without end, deep, deep, deep rest was the note. Rest and solitude. The old, strong, gray horse was named Daniel. This was his road since he was a colt. Sometimes he might find upon it Whitefoot and Bess, the farm horses, drawing the farm wagon, but oftenest it was solitary like this--his road--Sweet Rocket road. The phaeton moving its wheels rolled it, droned it forth--"Sweet Rocket road--Sweet Rocket road." "There are five miles of it," said Marget. Her tone added, "I love it--its solitariness, its ownness!" "It's miraculously beautiful," answered her companion. "It aches, it is so beautiful!" "Sweet Rocket road--Sweet Rocket road," said the wheels. "Way to Sweet Rocket--way to Sweet Rocket." "It is straight and single-minded as an arrow. No one goes but one who wishes to travel to Sweet Rocket. It is our road in and our road out. There seems to be no other." "'Seems'?" "I mean that it is the only road made with spade and pick." They traveled again in silence. The visitor sat, a small, elderly woman, with a thin, strong, intelligent face. Something about her, alike of strength and of limitation, said, "Teacher for long years." She sat with her hands in her lap, looking at that truly beautiful road and the forest walls. But at last with a sigh of appreciation she turned to talk. "Twenty years and more since we last met! But you keep young, Marget. I had no difficulty in picking you out of the station crowd." "Nor I you, dear Miss Darcy! But then I've always kept you in mind and heart. I owe you so much!" "Ah, Marget, not much!" "I owe you learning. It is a good deal to take a country girl, charge scarcely anything for her and see that she gets knowledge and learns how to get more--and more--" "You are of those who reward teaching. Don't let us talk about that which was neither load nor task and so is no debt. The 'now' interests me. You look well. Your face is a rose under clear brown." "I am well." "And happy?" "Yes, happy." "I know that you couldn't be happy unless you were helping." "I don't know how much I help. I help some." "You were never given to long letters. There really is much that I don't at all know about you! And such as they are, I have had very few letters of late years. It was the sheerest accident my finding out that this was your part of the country. I might have gone to the Conference and never known that you were not twenty miles away!" "The day before I had your card I knew that something pleasant was going to happen." "Well, tell me what you do--" Marget Land looked over Daniel's ears, down the vista of the road. At this point hemlocks grew to either hand, cones of a green that was almost black. Between rose sycamores with pale arms and leaves like silky brown hair. At the road edge the farewell-summer made a lacework, and above it glowed the sumac torches. Blue sky roofed the autumn earth. The air just flowed, neither hot nor cold, milk warm, happy. Summer and winter had made a bargain, struck a compromise, achieved a diagonal. Gold autumn, crimson autumn, violet autumn, dusky and tawny autumn--autumn balm--autumn drawn up into a gracious figure--Keats's autumn--a goddess! She drew a light, sighing breath. "I told you that I was happy.... Isn't it strange--living? Isn't it strange and sweet the way things come about? There's magic, all right! Sweet Rocket.... I was born in the overseer's house at Sweet Rocket. That was ten years after the war and there wasn't much nor many for my father to oversee. I love my father. He was what the mountain folk call 'a getter-on.' He had ability and a lot of goodness and a lot of kindness. Education from books had not come his way, but he knew many things. He had worked hard and saved, and after the war, when he gave up overseeing, or it gave him up, and when he turned merchant in Alder, over there, he made money--as we looked at it in Virginia in those days. Some money, that is. He had ten thousand dollars in bank when old Major Linden died, and Mary Linden married and went away, and Sweet Rocket was sold for debt. He bought it--though he kept a steady face, he was so proud to buy it! I was nine years old when we moved out of the overseer's house into the big house--my mother, my father, my two brothers, and I. I loved it, loved it, loved it--love it, love it, love it!" "I remember the very way in which you used to say it, 'Sweet Rocket!'" "We became at once land poor. And my father had an illness, and, though he seemed to recover, never did quite recover. When it came to choosing and bargaining, making and laying by, he was never again the man he had been. My mother, too, who had worked so hard when she was young--too hard--began to fail. Will, my elder brother, went West. Edgar, the younger, wanted to go, too. He did not like it here. You see ... every one still said: 'The old overseer bought it. They were all born in the overseer's house. Now they rattle around in the Lindens' house! Bottom rail--!' It was still called 'the Linden place.' As I grew old enough to have cared for what they said I somehow escaped caring. But Edgar cared. It was hard on the boy.... But I loved Sweet Rocket, loved it, love it! I love the overseer's house and the big house--which isn't, of course, very big, for the place was always a simple one--simple and still and out of the way!" She seemed to pause somewhat deeply to vision something within. Miss Darcy watched the moving walls, now standing close, now a little receding, now opening as it were into gateways through which were seen forest lawns and aisles. They shut in again. A golden bough brushed the phaeton. She who had been speaking put out her hand and touched it. "How could one help but love it? To me it is forever so old and forever so new! I lock with it.... What was I saying? Well, Edgar did not like it, and my mother failed, and father had less money and less money--and still we went on ... five years, eight years, ten years. Then in one year my father died and my mother died.... Will came home. He and Edgar said that we must sell Sweet Rocket. I wasn't eighteen. We knew about the mortgage, but we didn't know about some other debts. When it was sold there was hardly anything to divide among us--" "The Lindens didn't buy it back, then?" "No, not then. Northern people bought it. Will went back to Wyoming, and Edgar with him. I went to my mother's sister--Aunt Hester--who lived in Richmond. I went to her with my two hundred and fifty dollars a year. She's one of the best of women. I never had anything but kindness from her--and one of the greatest was when she spoke of me to you!" She put her hand over Miss Darcy's hand. "I had been to school a little, of course. There were some books at home, and I had borrowed where I could. But in Richmond, to you, I really began to go to school." "You studied as very few study, Marget. You studied as though waves of things were coming happily back into memory." "Yes. But you released something. Always fire is lit from fire. Always one comes to any that sit in darkness.... Well, I went to school for three years. Then off you go from that school to Canada, to England, to I don't know where! I stayed in Richmond and went to a business school. I learned typewriting and stenography. I began to earn my living." "You were with Baker and Owen?" "Yes. And then I passed into library work. I went to Washington. I was in the library there for five years. I saved. I wrote a few papers that were published. I took what they brought me and what I had saved, and I left the library and I went around the world, second class and third class--and at times fourth--and I learned and enjoyed. I taught English here and there, and so I paid as I went. I came back in four years--back to Richmond and Aunt Hester, until I might look about me and see what I could do, for I must earn." "If you had written to me then in New York--" "I felt that. But there is something--don't you know there is something?--that guides us.... I lay one night thinking of Sweet Rocket. I could always come back here, just as really--come back from the ends of the earth! I came back often. There has always been, along the garden wall, sweet rocket--dame's violet, you know. Some of it is white and some is purple--shining clusters growing above your waist. I could gather them in my arms and feel them against my cheek. I could get _into_ the dark cedars that come up from the river. I lay in Richmond, more than half feeling, more than half seeing.... There's a country, you know, out of which things come down to you.... It came down--knowledge! I meant to go back to Sweet Rocket." She paused. "Look at that tree--" "It is so splendid! A sugar maple, isn't it? And that one?" "Mountain linden. It puts on a clear, pale gold, like the old saints' haloes." "I hear water." "It is the little stream that we cross. See how sweet and clear and sounding it goes! Hemlock Run. All right, Daniel!" Daniel bent mouth to water and drank. "No check rein?" "No." Gray horse and old phaeton moved again. The wood grew richer and deeper. "We are nearing the river." "And then, in Richmond, you heard about Sweet Rocket?" "Aunt Hester had a letter from Alder. Richard Linden, old Major Linden's nephew, had bought Sweet Rocket. I was glad that some one who must love it was there. Aunt Hester said that he had visited it once or twice as a young boy. He would remember it then as I remembered it. The second letter said that he was almost blind, and alone on the place save for the colored people. Then I saw his advertisement in the Richmond papers. He wanted a secretary, one who could read aloud well. So I answered, and was taken--five years ago." "How old a man is he?" "He is forty-seven and I am forty-four." "You have inner youth--higher youth." "Yes. Childhood there. So has he." "Do you love him, Marget?" "Love him? Yes! But not the once-time way, if that is what you mean. As he loves me, but not the once-time way. So we shall not marry, in the once-time way. But we live here together all the same." "Well, if it is as fair as this road--" "It is just a simple house in the bent arm of a little river and with hills all around, and behind the hills, mountains. There are fields and an orchard and garden. It is hidden like a lost place, and happy like a place for evermore finding itself." "Tell me about Mr. Linden." "No, let us wait for that. Or I can tell outward things--how we live?" "Yes." "He has only a small, fixed income. It wouldn't at all go round the year, so we farm. We have an excellent man, Roger Carter, who lives in the overseer's house. Wheat, corn, buckwheat, hay, and apples! So we live and can buy--though with an elegant spareness--books and red-seal Victor records and more and more flowers for the flower garden." "Of course you have help about the house?" "There are two colored men and a boy, and Mimy the cook and Zinia the housemaid. But with the home garden and cornfield and orchard and the two cows and the chickens and ducks and Daniel and Whitefoot and Bess there is more than enough to do. You will be surprised to see how much he does himself." "How can he see?" "He can tell light from darkness, and the dim mass of things. And then, when you are blind, you grow so skillful with the other senses! And of course in a measure all of us are eyes to him. He has a great, strong body. He hoes and digs. He knows always what is beneath his fingers. He can weed a garden as well as I can. He gathers fruit and berries and vegetables and knows the perfect from the imperfect. He does no end of things. Perhaps he may work with his hands four hours a day." "And then?" "There are letters. I write them, and I keep his accounts, and, of course, the house. Then we read. It is a sandwiched business, but we must average three hours a day with books. He gets up very early and walks before breakfast, and usually again in the afternoon. Sometimes I drive him on this road. Sometimes I walk with him, sometimes he goes alone. After supper we read, or listen to the Victor singing and playing, or we talk, or sit by the fire, still and thinking. Or on the porch steps when weather is warm, where I can see and he can image the stars." "I see a good life." "We are not without neighbors, though it seems so lonely. And then folk come to us. His blindness was an accident, you know. He has had life in the world as I have had life in the world. We _have_ life in the world." "He is one, then, that may be loved?" "He is a great poet, though he would never call himself so. He just feels and acts so.... I think his face is beautiful." "I think that your face is beautiful," thought Miss Darcy. The tawny road turned a little east. Trees yet green, trees that wore the one color the year round, blended with golden trees and scarlet trees. Wild grapes with twisted and shaggy stems and yellowing leaves, with blue grapes hanging over, ran and mounted, held by the forest arms up to the sun. Sumac that was somehow like the Indian, that seemed to hold memories of the Indian in the land, grew in each minute clearing. There arose a little, rustling wind, the ineffable blue air moving lightly. Brown butterflies abounded. The sense grew strong of remoteness, of calm that was not indolence, of beauty gathered and at home. Miss Darcy moved a little. Marget Land turned toward her. "You feel it, don't you?" "Yes." "They that come feel it. They are drawn. There are centers of integration. This is one. I do not know who started it. Probably many, working in at different times. But now it is in action." "Is that mysticism?" "No. It is fact." The forest stopped with clean decision. The road ran through fields where the corn had been cut and shocked. The shocks stood in rows like brown wigwams. Daniel and the phaeton came down to a little river, very clear, falling and murmuring over stones above and below a ford, but at the ford a mirror, reflecting autumn hills and heaven. Across the ford stretched a little pebbly beach, crowned with trees and grass, and behind the trees stood a brick house, old-red, not so large as large houses go, but of excellent line. It had a porch with Doric pillars, weather-softened. It stood among fine trees in a small valley shut in on all sides by hills and mountains, all forested to the top. Only the road and the river seemed to have way out and in, only road and river and air and birds. Valley and colored mountain walls were proportioned, modeled, tinted to some wide and deep artist's taste. The tone was rest without weakness, movement without fury, solitude that had all company. "How could you help but love it!" said the visiting woman. "I don't try to help it.... If it burned down--if the hills sank and the wood was destroyed--still it would endure, and still I could come here. Now we cross the river. Look at the bright stones and the minnows, gliding, darting!" Up from the river, across the pebbly shore, rose cedars dark and tall. "They are like warders. Only there's nothing, really, to ward out. All things may meet here. We go this way, to the back of the house." "It feels enchanted." "It is so simple. You might call it meek. There are people who pass who say, 'How lonely!'" They were now at the back of the house, where the road skirted the flower garden. Here was the back door, with three rounded, moss-grown steps of stone. Daniel and the phaeton stood still. The two women left the vehicle. A colored man appeared. "Miss Darcy, this is Mancy. Mancy, this is Miss Darcy, come to stay with us as long as she will." Mancy, tall and spare, with an Indian great-grandmother, said that he was glad to see her, and took her bags. In the brick kitchen in the yard, Mimy was singing: "Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home--" II "I might stay a week." Anna Darcy spoke to herself, standing at the window of the room where Marget had left her. She looked down upon flowers and out to the southern wall that closed in the valley. The mountains had the tints of desert sands at sunset. They had long wave forms; they were not peaked, nor very high. They were so old, she knew--Appalachians--older than Apennine or Himalaya. They were wearing down here, disintegrating. The weather would be lowering them year by year. They were removing and building elsewhere. They had granaries full of memories, and they must have somewhere, springing like the winter wheat, as many as the blades of wheat, anticipations. Down in the garden she saw marigolds and zinnias, late blooming pansies, mignonette, snapdragon and aster and heliotrope, larkspur, mourning bride, and citronalis. A rosy light bathed garden and fields. This was the back of the house. She saw two or three cabins and a barn, stacked hay, and a rail fence worn and lichened, fostering a growth of trumpet vine and traveler's joy. She heard cow bells. A boy with a good-natured ebony face crossed the path below, carrying two milk pails. Chickens, turkeys, and guineas walked about in the barnyard. From the kitchen, fifty feet from the house, floated a smell of coffee and of bread in the oven. All the place was clean, friendly. She turned to the large, four-windowed room. The walls had a paper of lavender-gray, on which hung three prints. The bed was a four-poster, with a linen, ball-fringed valance. Books stood ranged above an ancient desk; a blue jug held asters. There was a large closet and--modern blessing--a bathroom, white tubbed, pleasant and light. It had been, she saw, an old dressing room between the two chambers upon this side of the hall, with a door for each. Both doors being ajar, she saw Marget's room, large like this one, furnished not unlike this one. But that, something told her, was really the spare room, and this that she was to dwell in was Marget's room. It had the feel of Marget. "It is the pleasantest, and so she has given it to me." She bathed and changed her dress. All the time old, happy rhythms ran in her head. Dressed, she sat down by one of the western windows, in the yet warm light. She rested her head against the back of the chair, her eyes closed. She was no longer a young woman, and she had had a tiring year, and it was grateful to her to rest thus. Rest! It was the word, it was the feeling, that was dwelling in this place. Rest, rest, deep rest without idleness. The air was so rare and fine--mountain air. She remembered that they said that the valley itself lay high. Mountain air. But even while she thought that she had a sudden sense of sea air, fine and strong and drenched with sun. There would be five or six rooms on this floor. All were large, and the hall between was large. The stairway was very good, the woodwork everywhere good. The ceilings were high. They used lamps and candles. The day had been warm. Fire was not needed. But wood was laid in the fireplace and the wood box beside it held chestnut and pine. This window gave upon the west. Here were grass and the red and gold trees, and the pebbly beach and the sickle of the water, and the lion-colored fields and the wood through which they had driven, and the amethyst mountains. The sun had set, but the sky stayed aglow. The fatigue went out of the old teacher's face. "'Cast thy bread upon the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee!'" She did not consciously repeat this, but the saying overhung her. She had slightly opened the door giving upon the hall, so that Marget, returning, might know that she was ready. Stair and hall floor were bare wood. A step sounded upon the one and then upon the other. She was sensitive to the way folk trod. "That is Mr. Linden." He passed her door and she heard him enter his room across the hall. Marget presently came for her. "Let us go into the garden until the bell rings." The garden lay spread in breadths of violet brocade. They walked on brick paths and smelled box and mignonette. Then Zinia rang the supper bell. The two entered the lower hall yet drenched with the afterglow. A man, tall and big framed, turned at their step. "Miss Darcy, this is Mr. Linden." He put out his hand; the visitor laid hers in it. It was a strong hand, likable. His voice, when he spoke, was the voice for the hand. "I am glad to see you, Miss Darcy! Marget and I are glad." There was light enough to show a strong-featured, clean-shaven face. The eyes were blue-gray. They were not disfigured. She also came to think his face a beautiful one. They went into the dining room, where two lamps were lighted. The mahogany table had a blue bowl of larkspur. Zinia, in a blue cotton dress and white apron, waited. There were coffee, delicate rolls, a perfection of butter and of cream, a salad, coddled apples, and sugar cakes. Marget sat behind the coffee urn and cups and saucers. Richard Linden did not take the foot of the table, but sat beside her, at the right. She aided him quietly, perfectly, nor did he need as much aid as might be thought. He was so skillful; eyes must be in fingers. Zinia, too, marked his needs, forestalled things. She called him Mr. Dick. She had for him a low, rich, confidential whisper. "The salt, Mr. Dick." "Cottage cheese, Mr. Dick." Marget called him Richard. The three talked of the ring of this valley and of the ring without and around it, of Miss Darcy's doings and of Sweet Rocket's, and of everybody's. It seemed that papers, magazines, the news, must come here. Earth was the earth of the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century. There was news enough. Supper over, they went into the parlor that was opposite the dining room, and was no more parlor than library. It stretched around, a big room with old pictures, old furniture, with books. A fire flamed and sang. They sat in the firelight, Richard Linden on one side of the hearth and Marget on the other, and Miss Darcy beside the latter. Still there was talk. The visitor would have gathered where they stood on questions of the day, then suddenly saw that they stood all round and through, and that the day to them was so old and young that it included yesterday and to-morrow. That being so, their solutions were not always those currently offered. She also found that though they talked they were not talkative. With them conversation became a rhythmic thing--tranquil pause, deep retirement, then again the word. And it startled her almost, how completely they were one. When they had sat by the fire an hour Marget, rising, put violin music upon a victrola. Hafitz played to them a Hebrew melody; Kreisler played, and Maud Powell. The flames danced, the world heightened. Then, one after the other, came three songs, and between each, as between the violin pieces, they watched the fire, and the forest and the night wind were felt around. "Oh, that we two were maying!" The song ended, the fire burned, they heard the river, the forest was all around. A man's voice was lifted. "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come into His Presence!" Again the wide and deep pause, and then the third song. "And the world shall go up with a shout unto God." Marget shut the victrola. Again they sat in that quiet. It was systole and diastole, it was in and out, and inexpressibly it rested! And that was what she wanted, rest. Marget lighted a lamp that stood upon the table. Linden said, "Hadn't you rather not read, to-night?" "No. We won't read long." He turned to the visitor. "Do you mind listening?" Miss Darcy was glad to listen. Marget began to read. Her old teacher remembered that she had read well twenty years ago. She read better now. The book was Lafcadio Hearn's _West Indies_. "We travel so," said Linden. "We take a right journeyer and journey with him." The fire flickered, then seemed to pass into actual fire of sun. They were in Martinique, under Pelée, in Saint Pierre, in Grand Anse. Again she was startled to feel how real it was. She touched, she knew, the people of Martinique. Later, when the book had been closed, when they had said good night, one to the other, when she lay in bed in the dark quiet, she experienced strongly what a certain number of times in her life she had been able to experience faintly. She experienced coherence that was wider than old coherences. She interlocked with this place and her hosts. She held them, they held her. At the end of the week she must go afar. "But never any more so far that I lose the tune--never any more!" She went to sleep with a strange, fair feeling of sea about her. Not that the forest, the hills and mountains, were not there, but she felt the sea likewise. "Of course it is there, but I never thought to look at it or taste it! The sea and mountains and they and me, threaded together, talking together!" She slept. III As she dressed, the next morning, she heard Mimy singing, but no stir of her hosts. The sun was shining. In at window streamed life-giving air. Her mind was upon the evening before and its current of happenings. As she had gone to sleep with the sea, of which they had read, about her, so now the three songs to which they had listened returned to mind, returned almost to sense. That was one remarkable thing about this place--the great vividness and depth of perception.... She knew the difference between usual or even intent thinking and intuition. Her intuitions had not been vigorous--she had looked at them with a kind of gray wonder, as at pale children from afar. They came at long intervals, but were never forgotten. It now seemed that this was a good clime for them. She stood still in the middle of her room. Her mind opened. "'Oh, that we two were maying!' That is man and woman love, time out of mind; love and cry of love! It is Romeo and Juliet, it is Tristan and Isolde. 'Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come into His presence!' That is religious love that goes up from man and woman love. That is the onward going, the seeking of Great Lovers. 'And the world shall go up with a shout unto God.' That is when we move and feel and think, not as men and women, but as Humanity. The Great Mating." The little firmament closed like eyelids and hid the greater. She was a small, gray woman, and she had beaten about in the intellect, and when gleams came like this she had taken them and promptly, when the sky closed, had doubted if they had ever existed. But to-day she was less inclined to doubt. There remained a faint luminousness in mind, a sense of depth behind feeling. She thought, "If I could stay in that garden I should indeed know bloom and music!" She moved about the room. "The point is that there _is_ such a garden." She finished dressing, and went downstairs. Zinia met her in the hall. "Good mahning! I hope you slept well? Miss Marget says you're to have breakfast on the porch. It's so warm and beautiful this mahning." "She has had hers?" "Yes'm. She said tell you Sweet Rocket was home. I put the table here. But if it's too sunny I can move it." "It's not too sunny. I like sun," said Miss Darcy. "I like it, too," said Zinia, and departed kitchenward. Anna Darcy sat and slowly ate Catawba grapes. The porch was wide, the table placed between high, mellowed pillars. Beyond them the autumn turf ran to great trees colored like Venetian glass. The river crescent sparkled in light. Beyond it she saw the fields and the woods through which they had driven. All was closed by the mountain wall, very soft and gracious in the sun, in the still, warm air. Zinia brought coffee and rolls. There was honey upon the table, and an old blue basket-dish filled with red-amber grapes. Zinia was very dark, supple, and strong. She had large, kind, African eyes, and beautiful teeth, and she moved with an ample and conscious majesty. Miss Darcy loved to watch her. The evening before, a collie lay upon the steps. Miss Darcy asked of him. "Tam? He's gone with Mr. Dick." Zinia stood by a pillar, watching with kind eyes the visitor's evident enjoyment of her breakfast. Miss Darcy had noted before, and noted now, the lack of any servility at Sweet Rocket. They all seemed too much a part of one another for that. But there was also that fine courtesy and feeling that did not speak out of the way when speech was not wanted. They all seemed to sail upon some inner current of understanding. She finished breakfast, and, rising, helped Zinia to carry away the table. Dining room and pantry shone clean and simple. Zinia had flowers in the pantry, and upon the shelf below the china press an open book. Miss Darcy glanced. "What are you reading?--_Pilgrim's Progress?_" "Yes'm," said Zinia, in her rich voice. "I like that girl Mercy." The house was clean and sunny; still, and yet singing somehow, like a great shell held to ear. She walked about, and at last went out into the high morning and the flower garden. The brick paths glistened. Box smelled sweet, mignonette and citronalis. Around flowed bird life and a vast insect life. Multitudinous song and hum and chirr fell into harmony. She walked up and down the paths and partook of garden amusements, then went out by a wicket gate and found herself near the outdoor kitchen. A brown four-year-old was seated on the stone step. She stopped before him. "Good morning!" "Mahning." "What is your name?" "Just So." "Just So?" "Yass'm." Mimy appeared in the doorway. Mimy was a small woman with a face like a carved cherry stone for wrinkles. "He's my grandson, ma'am, Just So." "I heard you singing," said Miss Darcy. "I loved it." "Singing's like butter on the griddle," said Mimy. "It helps you turn things!" She sighed portentously, and then she groaned. "I've had a lot of things to turn! Yes'm, I've lived long and turned a lot of things!" Her voice was gloom, and yet carried more than a suspicion of rich chuckle. She enjoyed her old woes, disaster had grown so shallow. "I, too," thought the visitor, "have had a lot of things to turn! I, too, have come to where I can stand back and see the drama and feel the play thrill!" Just So was a solemn young one. He sat and gazed as though in contemplation of the many things he would have to turn. Then a brown hen came by, and he put out a brown toe and dug in the earth, and said, "Shoo!" and laughed. Miss Darcy left him playing with a string of spools and a broken coffee mill. Mimy in the kitchen was toasting coffee and singing. The coffee smelled better than good, the singing was without age in the voice. "Who built the Ark? Oh, Noah built the Ark! It rained forty days, And it rained forty nights! 'There ain't any sun and there ain't any heights!' Oh, Noah built the Ark!" Miss Darcy's path led on to the barn. Cocks and hens, white and red, held the barnyard. She watched them with pleasure, and the sun on the gray walls and the barn swallows going in and out. Then she found Mancy sitting under a shed, mending a wagon shaft. "Good morning!" "Good morning!" "It's a lovely day." "It is so, ma'am! You're from the city, aren't you?" "Yes." "I hope you like Sweet Rocket?" "I do. It makes you feel whole." Mancy glanced at her. He was a long, brown man, with features between negro and Indian. What you liked very much was his smile. It dropped over his face slowly, like sun on brown hills, out of quiet, cloudy weather. "That's a true saying!" he offered. "That's what I think about heaven. We'll just feel and know that we're well and whole." The school-teacher's mind said: "The negro is a religious character. He is always willing to talk of the Lord and of heaven." "All the little torn bits coming together," finished Mancy. He sat mending the wagon shaft. It came to her, standing watching him, to say something of the distracted and warring earth. His slow smile stole again over his face. "Yes'm. We hurt ourselves right often." "You call it that--hurting oneself?" "Yes'm. What do you call it?" "I don't know.... I suppose it _is_ hurting one's self--suicidal mania!" she thought. "Perhaps all the history I have ever taught has been the story of self hurt and self heal--perhaps we fight our self in Europe and Asia and America. Perhaps, in the tissue wide as space, centers here and centers there are beginning to learn self heal above self hurt--" She stood looking at the mountains while Mancy worked on at the wagon shaft. Presently she said, "You would say that this was a very lonely place, but I have touched a thousand things since I came that run out and touch everywhere!" "Mountains aren't walls," said Mancy. She left the barn and walked on to the orchard. The apples had been gathered, but a few red orbs yet hung from the branches. She walked beneath the trees and she thought of old, dull troubles and anxieties that had attended her life. This morning light seemed at work among them, disintegrating them. The sun came down between the trees. The air blew soft and fine. She returned to the house, and upon the porch steps found Mrs. Cliff with baskets to sell, woven of white-oak splits, in a mountain cabin, by her son and herself. She was waiting for Marget and seemed content to wait as long as the sun shone. She wore a faded calico and a brown sunbonnet, and she dipped snuff. "Good morning!" "Mornin'!" Mrs. Cliff put her snuffbox in her pocket. "Don't you want to buy a basket? These three are fer Miss Marget." Miss Darcy examined and admired. "I'd like this little one." Mrs. Cliff put it aside. "I hain't seen you here before." "I've just come. You've got a lovely country." "Yaas. We think so. Do you see yon clearing on mountain? I come from thar." Miss Darcy sat down, and she and the mountain woman talked of basket weaving and of the times, which Mrs. Cliff said were hard. "What do you think sugar is? An' what you got to give fer a pair of shoes? You've got to sit an' fergit, even while you're rememberin', or you don't git nowhar! I wish Jesus Christ would come on back!" "He is somewhat needed," Anna Darcy agreed. "I had a funny thing happen to me yesterday," said Mrs. Cliff. "I had jest finished that basket. I was setting on the step an' awful tired, an' I shet my eyes an' leaned my head back against the door. An jest like that I thought, 'He's in little bits in all of us, an' we've got to put him together.' An' jest thinking it, all in a minute I felt so big and rested! But it couldn't last. I wish it would come again." Marget's voice was heard, speaking to Zinia. "She's come back. They're mighty kind folk here!" "I know that." "They _like_ doin' you a good turn," said Mrs. Cliff, and, getting to her feet, gathered up her baskets. IV In the afternoon the three and Tam went for a walk. They crossed the river by a footbridge and walked a mile by waterside. This brought them to valley end. The stream slipped on between close-standing hills, but the strollers turned aside into a glade from which the greater forest had been cut. Young trees and tall old trees were set with some spareness. All wore robes like princes; all glowed in a dream of spring behind winter. The ground had gray moss and green moss, and all manner of minute and charming growths. The sun so came into this glade that the wild grape found and took advantage. It leaned its wine-hued, shaggy stem against trunks; it climbed and overran, and made bridges from tree to tree. Its festoons shone aloft, its broad leaves and blue clusters dreamed against autumn sky. The air breathed dry and fine. Sunshine lay on ground in shafts and plaques of gold. Richard Linden used a staff. Marget kept near him and Tam just ahead. Walking so, you would not think he was a blind man. Indeed, he seemed to have a sixth sense, he moved so easily. The three walked without much speech. The day was the sumptuous speaker; these woods, this feather air, the admirable poise of the year before its journey from hearth fire, the plain chant of the crickets, the trill of the bird. In a roll over his shoulder Linden carried a wide and thick plaid. Presently Marget said: "Let us rest before we turn back. Miss Darcy isn't the tramp that we are!" whereupon they pitched camp for half an hour, spreading the plaid beneath a tree. Richard Linden, resting against a chance bowlder, locked his hands behind his head and lifted his face to the high, free sky. Marget took off her wide hat and lay down beside Miss Darcy, who sat on a stone. Tam had the dry grass and moss and the fringe of the plaid. Marget spoke. "We are under a young hickory, Richard. It is all gold. There is a dogwood close by, and its leaves are red, and it is very full of berries. Wild grape has started by the dogwood and crossed to the hickory. It is far and near and up and down. The leaves are half green and half yellow, and there are a thousand bunches of grapes." "I see!" he said; "and I hear a woodpecker." "It's yonder on a white oak. It's a flicker. There isn't a cloud in the sky, and far, far up, small as a dragon fly, is a buzzard sailing. There's a cedar waxwing in the dogwood stripping berries. There is another--a third! We frightened them away, but they are coming back. They're after the grapes. There will be fifty in a moment--" They kept still and watched, Marget's hand on Tam. Slender, graceful, tawny, crested birds came in a flock. They entered the hickory and the dogwood. With quick movements of head and body they stripped the grapes and the scarlet dogwood berries. They perched and removed, and perched again. They kept up a low talk among themselves and a perpetual flutter of wings. It was as though a wind were in the trees, so continuous was the sound. Blue grapes, dogwood berries, dropped upon the ground. For ten minutes the flock fluttered and fed, while with intent, pleased faces the human beings watched or listened. Then Tam became aware of a rabbit down the glade and started up. Away flew the cedar waxwings. "Oh, wasn't it lovely?" They sat still. Richard Linden, resting against the rock, kept his face raised to blue sky. "Their life!" he said. "As we enter upon their life--" Tam came back, the rabbit having vanished. "Lie still, Tam, lie still! Get into your life-to-be for a little, and be quiet shepherd on a hill instead of shepherd's dog!" "Their life--" The visitor to Sweet Rocket sat still, with her eyes upon the gold fretwork of the hickory. She was thinking of the birds. It was very sunny, very still in the glade. Her companions also rested silent. They seemed to be in reverie, to be going where they would in their inner worlds. Miss Darcy followed the waxwings in their flight. She saw the flock that had been here, and other flocks, stripping wild grape and dogwood and cedar berries. They were far and near, in many a woodland glade. In thousands they twined and turned, they talked in the clan, their wings made a windy sound. And the woodpeckers! Hammer and hammer, through the forests of the world! And the thrush that she had heard this morning, and the humming bird in the garden--and the crows that had cawed from a hillside, the hawk and the owl.... Suddenly she saw in some space an eagle rise to its nest upon a crag edge. From the one she saw others. Eagles in all the lands. For one instant she caught a far glimpse of the Idea, the absolute eagle. There was the rush of a loftier sense. Then she sank from that, but she saw eagles in all the lands. She saw the great hawks and the condors. Green waves were beneath her; with sea birds she skimmed them in the first light, and the cries of her kind were about her. On the ice floes walked the penguins, the albatross winnowed solitude. With heron and flamingo and crane she knew shore and marsh. The white swan and the black swan oared their way through still waters. In their right circle moved the peacock and the pheasant, the lyre bird, the bower bird, and the bird of paradise. The nightingale sang in deep woods, and in southern thickets of yellow jessamine sang the mocking bird. The lark mounted into the air, the cuckoo called from the hedge, the wren built under the eaves. In the gray dawn, from a thousand farms and hamlets, crowed the cocks. Over all the earth clucked the hen, peeped the downy chick. The swallows crossed a saffron sky and the whippoorwill cried in the night, and in the morning the quails said "Bob White!" Migrating hordes, like scuds of clouds, drove before favorable winds, north, south! She was plunged in the life of birds, where they waded between deep water and solid shore, where they lived in a world of green, where they flew aloft and afar, over land, over sea--all their plumage, shapes, and magnitudes. She seemed to hear their cheepings, cries and songs, to hear them and touch them, their sleekness, lightness, threaded beauty! Over all the earth spread the passionate wooing, the daylong song. Here were the nests, the multitudes, and the eggs, green and blue and white and dark. The nests and eggs became transfigured. The straw of the nests burned lines of white fire, the cup was diamond light, the shell of the egg no more than a window, and through it was seen the bird-past, and the bird desire and will and power. Out of the egg the young--she heard the nightingales in the woods, the lark in the sky! "See the love and beauty and power and daring! See the thought and feeling pressing on--see them trooping into fuller being--see them men and women, their tribes and nations! When we have gone far, far on, see their human earth!" It was Linden, she thought, who said that. She came back with a great throb of her heart to the earth beneath a golden hickory, to the October sun, in a little Virginian valley. Yet the two reclining there seemed still in a brown study, gone away. She thought: "I am come into a strange country! Are they knowing, feeling all that life more intensely than I, for all that they lie there so quietly, thinking, one would say, of to-morrow's work, of a book they are reading, or of the cedar waxwings?... It is all in the range of perception, could I run like light all over the earth! There are those birds and their life. I only saw what _is_!" But she felt that while she had had a wave of it those two had a whole breadth of ocean. She felt that they were expert, adept. She felt again the breath of wonder. It was at once wonder and homelikeness. "Glad--glad--glad that I came! My gray road turns!" Richard Linden dropped his hands from behind his head and passed them over his eyes. Marget rose to her knees. There was deep light in her face. She lifted then let fall her arms. "Oh, the _beauty_ when life is seen as a landscape, heard as a symphony, smelled as a garden, tasted as nectar, dwelt in as a house!" She rose to her feet. "The sun is gone from the grass. It is dawn in Tibet. Come, Tam, let us be going home!" They folded the plaid and left the hickory and the dogwood. The glade was turning violet, but the hilltops showed golden and the mountains stood in light. A rich scent breathed from the earth, while the air carried a spear from the north. Leaving the wood, they took again the path by the river, that sang toward them, that held pools of light. Walking so, Marget fell to talking of Anna Darcy's life, the manner of it, her steadfast work from year to year, and all her kindnesses, and all that she had given. At first Miss Darcy tried to stop her, but then she could not try any longer, the appreciation was so sweet. Her life had been difficult, isolated for all the stir around her, subject to sorrows, a little withered and gray. She felt the exquisite caress of their interest. It was more than that to her; it was recognition. How would it be if all were truly interested in all? If there were general recognition? As she walked, the valley and the hills, the river and warm, dusky air, the collie, the man and woman with her, herself, seemed to shift and quiver into one. Walls vanished. There happened rest, understanding, imperviousness to harm, blood warmth, and new and strange aspiration. It was impossible for her to hold the moment. She seemed to herself to sink again to the rigid and small shape of Anna Darcy, like an Egyptian figure graved on stone, a plane figure. But she did not wholly fit back into the figure. She felt that above it was fullness and youth and song, and that they were hers as well as another's. V Again, the next morning, she found neither of her hosts. "We breakfast early and work early," Marget had said. Again Zinia served her alone, again she walked in the flower garden, again she went farther afield. The day was brilliantly, vividly clear, white clouds in the sky, and between, great seas of cobalt. She went at once to the river path, but turned this morning up the stream. The day hung joyous, the high and moving clouds, the light and shadow had magnificence. She felt very well; she really looked five years younger. Before her, beyond a spur of orchard, she made out the roof of a building. When she came nearer she felt an assurance that this was the overseer's house. "Where Marget was born," she thought; "where she lived with her father and mother and brothers." Presently she stood still to regard the place. The house was a small one, two-storied, frame, painted white with green blinds. It had a small porch with a window to either side. At the back she made out a wider porch, and there were outbuildings. The whole was buried among locust trees and old shrubs, that when she came nearer she recognized for lilac and althea and syringa. Door and windows stood open. At first she thought she would turn from the river to the house, but then she said, "No, not till she herself brings me here some day." But the place was plain before her where she stood. When she had moved a few paces she looked full to the door, between locust trees and bushes. She was now beside a giant sycamore, very old, all copper colored as to leaf, with dappled white and brown arms. Built around the bole was a wooden bench, old and weather-worn. "She played here when she was a child. They have all set here beneath this tree. She comes here now, I fancy, often." She took her seat. No one came in or out of the house door a stone's throw away. The place was sunny and deserted. There came, as it were, a veil over it. She shut her eyes the better to look at child life here with father and mother and Will and Edgar. The old overseer, who had fought in the war for the old order, but who, when it came crash! had built in the new; and the mother, Elizabeth Land, overworked and uncomplaining; and the boys with their desires and broodings and hopes--she felt them all. Sitting with her eyes shut, she passed into feeling them very strongly. The place turned to be of thirty, forty years ago. She moved with the overseer as he went to his work and came from it. With Marget Land's mother she was cooking, sewing, cleaning. She was with the three children, the boys older than the girl, at tasks and in play. Swim in the river, swing under the locust tree, go for berries, for persimmons, chinquapins, walnuts, for grapes and haws, go for the cow, work in the garden patch, shell the peas, shuck the corn, look for eggs, pick the currants and gooseberries, split the kindling, gather the chips, wash the dishes, clean the lamps, sit by the fire and study reading, writing, and arithmetic--she was deep in it, deep in a slow, steady current of participation. It did not seem to curve, but now it was her own childhood, her parents and brothers and sisters, an old town house and a leafy town square--life, life, so varied and so the same! Deep, deep wash of deep waves, and so pleasant, so sweet, all the pang and ill lost! A past that was winnowed, understood, forgiven, appreciated, loved by mind and heart of Farther On, and that was present, gone nowhere, here, in finer space and finer time, a vast country capable of being visited! Going into it was to find the deathless taste of eternity. It was not dark; you could fill it with golden light. The forms there were not immovable, not dead. As you understood, they lived and were yourself. As you remembered, you saw that you were remembering, that you were re-collecting from far and near, your Self. Anna Darcy sat very still. "I had to wait till I was fifty-eight years old to see that." As on yesterday it had grown out of a commonplace of imagination and memory. Memory and imagination had, by degrees, entered _their_ deeper selves. Again, as on yesterday, she could not hold it. Increased energy, increased perception, what the ancients called the Genius, and the mystic called illumination, or voice of God, and the moderns higher vibration, superconsciousness--whatever it was, and perhaps the name did not much matter, she had touched it and then lost it. But she knew that it had been touched, and that it was desirable to know it or its like again. She was a member of the church, a praying woman. She bent her forehead upon her hands: "O God, let thy kingdom come! As it comes near us, send thy breezes!" Presently, rising, she went on up the stream. It was not wide; it just came into the category of river, headwater, she knew, of a greater river. October painted it with russets and golds and reds. Midcurrent showed the ineffable blue of the sky, or when clouds drove by the zenith, the clouds. She walked on until before her she saw the eastern gate of the vale. The hills closed in, leaving a bit of grassy meadow on either side the stream. This narrowed. The hills grew loftier, insensibly became mountains. She was in a mountain pass, gray cliff to the right, hemlocks overhanging the water that was broken now by bowlders, débris of an ancient rock. The path was cool and dark and washed by the scent of the conifers. Only here and there the climbing sun sent splashing through an intensity of light that showed every fallen needle, every cone or twig or leaf upon the path. Not far before her the path turned and went up over the mountain. She thought, "That will be the way to Mrs. Cliff's." She came upon a fisherman. He sat among the roots of a hemlock, and was engaged in reeling in his line. He was a man neither old nor young, with a long, easy frame, and a short, graying beard. His dress was that of a fisherman who goes forth from the city to fish--but not for the first nor the second nor the third time. Nothing that he had on was new, but all was well cut. "Good morning!" he said. "Good morning!" He worked on at his reel. "Each time that I do this I say that it is the last time." "Why?" "I grow too damned able--I beg your pardon!--to put myself in the fish's place." "Have you caught any?" "This morning? Not a ghost of one! Yet they say this is a good stream! I think that I warn them off the hook. 'Monsieur Black Bass, or Signor Trout, as it may be, my desire not to take you is gaining, I feel, upon my desire to take you! Your own desire naturally aiding the first, I grow to feel that we make a strong combination!'" He laughed, putting up his rod. Then his mustaches went down and his face became serious enough, "So much mangling! I've had my fill." "How did you come? Over the mountain?" "Yes. I am camping with a dozen New York and Washington fellows on another little river over there. The others fish that stream. I'm like Mrs. Elton. I adore exploring! I slept last night in a mountain cabin--Cliff's. Can you tell me how far I am from Sweet Rocket farm?" "Less than a mile." "No! I didn't think from what the mountain folk said that it was so near. I knew before I came that he was somewhere in these parts." "Do you know Mr. Linden?" "I was his classmate at the university. Then, fifteen years ago, I met him in Southern Russia. We had a couple of weeks together, and then I must hurry on to Constantinople, where I was due. He went into the Caucasus. I lost sight of him. It was two years later that I heard of that accident which blinded him, and I've heard since only second-and third-hand things. The other day in the club a man told me that he was living where his people had lived, down here in Virginia. I meant to go to see him, but I meant to write first." "I am a visitor at Sweet Rocket. But I am sure that Mr. Linden would wish you to come on to the house. Had you not better do so?" "Why, yes, then, I think that I shall." He stood up from the hemlock roots. "You are very good. My name is Curtin--Martin Curtin." She gave her own. He took up fisherman's paraphernalia and a light coat. They moved out of ravine into meadow strip; before them lay the jewel valley. Mr. Curtin drew a deep breath. "And he hasn't eyes to look at it!" Anna Darcy found herself answering with certitude. "He sees it and a thousand places beside." They walked on, Mr. Curtin gazing at river, hills, and mountains, and quiet valley floor. "I have known of his doing some splendid things in life--simple and splendid--the kind that steals into folk, and they do likewise!" "Yes, I should think that." "What is that house?" "In old times it is the overseer's house. Now the young farmer who helps him lives there." "'In old times it _is_'--that's an unusual phrase." "I mean that to me, for reasons, it stays that way and _is_." "I agree! When you turn to a thing it _is_. Turn with decision enough, and your overseer would come out to meet you. That's a sycamore for you! Do you ever feel the Indians by these streams? If you can see your overseer you can see your Indians, too." They walked on. "Is that the house?" "Yes." "It's a simple place, too--but I like it. Houses, now! I make a specialty of keeping them in duration." Anna Darcy thought, "A week ago I wouldn't have understood that." The house where she was born, the house facing, across a row of box and a finely wrought iron paling, the old, leafy city square, walked bodily into her. She was through it, up and down, like the air. It seemed to her that there wasn't anything she didn't know about it, and it all came together into an inner aroma, taste and tone, dry, warm, pungent and likable, idiosyncratic, its very own. It had been a loss, a grief, when the city had taken and torn down that house. And all the time it was waiting for her, in a deep reality, to walk in and take possession! She thought: "What is happening? I shall never be lonely again!" Mr. Curtin looked from side to side of Sweet Rocket valley. "It's like a beaker of Venetian glass! You'd say there was a magic drink in it.... But how clean and drenched with sun is this air!" "Yes!" "He never married? Archer said he thought not." "No, he didn't marry." "He's rather the kind that marries the world." "Yes, I think so. We turn here to the house. Have you the time?" "It's almost noon." "He will be home, then. He works upon the farm as though he had eyes." They left the pebbly beach and went by the cedars up to the house. Tam came to meet them, and Linden rose from the bench upon the porch. VI "And so he was killed," said Curtin, speaking with strongly controlled emotion. "And I can tell you that when I heard it I felt physically that shock and crash and mortal bruising. It wasn't only my heart that was wounded. My nerves and my flesh felt it. Even now I think that there must be but one body--I got away for a time after he was buried. I went down to Hyères. I used to sit there by the sea. He was a lovable fellow, square as they make them. We were brothers and friends, too. Well, that is the way it runs! Life--death. Life--death! I would give a good deal--" He had been thirty-odd hours at Sweet Rocket. They had sent up mountain to Cliff, who took down to his camp news that he would be gone for some days. They had given him the room next to Linden, and he had become at once delightfully at home. When with Miss Darcy he had stepped upon the porch Linden had said: "Don't think you take me by surprise! I saw you in my looking-glass this morning!" "It is good to find you again, Linden! What do you mean by your looking-glass?" Linden laughed, his hands upon the old classmate's shoulders. "Only that I had been thinking of you. And the other night I was with you by the Sea of Azof. I thought, 'I should like to see him again!' And you know yourself that when you make a current boats appear upon it!" Now, as the four sat about the fire in the big parlor, before the lamp was lighted, he had been telling of the death of his brother, an aviator. There had followed silence; then, "Well, let us talk of something else!" said Curtin. He took up the pipe he had laid upon the hearth beside him, and raking out a coat from the fire, relit it. "What do you think is going to happen now, Linden?" They sat and talked, and the flames leaped, many and small, in the mahogany of the room. At ten they rose to separate for the night. "Come look at the sky," said Linden. "The first week in October, and diamond clear!" They went out to the porch, and then, so majestic was the night, to the sweep before the house, whence they might see the great expanse. It was very still. The river sounded, but the air rested a thin and moveless veil. It was not cold. Richard Linden stood bareheaded, his face uplifted to the vault that writes forever its runes before men. "By George! I forgot!" thought Curtin. "But doubtless he knows them so well that he knows where they are, season by season." It seemed that it might be so. Linden spoke as though he saw. "See the Pleiades and Capella and Aldebaran! The Great Square is at its height. The Cross and the Eagle and the Lyre. The mountains hide Fomalhaut." They walked a little way upon the road. Immense and tingling was that view, looking outward, looking inward, upon those stars. At last they came indoors and said good night. Martin Curtin lay in a big four-poster bed and stared out of window. Upon going to bed he had slept quickly and soundly. Now he was awake, and he thought it might be past four of the morning. He felt the subtle turn toward the day. He heard a dog bark and a cock crow. He was aware that he had waked suddenly and completely. He was wide awake, and more than that. There was a keenness, an awareness; keen, sharpened, but also wide. His body lying very still, he began to remember, but it was remembering with a deeper and fuller pulse than was ordinarily the case. He remembered that younger brother who was dead, and not him alone, but many another, kindred and friends and associates. The past lived again, but lived with a difference. What multitudes of kindred, and friends, and associates! The meeting went deep and wide. Had he touched all those in one life or had it been in many lives? Was the whole texture coming alive, and in effect did it include the whole past, the whole dead and gone? However it might be, it was a world transmuted and without pain. He lay still, regarding it. It was strong and light, and he and it grew together with a sense of frictionlessness, of exquisite relief, even with a kind of golden humorousness. None had been truly any better or worse than another, nor in any way miraculously different, and now they could understand and laugh together! The sense of union was exquisite, and the sense of variousness hardly less so. The variousness was without hostility. It glided and turned smoothly, much as personal thought and mood might glide and turn. The sense of well-being flowed in every realm. The perception included environment. Remembered, recalled persons meant remembered, recalled houses, towns, country, forest and river, fields and gardens, a thousand, thousand places! Where were they all? They were all over the earth--light and golden--loved places and the right people in them! There was nothing rigid--even the places understood one another. Curtin felt a profound happiness. This one body, lying at Sweet Rocket, was not wholly forgot nor relinquished. It came into the pattern of variousness. But Curtin himself was moving in a wider consciousness. All these people, all these selves of himself! and he understood their old difficulties and he understood their old misunderstandings. The _piece_ understood, the beautiful tissue! The music understood, the notes moving so richly together! It was throbbing in the present and in the understood, the appropriated past. He never thought, "How grotesque the thought that we are dead!" The thought could not even occur. For one flash, for less than an instant, the plane lifted. There started forth a high, a tremendous sense of unity--Presence. It towered, it overflowed him, he was of it--then the instant closed. As it had come like a towering wave, so it sank like a wave. But there was left the lasting thrill of it, and there was left undying aspiration. "Ah, to find it again! Ah, if it will come again!" Where had been sense of the whole, again befell fragmentariness. Loss--great loss--and yet was there falling sweetness, exquisiteness still of order! He felt again the wide world that they said was dead, and yet surely was no such thing. There happened again wide and subtle change. Out of a stillness, a silence, an isolation, exquisite and tingling, a state of clarity and poise, one spoke to him _within_, "Martin!" He answered in that space. "Yes, John.... No, grief is absurd!... Just because we're ignorant!" "You can be content. We can be content." "Yes, I see! We are all in one, who cannot be destroyed." There came no more, but the world was a rhythm, swinging, swinging. There reigned great rest and calm. Out of this, with much of it yet clinging, he sank to the square, clean, sparely furnished bedroom at Sweet Rocket, with the cock crowing, with the old clock in the lower hall striking five. Curtin lay very quiet in the big bed. Dawn was coming, but his sense was that of an afterglow. He had felt beauty and still wonder like this in high mountains, watching Alpine glow. It faded and faded, but there was left with him assurance, rest, the sense of a dawn to be, a consciousness behind this consciousness, another consciousness towering, sun-gilt, in the future. He lay very still, at rest, hardly wondering. The great things, the beautiful things, were the natural things. The wholly full and blissful would be the finally natural. Dawn came in rose and amethyst. When it was full light Curtin left his bed, dressed, and went downstairs. He thought that he would walk by the river or in the garden. The house was still, the front door open. Early though it was, he found Linden on the porch starting forth with Tam. He had found, he said, that he must see Roger Carter, who was riding to-day to Alder and would be starting presently. "Will you walk with me? But you shouldn't miss your breakfast. I've had bread and milk." "I won't go now," answered Curtin. "I'll walk up and down before the house for a while. Something happened to me last night, or I happened into something. I'd like to talk to you about it, Linden--but it won't fade before you come back. I don't indeed think it will ever fade." There was that in Linden's remembered face, when Linden himself had gone away toward Roger Carter's, that made Curtin think, walking now before the house as they had walked the night before under the stars: "Does he know what I felt? Could he even have helped--put a shoulder to the wheel, seeing that I was grieved and uncertain?" Not so long ago he might have answered, "That's fantastic!" but he did not so answer now. He went into the garden and walked up and down. Before seven Marget came out to him. "I saw you walking in the dawn like a man in a ballad. Could you not sleep?" "I slept till nearly five." They walked by the late asters and the stocks. Said Curtin: "I remember a line of Masefield's: "... the dim room had mind, and seemed to brood. And again: "And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen Who knew the interest in me and were keen That man alive should understand man dead. Miss Land, do you think that is true?" "Yes. Surely." "Do you think we can be reassured about the dead--all the dead--and ourselves when we die?" "Yes, I do. Very safe, very sure." "Well, I think so this morning." They walked by the marigolds and larkspur. "Where do you meet the dead? In this space?" He indicated it with a wide gesture. "No. In space that permeates this space. In added space. When and where we make space. Though I think," said Marget, "that one day the edges will have so flowed together that we shall say 'in this space.'" "You and Richard Linden both have that assurance?" "Yes. Many have it now." She added, "I think, perhaps, that it is more easily felt in some places than in others." He thought, "As we put telescopes on heights." They walked by the wall with the ivy. Her quiet, dark eyes were upon him, friendly, kindly. He thought: "No less than Linden she hoped such a night for me. Perhaps--" A bell rang. "That is for us. Miss Darcy, too, comes down early now." They went indoors. Anna Darcy met them in the hall and they went together into the bright dining room, to their pleasant breakfast, and Zinia waiting, with "that girl Mercy" still at heart. VII The next day was Sunday. Zinia and Mimy and Mancy walked early to their church, two miles down the river. Marget and Miss Darcy, Linden and Curtin, went to Alder in the phaeton, drawn by Daniel and Bess. It was as sunny and still a day as might be found in any autumn land, and most beauteous was that forest through which they drove. Anna Darcy was glad to see it again. It rested forever in her mind, a true magic approach. Marget drove, Curtin sitting beside her, Miss Darcy and Richard Linden behind them. The jewel miles went by and the pleasant, pleasant air. Here rose Alder on a green hill, and Alder had three streets, a hundred dwelling houses, and three white-spired churches. The houses were brick or frame, with shady yards and late-blooming flowers. They drove by a small, quaint courthouse, a rambling hotel, and several stores, closed to-day. The trees were maples and Lombardy poplars and a few ancient mulberries. Folk were going to church, and they spoke to Sweet Rocket and Sweet Rocket to them. Before them rose a church of white frame, set in an ample churchyard, all glowing maples with a mosaic of red and gold leaves underfoot. Street before it and bordering lane held horses and buggies and Fords and Buicks. The second bell had not rung. Men and boys waited around the doors, talk and laughter at a Sunday pitch. Women were entering, some with children in their hands. Sweet Rocket folk, leaving the phaeton, walking up churchyard path, took and gave greeting. They entered the church, Marget's hand upon Linden's arm, just guiding him to a pleasant pew by a pleasant, open window, the weather being yet so warm. Curtin took his seat, and, turning a little, watched the folk enter. He did not know when he had been in a village church like this, nor, indeed, had he been for long in any church at all, barring the cathedrals and churches abroad, into which he went as artist. A clear, sweet sound, overhead, rang the second bell. Men and youths came in; the building filled. A simple place, it was well proportioned and to-day filled with a dreamy, golden, softened light. In that soft, flowing atmosphere, men and women and children were gathered as in a bouquet. The choir assembled, the young woman who was the organist took her place. A woman in the pew behind Curtin leaned over and gave him an opened hymn book. The minister appeared, a kindly faced, small, elderly man. The bouquet became more and more Sunday. Curtin glanced at Linden. He sat as always, with ease, and a certain still power. He seemed to Curtin as simple and whole as a planet in the sky. This village Methodist church seemed within his frontier, as, when you thought of it, all other places seemed within it. Curtin remembered. They were talking, he and Linden, in Odessa, in their hotel, after having been to a great service in a great church. Linden was telling him that Religion held all religions, and that he, Linden, belonged solely to no one church, but liked at times to go sit in any one of them. He had gone on to say other things, but Curtin--and Curtin remembered this with a certain pang--had yawned, and said that it had been a tiring day and that he would off to bed. "My God, I was crass in those years!" thought Curtin. He still watched Linden, who could not know that he was being watched; and at the thought Linden turned his head and smiled at him. His face said as distinctly as if his voice had uttered it, "Yes, that night at Odessa!" Again Curtin, startled at first, felt the startling vanish. He thought--and, as on last night, his thought seemed to lay hold upon and give form to a down-draught from some upper region--"Truly the startling should be over mind broken from mind, not over mind beginning to heal!" He sat in a deep study. There came like a picture into his mind Jesus of Nazareth's parable of the talents. "Ability to perceive thought! If the world should take that talent and improve it, a different world we should have anon!" "Let us pray," said the minister. When they had prayed, he said, "Let us sing hymn number--" They sang: "Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear, It is not night if thou be near--" "I will read," said the minister, "from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew." Curtin heard read the parable of the talents. He thought: "Intercommunication. It widens and deepens and heightens perpetually. Now it gets to be wireless, independent of gesture or the vocal cords, or the handwriting." There thronged echoes of his experience of the other night. "Intercommunication becomes communion. Communion becomes identity. At last 'we know even as we are known.'" The reading ended. They sang "Rock of Ages, cleft for me." All the congregation sang; men, women, and children's piping voices. They sat down. The minister took his text from the parable he had read. It was a good, plain sermon, in which the preacher said more than he knew he said. The air came in at window, bees buzzed without, a brown butterfly passed. The congregation breathed gently, rhythmically. The sun gave life to the flowers upon the women's and the children's hats. There were young faces and old faces, dull faces and quick faces, intent faces and wandering faces. Some were rich flowers, and others little flowers not far from weeds, but all were in the garden. Curtin thought: "They are like the thoughts and moods of a man, many and various, but all in the man. One Man.... It was Balzac who said, 'There is but one animal.' One Man--his name Adam-Eve, or Humanity, as you choose--or, perhaps, when he finds himself, his name is Christ." He looked again at Linden, sitting with that pleased and quiet light upon his face. The sermon was not extraordinary, the congregation the average village and country congregation, the church had no especial grace of interior or exterior. Linden was not habit-bound to it, he did not hug the letter of its creed. Any one of those around might say: "No, he does not belong to any church--which is a great pity! No, it isn't his church." Yet Curtin saw that Linden, sitting there, loved this place, the feel of the folk around him, the sense of what they were doing, were striving to do, and, on the whole, were slowly doing. He comprehended that to Linden it was very simply his own, as were the other two churches of Alder, and the colored church down the river, and the Greek church at Odessa. He saw that Linden's possessive was large--Linden's and Marget Land's. Miss Darcy sat very still, her thin hands crossed in her lap. At first she had listened to the sermon, but now she was in the old church in the old city, and there was another congregation around her, and another clergyman, a kinsman, in the pulpit. At first it was like opening a potpourri jar, and then warmth and light came back to the rose leaves. "I am there, they are here! Never could I do this or feel this until now--or I did it so weakly and palely that it did not seem to count!" The sermon ended. "Let us pray.... Let us sing." Benediction followed, then a moment's pause, and then the folk turned from the pews and moved slowly toward the doors. There were greetings for Sweet Rocket, and Sweet Rocket greeted in return. All had a grace of friendliness. Anna Darcy thought: "That is another thing that has come or is coming! What does it matter now if your name is or is not on the register of a church? It didn't use to be so. Something gracious and understanding, invisibly binding, is coming!" She thought: "Those two are the most beautiful here, but in their degree all are beautiful. And all move on to completer beauty. Oh, life is coming alive!" They drove through Alder and by Alder highway, and at last upon that lovely forest road to Sweet Rocket. Curtin and Linden fell to talk of their student days, of such and such teachers and mates, and such and such happenings. "I had forgotten that!" said Curtin, and again, "I had forgotten that!" At last he said, abruptly, "You've got an astounding memory!" Linden answered, "Oh, we learn how to use and deepen memory!" The smell of the forest, the voice of the forest, circled and penetrated. "I should like to know how you do it," said Curtin. "It is like all other things. Practice makes perfect." "It is not only remembering. You remember with a strange understanding of things. You direct later light upon the past. The line is there, the form is there, even the color and tone, but you make it understood as I am very certain we did not understand it then! I see now what we were doing! It's intelligent at last, and bigger." "All that you have," said Linden, "isn't too much to apply to the past. The past has served you, now serve the past. Serve and redeem! Bring it up, even and great, into the present! To understand past time is to have present power. Only by understanding it can you love it, unless you wish to remain infant and love with infant's love." The many-hued woods went on, the leafy, narrow, remote road, the scents and sounds, the miracle of many centered into sole delight. The air was so fine you could gather what the upper air must be. Daniel and Bess, the phaeton, the four, stepped and rolled through a magic world, artist world of the Ancient of Days. Here was the river and the flashing water of the ford. That afternoon they walked upstream as far as the overseer's house. It was shining, late afternoon. They saw, seated on the porch and the porch steps, Roger Carter and his wife, with Guy, her brother, who worked on the farm, and old Mr. and Mrs. Morrowcombe, her parents, paying their Sunday visit. A little Roger, three years old, played absorbedly with a chinquapin string and a rag doll that his grandmother had brought him. "Let us go across to them," said Marget. "Just so did my father and mother use to sit." Carters and Morrowcombes made them welcome. Linden and Curtin sat upon the porch steps, Tam beside them. Miss Darcy now played with the young Roger and now listened to Mrs. Morrowcombe's gentle, flowing talk of turkeys, and rag carpets, and Sam come home from the war. Mary Carter had dark eyes and wavy hair, bright color in a round cheek, a shy and tender smile--a Murillo face. She sat holding a year-old babe, and she talked shyly and listened with intent eyes. There listened, too, old Mr. Morrowcombe, with a long, white beard, and a gnarled hand resting on a stick marvelously carved by himself in prison, long ago, in the old war. Roger Carter proved a quick, dry talker, with not a little wit and power of mimicry. He had a way of throwing what he saw and heard and concluded into a homely story, both telling and amusing. He seemed to love to make Linden and Marget laugh, and they loved to draw him out. Curtin saw with what skill they opened fields to him where he might rejoice in his talent. He saw how they understood fellowship. Presently Marget asked Mary if she might take Miss Darcy into the house and out on the back porch and to the lilac hedge. "Certainly, Miss Marget, you go right in! It's all straight. Go upstairs, too. Anywhere you like." The two went. "This was mother's room. Here I was born. When I was a little girl I slept in this tiny room next door. The rain on the roof drummed me to sleep. This was the boys' room. This is the back porch, where we did much of the work. It is so lovely and broad! There is the old well. Yonder is the lilac clump where once, in May, I saw the Spirit of the Lilac." When, half an hour later, they walked homeward along the river bank, there renewed itself the question of prolonging a visit. "Well, I'm going to stay, anyhow," declared Curtin. "I like it better here than at that camp. If you will keep me a month--" "Oh, we will!" Anna Darcy said: "I can't stay that long. But I'll stay just as long as I can." That matter settled, they walked on, quietly, in the amber and violet hour. There was a sound of water, a smell of wood smoke. The house rose before them, richly colored in the sunset. VIII The weather changed. On the heel of soft sunshine and quietude came autumn storm, wind and rain, lashed trees, leaden and heavily sagging cloud. In the late afternoon Zinia appeared at the parlor door. "Miss Marget, there are two men on horseback. They've come over Rock Mountain and missed their way. They say it's getting late, and they say, could we take them in for the night?" "I'll go see," said Linden, and left the room. "Of course you will?" "Yes, of course," answered Marget. "I had better go see about the room." Curtin and Miss Darcy, left alone, watched the flame. At last Curtin said, abruptly, "Had you ever thought of humanity moving on into superhumanity?" "I think that I have been blind and deaf to a great many things! I suppose I thought that there would be slow, general improvement. But I did not think of marked betterment here. I thought of the soul at death springing alive into heaven." "Or hell?" "Yes, we were taught that." "And it was going to reach heaven or hell at one stride! No degree here, no degree there!" "It was irrational!" "Naturally, being yet in Time, there are those ahead. Some cross the line earlier than others." Marget returned. "They are two young men, foresters, I think, from the government purchase on Rock Mountain. They are wet through. Mancy has built them a fire and Richard is looking after them." She stood by the window. "The gray rain is chanting up and down the mountains! Queen Rain and King Wind!" Curtin put a chair for her as she came to the hearth. She sat down, and bending herself, looked into the fire. She held her hands to the flame and appeared to gather it into them. "The fire!" said Marget, "the spirit that is fire, that is will--that are living, endless powers, the Host of the Lord!" There fell a silence that was voice. Then said Anna Darcy: "I have always said, 'I remember--I remember.' But since I came to Sweet Rocket I have learned far and away more of how to remember." Marget turned toward her with a great sweetness. "When we have found a good thing we so naturally wish to share it! Now you must learn the Universal Man's present sharing--and his future sharing. You who have always said, 'I remember,' and who have been unselfish, will have little trouble." Her look included Curtin, who sat staring into the fire. He drew a long breath. "Two weeks ago I should have said that adventure and youth had passed from my life." "You are just beginning to find them! Henceforth you will find rest and romance, salt in life and the true wine and the uncloying honey and the bread of right wheat. You will find water of Moses's spring, and the Burning Bush." The rain and the wind sang against the pane. The fire made shape upon shape. The high, inward vibration lowered, but it left a memory of itself. There was the Jericho rose in the sandal box to say, "When there comes moisture again to my root, then shall I bloom again!" Linden entered the parlor with the two guests, now with dried clothing, rested and refreshed. It was growing dusk. The room looked warm and bright to them, a happy haven after a battering day. They were young men; twenty-seven, twenty-nine, forestry graduates, resuming forestry after an interlude of war. Linden presented them. "Mr. Randall--Mr. Drew." The evening closed in stormy. They had supper, a small bright feast, with talk and laughter. Randall proved lively, good company. Drew was much the quieter of the two. Supper over, they returned to the big parlor and the generous fire. The boy Jim had brought in a great armful of wood. It was a night to heap logs, as the rain drummed against the pane. Randall was talkative. He flowed like a mountain stream, trilled like a care-free bird. Forests and forestry came into the room. It appeared that both had had from childhood a taste, not to say a passion, for woodland life. Randall had lived in the country, so it came natural. But Drew had lived in a city. But forests were a passion with him; he had to get into them, and did so at every chance, and at last left for good a clerkship in a stockbroker's office, and scraped together enough for that course in a forestry school. This gave him surface learning, but he exhibited a deeper knowingness, gained somewhere. "Drew's like an Indian in the woods!" "No. Not like an Indian," said Drew. Linden asked, "Like whom, then?" He sat in a corner of the great fireplace, Tam, who came indoors upon nights like these, lying at his feet. "Drew," said Randall, "tell them about that night in France! He's got a curious story. He won't tell it to everybody. But I don't know--somehow we're all at home here." His quick song went on. "You see, my folk and Drew's are English. We're just a generation from fields and things that we've heard about all our lives. So when England went in, we thought we'd better go over, and we did. We were in the same company, and this was before Verdun. Go on, now, Drew!" Drew began at once, without prelude, his eyes upon the blind man. "It was something that happened to me. Sometimes I think that it was a dream, and then I know that it wasn't. I'm more and more certain as time goes on that it wasn't. I've got a kind of feeling about Reality, that we are like swallows skimming it. I suppose that now and then a swallow tumbles into it. Well, it was a big, dark wood, fairly early in the war. A detachment, sent we did not know by whom nor for what, moved through it from one station to another. I was second lieutenant. Well, there came news of a trap, and most of us turned off in a hurry, out of that wood. But--I don't to this day know how it was--as many as twenty were away from the rest, sent to find out something, somewhere. It was night, and there was no path. We got the warning, too, and we swung round and tried to get back to the main body. There came a spattering of shot. There were men besides ourselves in that wood. They rose like partridges and struck like hawks. We struck back. There was fighting. Something came down on my head like a falling tree. I remember that I thought it was a falling tree. Then everything went black, and it seemed both a long time and a short time till dawn. "It came at last, dawn. I sat up, and it had been a falling tree. My forehead had an aching lump and a gash, but luckily just a branch had struck me and I had rolled clear. It was a very old oak, brought down by the high wind. Upon the branch beside me was growing mistletoe. I wouldn't touch it, for I thought, 'It is not for me to touch it, but surely it saved my life!' There was gray light, and one red streak far down the forest where, after a time, would be the sun. And then I remembered that it was Lutwyn who had saved my life, crying out, and pushing me away, where I had thrown myself down for one moment's rest. I looked beyond the mistletoe and I saw that the tree had caught and pinned down a man. I crept on hands and knees, for I was dizzy yet, and I found Lutwyn. He lay pale and twitching, his leg and part of his body under the trunk of the oak. It was very still and lonely in the forest, and the first cold light made me shiver, and I was afraid of the mistletoe, so near. I got Lutwyn from under the tree, and it took all my strength to do it. The spring that we called Red Deer was hardly a spear throw away. I had on a cap of otter skin, and I filled this with water and brought it back to Lutwyn. When I had dashed it over his face and put it between his lips, he sighed, and came to himself, opening his eyes and trying to sit up. He said, 'I thought it would catch you, and I tried to thrust you out of its way--' "I said: 'Are you badly hurt? Can you walk?' "He tried, but he could only drag himself a little way, holding by a branch of the tree. The light had grown stronger, the red line down the forest was a red splash. We were both thinking of Guthlac and his men, who were after us because, being outlaws, we had set upon and stopped a bullock wagon and helped ourselves. We had strong belief that when they found us they would hang us. We had no great start of them. "Lutwyn said: 'You go on, Oswy! I'll make myself at home here, by the mistletoe.' "That couldn't be. I couldn't carry him. He was, if anything, a little taller and larger than I. He tried again to move, but it was not his leg alone; his body had been hurt, terribly hurt, I now saw. He could not make a step. It was I who drew him back to the tree. He settled down into the hollow made by the trunk and a bough, and I looked at his hurts, but could do little for them. I saw that they were filled with danger. The mistletoe grew so near him. I looked at it, and I wished it would heal. Lutwyn said: 'Now you go on, Oswy! I don't want you to be hanged.' I said, 'Save your breath!' and sat down beside him. We rested side by side against the tree, and he said that he was not in pain, but only now and then drowsy. He was very clear in his mind and wanted to talk. I listened for Guthlac and his men, and looked at the mistletoe. The sun was up now and it was growing gold--the mistletoe--a great bunch of it. I did not hear Guthlac. It was likely to be some time before they found us, having to wait till day to see our track. Now and then I felt Guthlac's rope around my neck. And then I looked at the mistletoe, and it seemed to be growing by Woden's chair. Then Lutwyn came awake again and we talked. We were twin brothers. We talked of when we were boys, and of our mother, and Lutwyn the Strong, our father, and of places we had seen and the earth we had trod. The Earth that was us, we thought, springing up in us all toward Father Sun. And all the wrong that we had done went away, and the mistletoe grew more golden. He drowsed away for longer and longer times. "Far away I heard Guthlac's horn. It blew, and another answered. They had found our track and were drawing together. Lutwyn waked, and heard it, too. 'But there's another horn for me,' he said. 'Don't you hear that one?' He had slipped from the hollow of the oak and his head was on my knee. The horn blew louder and nearer. The mistletoe was all golden. I could feel Guthlac's rope around my neck. But I was glad they would not hang Lutwyn. He was dead. "The horn blew louder in the wood. I heard them shouting. The mistletoe was burning gold. I said, 'Woden, Woden! we be brothers, Lutwyn and me!' They broke upon us, shouting, and all went black--" Drew stopped speaking. He sat bent over, looking at the fire. Putting down a hand he stroked Tam. Straightening himself, he looked at Linden and Marget. "All that was actual," he said. "Just as actual, just as real, just as day and night and earthly and conscious as this room and the fire and we six and the dog!" He made a movement toward Randall. "You tell the rest." Randall's voice came in. "The detachment drove the Germans out of the wood and chased them a good long way. It was dawn when we stopped and went back to gather up our hurt and dead. There were a dozen dead, Germans and us, and a good many hurt, all scattered through that wood that was full of big trees. We found Drew propped against a very great, old, fallen tree. He had been struck over the head in the hand-to-hand fighting and had a cut or two besides. Nothing odd in that, but what was odd was that he was cherishing a dead German--had his head lying on his knee! Of course, enemies lying as close as lovers wasn't any novelty! But Drew had crept some little way to this man, and had tried to stop his bleeding, all there in the dark, and had given him water, and then had gathered him into his arms. He said: 'Yes, he was Drew, but he was one Oswy, too. Yes, that was a German, but it was Lutwyn, too.' He said they were twin brothers. We were used to men out of their heads, so we gathered him up and took him on. He wanted us to stop and bury the German, but there wasn't time for that. The funny thing is that he certainly isn't out of his head now! Yet he still believes that story, though he won't tell it to every one...." The rain beat, the fire burned. "I've tried to get back," said Drew, "back to Guthlac and the bullock wagon and why we were outlaws. If I could find even now what we did--if I could get farther back still, to the point where we decided to do it, and redecide, decide more wisely, having long light upon it, I think that even now I could change in some way the whole world! Changing it to Lutwyn and me would mean changing the whole texture." "You are right," said Linden. "And seeing it that way you have begun to put your change into operation." The fire shined, the rain beat upon the panes, the wind came with the impact of sea in storm. Pictures shifted before the inner eye. Lands and times held the earth. Now they seemed foreign pictures, now there was a faintly conscious participation. "We are Earth, to-night," said Linden. "All these are in our memory. Earth is growing conscious. A conscious Spirit. That is what we mean to-day when we say, 'There is a new world just beneath the horizon.'" IX In the night the storm ceased. The household woke to a high, clear, stirring morning, the clouds riding in archipelagoes with, between isles, a sea bluer than the �gean. The shaken trees had spread a Persian carpet. All the flowers hung heavy with wet, snails marched on the paths, Sweet Rocket glistened. Randall and Drew must ride away, so at ten o'clock Jim brought their horses. Marget and Anna Darcy walked through the flower garden. "I am going to Mimy's house for a little. Will you come, too?" Marget had a basket upon her arm. "It is full of silk and cotton scraps for Julia's quilts. The day I met you in Alder I begged of two or three friends and they gave me all this! It is Julia's intense industry and happiness, piecing quilts." "Who is Julia?" "Mimy's lame daughter. Lame in her body and just a little lame in her mind." "Where does Just So come in?" "Oh, he's Susan's! Susan has been away upon a visit, but she's home again. Zinia is Mimy's niece, and Jim is her grandson. Mimy and her husband, old Uncle Jack, who is dead, 'belonged,' as they call it, to the Lindens. When Richard bought Sweet Rocket she was living in Alder, and she rode over in a wagon one day and told him she wanted to come home--just like me!" said Marget, with a happy laugh. "The old cabins were tumbling down. Richard built her a real house. He said that any who came and said, 'This is home'--" Her dark eyes looked afar to the valley rim. "Where does Mancy live?" "Over there, behind the big field. He and Delia, his wife, and William, who is Roger Carter's right-hand man." Mimy, in the kitchen, was singing: "Roll, Jordan, roll! I want to go to heaven to hear Jordan roll. Oh, roll, Jordan, roll!" Marget stopped at the door. "We're going to your house, Aunt Mimy, with quilt pieces for Julia." Mimy interrupted her singing. "Are you gwine take company?" "Well, she isn't company." "You'll find a mighty mess in that house! I don't think I ought to let you go, Miss Marget! You see, Susan's been away, and Julia can't get around, and when Zinia comes from the big house she wants to _read_! instead of straightening up. I reckon you better not go." Marget laughed. "Aunt Mimy, you know how we'll find the house!" "Well, go along!" said Mimy, gloomily. "Julia'll be glad to get the pieces." They left the kitchen behind them. "And I want to go to heaven to hear Jordan roll!" Marget's low, warm laughter sounded again. "Her house is like a pin, and she's so proud of it, and she wouldn't for anything miss having you see it! The same little rhyme is said to every guest we have. And '_read!_' Mimy's so proud to see Zinia sit at a table and read! Jim can read, too, but he doesn't like to. But Zinia is fond of books." Mimy's house rose beside the orchard, a pretty cottage with a dooryard filled with cockscomb and larkspur and marigold. At the gate grew a bush of myrrh, and the porch had over it a gourd vine. Just So sat in the middle of the path, playing with red and blue blocks. At the sound of voices Susan appeared, a clear-brown, neat, and active woman. "Just So, don't you clutter up the path like that! Come this-a-way, Miss Marget!" She took them across the porch, where the gourd vine made so pleasant a pattern, into a little parlor, bright as a pin. They sat and talked, and then Susan said that she would bring Julia, and, leaving the room, reappeared, pushing a wheeled chair. In this sat Julia, who was almost a middle-aged woman, and had a slender, pleasing face, and was only a little lame in her mind. Marget emptied the basket. "Oh, my!" said Julia, and again, "Oh, my!" With eager fingers she spread the bits of silk and velvet and satin and striped or flowered ribbon. "Flower-garden pieces! It will be a flower-garden quilt. I'll make a quilt like they have in heaven!" "Shoo! Julia!" exclaimed Susan. "They don't have quilts in heaven. It ain't cold there!" Julia's face took on an imploring, almost a frightened look. She turned to Marget. "If they don't have quilts I won't have anything to do!" With all that she knew of Marget Land, Miss Darcy could but wonder at the luminous sweetness, the depth and the play with which Marget, seated by Julia, dealt with the latter's fears. All the bright pieces were spread over the knees of both. "In heaven you'll put rose and blue together, and this violet and green. And look how these flowered pieces go! Your quilts are for warmth and beauty, Julia, aren't they? Shut your eyes and see warmth and beauty, warmth and beauty!" She put her hand over the lame woman's hand. The latter's plaintive look changed, her eyes brightened, and she nodded her head. "Yes! To keep us warm; and they are lovely, like the flowers! Warm like the sun is!" "Yes. Warmth and beauty--warmth and beauty! So in heaven you're to keep on with warmth and beauty. And you'll learn, too, how well wisdom goes with them. Their quilts aren't just like these quilts, but you won't care for that. You'll be putting together and giving beautiful, bright things!" Julia caressed a length of flowered ribbon. "That's what I think. They're warm and beautiful, warm and beautiful! And every one I give a quilt to says, 'I'm so glad I've got one!'" "When you put that piece in, think 'warm and beautiful' for Mrs. Gray. She gave it to you. And Miss Lucy Allen gave the beautiful blue piece." When they had quitted the porch with the gourd vine, and the dooryard, and the gate by the myrrh bush, and were under the orchard trees, Marget said: "She's been making quilts for twenty years. Perhaps two a year, and into each one goes I do not know what dim thinking and feeling, warmth and beauty, for such and such a one!" It was Miss Darcy's habit to rest a little in her own room after dinner. In the midafternoon, coming downstairs, she found the door of Linden's study open. Linden turned his head, hearing her step. "Come in! Here are Marget and Curtin." It was the first time she had entered this room. Her eyes took it in as she crossed the threshold, and found it a simple, grave place, as simple and grave and charged with its own aroma and spirit as a pine wood. It spread a large room, with plenty of space for pacing up and down. The bookcases, the desk, the chairs, an old, long cane and wood sofa were for use. The plain walls held a few prints. In one of the deep windows stood a large globe. Curtin put Miss Darcy a chair. "I've just come in," he said. There had grown between them, beginning the morning upon which she found him fishing, or not fishing, in the gorge that closed the valley, a quiet liking and friendship, with a sense, perhaps, of standing even in the inner world. "Linden was saying--" Marget sat before the desk not far from the fireplace, in which burned a light flame. She had been writing, and Linden dictating from his big cane chair by the long window. She had turned from the desk and he had moved his chair to where he sat, half in firelight, half in tawny sunlight. To Anna Darcy's sense the room had strongly that luminousness which in some sort she found in the whole of Sweet Rocket, in valleys, hills, house, and folk. The whole made a sun-filled cluster that, acting as a cluster, redoubled so all effects. But undoubtedly Linden and Marget were the center of the cluster. "I am glad you have come in," said Curtin. "Linden was speaking of their life here--" "I told you, you remember, driving through the woods, of our outer life," Marget said. "Sitting here before the fire we had begun to talk of that far larger life within the outer." Linden spoke. "Martin asked me, and I was telling him as clearly as I could. It is not wholly clear, you must not think, to Marget and me, our progression and our life. 'Man is a bridge,' says Nietzsche. A living bridge that crosses from himself to himself. Always the provisional, the halfway, gone afar even while we say, 'Here am I!' How to name a thing that travels so fast! The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as does yours and yours. The history of one--the history of all. There is at once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will hold our life!" "I don't know anyone like you," said Curtin. "No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from us and yet who belong in the order--the order of those who are aware that present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and know in a larger existence." "And that is still inward?" "The world still calls it inward. To those in that existence inward and outward, past, present, and future, come into one. The old words, then, are but retained words of convenience. As to the ultimate mind Martin and Richard, Marget, Anna, are but words of convenience, names for strands of experience. All are comprehended, combined, surpassed." The sun lighted his hair, his bronzed face, his quiet eyes, the sight of which he seemed so little to miss. After a moment's pause he spoke on: "To-day many and many are aware of the richness of destiny. Some more so, some less so, but aware! Faculties that in a host are but germinal build in and for others realities. The momentary, superficial present, not being the true present, there _are_, not 'there have been' since the dawn of history, many such men and women. Very many; a host. There are many to-day; to-morrow there will be more. If you regard with intentness you may see the new Humanity forming." "What of those who neither dream, nor divine, nor wish, who come on so slow?" "Their not divining nor dreaming nor wishing is more apparent than real. All come on. The slowest, who thinks he has no direction, is drawn unconscious until the day when he discovers the compass." "Will any never cross?" "I don't think so." "And when the last human being has crossed?" "Then will the others come on into humanity--they that we call the animals. And those behind them will lift to where they were. But our wave goes on into the spiritual world that is the world of subtler matter, vaster energy, understanding at last, love at last, beauty at last. Well, Marget and I are conscious travelers thitherward, as are you and you." "Ah, you are ahead of me!" "And of me!" "In some ways we may be ahead. And in others you may have store of energy and experience that sets you ahead. That matters not in the least. Whitman said that when he said: "By my side or back of me, Eve following, Or in front, and I following her, just the same. Like him, too: "Content with the present and content with the past, yet lassoing the past and the present with the future!" Curtin shook his head. "You have powers that are not mine." "If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have, as it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great temple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all vigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you also, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter where you move you take possession of yourself--" He rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon Curtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. "'With all your getting, get understanding.' 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' God is _I am_." The sun struck through the western window, the fire burned, the room was lighted and warmed. Flame and stirring air made a low singing. X The next day Drew came back. Curtin, seated on the porch, saw him cross the river and ride up by the cedars. Shutting his book, he descended the steps to meet him. "Good day, Drew! Glad to see you back! Nothing wrong?" Drew dismounted. "No. I wanted to talk to Mr. Linden." Jim, coming around the house, took the horse. "He's out somewhere on the place," said Curtin. "Miss Land, too. But they will be back by twelve. Did you ride from Rock Mountain this morning?" "Yes. It's not so far once you know the way." He took the chair that Curtin hospitably pushed forward, and sat apparently in a brown study, while the other speculated. At last said Drew: "This is a good, big farm with room, I shouldn't be surprised, for another worker. At any rate, I've ridden over to ask Mr. Linden to employ me." "Do you like farming better than forestry?" "I like it better plus some other things." His eyes swept the hills that shut in the vale. "There is rich forest here. Any woodland that he has I could cut and replant. I know something of farming, too, and I can learn more. I'd give good work in return for the other things that they can teach me, and that I want." He regarded Curtin with brooding eyes. "Ever since I could remember I have been beset by the past. A man told me once that I was conscious there, but hadn't co-ordinated it with the present and the future. It was some time ago, and he went away at once and I never found his like again--until I came here. I don't think there are many of them, living at any one time. The only wisdom I've got is the wisdom of going where I think I may find help." "How about Randall?" "I'm very fond of Randall. But he can't help me here, nor I him. He thinks it's just my 'queerness.' There's a man in Washington who will be mighty glad to get my job. He's a friend, too, of Randall's. I want to stay here for a year. Then I may go foresting again with Randall. I don't want to lose him. If Mr. Linden can't use another man this winter perhaps he will take me in the spring. In that case I'll go, and come again. I've talked it all out with Malcolm Smith, our chief at Rock Mountain. Brown in Washington will come down right away." At twelve appeared Linden. He stood in the hall door. "Is it you, Drew? I will be down in a moment to shake hands." They heard his step going up to his room. "Blind, and not blind!" said Curtin. "There's some profound development of sensibility." "I am not a scholar," said Drew. "I haven't got the names to give to things. That's a part of my need." Marget and Miss Darcy came up from the river path. They had been, it seemed, to the overseer's house. Marget gave her hand to Drew. "I am glad to see you again!" There was no surprise in her warm and happy voice. "Your room is all ready for you." They had dinner. When it was over Drew went with Linden into his study. The three others lingered a little in the pleasant, wide hall. The day was again right October; amber and garnet and sapphire; balm with nothing of lethargy. Said Curtin, "When we come and come, what do you do at last?" Marget laughed. "Oh, you come and go! You never really go, you know! But you have to take your bodies here and there over earth. But once come, we keep you and you keep us!" "You know people all over the earth?" "Yes." "Do they write?" "Oh, now one and now another writes! But we hardly need letters. That is, they are needed, of course, for minute information, for news of bodily movement. But there is communion whether we write or not." Marget returned to the dining room to talk with Zinia. Anna Darcy went up to her chamber for her rest, and Curtin took his book to the porch. The books at Sweet Rocket. He fell to pondering them. There were, perhaps, five thousand, not in one room, but up and down. Many were old, and many neither old nor new, and many new. They seemed to touch all subjects. Curtin, pondering, going deeper and deeper, fell into some border country of Reality. With swiftness, with electric shock, he touched, not thousands of leaves of paper printed over, but conscious, intelligent, and powerful life. Or rather, it seemed to touch, to descend upon him, to well through him, coming down, coming from within, occupying space internal to all this tranquil, outer, October space. It was presence, it was personality, overwhelming. Books! What were true books? Will, Desire, Intelligence, living, active, not unclothed or unbodied, living Presence, present Activity, being in mass, active being, present and active here in this valley and present and active elsewhere, present and active throughout he knew not what infinity! He felt again that wide and deep shock of reality. The world lived!--had always lived--only he had not known it. Vigor streamed into vein and nerve. He sprang to his feet, and, leaving the porch, moved down past the cedars to the river path, and along it. "It is not Richard Linden and Marget Land, nor the one nor the other! It is all of us. It is the Whole. The Whole has found them and is bringing them in accord." He felt exquisitely a touch of bliss. "It will bring me in accord, too. Drew and Miss Darcy and me--and many others." He felt a satisfaction such as he had never dreamed. "All others. One by one, all accorded, all remembered. The Already Remembered, forever increasing in strength, gathering, drawing, the scattered and fragmentary and incipient!" He walked, hardly knowing that he walked. "Goodness and largeness! The dawn of them is synchronous with the dawn of Allness. All our words, mercy, justice, love, wisdom, power, joy, are but terms for the natural, habitual feeling of the One who is Whole. It is not that they are 'virtues'! They are the hue and tone and sense of health!" He went up the river as far as the overseer's house. Here, upon the bench built around the sycamore, he found old Mr. Morrowcombe, who had stayed over with the Carters. In his old brown clothes, with hair and long beard, pale as the pale patches of the sycamore trunk and boughs, leaning forward upon his stick, he looked, as it were, the huge old tree come forth into human form. Curtin sat down beside this old man. The cane upon which the elder leaned was now close to his eye and he saw that it was covered with finely cut words. Thick, and shaped like a shepherd's crook, the graving ran all over it. "May I look?" "Surely!" said Mr. Morrowcombe, and gave it into his hand. "The year I was in prison at Camp Chase I carved around it the twenty-third psalm." Curtin examined the quite beautifully done work. "Trust and Consolation in your hand--walking with them for fifty years!" He sat musing. Mr. Morrowcombe's old, gentle voice began like the zephyr in the sycamore, whose beginning you could hardly guess. "Yes, sir! That staff's me now. Just as a good dog that goes with you gets to be you. It's helped me, week days and Sundays; that staff I made myself. I made it myself, and I didn't make it. I didn't make the tree that grew it and I didn't make the psalm; nor David that made the psalm. But I cut the staff from the tree and I carved the words there. So I reckon I have my part." "You cut it in prison?" "Do you see that piece just thar?" The old finger traced the line. "'_Thou settest me a table in the presence of mine enemies._' I cut that deep and fierce!" He looked at the river and then again at Curtin. "Now, whatever it means, I know it doesn't mean what then I wanted it to mean!" His old, gentle face grew meditative, contemplative. A more tranquil form and face it would have been hard to find. "I kind of sense the meaning, but I can't put it into words. But when you feel at last with folks and things you can't feel against them. When I was young I must have hated a lot of folk! I don't now." "What is your healing herb?" "Put yourself in his place. Don't oust him from the place, but understand him. Flow into him deep! Then you'll find that there is Something inside or above you and him which understands and straightens out both of you. Next thing you find is that you haven't got any real controversy." "Do you call that something God?" "That's what I call it. I used to think that you _had_ to call it God. I don't now. But it's a mighty good word! We've hallowed it. It's the biggest word we've got." "Mr. Morrowcombe, when we join God, don't you think we shall say 'I'?" "_That_ will say 'I.' Yes." They sat gazing at the river and the colored hills. "Ain't this a lovely place?" said Mr. Morrowcombe. "It's like Beulah Land!" "Do you ever talk to Mr. Linden?" "Surely! Him and Marget Land. They're of those in our time who are remembered early." He glided into one of his gentle silences. Curtin pondered that matter of re-membering, re-collecting, re-storing. Said Mr. Morrowcombe, "I knew Marget Land when she was a little girl and came to Sunday school. She was baptized in our church, but she ain't now one of our church members. That used to grieve and puzzle me--make me a little angry, too, I reckon! Now I don't bother about it. She's in the Living Church, all right." He looked up into the bronze and silver sycamore. "I've sat on this bench in old Major Linden's time, when John Land was overseer and lived in the house yonder. His wife, Elizabeth, was just the salt of the earth. Those children used to be playing around this tree. I remember Marget, a bare-legged, big-eyed little thing. She's sat by me often on this bench and made me tell her stories. Now it seems a long time ago, and now it seems yesterday!" His voice sank again into the October sunshiny stillness. His lips closed, but Curtin felt him speaking on in thought and consciousness. It came to him, in another of those revelational flashings: "That is the ultra-violet of speech, the high, subtle, inaudible, continual speech! When we begin to catch it, when we begin to hear thought--" He felt again the shock of going together, of rivers pouring into ocean. Mr. Morrowcombe's lips parted. "The war turned me serious, and I found religion two years after the surrender. I'd tell her Bible stories. I had a kind of gift that-a-way. Roger Carter, that's my nephew as well as my son-in-law, has got the same gift, though it ain't always Bible stories that he tells--except I reckon as all true stories are Bible stories! I used to tell her about David and Jonathan, and Joseph and his brethren, and Ruth and Naomi, and Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in Bethany.... Mary and Martha in yourself, and Lazarus who was long dead but could be raised, and Christ, who could judge and portion and raise, all in yourself! She used to listen, sitting just there. She had mind then, and she's got mind now--more'n I have in a lot of ways. She and him. Mind and goodness, and spirit that is power, and a body that you love to look at! They're the kind of folk that ought to be. Yes, sir, I was thinking when you came along of Marget sitting there, a little thing, and saying, 'Now tell me about the children of Israel'--or 'about Bethlehem,' as it might be." With distinctness Curtin felt that which the old man also seemed to feel, for he turned his head, lowering it and his eyes a little, and smiling. The movement was precisely that of turning and smiling into a child's eyes. Again through Curtin poured that thrill of a freshness of knowledge. If this tree, this place, were strongly in a consciousness, in a memory, surely then that conscious spirit itself might in some sort be felt here! At any rate, he was aware of Marget, though to all outward senses appeared only the warm-colored October air. He had again the sense of etheric life. He lost it. It was so bright, it was so transient! The unquenchable desire was to bring it lasting. He presently walked back to Sweet Rocket House. Drew was on the porch. "I'm going to stay. I'll write to Brown, and ride to Rock Mountain to-morrow to tell Mr. Smith and Randall, and pack up my things." XI The next day Drew returned to Rock Mountain to make his arrangements. "Why not ride with him?" Linden looked at Curtin. "There is a fair trail. You have an extraordinarily fine view from the top." Drew urged it likewise. "But I haven't a horse." "Roger Carter has a good saddle mare. He will be glad, I know, to let you have her." Drew, mounted as he came, Curtin on Dixie, set out before noon for Rock Mountain. The cliffy crest that gave it its name peered above the southern hills and ridges facing Sweet Rocket. Crossing the river the two kept for some little distance to the Alder road, then at a pine tree left it for a just discernible track. "This is where we changed, Randall and I, the other day. Until we saw the river we thought that we were going to Alder, but we were going to Sweet Rocket instead." The trees closing in behind them, they were plunged into forest. There was now no green save the green of occasional pine or hemlock. All was gold or red or russet. Moreover, the earlier trees to turn were fast flinging their mantles upon the earth. The sky met less obstruction, the sunlight spread a royal carpet. The air equaled exhilaration. As Curtin rode he thought that he faintly remembered all the forests of the world. "Is it infectious? Is it because in some sort Drew remembers, or is it because I have been--and surely I _have_ been--in all the forests of the world? Like him, I remember best the temperate and the northern forests, because in time they are the nearer." For a while they rode in silence. There was only the sound of their own breathing and movement, and the very inner voice of the forest, low speech of branches that brushed them, break of twigs, flutter of wings, tap of woodpeckers, whisk of squirrel, and once, a little way off, the heavy whir of a pheasant. At last Drew broke the silence. "My mother died when I was fifteen years old, and my father when I was twenty. I remember my mother's mother and my father's mother and father. I know a good deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was born. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know something of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have been told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of whom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of course I know that people often imaginatively share the experience of parents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my mother and my father--or with my grandparents--or my ancestors generally. They had these experiences and they must have felt and done this way. It seems almost as if I were there!' I think when you say that you are beginning. But it's grown to be more than that with me. After all, what are you but your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on? Your experience under your immediate name and your experience under your old names--their names. And alike, what are they but you? Share and share, comprehend and comprehend, include and include! I tell you that I am aware of the pyramid behind this cleaving point that is talking to you. I _remember_." "Do you mean that you remember actually thinking, feeling, doing what men say your ancestors did?" "I don't get it clear. It's all wrought into some kind of unity. I don't remember clearly sharp, isolated experiences--except that one time I told you about, and that was clear and sharp repetition. But I remember, all the same. I don't feel any wall between my father and myself, between my mother and myself, my grandparents and myself. You don't know how curiously I seem to share their life! Sometimes, lying still at night, I simply, naturally, am Edward Drew as well as Philip Drew. I look out of the Edward Drew window--or out of the Andrew or Robert or Margaret or Janet window--and then I turn and look out of the Philip Drew window. I had a great-grandfather who was a sailor. I can't tell you what feel of the deck beneath my feet, what a sense of sea by day and by night, I have at times!... But then, of course, in the far back I must join many sailors.... I _am_ those folk. That's my own life they led. I lead their life. Wherever they are, they lead mine!" He fell silent, and Curtin, too, rode silent. They were now above the valley, their road climbing. Overpassing a great hill they came to a threadlike, green vale, and crossing this climbed Bear Mountain, behind which rose the great head of Rock. When they reached a gushing mountain spring they dismounted, and, seated on moss and leaves under a tall mountain linden, all palely gold, ate the bread and cheese and damson tart and drank the cider that Sweet Rocket had put in the bag they carried. Their feast ended, they rested on the springy, fragrant earth. Drew began again. "Remembrance! If I had a hundred per cent better brain--and I suppose one day the brain of all of us will be a hundred, a thousand per cent, ahead of what it is now--I am convinced that I could remember not only down the stalk of myself, but out into the branches right and left. The tree conscious from leaf to root, from root to leaf! The whole tree conscious, aware up and down and to and fro--and, as somewhere all the forest joins on, the forest conscious and aware up and down of its history. Then the forest runs into all the forests high and low. The everlasting Forest and all its adventures!" He looked as though he rode in that forest. "Out of it comes the Tree that sheds the forests! And never once need we lose consciousness in finding that Tree! That's what Mr. Linden said to me. He said: 'You're the Ash Yggdrasil. You're all things and all people. You share them and they share you. You're to extend, extend, your sense of that. The One is to come down and lay hold upon you--and still you shall find it home and yourself!'" On they rode over Bear Mountain, and at last up Rock. Five hundred feet below the top lay a green depression named Hall's Gap. Here a half-dozen cabins made Hall's Town. The people now owned Rock Mountain, its rich forests and rushing waters. A road was in the making and that and other department plans brought to Hall's Gap preliminary groups, the present group being a surveying, engineering, and reporting one, with Malcolm Smith for head. Under him he had Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew, with axmen and spademen hired from the mountain. The cabins in the Gap lodged them all. Curtin and Drew reached this place before sunset. The men were coming in, dogs barked, the smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air. Randall welcomed them, and presently Malcolm Smith appeared and shook hands. They had supper in Hall's big double cabin, with Hall and Mrs. Hall and half a dozen flaxen-haired young Halls, but after supper they went to a neighboring cabin, for the time being their own. Pine knots blazed on the hearth. Malcolm Smith and Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew and Martin Curtin stretched tired limbs and smoked and talked. Morris and Cooper presently played checkers. Malcolm Smith read the newspaper, but after a little put it down and talked. He talked of aviation, and wireless, and of Einstein's notion of space, and of atomic energy. "I've an idea that ideas, ideation generally, imagery, perhaps memory, are simply that energy functioning! We imagine, and that energy has constructed a form in ether. We use it blindly, weakly, unintelligently. But if--" "I see." "But if we used it enormously more strongly--and wisely--we'd be creators all night! It's getting very important to know what we do want to create. If we don't look out, presently we may find that our imaginations have life! We've got to choose, I suppose, what kind of life we'll give; silly or monstrous life, or intelligent, kindly, strong, beautiful life!" Curtin enjoyed the evening on Rock. Flame and odor of burning pine, and the pleasantly grotesque shadows on the cabin walls, made for rich fancies. In one of the easy silences the men grouped in this brown and flame-hued place seemed to him genii, gathered here before they drove their roads over mountains or harnessed their plunging water steeds. He thought: "We are genii! How wonderful it is to be what we are--and shall be!" Men at Hall's went to bed before ten. Curtin found in a small cabin a hard couch and honest sleep. He slept without turning till five of the morning, when he waked with a great sense of refreshment. "Where I have been I don't know, but it was where vigor flows!" The stars shone in at his window. He lay still for a few minutes, then rose. The air was not too chill. He found when he was dressed that he was warm enough. Opening the cabin door he went out, moving softly so as not to waken Drew and Randall. The morning star hung in the east, and near it the moon in her last quarter. The cold, first hyacinth of dawn streaked the sky. Drew had pointed out the path to the top of the mountain. Curtin, finding it, climbed it alone. Half an hour brought him to the summit. When he reached it the earth was bathed in the cool and violet first light. He found a great projecting rock, shaped like a chair, and took his seat here. The planet, from gold, was become silver, and the moon hung like a dream canoe. Here or there mist hid the vast expanse below, but for the most part earth lay clear. The outthrust rock that was his seat gave him two-thirds of the circle. Stillness with depth and power possessed Curtin. He looked out, and down, and over. Range on range, with narrow vales between, rolled the mountains. In the strengthening light the autumn hue of them gave desert tints; then he picked out clearings, and white points that were hamlets and farmhouses. He turned eyes to where would be Sweet Rocket, though he could not see that valley. It was dawn. Richard Linden would be up. Perhaps, guessing that Curtin might watch dawn brighten from this rock, he might be here in mind and spirit. Even as he thought this, the presence of Linden not there but here, or both here and there, came to Curtin in a wave. He felt company in solitude, doubled life. And not, as he presently perceived, Linden only. Linden meant thousands of others, as thousands of others meant Linden. Thousands and thousands.... That was himself ... thousands and thousands. He looked north and east and west; by rising and moving he looked south. The horizon rim lay very far. Using knowledge, he let it farther drop away, drop away. Underneath him was the bulk of the earth. Use power and make it as crystal, penetrable as water or air! Overhead and all around was air, thinning afar into ether. He saw his globe in space and time. A ten-minute road of light ran between it and the sun. He sat very still, but within he moved into the land of contemplation. Here much time came into no-time, so subtle swift was motion. He entered into touch with much for which he had not yet found name or names. He might say, there is deep water and rich land. He might say, the world is other than we thought it. There are Americas ripe for discovery, and there are farther and future Americas forming. By degrees might lessened. Muscle could not yet hold, nor sense be aware. He came nearer surface. Yet still there was vision. Phosphor was paling, the moon a dim curve of pearl, and all the spread of earth in stronger light. Curtin gazed, and the eyes of the mind outran the eyes of the flesh. Not just Virginia, but all the forty-eight states. Not just the forty-eight, but all America, Canada, and Mexico, and the islands and the republics of the South. He looked to the Atlantic and saw on the farther side Europe and Africa, and on to the east Asia and the Pacific. He saw the continents and the nations. It was not so much that he saw their earth, their body, though he saw that, too. But he saw them, touched them, heard them, as persons. The most of them had lately been at fierce war, fibers of each dissenting, but the bulk warring. Exhausted from war, haggard and torn, yet still they made gestures with broken weapons. He saw them in the throes of economic and political change, of change from knowledge to knowledge, and of religious change. He saw traits and actions, deep, deep; yesterdays at the point of to-day, and all the morrows being built of yesterdays and to-days. He saw as it were stain and chaff and guilt, and through all these white-running Fire and Life and Upspringing. They were Persons, but a greater Person held them. Light broke. He saw the earth and the world and the heavens as Person. Upon him broke in deluge the vaster Selfhood. The sun rose over Rock Mountain, the long ranges and the vales. The air had the exquisite fresh energy of Hope. Curtin moved down the path to the cabins. All his being seemed lit and harmonized. "It is what the old saints called conversion. My times fall into the hand of the One that I Am!" The rosy light shone on Hall's below him as it shone on Sweet Rocket and Alder and the Virginia farms and villages and towns, and the farms and villages and towns of every state, and of all the Americas, and of the earth. Fragrant smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard the cheerful voices. A great love of the neighbor pervaded Curtin's consciousness, and with it entered the neighbor. His consciousness and the neighbor's consciousness became to a degree one. XII The men at work had breakfast at Hall's in great beauty of weather. Afterward Curtin went with them along the proposed line of road. It proved a cheerful group, doing basic work well. The wine of the air and the lift of the earth and the beams of the sun helped amain. Axes rang, pick and shovel sounded. There was a center of work and there were outlying explorations. One hallooed to another. Morris was a master whistler, and you heard him like a redbird. Dave Hall had an interminable mountain ballad which he chanted as he worked. The buzz of the whole might be caught a long way over the mountain slope. Where they worked would be a great driveway for holiday folk. Young and old would pass that way, drinking the great views and the mountain air, pierced by beauty and largeness. Young and old, man and woman, a many and a many, through years heaped like sand! "I like public work!" said Randall. Drew answered: "I like it, too! If a scholar wants to help all and a teacher wants to help all, then going to school and teaching are public works. But I'm coming back to help hold the forests for themselves and the people." The morning went by quickly. At noon they had dinner by Indian Creek, that rushed and leaped. Three young Halls brought their food in baskets. It was spread under hemlocks, and they ate as it were in Arden. Dinner over, for half an hour they smoked and rested, stretched out beneath the trees. "Tell us a story, Cooper!" "I haven't one. Call Dave Hall over." Dave came, tall and lank and brown as ale. "Sit under that tree, Dave, and tell us a story." "I kin sing you about John Horn and Betsy at the dance." "No. Tell us a story. Tell us about the mountain woman you began about the other day when the storm came up." "Miss Ellice?" "Yes, Miss Ellice." Dave settled himself, with his back to the wine-red trunk of a hemlock. He was lean and tanned, wide-eyed, with a rich, drawling voice. "She was a see-er, that woman! This-a-time that I was telling about the mountain barked like a dawg at her, and showed its teeth and tried to bite--because she said an awful thing! She said that a time would come when every man and woman could do the things that Jesus did. She said Christ was an abstract description of the state of being folks would come to some day, and Jesus was a great laborer who got there earlier than 'most anybody else. Said he was an example, sure enough, and a shower of the way, and who could help loving and wondering? But, 'cording to her, the best way to love Jesus was to _learn_. Stop jest do-less wondering, and grow! Said that Bethlehem and Nazareth and Galilee and Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem were where any man or woman was! Brother Carraway preached against her, and the mountain decided she wasn't healthy for it. She was living all alone, but the mountain decided that her cabin had better be emptier yet. She was a tall woman, about the age of my mother, and when you looked at her you'd think at first she wasn't strong.... "Brother Carraway, after he had preached, went on home, but James Curdy always took what he found in the Word and tried to do it. What he found was usually right harsh. James had black eyes pushed 'way in, and long hair that always seemed to me to be blowing in a wind. He was awful fond of the word 'punish.' 'Now you're Punished!' 'God will Punish you!' He used to stride around and do his best to see that God didn't forget it. He was one to see that God did his duty, was James! He couldn't always make the mountain look at things same as he did, but after Brother Carraway's sermon, and the lightning striking Barber's house and killing old Mrs. Barber, he got two-thirds of it worked right up to his feelings! That was Tuesday after Sunday, the lightning having struck on Saturday, and Mrs. Barber buried on Monday. He got about thirty men and boys together at John Williams, and a lot of them had had whisky--I don't know that this air interestin'? I could sing to you about John Horn and Betsy." "No, go on! They were going to drive Miss Ellice off the mountain?" "That was the intention. But this very Indian Creek about a mile from here makes a pool that's called Dumb Child Pool, because little Johnny Nelson that was dumb was drowned there. He fell in while the children were gathering nuts and he couldn't make them hear. Well, those that had had something stronger than water, they were all for seeing if Miss Ellice wasn't a witch! You know how folk used to prove a witch? That was about twenty of the eager ones, mostly young men. This wasn't very recent. I wasn't living on this mountain, but on Stormy Mountain over thar. I came here when Lucinda Nelson and me married. But I've heard all about it." He spat vigorously. "Now, this is where her seeing with other eyes than like yourn and mine comes in! And how I come to know about some things that others don't was that that very Lucinda Nelson that I married happened to be at Miss Ellice's that day. Nelsons ain't afraid of anything, and Miss Ellice had done them neighborly turns, sitting up with the sick and sharing coffee, and such as that. Anyhow, Lucinda was there, and Miss Ellice was braiding a rug and seemed extraordinarily cheerful and sunny. 'Long about two of the clock, as it were, she broke off her talk and finished her row, as it might be, without looking at it. Then she says to Lucinda--and Lucinda says she was that still and sunny, like a day that comes sometimes, that she was 'most afraid of her, just as you're 'most afraid sometimes of that kind of day, and yet you want to stay by it and it to stay by you--she says, says she, 'I'd like you to stay longer, Lucinda, but I find that I've got something to do! You go along, honey, and if I don't see you again I want you to remember that I like you and think you're on the right road!' And with that she got up and kissed Lucinda and stood in the door to watch her down the path. Lucinda went along home. Well, in about two hours, here they come, James Curdy and Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan, and the others, drunk with whisky and with what they thought was the Word of God. They had a rope, and they meant the Dumb Child Pool." He spat again. "'Twas Jonathan Morgan that told me, and Lucinda the rest of it. He was young and wild in those days. Jonathan says he hadn't been drinking, and for all that now and then he shouted with the rest he had never seen a day so sunny and still, and just the minute after he'd shouted he'd see the whole as in a picture--his crowd and the Dumb Child's Pool, and Miss Ellice's cabin. Kind of saw it out of himself as it were, as though he was sitting on the bough of a tree looking, seeing thar as well as here. But the rest of them, I reckon, didn't see nothing but a witch and something exciting to do--unless it was James Curdy--and what he saw and felt Lord knows! Something like a nightmare, I reckon! "Miss Ellice's cabin was high on the mountain. They stopped shouting when they got nearly up thar. They thought that if before that Miss Ellice heard them she'd just think it was some jamboree going on alongside of mountain. James Curdy had such a rule that he could bring even the drunken ones quiet for a bit. So they stole up the path, and Jonathan said that the cabin above them looked like a goldy leaf hanging still, or like an empty nest. So they went up in a string till they got to where the trees stopped and there was just some bushes and grass. And then they spread out, and went on in a bunch, and James Curdy cried in a loud voice, 'Woman, come forth!' But the shut door didn't open. Then he cried it again, and then he opened that tight mouth of his the third time. He had more learning than most of the mountain and he used big words. 'Blaspheming atheist, come forth!' But the others wouldn't stay quiet any longer, and they shouted, 'Witch! Witch!' "The door stayed shut, and Jonathan said that the cabin hung like a goldy leaf or a nest high up on a bright, still winter day. Jonathan says there was something so still and sunny there that it stilled the shouting. Then they opened the door, for it wasn't bolted, and those that could get in went in--James Curdy at the head. Those outside spread around so's they could catch her if she run out. But Miss Ellice wasn't at home. She was gone. "Thar was her half-braided rug and her chair and a little fire on the hearth. But she wasn't there. It turned out that she had taken a bag and a basket with her clothes, and a little money she had. And then Mat Waters found the letter on the table, and Jonathan Morgan read it, because James Curdy had left his spectacles at home. And if you'll believe me it was directed to 'James Curdy and Matthew Waters and Jonathan Morgan and their Company.' Inside it said just this: 'I've loved this cabin and this mountain. But now I remove myself from among you. Yet I love this place where I have been, and am, and shall be. Now abideth Faith, Hope, and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.' And then there was the name, Ann Ellice. "Jonathan said half of them were still drunk and outrageous because they couldn't have their fun at Dumb Child's Pool. A lot didn't even listen to the letter, seeing with their own eyes that Miss Ellice was gone. James Curdy listened, and his face got white and his eyes red coals. 'She's brazen!' says he. 'The devil talks Scripture to his own damnation!' He went out of door and looked about him. But most of the rest didn't see anything but that they'd lost something exciting to do. They began to break up the furniture. Then some one raked the coals and brands out over the floor and they set the straw bed on fire. But Jonathan took the letter and a book or two she had--Lucinda's got the books now. But James Curdy stood outside and looked down mountain. 'That's Harris's cabin a mile over thar. It's likely she's thar.' And he began to go down over mountain side. Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan followed him, and so did about half of the others. The rest stayed to burn the cabin. The witch had gone off on a broomstick for them! "The Harrises were a kind of lonely folk that didn't go much to church or nowhar. They mightn't even have heard of Brother Carraway's sermon. She might be thar, as James Curdy thought. But she wasn't. She had been thar, they said, jest a minute. She'd looked in on old Aunt Viny Harris and said she was going away. Said she was going to foot of mountain to Norwood, whar you get the train. Aunt Viny asked when she was coming back, and Miss Ellice smiled and said she didn't think she was coming back. 'Whar was she going to live?' She said she didn't exactly know, but she had kinsmen who would take care of her. 'Aye,' said Aunt Viny, 'you're a master weaver and worker, and any folk ought to be glad to have such a handy woman around!' Which shows that the Harrises hadn't heard anything. And so Aunt Viny said Miss Ellice said good-by very friendly, and went on down mountain. James Curdy wanted to set a hound of Harris's on her track, and the drunk ones shouted at that, and one staggered out to get the dawg. But Jonathan, he represented that Miss Ellice would be 'most down mountain now and out on big road where the tracks would be all mixed up and covered, and anyhow the folk down there wouldn't understand and let it be done. By that time the cabin was burning up on mountain above them. They could see the smoke and light. James Curdy had to let it be, though doubtless he had some hard thoughts of the Almighty. Well, that is the end of it! She didn't ever come back. It ain't much of a story. I don't know why I told it to you." "You don't know where she went?" "No. Mountain folk ain't curious in them ways. You'd better have let me sing to you about John Horn. Lucinda says she took her body away, but not her spirit. Says she can feel her any still and sunny day. I reckon Jonathan Morgan feels the same way. I don't know. It's been a long time ago! Brother Carraway's dead and Jonathan Morgan is Brother Morgan now and preaches in the old church. Things air sure changing in this world! Last summer I heard him say myself that Christ was inside us and not outside--might never have been outside us, so much in the world being parable! James Curdy's so old now he couldn't do anything but look mad as an old beast in winter and get right up and go out of church, looking like a snow cloud and talking to himself.... Lucinda says people keep on acting and persuading if we see them or if we don't see them!" He lifted himself, long, lank, and brown, and moved from the hemlock. "You air welcome--Mr. Smith, you'd better speak to Jim Harris about them logs." XIII Malcolm Smith, talking with Curtin in the cool twilight, before Hall's, had no word against Drew's departure for Sweet Rocket. "He's a valuable, likable fellow! There's a curious sense when you are with him of depth or background that he doesn't understand himself. Violin wood! He says that this friend of yours has something to teach that he wants to learn. That's all right! I can generally tell when a man's real destiny is ruling him. I've got that feeling now about Drew. He needs to buy in a certain city and he's going there. If we're here next year--and there's a lot to do on Rock Mountain--I'll be glad to take him on again." Bedtime came. Again Curtin slept profoundly, restfully, waked early, and climbed again to crest of mountain to see again the sun rise over so great expanse. He sat in the stone chair and before him hung the morning star and the senescent moon. Below them was spread violet and jonquil and one strange sea of blue. Again he felt the Spiritual Sun. He thought: "This is what they have perceived at Sweet Rocket. They have not waited for death. They live now, and forever, and know it. This body will go from them, but they are building or remembering--I do not know which, and perhaps it is both--a life that will not go from them. And I also, also, though I am a babe yet--" Sitting in the hollow of stone at the top of the upraised wave of earth he watched the sunrise from Rock Mountain.... He conceived that what was true of him was true of others, had been true age after age, was true now over this round earth of others. He thought: "There has always been a fellowship. The eidelweiss does not guess the roses and the heliotrope, nor the violet and the meadow rue. But at last the garden of the earth guesses! It becomes the living garden. The living garden becomes the living man. Naught is right, naught is reasonable, until you get it from the whole." The sun rose, the earth turned ruddy. Curtin went down the path to Hall's, breakfasting there with the men who worked with head and hands. This morning he and Drew would start for Sweet Rocket. Drew's slender luggage was going down mountain to Norwood, whence the train would take it to Alder. Every one liked Drew, even Cooper who laughed at him. "Good luck, old farmer! Ride over and see us sometime!" The two rode down Rock and crossed a vale, like a green and gold ribbon, and went up Bear Mountain, where the oaks were all deep colored, and down Bear and over forested hills and on by the trail that struck into the Alder road. They went rather silently, but in a deep, contented companionship. Once Drew spoke. "He said, 'A good present is one in which the past betters its condition.'" When he said "he" there was meant Richard Linden. After this there was silence again, both having struck some road within, where is the network composed of all the roads of the world. They approached Sweet Rocket. The forest fell away. Before them shone the river, the wheat and orchard land, and the ruddy house with its pillars of mellowed white, and the hills that inclosed. Through part of the day clouds had been driving across the sky. Now they were sinking before the southwest wind, leaving the blue arch. They were variformed, castles and towers, bridges, alps, cities, ships, mythical beasts, giants. Light embraced them in a spray of colors. Crossing to it, for one instant, Curtin saw Sweet Rocket transfigured. All that was strong and fair became a hundredfold stronger, fairer. All that deterred or roughened or overweighted or twisted or weakened vanished in warmth and light. A sheath, or husk, or burr fell away. Interior power rousing itself, he saw the place in its seraph aspect, eternal in the heavens. Drew seemed to share the perception. He said, abruptly, "There is splendor!" They felt splendor; then it closed, like light withdrawn, warmth screened away. There stood Sweet Rocket in its earthly estate. That is, they thought it its old earthly estate. But by that much it had become endowed and was not the old earthly estate. They had checked their horses. Curtin said, "So it was always in poetry!" The younger man had a curious gesture. "We gather all the household gear into the long ship, and put forth!" But Curtin thought, "In the Bible Noah gathers all the lifeseed into the Ark and rides the waters into a new world." They crossed the river and went up the little glistening beach and by the cedars to the house. Sweet Rocket welcomed them home, the white folk and the colored folk and Tam. They found the household increased by two. Linden said, "These are my cousins, Robert and Frances Dane, who come for a little while each year to Sweet Rocket." They were a married pair, a little above forty, perhaps, the mark of the city upon them. They had quick and nervous bodies, thin, lined faces, eyes well apart, burning deep and very steady, lips tending to compression. They seemed tired--about them breathed something of soldiers after a long day's march through hostile elements. This was bivouac, this was rest! At first they were too tired, there was almost resentment. "O God, _how_ can you be still and ageless?" This changed, little by little, at Sweet Rocket. The overtension disappeared. They were left taut, collected, wary--workers worthy of praise in a dangerous world. At the supper table that evening Curtin made out more and more of their life. They had come yesterday, a little before their set time, and Anna Darcy had the start of him in acquaintanceship. Intellectual radicals certainly, members of some group in action, probably of more groups than one, jack of all agitations and master of one. He could hear them speaking, in halls, and under open sky, and he could see the face of the throng to which they spoke. They would be speaking of Soviet Russia, of Guild Socialism, of Employer and Employed and the Course of Labor that did never yet run smooth. There were causes, not so apparently economic, for which also they would work. He heard them speaking for the Suffrage Amendment and likewise for the release of Conscientious Objectors. They belonged here, they belonged there. The one, he was later told, was Associate Editor of a Journal that was making the step from liberalism of the left to communism of the right. The woman was an admirable violinist. He knew that they lived on little and gave much of that little away. They lived where it was possible to live in one big room and three small rooms. They had a son who was doing well at a school they liked in the country. To look at them was to see how hard they worked, and to look into their eyes was to see the beacon that set them and kept them at work. They also had vision of Oneness. Though in talking Linden and Marget used in a much less marked degree the terminology used by the newcomers, it seemed to present no difficulties to them. They seemed to understand these guests, as they understood those others who had come to Sweet Rocket this October, to understand and to travel with them. Curtin thought: "They sympathize. It does not occur to them to say, 'Do something else, take another road!'" He thought: "That is their strength. They utterly share." Frances Dane had brought her violin to Sweet Rocket. Yesterday it had been laid in the parlor. Now, after supper, sitting by the fire in the old room, the violin spoke. It told of the player's passion for the world, of the man who wrote that music's passion for the world, of the passion for the world of all makers of violins, and of the trees whose wood was used, of the passion for the world that is progression and revolution, of the passion for the world that is the slower rate that is called withstanding progression and revolution, of the passion for the world that is music, of the passion for the world yesterday, to-day, and forever, of the passion for the world that every heart of us knows! XIV "It is something like this," said Linden. "We are One Being with its mighty potencies. All that comes in comes to us, all that goes forth goes from us. The points that take, ponder, sort, combine, alter to better liking; the mighty poles, the mighty afferent and efferent that flow from pole to pole, all that is movement, that is gravitation, that is cohesion, that is justice, that is harmony, that is love, are Ours. We go as we have gone through time, from and toward--the from that is also toward, the toward that is also from. But something beyond Time as we have known it, beyond Space and Causation as we have known them, increases upon us. Consciousness in some sort of the whole orb, awareness through and through, is momentously upon us to-day. In the end all desire is desire for that." "We shall move then in four-space?" "If you choose to put it so. It is an allowable figure. All that present language can devise is but a word, a figure, a symbol. What we mean is the next advance in consciousness. When you have it you know it." They were treading a slender path through October fields. Now they were in a great, climbing cornfield, all stacked corn like brown wigwams, and here and there upon the brown and stubbly earth the orange of pumpkins. The air folded them in violet and gold dust and faint frankincense. The hills had changed in color, so many leaves being shaken down. On days like this the mountains were evidently entranced. It was Indian summer before the Indian summer time. "A new consciousness?" said Frances Dane, walking with Curtin. "A farther-on consciousness? It is in the air to-day!" "Yes." "Wise men saying, 'We have seen His star in the east--' Oh, that's a figure!" "There is some Reality, or thousands of us would not be hearkening, as we are hearkening.... A new man, a new creature.... It's a consummation devoutly to be desired!" The heaped corn stood around, the orange globes made constellations on the earth. They were now well up the slope, at their feet Sweet Rocket and the little sliding river. All was reflected, all was veiled, but now and again eyes looked through the veil. Reaching the top of the hill they found there a tall, solitary tree--a black gum--and built around it a bench. It linked in Curtin's mind with the sycamore before the overseer's house. They sat upon the bench and upon the ring of brown grass that ran around the tree. The view was fair and they rested in silence. It was Anna Darcy who noticed how much silence there was at Sweet Rocket--silence that sang, that caressed. Moments went by, silence held them, fair solitude, sense of one person here alone. Tam moved, coming nearer to Linden. The latter's hand dropped to Tam's head. Anna Darcy heard a low sigh of relief and burden lifted. It came, she thought, from Frances Dane, who sat near her upon the grass. But it might have come from more than Frances, from all. Stillness and silence deepened. There grew a cathedral sense, a desert, an ocean sense. Into that entered a wealth of light and strength. A vast wave of freedom, an access of life, lifted them. They had life and they had it more abundantly. They seemed to themselves to flash together, and of them all was made a god. For an instant there held an intense vision of this valley and of Sweet Rocket transfigured. Color and sound lived, every movement was of joy. That broke away, vanished like the image of a rose into the image of a garden of ten thousand. Then that was gone into an image of all the earth, and then that into intense, sheer, mighty Living, with small regard to old space and time, abounding, keen, a Reality leaving old reality behind. "When it is all done, when it is all known, all felt, when we are fully, completely ourself, when we remember our Godhood and live it, when we do not look through storm for the lighthouse ray because we are Light, when we do not cry Father and Son because we are both and know it, when there is glory of home, glory of health, glory of love--" Who had spoken they did not know; it seemed their common voice. Perhaps it was Linden, but if so he spoke as their common voice. Into it came not only the voice of the seven there, but the voice of old Mr. Morrowcombe and the Carters, and of Mrs. Cliff and Mimy and Zinia and Mancy and the others; not just the voice of Sweet Rocket, but the voice of Alder, and of many an Alder, big and little, the voice of the city and the country, the land and the sea. "To be well! Oh, rise within me, truest Self, with healing in thy wings!" The great, golden feeling passed, leaving echoes, leaving memory. These folk were separate again where they had been one, but not so separate. In and out hovered that breath of transfiguration, a day of spring in late winter, dying, but with a tongue to tell of a time when it would not die. Where all had been vivid, singing, laughing, now was the wonted gentleness of this valley, a dreaminess shot with gold, taking and giving, but doing it subtly, silently, only now and then bestowing evidence of a vast interpenetrative life, showing like the eyes through the veil of this Indian summer day. They went down through the corn and out by a gate, set in the gray and lichened rail fence, where grew sumac and farewell-summer and the feathery traveler's-joy. They walked in meadows by the river, and at last through the orchard, and so to the house. Mimy, in the kitchen, was singing: "Oh, Jesus tell you once befo', Babylon's fallin' to rise no mo'. Oh, go in peace and sin no mo', Babylon's fallin' to rise no mo'!" In the evening Frances played again to them, and the rich and sweet music filled the old room. The violin put by, they talked by the fire; then Linden said, "Read for a little while, Marget." She took up a volume of Blake, and read. "Read that letter to Butts." She read: "... Over sea, over land My eyes did expand Into regions of fire, Remote from desire; The light of the morning Heaven's mountains adorning; In particles bright, The jewels of light Distinct shone and clear. Amazed and in fear I each particle gazed, Astonished, amazed; For each was a Man Human formed. Swift I ran, For they beckoned to me, Remote by the sea, Saying: 'Each grain of sand, Every stone on the land, Each rock and each hill, Each fountain and rill, Each herb and each tree, Mountain, hill, earth and sea, Cloud, meteor and star, Are men seen afar.'... My eyes, more and more, Like a sea without shore, Continue expanding, The heavens commanding; Till the jewels of light, Heavenly men beaming bright, Appeared as One Man, Who complacent began My limbs to enfold In his beams of bright gold; Like dross purged away All my mire and clay. Soft consumed in delight, In his bosom sun bright I remained. Soft He smiled. And I heard his voice mild, Saying: 'This is my fold, O thou ram horned with gold, Who awakest from sleep On the sides of the deep.'..." XV "Energy in larger units, affinities gathering strength and flowing together with power!" said Curtin. "Everyone has seen it and felt it in some wise. When it is blamable, unguided, 'mob spirit'! When it is praised, '_esprit de corps_, mass heroism, mass enthusiasm, conflagration of genius, voice of the people, unity of spirit,' what not! Most folk have a glimpse of the fact that there is an ocean of desire, emotion, will, as well as rivers and rivulets." Marget came and sat with them on the steps of the little summer-house in the flower garden. She wore a great check apron, denoting housekeeping and helping Zinia. She sat down beside them. "What have you been doing, Marget?" "Once a week Zinia and I have a general straightening day. Then my mother and I have been visiting together." "Truly, truly, Marget?" "Truly. But in a little wider order, my dear, a little wider order! The order above this order--into which this will melt. Mother and father, and Will and Edgar." "Two of those are living and two are dead." Marget smiled. "Ask Wordsworth!" "I see," said Anna Darcy. "Very well. Do more than that. _Touch!_" With a trail of ivy in her hand she looked past the snapdragon and marigold and larkspur, still blooming, so rich and mild had been this autumn. "Then, as the rooms grew clean, I was with my mother in her birthplace, two hundred miles from here. We were there as adults, moving, loving, understanding with a grown mind, but there in her childhood and girlhood as well, loving to contemplate all the past that was us two! Mine as hers, hers as mine. Mind and feeling ran and caught up with her brothers and sisters, her parents and friends. Her parents remembered their parents and those remembered theirs. Home rose after home, garden after garden, loved place after loved place." Her eyes were upon Drew, whose eyes were upon her. "Do you not see that you can, that you will, recover it all? All that you have been, and you have been very much; all that you are, and you are very much!" Mimy's singing floated to them from the kitchen: "There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land, Oh, pat yo' foot, chillun, don't you get weary! There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land." "And then," said Marget, "I was in Rome with Richard. The sun shone, the wind was in cypress and pine, the fountains made liquid sound. Father Tiber glided, Saint Peter's stood. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and then it was the Capitol within and without, and then the Appian Way and all the Campagna--all Rome--not to-day alone, but _all_ Rome. And then not Rome, but starlight nights from the decks of ships. And then--" "This was actuality, while your hands swept and dusted the parlor there?" "My body was in its duty and happy there. Yes. Actuality, but of another order, an order we are coming into. The order of intensified, guided, _realized_ memory and imagination." "And of reason?" "And of reason. Profoundly so. It is reason that is guiding. Reason has its higher levels, grows comprehensive, knows longer sequences, completer syntheses. And from the decks of ships we were in the desert watching the stars, shepherds on the hills and shepherds on the plains, shepherds and villagers and wanderers of far days!" She lifted hand and arm in a curious and commanding gesture. "Watching the skies above Queen Rain and King Wind! In desert and plain and upon hills and on seas, thousands and thousands of us strewn in time!" For an appreciable moment, to some degree, those listening to her became aware of, made, as it were, junction with their own far wandering, far wondering, savage and barbarian self. It was evident that Drew made junction. They touched the mind struggling there, and the lifted gaze. The sense was one of enormous, calm pervasion. They entered into, they aided, their own early man, where he marked the heavens, and around them was the wistfulness of early lands. Marget spoke on. "Then while I worked we were building pyramids and mountains of the god. We were watching and watching, patterning and naming, comparing, all the skies, the moon, and the planets and the times of the sun, and the white path through the heavens and the great named princes--everywhere, swarthy folk and pale folk! Now we were many and many. Then in us rose the Devoted, the Searchers of the skies, seeking from city roofs and temple roofs knowledge of the Whole for the Whole." Their interior self opened its wings and used its eyes. As space expanded, so did time. They were there in the October sunshine, on the summer-house steps, but likewise they attended, and in some vast, liberated way they were that collective effort, that process. They might carry the method over into all processes. There swam across the mind other words--"commerce"--"government"--"family"--many and many a word. Marget's voice went on. "Now one has made a telescope. Our theories change; we stand on dead theories and study on. Thousands of us studying, thousands building knowledge, learning vision! We gaze, we watch, we turn to desks and write and figure, we reason, we divine, we better our instruments, we gather results and make fortunate guesses, we hearken to intuition. We stand on a mossy stone in space and study the Promised Land, the universe that is ours, the ever perpetuating, the ever bettering! Time widens. Here are mountain summits and the observatories of this day, and the clockwork and the pierced dome, and the great eye that we have made, and the photograph. Mind sits at the knee of Great Mind and learns its alphabet. And all the thousands that were and are and will be are one Astronomer, and it is I, still working to know!" She ceased to speak, and sat wrapped in the golden light. Said Robert Dane: "We follow where you step. You make us follow you." "I do not make you. You walk with me because you can walk. We walk. It is your Self as it is mine." "We move and we feel, then, where you are. You live there more fully and keenly than we, but we can breathe and feel and see. Go on! We would have your life, as you have ours." "Then, after the stars, while I wound the clocks, I walked into the minute. Again thousands of us working and watching, noting, divining--thousands and thousands, years past and to-day and to-morrow! And one devises the microscope. All the laboratories!... Into the cell, into the atom, the infinite dance of relativities and small collections! And the intensed, pointed endeavor, using perception as fine as the millionth part of a hair--we knowing, marking, understanding ourself there, where we are moving clouds! We working there, patient, patient, the god working! The great and the small. We who forever remember and make richer ourself. We the I-- And then I was again with my dead, who are just as much and just as little dead as I myself! And then I came out into the garden." They sat on the summer-house steps, and the marigolds glowed around them. She spoke again. "Here and there, throughout the past, and often now I think in our own day, a man or woman lays hold upon faculties that some day all will lay hold upon. _And greater things than these._ Forerunners, pioneers! Regard this late flood of books describing communion with the dead and giving detail of the life hereafter. What they describe is the widening consciousness here and now! The increasing awareness. One does not wait for death. Richard and I would not have you think that we are deep, deep, deep in that realm. Were it so nothing could hide it. Were we or any full in the next order you would see the shining. We are not there, but we are in motion toward it, as are many to-day. The road thitherward has its great scenery and long, thrilling adventure! And you, too, all of you, too, are in motion toward it. In this day of ours, each day of the sun, more and more are in motion." She rose from the step. "I have rested this body that we call Marget Land and now I shall put it again to work in the house we call Sweet Rocket." XVI That evening, after she had played to them, Frances fell to telling of a crippled boy, almost a man, living in a poor flat in New York, the father an overworked head clerk, the mother a strong, gadabout, well-meaning person, more apt to reproach than to sustain. There was a sister, a stenographer, who meant to marry, if she could, some employer. This nineteen-year-old boy had a passion for travel, who could rarely travel as far as the street. At intervals, when his father had leisure to accompany him, he went to a movie. If the piece had scenery, country and ocean and strange cities, moving throngs and great buildings and places of which he had read, he was happy. He took the _Geographic_, and got travel books from a library. He knew more of the earth's surface than did many a "traveled" person. But it was hot in the city, in his little stuffy room, or it was cold in the city in houses that could never buy coal in quantity. He had a good deal of pain, and his eyes got bigger and bigger. Curtin had claimed the small bedroom at the end of the upper hall. Drew slept in the dormer-windowed room above. Frances and Robert Dane possessed the large room opposite Marget's, next to Linden's. Here were four windows and each narrow bed placed where it might look forth. This night the Danes talked awhile, then addressed themselves to sleep. Robert slept, but Frances found that she was wakeful. Yet she had definitely turned from care and question of the day, from concern for her own work left in suspension, even from the face and incident of Sweet Rocket. From her pillow she saw the stars as they rimmed and rose above the mountains. At first she seemed to be over there, with the shadow below and the diamond above, but then to herself she left it all. There seemed naught about her but cool space. She lay without fret at wakefulness, though she was intensely awake. She became aware that, waking, she was becoming rested, refreshed, as though she had profoundly slept. She was awake above the old waking. The old waking was dreaminess to this state. Vigor poured into her being, and all the past was passed. That is, it was passed in its heaviness and friction, its strain and anxiety. All that seemed to drop away, like dross leaving gold. It was curious, her sense of gold color of all things in a gold light of their own, not from without. She became distinctly aware of influences. They were good. She acquiesced, "Yes, I will travel with you." Will consenting, her strength was added to those other strengths. In the plane where she now was flashed out co-operation. Marget--Richard! Certainly they were where she had been wont to call "within her." But certainly she felt them, was aware of them, presently saw them, as never had she done before in that "within," though often in memory, thought, and imagination she, like others, had been with Marget and Richard there "within." She had used those words as a matter of course. Even then that "within" had, when you examined it, its own space and time, its own mechanics, warmth, color, and sound. That "within" and this "within" were of a piece, but where that had been faintly real this was vividly real. She had no doubt of its reality. It was so, but reality of another, of a farther on, order. Marget that afternoon had talked of another order. It seemed that one might rise or deepen into it. She was consciously there now, though in the order below it she rested at Sweet Rocket. It was not the plane of tremendous power and illumination, but it was a state of developed powers. It was as far as just then she could go. The boy Stuart--Stuart Black. How many a time had she wished that she could give this boy travel! "If I might take him and let him see!" As he had longed, as he had imagined himself traveling with Mr. and Mrs. Dane. "If I could travel with you!" And now to-night they had somehow caught and held to the ether and were seeing what they wished to see. The influence, the individuality that was Marget and Richard strongly aided. She was in Rome with Marget and Richard and Stuart Black. She did not question them nor him, and the boy did not question. They were there, and it was sunny weather, and they were strong and happy. They stayed in no hotel, they depended on no cab nor car, they needed no food of the old sort. When they looked at one another they saw body, since where is still multiplicity must still be body. There was something of old bodies in these bodies, but also there was difference, and all to the good. Old defect had vanished. Stuart Black was no cripple; she herself had lost fatigue. There was translucence, a golden appearance, and where they wished to go they were. She wished for Robert, and immediately felt that in wishing she had said to the others, "I wish." They strengthened her wish with theirs. Here, then, was Robert with them, though intermittently, not on the whole so strongly, but coming as he could answer, sleeping there at Sweet Rocket. And now and then another joined them, though somewhat dimly, and that was the boy's father, whom he loved and wished to include in his joy. The body of Rome, too, was like and not like the old body of Rome. Rome had a Self to match this Self of theirs. Spirit and body and mind and soul, Rome understood itself better. There rose a Rome richer, purer; nothing of fair and wonderful lost, all such quality strengthened; the unfair, unwise, unstrong of old, everywhere tending to drop the prefix. Yet to the new self Rome was herself, singing, enchanted, of the past and present and future. Marget and Richard, who seemed truly Marget-and-Richard, one word, had said, "a week in Rome," and that was what seemed to pass. They saw as in old travel they had seen, they went about as in old travel they had gone about, they enjoyed as in old times they had enjoyed, but with freedom and power and joy that left the old behind. All was vigor, heightened and transfiguring perception, and yet friendly, homelike, not solemn nor stilted, the boy here enjoying like a boy. Frances became aware of a control, keeping experience to a vivid and fair finiteness, not sacrificing current form. That was for the boy's sake, perhaps for her and Robert also. And after Rome, Athens--an Athens, too, sublimed. And after Athens, for the splendid richness of things and for the boy, the vast North, forest and plain, and an intense exhilaration of life that swept out upon the great sea and encircled the earth. They spent long, bright days in ships and at ports of call. Then they went to China, and India, and Egypt. They crossed the desert of Sahara, and again in a great ship passed between the Pillars of Hercules. Followed ocean days, and that greater will and awareness slowly diminishing, gently returning upon its still habitual self. Diminishing, diminishing, slower, slower, a little melancholy, but tranquil, with a subtle smile.... A sense of a giant woman in stone rising from an islet in a harbor--a sense of a familiar city in the year 1920--a sense of dreamy farewells, a quiet darkness and lapse.... Frances turned herself in her bed at Sweet Rocket. Starlight flooding the room dimly revealed walls and furniture. Across by the other window Robert lay sleeping. How much time had passed, or how little, or how widely could you live in no time at all? Here was reality, but there, too, had been reality! It had been real, that companionship and that travel. The memory of it was memory of reality. Mind had attended there not less, but more than here. The whole compound self had achieved a unity and power. Achievement--ungrown wings--first flights! She thought: "The possibilities! O life of life, our possibilities!" Old warmth and drowsiness took her. There was a kindly fatigue, as though she had walked on a bright day to mountain top and back and now thrown herself down for rest. She saw the stars through half-open eyes, then slept. The sun was streaming in when she waked; Robert already up and dressing. She raised herself upon her arm. "Good morning!" "Good morning!" She rubbed her eyes. "There is a strange and happy feeling of 'there' being here!" Robert said: "That somehow hits it. I had the most vivid dream of long, sunny travel, with you and Marget and Richard and Stuart Black! It wasn't like a dream. I feel as if I were just off the ship--had all the memories and a most tremendous refreshment! I could take down any wall this morning!" "Why do you put it that way?" "I don't know. We have so walled ourselves in from wide doing--are so afraid of our own landscape!" He stood by the window. "I think I'll ask you a question that never, never would occur to Mr. Gradgrind to ask! Do you remember it, too? For instance, Athens and some dim, northern forest--and a lot of islands with palms? Do you remember music?" "Oh, it was all music--and I think that I'll play it all my life!" Dressed, they went down to the others, Zinia's bell ringing for coffee, omelet, honey, and cakes. Linden and Drew had eaten and gone to meet Roger Carter and William where the winter wood was being cut. Marget sat behind the coffee urn. "Good morning, Robert and Frances!" Her face of a subtle, moving beauty, more of look than of feature, did not turn upon them with a "Do you remember?" It seemed to assume that they remembered. Frances thought, "Certainly she remembers, and as much more strongly than I as I remember more strongly than Robert!" It was of a piece with all that they had talked of. "At last, with all of us, talk passes to action." Frances Dane drank her coffee. All of them in the room seemed bound in a ribbon, Linden and Drew also, wherever they might be in the forest, and Stuart Black in that small, dark room in New York, and how many others! She did not name them, but she knew they were many, in fact all. In a flash she saw how, to Marget and Richard, might appear not many selves and binding ribbon, but One Self. To realize this was to realize that for her, also, there was but One Self. XVII Three days after this Curtin and Anna Darcy, who often walked together, having gone to the pass of hemlock, cliff and tumbling water, turned in the broken sunlight and shadow back to Sweet Rocket. The maples of the upper slopes had cast almost all their leaves, but the oaks stood yet in carmine. Yesterday had fallen light rain. Earth lay moist, and soil and leaf and fern and moss sent out a haunting odor. The sun stood in Scorpio. The drama of the year was on the homeward road. It saw ahead the Archer and the Goat and the Water Bearer, the Fishes of the great deep, and the Ram that, springing forth, should take once more the road, the old road, the new road, the old-and-new road! Now Curtin and Anna Darcy spoke, and now they were silent. It was a blessed feature of this valley that none need be talkative in order to convey, "I am at home with you." Her visit was approaching its end. That was what people would say. "Physical presence and metaphysical presence!" said Curtin, answering her thought. "Physical and above-physical--and the generations to come will find the inclusive word." "Oh, I shall be here still--or 'here' will be with me in the city--or it will be both. At any rate, no desolate parting!" They passed from under hemlock and gray rock to beech trees and a dappled path. The small river calmed itself and began to flow through cultivated land. Gentian and farewell-summer made a purple fringe for the way. "In old romances one walked into an inn or house by the road--always saying, 'It is by the road that goes on as it went before, and I presently again with it!' But never again as it was before, and never again I as before! For just there befalls the adventure that sets one climbing to a new road." Sweet Rocket vale opened before them. Each time they looked it grew fairer, and that, they had begun to see, was because it was not separated from anything. Said Anna Darcy, presently: "Do you know Morris's _Earthly Paradise_? Do you remember the Story of Rhodope? I used to know almost all of it by heart. When Rhodope is born the countryman, her father, dreams, and he seems to himself to be standing with the mother, watching "... a little blossom fair to see." Then:-- "The day seemed changed to cloudiness and rain, And the sweet flower, whereof they were so fain, Was grown a goodly sapling, and they gazed Wondering thereat, but loved it nothing less. But as they looked, a bright flame round it blazed, And hid it for a space, and weariness The souls of both the good folk did oppress, And on the earth they lay down side by side, And unto them it was as they had died. "Yet did they know that o'er them hung the tree Grown mighty, thick-leaved, on each bough did hang Crown, sword or ship, or temple fair to see; And therewithal a great wind through it sang, And trumpet blast there was; and armor rang Amid that leafy world, and now and then Strange songs were sung in tongues of outland men. "It is something like that that I feel for any place--and perhaps now it will be so for this and every place! It was such a blossom and now it is such a tree. All hangs therein, peoples and nations, things past and things to come! When I go away I shall find it so in any place." "That is what you will do--and I also. Everywhere that Tree, that Man, that God!" The vale widened at the overseer's house. The sycamore by the river stretched in the sun its great arms of white and brown, and these and the blue vault made a pattern. A dozen turkeys crossed the path in a stately, slow-stepping procession. Mary Carter was singing in the house, and little Roger singing after her. As they approached the tree and the bench around it other voices reached them; then one voice reading aloud. They saw the two Danes seated there--Frances, reading a letter. "So I _did_ travel with you and Mr. Dane. It was so wonderful--it is all around me now! I don't clearly remember little, sharp bits of it, but I remember the whole. It has shown me a lot of things. I don't any longer mind living. It's funny, but father, too--" Frances looked up as Curtin and Anna stepped under the tree. Bright tears stood in her eyes. She shook them away and smiled at the two. "It's a letter from the crippled boy I told you about--" The four walked back to Sweet Rocket House. "Robert and I have but a week longer. But this place tempers the wind of the whole year. It drops honey into winter days." Curtin asked Robert Dane, "Forth from here you go on with the work you are doing?" "Of course. That is a department of this. But I wish to work without bitterness or violence." The day shone about them. Rain of the night had brought into late autumn a sense of spring. Spring and autumn seemed to touch across shortened winter. The air held a divine, sweet freshness. They were aware of new life, and all objects of perception tossed back vigor and luster. "The world renews--the world renews!" sang the river. A little later Robert and Frances Dane at their window saw, coming up from the river, a somewhat worn automobile. Stopping before the porch the driver and owner descended and mounted the steps. "There's an old type!" said Robert. "Tall and thin, black clothes and soft hat, low collar and string tie, white hair, mustache and imperial--look, Frances, it's a picture! Once it was the horse, and he swung himself down--then the carriage, and at the door he helped out the ladies. Now it's the car. To-morrow he will descend from the airship--just like that!" She looked over his shoulder. "It's old Major Hereward from Oakwood. He was here four years ago, that time I came alone. He's all the past! But that car's symbolic, too. He's all the past beginning to say, 'For all my fighting I begin to find myself, with all I care for, here in the present--perhaps also in the future!' He's beginning to think that it may be so with the airship. There with all that he really, really cares for! 'I always said that they couldn't get along without me, and now I begin to see that neither can I get along without them!'" Major Hereward appeared at the dinner table. It seemed that he, too, was a cousin of Linden's, on the other side from the Danes. His place was Oakwood, twenty miles away. Old Major Linden and he had been boyhood friends. He breathed knowledge of Sweet Rocket in ancient days. His manner to Marget was delightful, though perhaps he still held in comparison, in a "this--that," Sweet Rocket House and the overseer's house. His manner to all was delightful--like old wine. Robert Dane pondered that, and also Frances's words of the morning. Like others, he could speak as though the past, the present, and the future were islands with nothingness between. But truly he knew it was not so, and he assumed that much self-knowledge in those to whom he spoke. Now he had it, in a flash of vision, how the old wine and wheat, how the old strength of man and woman, did go on. All within the whole flashed and changed. But the whole held all. The tangential itself only went so far, then returned, and was met and welcomed. _The prodigal son._ He saw that contrary winds were not so contrary after all. "In the whole, and in the whole only, I am not contrary to him nor he to me. In the end one sail and one wind--and the sail due to arrive and the wind favorable." That afternoon Major Hereward walked over the place; with him, Linden and Curtin. "I came to talk to you about something, Richard. But we'll leave it till night. I can always pull things together better then--after the day. Here's the oak Phil Linden and I planted the day we heard of First Manassas! He was eighteen and I was sixteen. The next year we both went in." They stood beneath the tree. Said Curtin, "Much water has gone over the wheel since then!" Major Hereward nodded. "Much! But Phil Linden and I seem to stand here together. Not just of the mind we were, but together! _And many a foe grew to be a friend._" The bright day declined. The sun set in a coral sea, a crescent moon appeared, earth grew an amethyst, the stars came out. Brush was being burned and wood smoke clung in the air, and there was the multitudinous chirping, chirping in grass and bush of late autumn. It was almost November, and they built larger fires. The old parlor gleamed. "It's a dear room, a dear, dear room!" said Major Hereward. "I don't believe any here can love these portraits as I do. Richard may look at them often, but--" He broke off. "I forgot that he is blind! I'm always forgetting it! Well, he may see the reality of them." Richard entered, and a moment later Marget. "It's a night of the gods! How the fire leaps!" They sat around it, Anna Darcy and Curtin and Drew and the two Danes and Major Hereward, Linden and Marget. Anna Darcy was saying: "I went down to Mimy's before supper. The preacher is there for the night--Brother Robinson." Linden answered her. "Yes. He will be here presently. He always comes to us for an hour or so. He's a fine fellow." Rising, he fetched Frances's violin. "What deep and dear pleasure you give, Frances!" She played old music and new, into which the old glided, until there seemed neither old nor new, but a content very vast and rich. The wing of the music lifted them; music and flame blended. They sat in reverie, and the wealth of the world flowed, circularly flowed. Without, in the night, a lantern passed the windows. "There is Brother Robinson," said Marget. Richard went out--they heard his voice in the hall--then he returned with the negro preacher and Zinia. He said, "Mr. Robinson--friends, all of us!" The circle widened. The preacher sat down between Linden and Robert Dane, and Zinia sat between Marget and Frances. "Play a little longer, Frances!" The music blended with the flame, the wealth of the world flowed, flowed, circularly flowed. The Rev. William Robinson sat, a gaunt, dark figure, in long-preserved broadcloth, with a rugged, deep brown face. When he spoke his voice had unction--like the voices of most of his people--unction, but not too much of it. By sheer indomitableness he had gained a fair education, and he was a good man and a wise one. In her blue dress Zinia sat beside Marget Land. She kept silence, but her poise was like her poise in the dining room and pantry, or on the porch when Miss Darcy had taken her breakfasts there. The latter always thought of her standing beside the pillar, or in the clean, airy pantry, by the jar of flowers and the open _Pilgrim's Progress_, always heard her rich voice, saying, "I like that girl Mercy!" It seemed that Robert Dane had met Brother Robinson before this at Sweet Rocket. When the violin was put by the two talked together a little, as folk might talk who liked each other. Curtin, from his corner, watched with interest Sweet Rocket in Virginia. A voice from somewhere went through his head: _Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all_. He looked at Major Hereward, and the old man, who had stiffened at the "Mr. Robinson" and the seating in the circle about the fire, seemed now to rest at ease, in a brown study, as one who regards the expanse of things. Miss Darcy spoke. "At Mimy's this afternoon you had begun to tell me of the building of your church and schoolhouse down the river. Then they called me and I had to go--" "Tell them now, brother," said Linden. Brother Robinson told, and what he told had humor and pathos and heroism. There passed, as upon a screen, the littles gathered that were much to spare, quaint efforts at money raising, labor at twilight and dawn given by laboring men, the women's extra work and their festivals. Brother Robinson was a born raconteur. Into the sheaf of his homely narrative fell vast swaths of human effort and aspiration. "And Brother Linden helped us, and old Mr. Morrowcombe gave us five dollars." A voice came from the corner of the hearth, from Major Hereward: "I'd like to help you, too, Brother Robinson! Put me down for ten dollars." They left the material building of the schoolhouse and the church. Said Brother Robinson: "I've got something else I want to tell you. I've had an Experience, and it's taken the heart out of my bosom and crumbled it between its fingers and put in a new one! I came to Sweet Rocket to tell it to you, Mr. Linden. But I don't see anyone here that I'd be afraid to tell it to." "There isn't any such," said Linden. "Tell it!" XVIII "I was going to preach," said Brother Robinson, "at Piny Hill Church, that's twelve miles from Old Lock, where I live. I started out Saturday afternoon to walk, counting on a lift or two on the road, and I got them. I was going to sleep at Will Jones's, who works at the mill on Piny Creek. The first lift I got was from a wagon full of hay going to Cherry Farm. That was two miles. Then I walked three miles. Then a Ford came along and said, 'Hey, Brother Robinson, are you going as far as Llewellyn?' I said that I was, and farther, and the Ford took me to Llewellyn. That didn't leave but four miles to do, and that was nothing. So I was a-walking, and the leaves hung red and yellow, and the evening was powerful sweet! I went through the woods by the Thessaly place. I was thinking as I was walking. And then, just like that, Mr. Linden, thinking with words stopped! My old body stopped, too. I just lowered it under a cedar tree and left it there. "But I myself went higher and wider. I was everywhere and all over! I was in and through everything! They were just shapes in me. It was like being air, or like that inside air you told me about, called ether. You told me about that, but when you told it I hadn't experienced, and so it was just words. Now I have experienced. Everything was right here and now, or there and then, it didn't matter a mite which! "The first thing I felt was just infinite cleanness and coolness. It was me and it was not me. If it was me it was something vast in me that had got the upper hand. There was a me, a self, like a tired, dirty child. To that me the other was God. But God turning out to be me, too. I had preached about God for thirty years, but I never really tasted or touched God till that day. It was cool and whole and pure, and bigger than the sky. And it forgave all my sins, or it saw clean through them. It saw a long way and all at once.... The tired and dirty me was everybody else, too. It was me and it was everybody, and we were healed by our God, and that was us, too, us, and more than we had ever dreamed of in that us! It healed with its might, and the lower part understood and went up.... I can't give you a description. It was awe and joy. The little body of William Robinson couldn't have held it, but something bigger than that held it. And then, just as light changes on the mountains here--when you are on top of Rock Mountain maybe, and see everything below you--and it's all there, but it's got another tone and you feel it in a different way--just so that cool awe and greatness changed a little. It was joy still, but now it was friendly and natural. It was the whole earth looking like a garden, and all mine, all me, and in that me was all I had ever thought was you or him or her, and all that I had ever said was it. The bird and the beast were there, the trees and the grass and the air. And it was lovely; it was just love, and beauty!" He brushed his hand across his eyes. "I can't tell you about that beauty. And we weren't dead; all was living. If you'll think of the very best moment you ever had, when you were deepest friends with yourself and found that it took in everybody, it might be something like that a million times over. It was innocent and wise. And all the times that I'd ever thought I was happy were just plain misery beside it! I couldn't hold it, any more than a young robin can hold the flight he will hold after a while. I reckon we're all fledglings! Back I flopped toward William Robinson. Here was old Virginia, and the woods and the road and the hills and the mountains, and Old Lock, and Piny Hill Church. But just before I settled in I got for just a minute this very country and our daily life in the light and the glow and the music and the wonder! All that was fair kept in and strengthened, and all that was unfair just melted out! I knew then that though we talk about it we haven't begun to love our country. It went, too, into the world. 'For God so loved the world.' ... Well, that vanished, too. I was back. I was just the colored preacher, William Robinson. I was back, but I could remember! I've touched what it's like to be God." He ceased speaking, and sat bent toward the fire. A little of that luminousness of which he had told seemed to show through his flesh, a dark translucence. He said, under his breath, "'Little children, love one another!'" and rested silent, in communion with the flame. "'For all we are members one of another.' Feeling that," said Linden, "is to feel as One. Then the One no longer counts as separate his members. He says I AM." Stillness held in the old room. The fire gave it crimson and amber life and warmth. The canvases on the walls, the pictured men and women, seemed self-luminous. Major Hereward spoke abruptly: "Where are the dead? Where are my brother Dick, my son Walter, my mother and father?" "They are here. Re-member yourself and you shall find them." "Where is heaven?" "It is here, the moment you begin to perceive it." "You mean that you perceive the dead, Richard?" "Yes. Do not you?" The old man stared. He drew a long breath. "Never before did I think that I did!" Robert Dane spoke. "You mean that as the Great Consciousness expands it becomes aware of itself there, too? That that realm becomes open?" "Yes. Discovery there is within the grasp of our age. It is not so far away as many might think! As Power comes through. The 'dead' and the 'living' do meet. They have met all the time. The general recognition and use of the fact is to be strengthened, developed." "It is not the only recognition and use of Oneness impending!" "By no means! No. In every field there is ripening corn. How should it not be so?" Major Hereward's voice came in again. "'The spiritual sense of the dead.' I've heard that phrase. I didn't know what it meant. Do you mean that when I seem to myself to move about in company with Dick, when things come into my mind that he knew about or that we did together, when I seem, as I go on, to understand his character better and better, and to see life as he did, when he seems here with me or when we are just happy together in old places--that it's _true_? And Walter and my mother and father and Helen and others--oh, scores of others--they enter my mind and heart just as though they came in at a door! Do you mean that when I think of them suddenly and strongly, feel them as it were, that _they_ are doing part of it, that there _is_ intercourse? Good Lord! I thought it was only myself!" "I mean that," said Linden. "It will grow to be more than that. A higher, fuller thing than that." The old man rose. Face and voice showed emotion. "I've got what I came for. God bless you, Richard, and God bless you, too, Brother Robinson! Oh, we've been little! Marget, I'll say good night, my dear. Out of my life goes fear and loneliness!" Brother Robinson likewise, with Zinia, rose to say good night. "I'll see you in the morning," said Richard. "I want to talk to you about the school." That night Curtin, also, increased his sense of life, life that included those that were said to be dead. There had been no repetition of the hour when, lying in the room where now slept Robert and Frances Dane, he had touched with an inward sense that brother who had fallen from the aeroplane, who had been jostled out of the body, but who lived! Surely the life was not quite that of the old life, though surely built from that; certainly Curtin might not fully understand until he, too, slipped the body. Yet there was life and living. He had not experienced that hour again, and he had tried doubting if he had ever experienced it. But doubt did not prove to be a going proposition. Memory smiled it down. Yet the experience had not been repeated, or rather what had come had diffused itself in the wide awakening of these Sweet Rocket weeks. Nor did its distinctive _klang_ return to-night. There was not the same white keenness. That which beamed about him now was more like that which Marget had spoken of on the summerhouse steps. Not one now, but many of his dead; not the human only, but the flower and the tree, the bird and the beast, the scene, the water, land and sky. "The old and sweet is here, but chosen, redeemed, gathered up, understood, become immortal! And we have had it all the time. It has been here all the time! Just as we had electricity and did not know it." He fell asleep, rocked by the waves of a sunny sea of love and home and kindred. XIX Major Linden spent two days at Sweet Rocket, chiefly sitting upon the porch in the sunshine or walking about the place, sometimes in company, sometimes alone, but never, Curtin noticed, with an old man's look of loneliness, though he thought that at times before this Major Hereward would have shown that loneliness. But now there was vigor in him, vigor and interest and life. "If they are here, living for me as I for them, talking to me and I talking to them--it is the strangest thing what life does when it comes!" His laughter had a clear and happy ring. "I had thought of all kinds of solutions! And here it is, the needle threaded, while I was still looking for it in the haystack!" He stood beneath the oak he had planted almost sixty years ago. "Phil is here. Trying, wasn't it, Phil, when I said, 'Oh, fancy!' or, 'It's just Wilmot Hereward talking to himself!'" When he met Linden on the porch he said: "Richard, if it's so with those folk whom we so promptly insisted hadn't any reality in them, isn't it so all over? When I'm pondering Bob who's in England, or when I'm thinking of nothing in particular and in he walks into mind and affection--" "Yes. It is part of the same truth. It all rests on the oneness of Being. That is why you must in some wise grasp that Oneness first. A time will come where there will be no saying 'My brother Dick,' or 'Bob in England,' because they and Wilmot Hereward and all others will have advanced beyond all such divisions. But on the road there you will meet many a fair power!" The old man went the next morning back to Oakwood in his battered car. He went alone and not alone, with a peaceful face. In the afternoon Anna and Curtin, Drew and the two Danes, walked down the river, in among the partly forested, partly grassy hills that here closed the valley. Indian summer had now stolen over the land. The air hung smoky amethyst, and still as still! No motion was in the fallen leaves, the birds sailed stilly by, the stubble fields dreamed, the river sang low. Wood smoke clung in the nostril. Turning, coming homeward, the brick house and yellowed pillars stood pictured. They passed through the orchard and by a small cider mill. Zinia, on the back porch, poured for each out of an amber pitcher an amber glassful. "_Was-hael!_" said Drew, and lifted the glass. Curtin caught from memory the answering phrase, "_Drink-hael!_" A shaft of wonder, like a gleam of light, touched them all with strange fingers. Something trembled in the air. If it said aught it said, "So Earth begins to _live_ Poetry!" Drew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. "Life, everlasting life!" he said. "I see it now! We have always lived!" Again evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside Linden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. "This finding ourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I, this is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind all efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse, swifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse--this is it?" "Yes. Behind a hundred shapes of dawn." "Effort does not cease?" "No. But effort, too, is finer and far more powerful. You act now from within upon the within." "To touch through and through that we are one! Hercules's labor isn't in it!" "Yet it is done and to be done. Find me if you can an individual to-day who has not some dim perception of it, or who is not in some wise acting toward it! Even the most unpromising--look and you will see! It is so tremendous, that finding, it runs through every fiber. We can cut out no pattern, but we move from light to light, from love to love!" In her room that night, when she had put out the lamp, Anna Darcy, lying in bed, watched the firelight on wall and ceiling. A cricket chirped, she could hear the river. Her visit to Sweet Rocket was ending. "Only it will never end; it is immortal within me!" She saw how all life interlocked, how shock to one was taken up by the whole, how joy to one thrilled through all. "What we call space is Being; what we call time is our own Story, our colored, toned lastingness! Give and take, forever and forever, forever and forever! Find lovely things to give, and from the other side of us take lovely things, lovelier and lovelier! Know thyself--know thyself--know Thyself. 'If ye do it unto one, the least of these, ye do it unto Me.' 'And all we made One.'" The walls of the room disappeared. Anna Darcy, a slight, worn, teaching woman, sixty years old, vanished or altered. There was wide life, land and sea, deep life that did not talk in births and deaths, lofty life that said, "Better than this wave even, shall you know!" It was Strength, it was Peace, it was Wisdom and Balm. Across the hall Robert Dane lay thinking. In his youth he had the passion of a Shelley for a regenerate world. Older, the vision dulled, and yet he worked on doggedly, heroically, one with thousands of others breaking and making a road for the feet of Coming Man. He worked heroically, never sparing himself, a devoted life. Sometimes the gleam shone fair before him, oftener mists made it faint, sometimes he lost it. Then it shone again. He worked on. To-night, lying here at Sweet Rocket, his youth came back, but higher, fuller, wiser! He saw what might be done, what was doing. He saw the interrelated roads and the travelers upon them, the hosts of travelers. A vision came to him in the night. His body lay very still, but he himself saw clearly a great thing. There was a City that was country also, and sea and land and sky, that was a world, harmonious, great, not a dead thing, not unintellectual, but living, living with a vast fervor and beauty and interest and knowledge, throwing out even, it might be, silver lines toward a world yet more light, more fervent, more living! But it was there, all that he could now image of body and spirit, mind and soul's desire: He saw like a pale film another city that was pale and sorrowful to this. And he saw that city, as it were, send out itself, by rivers and seas and roads, thousands and thousands of paths, upon a journey to the other. There was hardly a point--truly he thought there was not any point--that did not travel. So many living beings, so many ships or rafts, caravans or solitary travelers to that Desired Haven! All going, some ahead, some behind, but all going. The pale and sorrowful city was moving into that other, and brightening as it moved. That other was drawing it, steadily, steadily! He felt it like a loadstone; he felt it like a mother calling home. The vision passed, but there was left Assurance. He lay still in the starry night. The mind kept up an underhumming with words like "reintegration," "superconsciousness," but the spirit dealt only with the bliss of a great coming to itself. He slept at last, and his sleep was dreamless and profoundly renewing. XX "It is the flowering land, it is the music land. You go to it through every moment and incident and encounter of the day. You read, and it is behind the words. You think, and it smiles through. It is the Higher Us that resolves the discords and reaps the fields. Experience it once, and it is miracle and wonder; experience it twice, and you say, 'Columbus was not the only discoverer!' Experience it thrice, and you work for it day and night! You yourself, drawing yourself out of the old man and the old house. Read 'The Chambered Nautilus.'" "It is religion--" "It always has been Religion." "And the gloom and storm of our day?" "It is _not_ gloom, it is _not_ storm. It is the pains of growth. Feel the epic and voyage that it is!... Every proper and general noun in all dictionaries now and to come is my name, as it is yours. Every verb is my doing, as it is yours. The use of language, use and _dis_-use, is mine as it is yours--" They were walking in the orchard beneath the apple trees, whose leaves were slow to fall. There had been, this morning, a heavy frost. The garden flowers were going, the creeper over Mimy's house had shed its scarlet leaves, but held its dark-blue berries. The heavens hung a blue crystal. The air had the cool of mountain water. It was the day when Anna Darcy must leave Sweet Rocket. After dinner Daniel and the phaeton and Marget would take her to Alder to the north-going train. Now, with Marget, she went the round of the place, saying good-by. They had been to Mimy's, and had talked to Mancy at the barn. "Come again!" said Mancy. "But you ain't really going, you know! Sweet Rocket will hold you, and you'll hold Sweet Rocket." They came by the kitchen. Mimy was singing: "Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home--" "You gwine back inter the troubled world?" said Mimy. "They say hit's awful! But, Lord! there ain't any bars ter trouble! I've seen a lot." They walked up the river to the overseer's house, where they were made welcome by Mary Carter and small Roger, and by old Mr. Morrowcombe, who was staying over from Sunday, which was yesterday. He said, much as Mancy had said: "I'm sorry you are going! But thar! You ain't going in the old, harsh ways." Marget, sitting beside him on the step of the porch, rested her arm upon his knee. Her brown, slender hand touched his great horny one. "Grandfather Morrowcombe!" she said. He answered her: "I see you as a nine-year-old, Marget, and I see you as a woman in Sweet Rocket Valley, and I see you as something that stands above child and woman. It isn't any more big than it is subtle-fine. It's puzzling to find words. But when I look at you and think of you I seem to hear the air stirring over the whole world. All kinds of things that I had forgotten, and all kinds of things that I have read...." She and Anna sat for five minutes under the sycamore by the water. Returning then to Sweet Rocket, they walked in the garden that was making ready for winter. As it happened, Mrs. Cliff came this day down mountain to borrow some sugar. She sat on the steps of the back porch, in the violet light of November. "Howdy!" she said to Miss Darcy. "I'm glad you stayed on. When I come here I want to stay on, too. But thar! I take the memory of it up to my home. You wouldn't think how often thar I'm here, too!" To-day she had a braided rug to sell, and Marget bought it. Mrs. Cliff's long, wrinkled hand put the money in her pocket. "Times isn't betterin' any, Miss Marget." Marget laughed. "Oh, the poor old times!" It startled Anna Darcy, too, so joyous and care-free and lilting was the voice. Mrs. Cliff stared at her. The mountain woman's face was not what one would call a cheerful one. Whoever was behind it was caught in a network of fine, anxious lines. Now these held for a perceptible moment, then faded as though the twine were mist. That one immortally youthful and insouciant looked forth as it had looked from Marget. Sun came out over meadow, plain, and hill, and Mrs. Cliff laughed. "I reckon you're right, Miss Marget! You generally are. I reckon we've seen so much that we can afford to take it tranquil--which ain't to say that we're either do-less or keerless!" She spoke to Anna. "You remember my tellin' you about that feeling I had? I 'ain't had it full again. But I've caught glimpses of it, maybe in the day, maybe in the night. I know the minute when anything like it comes my way. When you've had a feeling like that all your life's set to feeling it again." But Marget had taken it joyously. When Mrs. Cliff had said good-by and gone mountainward the two, crossing the pleasant porch, entered the house. They walked from room to room, Anna's consciousness gathering each. "Any time you may feel me here!" "We shall feel you here all the time." They stood in the study, against the broad mantelshelf. "At first, when I thought of this room, I thought, 'Richard Linden's study.' But it is of and for and to both of you." "Ah yes! To both." She seemed to give forth light. Anna thought, "Is it only the sun shining on her?" Later, in her own room, all packing done, dressed for her journey, Anna went and sat beside the window as she had sat the first evening at Sweet Rocket. She still heard Mimy singing, she still saw the garden, though it was dreaming now of spring. "I have been here only a month, but in it I have had years and years." The quiet room filled with a sunny stillness, an eternal assurance. Again, as on that first evening, the mountains were here and the wind of the sea was here. Love and wisdom and power were here. The boy Jim brought Daniel and the phaeton to the door below. Marget came for her, and they went down, and through the hall to the porch, to find there Linden and Curtin and Robert and Frances and Drew, and Zinia and Mimy, and Mancy and Tam. Across the river, at the edge of the wood, Marget checked Daniel so that Anna might look back and see the house again, the house and the trees and the hills, and the holding arms of the mountains. "But you are to come again," said Marget. "Never part, and come again!" "Yes, oh yes!" The wheels turned and went on upon the Alder road. They entered the forest, old forest, great trees that sloughed their leaves again and again and again, through centuries past number, sloughed their leaves, sloughed their old bodies, made soil, and stood upon it and builded higher. Behind and in and through every stem and leaf rose the subjective forest, and behind and in and through the whole the ideal, the spiritual forest, the divine forest. Around and onward went the wheels on the leafy road. Anna sat beside Marget. The two spoke little, having now no great need of words. The light came down between bare branches. Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework. Against this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song and twitter of a month ago was not now. "The birds go south--the birds go south!" said Marget. "But there are enough left for winter company. There is a bluebird on yonder bough!" Round went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so still. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It was _maya_, illusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton and Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna Darcy. What was left was fullness of Being. Did it choose to analyze itself it might be into Power, Wisdom, and Bliss. The revealing flash went as it came, ere one could say, It lightens! _Maya_ again, Marget Land and Anna Darcy, Daniel and the phaeton, the forest, Sweet Rocket and Alder and the train to be met. But each time the sheath thinned and there was left stronger light. The train came, the friends embraced. Anna Darcy looked from window at Marget and then at Alder, the fields and hills and rivers and mountains. The train roared through a tunnel, and when it emerged the scenery was changed. There were fields and mountains, but not these fields and mountains. "And yet they run into those. There is no impassable wall nor aching gulf. There are the finest gradations--" Marget and Daniel and the phaeton went homeward along the Alder road. XXI November rains wrapped Sweet Rocket. November winds rocked and bent the trees. The world was gray, or iron-gray, with rust-hued streakings. Indoors they built larger fires. It was five days after Anna's departure. Unless the storm held him Curtin was going on the morrow. In January his profession would take him abroad, to the nearer East. He could not tell when he would be returning. "But Sweet Rocket goes with me!" "Just. As all the East and you flow here." "What kind of a general world are we coming into, Linden? What kind of a political, social, economic world? I believe that, as to much of it, Robert and Frances are far seeing. In the large, those changes are upon us, and in the large they are for the better. They are built into the road we are going. I agree, I welcome! But I would see more completely if I could." Linden, in the cane chair by the study window, seemed to pay attention to the storm. At last he spoke. "I cannot see in detail. I think there will be a great simplification. Power out of a thousand tortuous channels mingling, running broad and deep! There are signs on every side. The old banks crumble. The great sea lifts other continents." "I see everywhere how we are seeking." "Yes. The seeker finds, the finder seeks on, seeks farther. The great ages are ever the seekers." "You would say it is a great age?" "Yes. A very great one. Who is not in some way aware of it? This friction of opinion on the top is but the wildness of the outermost leaves as the strong wind blows." "And wherever I go I shall find the seeking and the greatness?" "The world is One," said Linden. The storm continued. Sweet Rocket had early supper. Zinia and Mimy, with raincoats and a huge umbrella, went by the swaying, chanting orchard to their own fireside, to Sarah and Julia and Jim and Just So. The Danes and Curtin and Drew, Linden and Marget, sat or moved about in the old Sweet Rocket parlor. They might watch the storm from the windows, or they might sit by the fire. The great wind blew through Sweet Rocket Valley. They heard the stream rushing, and the trees had a voice, as though they had taken foot out of ground and were now a herd. The rain was driven against the panes, and the wind hurled dead leaves with the rain. Wall and roof and glass shut out the physical rain, but the psychical man cognized it far and near, rain since the world began. And the fire also, and the warm room, and they in company listening to the storm. The momentary outlines shifted. There fell a sense of having done this times and times and times, a sense of hut and cave, so often, so long, in so many lands, that there was a feel of eternity about it. Rain and the cave and the fire, and the inner man still busied with his destiny! There was something that awed in the perception that ran from one to another, that held them in a swift, shimmering band. "How old--how old! How long have we done this?" The rhythm of the storm, the rhythm of the room, the rhythm of the fire, passed into a vast, still sense of ordered movement. "Of old, and now, and to-morrow--everywhere and all time--until we return above time and place, and division is healed." They felt a lightness, a detachment. The spirit soared with the mind and made it look. "There is the natural man and there is the spiritual man. That last finds himself in all selves, and all selves in him. There is the spiritual man, and there is the divine man who works with power. Both are words of inclusion. It is to leave the old small I for the spiritual I, and it is to transcend the last and enter that which is above. Then is left the shrunken pond for the ocean! Only we say it upside down. It is the ocean that overflows and drinks up the pond." "When God enters life there will still be said I?" "Otherwise, still pond and ocean, still separation! Who shall lose his life here shall find it. But never sink to thinking that it is what in the past we have meant when we said I! When God enters how shall he not say I? But it is the ocean now that speaks! The pond is gone." They sat still, and the fire played and leaped. Through the night the rain beat and the wind blew, but at dawn it cleared. There was wreckage about the world, but life laughed and took her wreckage and built with it anew. Valley, hills, and mountains gleamed like precious stones. Navies of clouds rode for a while, then melted into the deep azure. The upper sea hung so calm and clear that down through it to the earth bottom ran light that seemed intenser than the light of every day. Curtin said good-by, and went. Marget and Linden drove him to Alder. The river ran swollen, the road lay deep in leaves, few leaves now on the trees. The trees stood still in vast ranks. They seemed to be holding something, to be turning it over in mind. There flashed across Curtin, "Who lifts, all lifts." "Yes!" said Marget, beside him, as though he had spoken. It was what he carried with him from this valley. Linden and Marget drove home through the wood. "How still it is! Barring foot and wheel on the wet leaves you would say there was no stir. We are passing pine trees. How fragrant!" "A bluebird is watching us from a maple. Now here is the great beech. It holds its leaves, though they are brown and curled upon themselves like cocoons. The ground underneath is clean and brown. A grapevine goes over and up with those young trees. There are yet bunches of grapes and they hang so still! There are brown loops for swings for all the forest children, whether they be Indians or dryads and fauns." "I see them," said Linden, "all the graceful, tawny forest children!" "Here is the oak glade with the grass yet green far down it, to where hangs the purple curtain. The outstanding great roots glisten, and the moss holds the water drops. You see a long way. Yonder is tree trunk and stone, light and shadow, that looks like a hermit's cell. It is an alley for the whole Middle Ages to come riding down--for a paladin to come riding down, the Red Cross Knight, or Guyon, or Galahad, or Parsifal--or it might be Robin Hood in Lincoln green!" "I see." "Here are green brier and red dogwood berries, and witch-hazel with dull gold fingers. Can you hear the water?" "Yes. Three silver threads of it, like a lute!" "The day is a castle and a church, the day is a city and a star! Now we pass the great rock and the two hemlocks, like cathedral spires. Here are the little oaks, and there is a guess of crimson about them yet. The birch and the hickory and the tall oaks, and the tops are far and fine and melt into the sky--" They came down to the river, and crossed. "The light washes the pillars, the cedars are little earth clouds. The arch of the sky has none, it springs clear blue. Music of home!" "Yes. Music of home!" After supper, with Robert and Frances and Drew they watched the fire. "Anna sends the city to us, and Curtin sends the rush of the train and the flying scenery. As we send this place and this mood and this thought to the city and the train!" The violin bow drew across the strings. Frances played, and love and release filled the ancient room. The world entered into harmony. The next day rose gray pearl. Linden and Drew went with the woodcutters. Marget sat at her typewriter in the study. Robert and Frances took a long walk. Three days, and they, too, must go cityward. Now they walked by the Alder road, and at the great pine took the Rock Mountain trail. The pearly light filled the forest like a water. All sound lay subdued. When a stone rolled underfoot it was not loudly; when a branch broke it was with a slow, deliberate, musing voice. When they saw a wild thing, the wild thing had no motion of flight, but pottered stilly on upon its business of the time. "We are far away! We have crossed to another land. It is as though we died, and this is the quiet ground where we take our reckoning before we find another busy world. Oh, a busy world in each of us, and a quiet land!" They rested upon a bowlder half sunken in brown leaves. "There is a touch of eternity about this day.... Yet in five days how busy a world for you and me!" "Yet I love that as I love this. How happy that we are so rich!" They sat still on the gray bowlder in the gray wood in the pearl-gray air. Minutes passed. A bird flew across the path, a gray squirrel ran up an oak. "Something is coming down the trail." The something proved to be a man on horseback. The intervening boughs, branches, twigs, made him to be seen like a horseman behind a great window filled with small, leaded panes. He came close, and, seeing them, drew rein. "Good day!" "Good day!" "From Sweet Rocket?" "Yes, from Sweet Rocket." "Do I speak to Mr. Linden? My name is Smith--Malcolm Smith from the Reserve on Rock Mountain." Robert gave their names. Mr. Smith said: "Have you ever seen a stiller day? It is one of the still days that set you on new action. I thought I would ride over. I want to see Drew, and there is something else--" After a minute or two he addressed himself again to the path. "I'll go on, as I have only this afternoon and to-night. I must get back to camp to-morrow." He made no doubt, it might be noticed, of the hospitality of Sweet Rocket. "I shall see you again?" "Yes. We shall turn presently." They watched him along the trail until, as the figure had entered, so it vanished from the leaded window. They sat awhile longer in the gray-pearl world, and then they rose and followed the horseman down to Sweet Rocket. XXII Malcolm Smith and Drew had their talk, walking by the river in the still, November dusk. Drew said: "I was glad to be on Rock Mountain, and after a few months, if you will have me, I am going there again. But I am glad that I came here. I am growing to see that it is not here nor there, camp on mountain or Sweet Rocket, that a man goes to find himself. But yet there are helpers.... There's a principle of induction, don't you think, sir? Those who find start a wave of finding. The wave caught them, too. There isn't any first or last." Turning, they saw fire gleaming through the window. "He says that we (and when he says that he means the whole of us. When he says 'I' it is the other word for 'we.' It is the Whole of the many) are growing fast to-day. Sometimes he says Evolving Life, sometimes the Principle of Integration, or the Great Synthesis. He may say Humanity Awake, or Going Home, or Realizing Deity, or Liberation in God, or Becoming Real, or Fulfilling Want, or Recollection, or Union, or the Eternal, Including _SELF_, or Love at Last. He seems to think that almost any phrase will answer if you know the thing." Zinia's bell rang from the porch behind them. They went in to the pleasant supper table, set with wholesome, delicate bread, and fragrant coffee, cottage cheese, and baked apples and cream. The table talk was merry this evening, after the dreamy day. Supper over, all walked out to see the night, and found it clearing, with river banks of clouds and stars between like lit craft sailing, sailing. The air breathed exquisitely mild, warm to-night as early October. "Let us sit by the river and watch awhile." They took capes and coats and went down to where, before the cedars, was placed a long bench. Sitting here, though no entire constellation was visible, yet they pieced out the figures. They sat in silence, watching the ships of the universe. At last said the visitor: "I have been thinking a good deal about you down here by this river, and about Drew, and of two or three things Mr. Curtin said when he was at camp. So I came down. I have been thinking a good deal. Look! there is Pleiades, a magic island in a sea. I have had my inklings of the way currents arise in this world. Let's grant that it is a universe of thought and will and feeling, and that, from ignoring as much as we could that fact, and then from wondering about it, and then from in some wise earning it, we begin to be it--" "Just," said Linden. "Well?" The other continued, "Once, when I was recovering from an illness, I found or was found by--and I don't suppose the expressions matter--" "No. They are distinctions without a difference." "Once, then, I walked into a state of consciousness that transcended the level that I had thought was the true level. I was there for it might be five seconds of our time. But though again in mass we parted, there remained an influence--like one of those rivers up there. The world has never since been just the old world. But the main experience did not repeat itself, though there have been times when I have met the shadows of it. Until the other night. But I will come to that presently. Though it was not repeated I have known ever since that there is a consciousness as much above our usual one as the latter is above the ape's. A consciousness that it is profoundly desirable to reach. Before that moment I was like almost any European of say 1491. During it--for that one minute--I was in America. After it, though I returned to Europe, I could say, there is America!" "Yes. Just." "But I had fallen out of America and I could never get quite back, though I often tried. And then the other night--" He broke off, and seemed to ponder the sky. "I rode over from Rock Mountain because the other night I had, not that first experience again, but one that was again in America--New America. From what I have heard I felt certain that this place knows these experiences. I wanted to compare, and be confirmed. So I rode over." He was speaking to Linden. "I had meant to ask to talk with you alone, but I see that there is nothing here that jars or makes it difficult. It's a good place, this bench, with the river sounding, and the clouds and the stars." "There is just ourself here." "I was coming down from the top of Rock. I had had a still twenty minutes there, watching the sunset. I had thought of nothing in particular, only gathered rest. I was halfway down when this torrent rose and overtook me. I stood still. I remember a pine tree, and beyond that a great wash of sky. But I--I was in the torrent that now seemed Ocean, and now seemed Air, and now was Fire. The combination called Malcolm Smith was gone into that, like rain into sea or a candle flame into sun. And yet--and that was the miracle of it--there was an I, only it was oceanic, only it was the sun! It held in a sheaf, it sucked out pith and marrow of all the small 'me's' in creation, and soared and rang, an All-Person. But what are words? If I could give you that sense--" "Perhaps you do. As long ago we developed gesture in order faintly to understand and be at one, and then developed speech, so now the Will within is propelling and the Will within is receiving these mightier waves. I feel what you would give. Go on." "If I could find the words! I passed into a subtle consciousness that went everywhere, and all our old time became space to it. There was motion, as of all the winds of the world brought into one current--only nor air nor fire is swift enough, vast enough! And yet you would say 'Quietude.' ... All the movements of our world penetrated, understood, furthered--all the honey fields, all the bees, all the hives--and Valhalla and Olympus and Paradise, where the honey is eaten! And it is all a figure, but what will you have! I can but stammer. I have seen home." He rose, and walked up and down beneath the cedars. "I talk about it so calmly, and yet all that I ever believed or hoped, all that I ever thought or felt or did, is babyhood to that! I am patient, and that astonishes me; I who am back at Malcolm Smith!" "You are not wholly back. The rising pendulum swings, but now a great part of you is above the old, lower range. And at the last not anticipation, but reality, not light of home, but home!" The river sounded, the stars shone in the upper rivers with the cloud banks. The clouds made rivers, but, the clouds dissolved, there were no more rivers, but Ocean, but Space, but the Eternal Fire! "It is all I have to tell," said Smith. "It sank with long reverberations, and there was the pine tree, and the camp below, and Malcolm Smith." They sat in silence. At last, said Linden: "America is a term of vastness. They who adventured there and arrived found all manner of experience, but all in America. They sailed in many crafts--and yet in the end all were as one ship, all being for America. They landed north or south, in varying climes; they stayed by the sea or went toward the mountains, but all in America. They met with great variety in adventure, the land being so vast and so rich in might, but all was American adventure.... So it is, I hold, with the New America, the New World now lighting the horizon. It resounds and flames thus to this one, and thus to the other one. But it resounds and flames. The Great Symphony takes in all the music. Feel it as you can, know it as you can! In proportion as you draw the breath of the All, comparisons become odious. You have access as I have access. Enter by the door of your inner nature!" "A new man is born?" "Yes. Everywhere. Including and transcending men. Men fading into Man, men left behind. Man moving toward his full Consciousness. What in prophecy we have called Christ." They watched the clouds and the stars, and they saw, each of them, a new Country that was fair and strong and keen and glowing.... At last they rose and went back to the house, and by the fire listened to the violin. XXIII Day rose in sapphire, tranquil, pure, still and sunny, white smoke going straight up from morning fires. Malcolm Smith, mounting his horse, turned again to his mountain. Sweet Rocket bade him good-by, but Linden and Marget said, "All who come together in this consciousness part no more!" "I believe that." He rode away, and in the afternoon was back with his work. But the inner eye might view, between mountain and Sweet Rocket, a shimmering, ethereal highway, a nerve, as it were, thrown from space to space, joining and making one. Robert and Frances and Marget, on this last day of the Danes' visit, walked to the hill with the solitary tree atop. The sapphire day continued, quiet and sunny, the air being of an extreme fineness charged with light. Far and near the mountains made a cup of amethyst. Fields and hillsides at hand were a lighted umber. They saw long rows of stacked corn, and in the meadows hayricks. Beyond the orchard they made out the steep roof of the great barn. There were corn and wheat for the mill, there were stored apples. In the wood below them they heard the woodman's ax. "I can see," said Robert Dane, "I can see that Humanity is mastering its own organism. I see that it is lifting toward Unitary Consciousness. Here, now, in this present year as in past years, each year now with greater momentum. Reaction and recoil, of course--but back again, and farther! Everywhere shows the swift inter-approach. All over, all through, America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the sea. The revolutions of our day are woven of it. We are leaving separation and partialness, fortress and dungeon." "Yes. All our 'movements' rush into the one. All our vortices approach with a fearful joy the Great Vortex. The Correlation will be established, the Summation made. We go to join and strengthen the Ancient Heavens. The Ancient of Days draws and redeems and fuses and Ones another layer of his being. Faster and faster our age begins to see what is happening. The language men use to describe it does not so much matter. The poet names it Life, Beauty, and Joy; the scientific man says Knowledge and Use; the philosopher says Energy and Substance in conscious union; the Hindu says the _SELF_; our peoples say God.... All one." They came to the hilltop and stood to look about them. "There is such joy!" went on Marget. "Pain and pleasure outgrown, now blooms the joy! 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' The being found and the finding. One after another lays hand upon that world, clings, braces himself, draws himself up and over and finds the manna lying around him. Joy, wisdom and power! and the taste of them but begun. Possession still to be possessed--forever and forever!" They sat beneath the tree and all around sprang the valley and the mountains and Virginia and the world. "Alive--deathlessly alive! The valley and the mountains, Virginia and the world!" Frances spoke. "I know a woman who speaks in the terms of the East. Is it the Principle of Sensibility--the Buddhic plane?" "Yes. Atma is yet to arrive. What we see is the light before his face. When he fully comes that is the Day of the Lord. What all work has been toward, all toil, all hoping. As Atma rises in us--as Christ rises in us--comes newer and richer life, fuller and fuller, inner powers and principalities, thrones and dominions, and their objective garments. But when WE ARE THE LORD--I know not! There is Light there that is as darkness to us yet." The exquisite valley heightened its values throughout, became richer. The mountains around hung in the eye like the Delectable Mountains. "If one grows, all things and all places grow with that one?" "Inevitably so! The wealth is for all." "The new consciousness that we feel is a pale film to what will be?" "Yes. A borderland, the islands fringing the New World. But such as it is it wipes out the old, blind, scattered, little consciousnesses. To what shall be felt and shall be known it is the one leaf of green, it is the olive leaf that the dove brings. But before us are enormous growth, strange and fair adventure, work, joy, love--" Through the air they felt the ether, through the sunlight they felt the Great Sun. Light and warmth came to them from the Sun behind the sun. It touched, it passed, but each time it came they strengthened. That night by the fire they sat in silence that was full and rich and understanding. "To-morrow night, here at Sweet Rocket, just Richard and Marget and Drew--and all the rest of us!" The next day dawned, and still it was Indian summer. Robert and Frances went from place to place, as had gone Curtin and Anna Darcy, saying farewell. "We wish and hope to bring our bodies here again next year. But if that is not done, still, still, still we shall have Sweet Rocket!" "You have access now to all places and times and peoples. You are through the gate, you two! All your good dreams now will come true. If not in this way then in that. Every dream that does no injury to the Whole." Richard and Marget, Daniel and the phaeton, took them to Alder. The still forest was clothed to-day in purple. For much of the way silence held within the phaeton as without. But it was the silence that Anna Darcy had early noted. It was rhythmic, it was thronged, it was fused and made into the richest solitude. "But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound or foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home." Now and then they spoke. Once Robert said, abruptly, "And all the effort of the world is to stand and grow in grace?" "Just. All the effort. Everywhere! Whether it be stone or plant or animal or man or over-man. And where the Emerging Character is so mighty none is to despise his brother's path or rate of speed. Once it was his own. Everything has been and is our own. Work! but who hates or despises halts and weakens the effort." "But work!" "Yes, steadily. In all realms. 'What thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might.' What thy judgment findeth to do. The other name of Lubber Land was Good Enough." They came to Alder with its churches and sere gardens lying in violet light. Here was the little station--in a few moments they heard the train. "Good-by!" "Good-by!" Frances and Robert looked through the car window. The platform had men, women, and children upon it. Two or three arriving travelers found friends to meet them; there were the workers about the station and the loafers, with country folk and village folk brought by some business, and in the throng Richard Linden and Marget Land. Just the usual village station. Then all of it sprang into light, into music, into significance, into importance. The train moved. There was a cry of "Good-by! Come again!" All seemed to enter into it, to cry it out. The houses went by, the village street, the hills, the river, and all, all, and this train upon which they found themselves had color and music and significance and importance. "The I that says of every living thing, 'It is I,' says it and means it and understands it and proceeds to live from it, says it of the total objective, and so takes the objective up into the Subject--that I is over the verge of the old into the New--" The hills went by, the river gleamed. Marget and Richard traveled homeward through the purple forest. To-day they hardly used the outer voice. The blind man sat with a smile upon his lips as though he saw, with such a face as could only have come from much seeing. The woman, too, sat still, the body relaxed, the spirit gleaming in the soul. Daniel drew them through the forest; nor did Daniel, either, lack some sense of growth, dim belief in a higher world, dim will to reach it. Below Daniel the forest felt that, and below the forest the rock. The utter stream of pilgrims-- THE END 
43601	----	FREAKS OF FANATICISM AND OTHER STRANGE EVENTS FREAKS OF FANATICISM AND OTHER STRANGE EVENTS BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. AUTHOR OF "MEHALAH," "OLD COUNTRY LIFE," "HISTORIC ODDITIES," "SONGS OF THE WEST," ETC. Methuen & Co. 18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1891 PREFACE. This Volume, that originally appeared as a Second Series to "Historic Oddities and Strange Events," is now issued under a new title which describes the peculiar nature of the majority of its contents. Several of the articles are concerned with the history of mysticism, a phase of human nature that deserves careful and close study. Mysticism is the outbreak in man of a spiritual element which cannot be ignored, cannot be wholly suppressed, and is man's noblest element when rightly directed and balanced. It is capable of regulation, but unregulated, it may become even a mischievous faculty. When the Jews are being expelled from Russia, and are regarded with bitter hostility in other parts of Eastern Europe, the article on the accusations brought against them may prove not uninstructive reading. There is political as well as religious and racial fanaticism, and the story of the "Poisoned Parsnips" illustrates the readiness with which false accusations against political enemies are made and accepted without examination. "Jean Aymon" exhibits the same unscrupulousness where religious passions are concerned. The curious episode to "The Northern Raphael" shows the craving after notoriety that characterises so much of sentimental, hysterical piety. S. BARING GOULD. LEW TRENCHARD, DEVON, _September 1st, 1891_. CONTENTS. PAGE A SWISS PASSION PLAY 1 A NORTHERN RAPHAEL 39 THE POISONED PARSNIPS 67 THE MURDER OF FATHER THOMAS IN DAMASCUS 86 SOME ACCUSATIONS AGAINST JEWS 107 THE COBURG MAUSOLEUM 120 JEAN AYMON 129 THE PATARINES OF MILAN 146 THE ANABAPTISTS OF MÜNSTER 195 FREAKS OF FANATICISM. A Swiss Passion Play. We are a little surprised, and perhaps a little shocked, at the illiberality of the Swiss Government, in even such Protestant cantons as Geneva, Zürich, and Berne, in forbidding the performances on their ground of the "Salvation Army," and think that such conduct is not in accordance with Protestant liberty of judgment and democratic independence. But the experiences gone through in Switzerland as in Germany of the confusion and mischief sometimes wrought by fanaticism, we will not say justify, but in a measure explain, the objection the Government has to a recrudescence of religious mysticism in its more flagrant forms. The following story exemplifies the extravagance to which such spiritual exaltation runs occasionally--fortunately only occasionally. About eight miles from Schaffhausen, a little way on one side of the road to Winterthür, in a valley, lies the insignificant hamlet of Wildisbuch, its meadows overshadowed by leafy walnut trees. The hamlet is in the parish of Trüllikon. Here, at the beginning of this century, in a farmhouse, standing by itself, lived John Peter, a widower, with several of his children. He had but one son, Caspar, married in 1812, and divorced from his wife; he was, however, blessed with five daughters--Barbara, married to a blacksmith in Trüllikon; Susanna, Elizabeth, Magdalena married to John Moser, a shoemaker; and Margaretta, born in 1794, his youngest, and favourite child. Not long after the birth of Margaretta, her mother died, and thenceforth the child was the object of the tenderest and most devoted solicitude to her sisters and to her father. Margaretta grew up to be a remarkable child. At school she distinguished herself by her aptitude in learning, and in church by the devotion with which she followed the tedious Zwinglian service. The pastor who prepared her for confirmation was struck by her enthusiasm and eagerness to know about religion. She was clearly an imaginative person, and to one constituted as she was, the barnlike church, destitute of every element of beauty, studiously made as hideous as a perverse fancy could scheme, and the sacred functions reduced to utter dreariness, with every element of devotion bled out of them, were incapable of satisfying the internal spiritual fire that consumed her. There is in every human soul a divine aspiration, a tension after the invisible and spiritual, in some more developed than in others, in certain souls existing only in that rudimentary condition in which, it is said, feet are found in the eel, and eyes in the oyster, but in others it is a predominating faculty, a veritable passion. Unless this faculty be given legitimate scope, be disciplined and guided, it breaks forth in abnormal and unhealthy manifestations. We know what is the result when the regular action of the pores of the skin is prevented, or the circulation of the blood is impeded. Fever and hallucination ensue. So is it with the spiritual life in man. If that be not given free passage for healthy discharge of its activity, it will resolve itself into fanaticism, that is to say it will assume a diseased form of manifestation. Margaretta was far ahead of her father, brother and sisters in intellectual culture, and in moral force of character. Susanna, the second daughter of John Peter, was an amiable, industrious, young woman, without independence of character. The third daughter, Elizabeth, was a quiet girl, rather dull in brain; Barbara was married when Margaretta was only nine, and Magdalena not long after; neither of them, however, escaped the influence of their youngest sister, who dominated over their wills almost as completely as she did over those of her two unmarried sisters, with whom she consorted daily. How great her power over her sisters was may be judged from what they declared in after years in prison, and from what they endured for her sake. Barbara, the eldest, professed to the prison chaplain in Zürich, in 1823, "I am satisfied that God worked in mighty power, and in grace through Margaret, up to the hour of her death." The father himself declared after the ruin of his family and the death of two of his daughters, "I am assured that my youngest daughter was set apart by God for some extraordinary purpose." When Margaret was six, she was able to read her Bible, and would summon the family about her to listen to her lectures out of the sacred volume. She would also at the same time pray with great ardour, and exhort her father and sisters to lead God-fearing lives. When she read the narrative of the Passion, she was unable to refrain from tears; her emotion communicated itself to all assembled round her, and the whole family sobbed and prayed aloud. She was a veritable "ministering child" to her household in all things spiritual. As she had been born at Christmas, it was thought that this very fact indicated some special privilege and grace accorded to her. In 1811, when aged seventeen, she received her first communion and edified all the church with the unction and exaltation of soul with which she presented herself at the table. In after years the pastor of Trüllikon said of her, "Unquestionably Margaretta was the cleverest of the family. She often came to thank me for the instructions I had given her in spiritual things. Her promises to observe all I had taught her were most fervent. I had the best hopes for her, although I observed somewhat of extravagance in her. Margaretta speedily obtained an absolute supremacy in her father's house. All must do what she ordered. Her will expressed by word of mouth, or by letter when absent, was obeyed as the will of God." In personal appearance Margaretta was engaging. She was finely moulded, had a well-proportioned body, a long neck on which her head was held very upright; large, grey-blue eyes, fair hair, a lofty, well-arched brow. The nose was well-shaped, but the chin and mouth were somewhat coarse. In 1816, her mother's brother, a small farmer at Rudolfingen, invited her to come and manage his house for him. She went, and was of the utmost assistance. Everything prospered under her hand. Her uncle thought that she had brought the blessing of the Almighty on both his house and his land. Whilst at Rudolfingen, the holy maiden was brought in contact with the Pietists of Schaffhausen. She attended their prayer-meetings and expositions of Scripture. This deepened her religious convictions, and produced a depression in her manner that struck her sisters when she visited them. In answer to their inquiries why she was reserved and melancholy, she replied that God was revealing Himself to her more and more every day, so that she became daily more conscious of her own sinfulness. If this had really been the case it would have saved her from what ensued, but this sense of her own sinfulness was a mere phrase, that meant actually an overweening self-consciousness. She endured only about a twelve month of the pietistic exercises at Schaffhausen, and then felt a call to preach, testify and prophesy herself, instead of sitting at the feet of others. Accordingly, she threw up her place with her uncle, and returned to Wildisbuch, in March, 1817, when she began operations as a revivalist. The paternal household was now somewhat enlarged. The old farmer had taken on a hand to help him in field and stable, called Heinrich Ernst, and a young woman as maid called Margaret Jäggli. Ernst was a faithful, amiable young fellow whom old Peters thoroughly trusted, and he became devoted heart and soul to the family. Margaret Jäggli was a person of very indifferent character, who, for her immoralities, had been turned out of her native village. She was subject to epileptic fits, which she supposed were possession by the devil, and she came to the farm of the Peter's family in hopes of being there cured by the prayers of the saintly Margaretta. Another inmate of the house was Ursula Kündig, who entered it at the age of nineteen, and lived there as a veritable maid-of-all-work, though paid no wages. This damsel was of the sweetest, gentlest disposition. Her parish pastor gave testimony to her, "She was always so good that even scandal-mongers were unable to find occasion for slander in her conduct." Her countenance was full of intelligence, purity, and had in it a nobility above her birth and education. Her home had been unhappy; she had been engaged to be married to a young man, but finding that he did not care for her, and sought only her small property, she broke off the engagement, to her father's great annoyance. It was owing to a quarrel at home relative to this, that she went to Wildisbuch to entreat Margaretta Peter to be "her spiritual guide through life into eternity." Ursula had at first only paid occasional visits to Wildisbuch, but gradually these visits became long, and finally she took up her residence in the house. The soul of the unhappy girl was as wax in the hands of the saint, whom she venerated with intensest admiration as the Elect of the Lord; and she professed her unshaken conviction "that Christ revealed Himself in the flesh through her, and that through her many thousands of souls were saved." The house at Wildisbuch became thenceforth a great gathering place for all the spiritually-minded in the neighbourhood, who desired instruction, guidance, enlightenment, and Margaretta, the high priestess of mysticism to all such as could find no satisfaction for the deepest hunger of their souls in the Zwinglian services of their parish church. Man is composed of two parts; he has a spiritual nature which he shares with the angels, and an animal nature that he possesses in common with the beasts. There is in him, consequently, a double tendency, one to the indefinite, unconfined, spiritual; the other to the limited, sensible and material. The religious history of all times shows us this higher nature striving after emancipation from the law of the body, and never succeeding in accomplishing the escape, always falling back, like Dædalus, into destruction, when attempting to defy the laws of nature and soar too near to the ineffable light. The mysticism of the old heathen world, the mysticism of the Gnostic sects, the mysticism of mediæval heretics, almost invariably resolved itself into orgies of licentiousness. God has bound soul and body together, and an attempt to dissociate them in religion is fatally doomed to ruin. The incarnation of the Son of God was the indissoluble union of Spirit with form as the basis of true religion. Thenceforth, Spirit was no more to be dissociated from matter, authority from a visible Church, grace from a sacramental sign, morality from a fixed law. All the great revolts against Catholicism in the middle-ages, were more or less revolts against this principle and were reversions to pure spiritualism. The Reformation was taken advantage of for the mystic aspirations of men to run riot. Individual emotion became the supreme and sole criticism of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, and sole authority to which submission must be tendered. In the autumn of 1817, Margaretta of Wildisbuch met a woman who was also remarkable in her way, and the head of another revivalist movement. This was Julianne von Krüdner; about whom a word must now be said. Julianne was born in 1766, at Riga, the daughter of a noble and wealthy family. Her father visited Paris and took the child with him, where she made the acquaintance of the rationalistic and speculative spirits of French society, before the Revolution. In a Voltairean atmosphere, the little Julianne grew up without religious faith or moral principle. At the age of fourteen she was married to a man much older than herself, the Baron von Krüdner, Russian Ambassador at Venice. There her notorious immoralities resulted in a separation, and Julianne was obliged to return to her father's house at Riga. This did not satisfy her love of pleasure and vanity, and she went to St. Petersburg and then to Paris, where she threw herself into every sort of dissipation. She wrote a novel, "Valérie," in which she frankly admitted that woman, when young, must give herself up to pleasure, then take up with art, and finally, when nothing else was left her, devote herself to religion. At the age of forty she had already entered on this final phase. She went to Berlin, was admitted to companionship with the Queen, Louise, and endeavoured to "convert" her. The sweet, holy queen required no conversion, and the Baroness von Krüdner was obliged to leave Berlin. She wandered thenceforth from place to place, was now in Paris, then in Geneva, and then in Germany. At Karlsruhe she met Jung-Stilling; and thenceforth threw herself heart and soul into the pietistic revival. Her mission now was--so she conceived--to preach the Gospel to the poor. In 1814 she obtained access to the Russian Court, where her prophecies and exhortations produced such an effect on the spirit of the Czar, Alexander I., that he entreated her to accompany him to Paris. She did so, and held spiritual conferences and prayer meetings in the French capital. Alexander soon tired of her, and she departed to Basel, where she won to her the Genevan Pastor Empeytaz and the Basel Professor Lachenal. Her meetings for revival, which were largely attended, caused general excitement, but led to many domestic quarrels, so that the city council gave her notice to leave the town. She then made a pilgrimage along the Rhine, but her proceedings were everywhere objected to by the police and town authorities, and she was sent back under police supervision first to Leipzig, and thence into Russia. Thence in 1824 she departed for the Crimea, where she had resolved to start a colony on the plan of the Moravian settlements, and there died before accomplishing her intention. It was in 1817, when she was conducting her apostolic progress along the Rhine, that she and Margaretta of Wildisbuch met. Apparently the latter made a deeper impression on the excitable baroness than had the holy Julianne on Margaretta. The two aruspices did not laugh when they met, for they were both in deadly earnest, and had not the smallest suspicion that they were deluding themselves first, and then others. The meeting with the Krüdner had a double effect. In the first place, the holy Julianne, when forced to leave the neighbourhood by the unregenerate police, commended her disciples to the blessed Margaret; and, in the second place, the latter had the shrewdness to perceive, that, if she was to play anything like the part of her fellow-apostle, she must acquire a little more education. Consequently Margaret took pains to write grammatically, and to spell correctly. The result of the commendation by Saint Julianne of her disciples to Margaret was that thenceforth a regular pilgrimage set in to Wildisbuch of devout persons in landaus and buggies, on horse and on foot. Some additional actors in the drama must now be introduced. Magdalena Peter, the fourth daughter of John Peter, was married to the cobbler, John Moser. The influence of Margaret speedily made itself felt in their house. At first Moser's old mother lived with the couple, along with Conrad, John Moser's younger brother. The first token of the conversion of Moser and his wife was that they kicked the old mother out of the house, because she was worldly and void of "saving grace." Conrad was a plodding, hard-working lad, very useful, and therefore not to be dispensed with. The chosen vessels finding he did not sympathise with them, and finding him too valuable to be done without, starved him till he yielded to their fancies, saw visions, and professed himself "saved." Barbara, also, married to the blacksmith Baumann, was next converted, and brought all her spiritual artillery to bear on the blacksmith, but in vain. He let her go her own way, but he would have nothing himself to say to the great spiritual revival in the house of the Peters. Barbara, not finding a kindred soul in her husband, had taken up with a man of like soaring piety, a tailor, named Hablützel. Another person who comes into this story is Jacob Ganz, a tailor, who had been mixed up with the movement at Basel under Julianne the Holy. Margaret's brother Caspar was a man of infamous character; he was separated from his wife, whom he had treated with brutality; had become the father of an illegitimate child, and now loafed about the country preaching the Gospel. Ganz, the tailor, had thrown aside his shears, and constituted himself a roving preacher. In one of his apostolic tours he had made the acquaintance of Saint Margaret, and had been deeply impressed by her. He had an elect disciple at Illnau, in the Kempthal, south of Winterthür. This was a shoemaker named Jacob Morf, a married man, aged thirty; small, with a head like a pumpkin. To this shoemaker Ganz spoke with enthusiasm of the spiritual elevation of the holy Margaret, and Morf was filled with a lively desire of seeing and hearing her. Margaretta seems after a while to have wearied of the monotony of life in her father's house, or else the spirit within her drove her abroad to carry her light into the many dark corners of her native canton. She resolved to be like Ganz, a roving apostle. Sometimes she started on her missionary journeys alone, sometimes along with her sister Elizabeth, who submitted to her with blind and stanch obedience, or else with Ursula Kündig. These journeys began in 1820, and extended as far Zürich and along the shores of that lovely lake. In May of the same year she visited Illnau, where she was received with enthusiasm by the faithful, who assembled in the house of a certain Ruegg, and there for the first time she met with Jacob Morf. The acquaintance then begun soon quickened into friendship. When a few weeks later he went to Schaffhausen to purchase leather, he turned aside to Wildisbuch. After this his visits there became not only frequent, but were protracted. Margaret was the greatest comfort to him in his troubled state of soul. She described to him the searchings and anxieties she had undergone, so that he cried "for very joy that he had encountered one who had gone through the same experience as himself." In November, 1820, Margaret took up her abode for some time in the house of a disciple, Caspar Notz, near Zürich, and made it the centre whence she started on a series of missionary excursions. Here also gathered the elect out of Zürich to hear her expound Scripture, and pray. And hither also came the cobbler Morf seeking ease for his troubled soul, and on occasions stayed in the house there with her for a week at a time. At last his wife, the worthy Regula Morf, came from Illnau to find her husband, and persuaded him to return with her to his cobbling at home. At the end of January in 1821, Margaret visited Illnau again, and drew away after her the bewitched Jacob, who followed her all the way home, to Wildisbuch, and remained at her father's house ten days further. On Ascension Day following, he was again with her, and then she revealed to him that it was the will of heaven that they should ascend together, without tasting death, into the mansions of the blessed, and were to occupy one throne together for all eternity. Throughout this year, when the cobbler, Jacob, was not at Wildisbuch, or Saint Margaretta at Illnau, the pair were writing incessantly to each other, and their correspondence is still preserved in the archives of Zürich. Here is a specimen of the style of the holy Margaret. "My dear child! your dear letter filled me with joy. O, my dear child, how gladly would I tell you how it fares with me! When we parted, I was forced to go aside where none might see, to relieve my heart with tears. O, my heart, I cannot describe to you the distress into which I fell. I lay as one senseless for an hour. For anguish of heart I could not go home, such unspeakable pains did I suffer! My former separation from you was but a shadow of this parting. O, why are you so unutterably dear to me, &c.," and then a flow of sickly, pious twaddle that makes the gorge rise. Regula Morf read this letter and shook her head over it. She had shaken her head over another letter received by her husband a month earlier, in which the holy damsel had written: "O, how great is my love! It is stronger than death. O, how dear are you to me. I could hug you to my heart a thousand times." And had scribbled on the margin, "These words are for your eye alone." However, Regula saw them, shook her head and told her husband that the letter seemed to her unenlightened mind to be very much like a love-letter. "Nothing of the sort," answered the cobbler, "it speaks of spiritual affection only." We must now pass over a trait in the life of the holy maid which is to the last degree unedifying, but which is merely another exemplification of that truth which the history of mysticism enforces in every age, that spiritual exaltation runs naturally, inevitably, into licentiousness, unless held in the iron bands of discipline to the moral law. A mystic is a law to himself. He bows before no exterior authority. However much he may transgress the code laid down by religion, he feels no compunction, no scruples, for his heart condemns him not. It was so with the holy Margaret. Her lapse or lapses in no way roused her to a sense of sin, but served only to drive her further forward on the mad career of self-righteous exaltation. She had disappeared for many months from her father's house, along with her sister Elizabeth. The police had inquired as to their whereabouts of old John Peter, but he had given them no information as to where his daughters were. He professed not to know. He was threatened unless they were produced by a certain day that he would be fined. The police were sent in search in every direction but the right one. Suddenly in the night of January 11th, 1823, the sisters re-appeared, Margaret, white, weak, and prostrate with sickness. A fortnight after her return, Jacob Morf was again at Wildisbuch, as he said afterwards before court, "led thither because assured by Margaret that they were to ascend together to heaven without dying." From this time forward, Margaretta's conduct went into another phase. Instead of resuming her pilgrim's staff and travelling round the country preaching the Gospel, she remained all day in one room with her sister Elizabeth, the shutters closed, reading the Bible, meditating, and praying, and writing letters to her "dear child" Jacob. The transgressions she had committed were crosses laid on her shoulder by God. "Oh! why," she wrote in one of her epistles, "did my Heavenly Father choose _that_ from all eternity in His providence for me? There were thousands upon thousands of other crosses He might have laid on me. But He elected that one which would be heaviest for me, heavier than all the persecutions to which I am subjected by the devil, and which all but overthrow me. From the foundation of the world He has never so tried any of His saints as He has us. It gives joy to all the host of heaven when we suffer to the end." Again, "the greater the humiliation and shame we undergo, and have to endure from our enemies here below"--consider, brought on herself by her own scandalous conduct--"the more unspeakable our glorification in heaven." In the evening, Margaretta would come downstairs and receive visitors, and preach and prophesy to them. The entire house was given over to religious ecstasy that intensified as Easter approached. Every now and then the saint assembled the household and exhorted them to watch and pray, for a great trial of their faith was at hand. Once she asked them whether they were ready to lay down their lives for Christ. One day she said, in the spirit of prophecy, "Behold! I see the host of Satan drawing nearer and nearer to encompass me. He strives to overcome me. Let me alone that I may fight him." Then she flung her arms about and struck in the air with her open hands. The idea grew in her that the world was in danger, that the devil was gaining supremacy over it, and would carry all souls into captivity once more, and that she--and almost only she--stood in his way and was protecting the world of men against his power. For years she had exercised her authority, that grew with every year, over everyone in the house, and not a soul there had thought of resisting her, of evading the commands she laid on them, of questioning her word. The house was closed against all but the very elect. The pastor of the parish, as "worldly," was not suffered to cross the threshold. At a tap, the door was opened, and those deemed worthy were admitted, and the door hastily barred and bolted behind them. Everything was viewed in a spiritual light. One evening Ursula Kündig and Margaretta Jäggli were sitting spinning near the stove. Suddenly there was a pop. A knot in the pine-logs in the stove had exploded. But up sprang Jäggli, threw over her spinning-wheel, and shrieked out--"Hearken! Satan is banging at the window. He wants me. He will fetch me!" She fell convulsed on the floor, foaming at the mouth. Margaret, the saint, was summoned. The writhing girl shrieked out, "Pray for me! Save me! Fight for my soul!" and Margaretta at once began her spiritual exercises to ban the evil spirit from the afflicted and possessed servant maid. She beat with her hands in the air, cried out, "Depart, thou murderer of souls, accursed one, to hell-fire. Wilt thou try to rob me of my sheep that was lost? My sheep--whom I have pledged myself to save?" One day, the maid had a specially bad epileptic fit. Around her bed stood old John Peter, Elizabeth and Susanna, Ursula Kündig, and John Moser, as well as the saint. Margaret was fighting with the Evil One with her fists and her cries, when John Moser fell into ecstasy and saw a vision. His account shall be given in his own words: "I saw Christ and Satan, and the latter held a book open before Christ and bade Him see how many claims he had on the soul of Jäggli. The book was scored diagonally with red lines on all the pages. I saw this distinctly, and therefore concluded that the account was cancelled. Then I saw all the saints in heaven snatch the book away, and tear it into a thousand pieces that fell down in a rain." But Satan was not to be defeated and driven away so easily. He had made himself a nest, so Margaret stated, under the roof of the house, and only a desperate effort of faith and contest with spiritual arms could expel him. For this Armageddon she bade all prepare. It is hardly necessary to add that it could not be fought without the presence of the dearly beloved Jacob. She wrote to him and invited him to come to the great and final struggle with the devil and all his host, and the obedient cobbler girded his loins and hastened to Wildisbuch, where he arrived on Saturday the 8th March, 1823. On Monday, in answer, probably, to her summons, came also John Moser and his brother Conrad. Then also Margaret's own and only brother, Caspar. Before proceeding to the climax of this story we may well pause to ask whether the heroine was in her senses or not; whether she set the avalanche in motion that overwhelmed herself and her house, with deliberation and consciousness as to the end to which she was aiming. The woman was no vulgar impostor; she deceived herself to her own destruction. In her senses, so far, she had set plainly before her the object to which she was about to hurry her dupes, but her reason and intelligence were smothered under her overweening self-esteem, that had grown like a great spiritual cancer, till it had sapped common-sense, and all natural affection, even the very instinct of self-preservation. Before her diseased eyes, the salvation of the whole world depended on herself. If she failed in her struggle with the evil principle, all mankind fell under the bondage of Satan; but she could not fail--she was all-powerful, exalted above every chance of failure in the battle, just as she was exalted above every lapse in virtue, do what she might, which to the ordinary sense of mankind is immoral. Every mystic does not go as far as Margaret Peter, happily, but all take some strides along that road that leads to self-deification and _anomia_. In Margaret's conduct, in preparation for the final tragedy, there was a good deal of shrewd calculation; she led up to it by a long isolation and envelopment of herself and her doings in mystery; and she called her chosen disciples to witness it. Each stage in the drama was calculated to produce a certain effect, and she measured her influence over her creatures before she advanced another step. On Monday all were assembled and in expectation; Armageddon was to be fought, but when the battle would begin, and how it would be carried through, were unknown. Tuesday arrived; some of the household went about their daily work, the rest were gathered together in the room where Margaret was, lost in silent prayer. Every now and then the hush in the darkened room was broken by a wail of the saint: "I am sore straitened! I am in anguish!--but I refresh my soul at the prospect of the coming exaltation!" or, "My struggle with Satan is severe. He strives to retain the souls which I will wrest from his hold; some have been for two hundred, even three hundred years in his power." One can imagine the scene--the effect produced on those assembled about the pale, striving ecstatic. All who were present afterwards testified that on the Tuesday and the following days they hardly left the room, hardly allowed themselves time to snatch a hasty meal, so full of expectation were they that some great and awful event was about to take place. The holy enthusiasm was general, and if one or two, such as old Peter and his son, Caspar, were less magnetised than the rest, they were far removed from the thought of in any way contesting the will of the prophetess, or putting the smallest impediment in the way of her accomplishing what she desired. When evening came, she ascended to an upper room, followed by the whole company, and there she declared, "Lo! I see Satan and his first-born floating in the air. They are dispersing their emissaries to all corners of the earth to summon their armies together." Elizabeth, somewhat tired of playing a passive part, added, "Yes--I see them also." Then the holy maid relapsed into her mysterious silence. After waiting another hour, all went to bed, seeing that nothing further would happen that night. Next day, Wednesday, she summoned the household into her bedroom; seated on her bed, she bade them all kneel down and pray to the Lord to strengthen her hands for the great contest. They continued striving in prayer till noon, and then, feeling hungry, all went downstairs to get some food. When they had stilled their appetites, Margaret was again seized by the spirit of prophecy, and declared, "The Lord has revealed to me what will happen in the latter days. The son of Napoleon" (that poor, feeble mortal the Duke of Reichstadt) "will appear before the world as anti-Christ, and will strive to bring the world over to his side. He will undergo a great conflict; but what will be the result is not shown me at the present moment; but I am promised a spiritual token of this revelation." And the token followed. The dearly-loved Jacob, John Moser, and Ursula Kündig cried out that they saw two evil spirits, one in the form of Napoleon, pass into Margaret Jäggli, and the other, in that of his son, enter into Elizabeth. Whereupon Elizabeth, possessed by the spirit of that poor, little, sickly Duke of Reichstadt, began to march about the room and assume a haughty, military air. Thereupon the prophetess wrestled in spirit and overcame these devils and expelled them. Thereat Elizabeth gave up her military flourishes. From daybreak on the following day the blessed Margaret "had again a desperate struggle," but without the assistance of the household, which was summoned to take their share in the battle in the afternoon only. She bade them follow her to the upper chamber, and a procession ascended the steep stairs, consisting of Margaret, followed by Elizabeth and Susanna Peter, Ursula Kündig and Jäggli, the old father and his son, Caspar, the serving-man, Heinrich Ernst, then Jacob Morf, John Moser, and the rear was brought up by the young Conrad. As soon as the prophetess had taken her seat on the bed, she declared, "Last night it was revealed to me that you are all of you to unite with me in the battle with the devil, lest he should conquer Christ. I must strive, lest your souls and those of so many, many others should be lost. Come, then! strive with me; but first of all, kneel down, lay your faces in the dust and pray." Thereupon, all prostrated themselves on the floor and prayed in silence. Presently the prophetess exclaimed from her throne on the bed, "The hour is come in which the conflict must take place, so that Christ may gather together His Church, and contend with anti-Christ. After Christ has assembled His Church, 1260 days will elapse, and then anti-Christ will appear in human form, and with sweet and enticing words will strive to seduce the elect; but all true Christians will hold aloof." After a pause, she said solemnly, "In verity, anti-Christ is already among us." Then with a leap she was off the bed, turning her eyes about, throwing up her hands, rushing about the room, striking the chairs and clothes-boxes with her fists, crying, "The scoundrel, the murderer of souls!" And, finding a hammer, she began to beat the wall with it. The company looked on in breathless amaze. But the epileptic Jäggli went into convulsions, writhed on the ground, groaned, shrieked and wrung her hands. Then the holy Margaretta cried, "I see in spirit the old Napoleon gathering a mighty host, and marching against me. The contest will be terrible. You must wrestle unto blood. Go! fly! fetch me axes, clubs, whatever you can find. Bar the doors, curtain all the windows in the house, and close every shutter." Whilst her commands were being fulfilled in all haste, and the required weapons were sought out, John Moser, who remained behind, saw the room "filled with a dazzling glory, such as no tongue could describe," and wept for joy. The excitement had already mounted to visionary ecstasy. It was five o'clock when the weapons were brought upstairs. The holy Margaretta was then seated on her bed, wringing her hands, and crying to all to pray, "Help! help! all of you, that Christ may not be overcome in me. Strike, smite, cleave--everywhere, on all sides--the floor, the walls! It is the will of God! smite on till I bid you stay. Smite and lose your lives if need be." It was a wonder that lives were not lost in the extraordinary scene that ensued; the room was full of men and women; there were ten of them armed with hatchets, crowbars, clubs, pick-axes, raining blows on walls and floors, on chairs, tables, cupboards and chests. This lasted for three hours. Margaret remained on the bed, encouraging the party to continue; when any arm flagged she singled out the weary person, and exhorted him, as he loved his soul, to fight more valiantly and utterly defeat and destroy the devil. "Strike him! cut him down! the old adversary! the arch-fiend! whoso loseth his life shall find it. Fear nothing! smite till your blood runs down as sweat. There he is in yonder corner; now at him," and Elizabeth served as her echo, "Smite! strike on! He is a murderer, he is the young Napoleon, the coming anti-Christ, who entered into me and almost destroyed me." This lasted, as already said, for three hours. The room was full of dust. The warriors steamed with their exertions, and the sweat rolled off them. Never had men and women fought with greater enthusiasm. The battle of Don Quixote against the wind-mills was nothing to this. What blows and wounds the devil and the young Duke of Reichstadt obtained is unrecorded, but walls and floor and furniture in the room were wrecked; indeed pitchfork and axe had broken down one wall of the house and exposed what went on inside to the eyes of a gaping crowd that had assembled without, amazed at the riot that went on in the house that was regarded as a very sanctuary of religion. No sooner did the saint behold the faces of the crowd outside than she shrieked forth, "Behold them! the enemies of God! the host of Satan, coming on! But fear them not, we shall overcome." At last the combatants were no longer able to raise their arms or maintain themselves on their feet. Then Margaret exclaimed, "The victory is won! follow me!" She led them downstairs into the common sitting-room, where close-drawn curtains and fastened shutters excluded the rude gaze of the profane. Here a rushlight was kindled, and by its light the battle continued with an alteration in the tactics. In complete indifference to the mob that surrounded the house and clamoured at the door for admission, the saint ordered all to throw themselves on the ground and thank heaven for the victory they had won. Then, after a pause of more than an hour the same scene began again, and that it could recommence is evidence how much a man can do and endure, when possessed by a holy craze. It was afterwards supposed that the whole pious community was drunk with schnaps; but with injustice. Their stomachs were empty; it was their brains that were drunk. The holy Margaret, standing in the midst of the prostrate worshippers, now ordered them to beat themselves with their fists on their heads and breasts, and they obeyed. Elizabeth yelled, "O, Margaret! Do thou strike me! Let me die for Christ." Thereupon the holy one struck her sister repeatedly with her fists, so that Elizabeth cried out with pain, "Bear it!" exclaimed Margaret; "It is the wrath of God!" The prima-donna of the whole comedy in the meanwhile looked well about her to see that none of the actors spared themselves. When she saw anyone slack in his self-chastisement, she called to him to redouble his blows. As the old man did not exhibit quite sufficient enthusiasm in self-torture, she cried, "Father, you do not beat yourself sufficiently!" and then began to batter him with her own fists. The ill-treated old man groaned under her blows, but she cheered him with, "I am only driving out the old Adam, father! It does not hurt you," and redoubled her pommelling of his head and back. Then out went the light. All this while the crowd listened and passed remarks outside. No one would interfere, as it was no one's duty to interfere. Tidings of what was going on did, however, reach the amtmann of the parish, but he was an underling, and did not care to meddle without higher authority, so sent word to the amtmann of the district. This latter called to him his secretary, his constable and a policeman, and reached the house of the Peter's family at ten o'clock. In his report to the police at Zürich he says: "On the 13th about 10 o'clock at night I reached Wildisbuch, and then heard that the noise in the house of the Peter's family had ceased, that all lights were out, and that no one was stirring. I thought it advisable not to disturb this tranquillity, so left orders that the house should be watched," and then he went into the house of a neighbour. At midnight, the policeman who had been left on guard came to announce that there was a renewal of disturbance in the house of the Peters. The amtmann went to the spot and heard muffled cries of "Save us! have mercy on us! Strike away! he is a murderer! spare him not!" and a trampling, and a sound of blows, "as though falling on soft bodies." The amtmann knocked at the window and ordered those within to admit him. As no attention was paid to his commands, he bade the constable break open the house door. This was done, but the sitting-room door was now found to be fast barred. The constable then ascended to the upper room and saw in what a condition of wreckage it was. He descended and informed the amtmann of what he had seen. Again the window was knocked at, and orders were repeated that the door should be opened. No notice was taken of this; whereupon the worthy magistrate broke in a pane of glass, and thrust a candle through the window into the room. "I now went to the opened window, and observed four or five men standing with their backs against the door. Another lay as dead on the floor. At a little distance was a coil of human beings, men and women, lying in a heap on the floor, beside them a woman on her knees beating the rest, and crying out at every blow, 'Lord, have mercy!' Finally, near the stove was another similar group." The amtmann now ordered the sitting-room door to be broken open. Conrad Moser, who had offered to open to the magistrate, was rebuked by the saint, who cried out to him: "What, will you give admission to the devil?" "The men," says the magistrate in his report, "offered resistance excited thereto by the women, who continued screaming. The holy Margaret especially distinguished herself, and was on her knees vigorously beating another woman who lay flat on the floor on her face. A second group consisted of a coil of two men and two women lying on the floor, the head of one woman on the body of a man, and the head of a man on that of a girl. The rest staggered to their feet one after another. I tried remonstrances, but they were unavailing in the hubbub. Then I ordered the old Peter to be removed from the room. Thereupon men and women flung themselves upon him, in spite of all our assurances that no harm would be done him. With difficulty we got him out of the room, with all the rest hanging on him, so that he was thrown on the floor, and the rest clinging to him tumbled over him in a heap. I repeated my remonstrance, and insisted on silence, but without avail. When old Peter prepared to answer, the holy Margaret stayed him with, 'Father, make no reply. Pray!' All then recommenced the uproar. Margaret cried out: 'Let us all die! I will die for Christ!' Others called out, 'Lord, save us!' and others, 'Have mercy on us!'" The amtmann gave orders that the police were to divide the party and keep guard over some in the kitchen, and the rest in the sitting-room, through the night, and not to allow them to speak to each other. The latter order was, however, more than the police could execute. In spite of all their efforts, Margaretta and the others continued to exhort and comfort one another through the night. Next morning each was brought before the magistrate and subjected to examination. All were sullen, resolute, and convinced that they were doing God's will. As the holy Margaretta was led away from examination, she said to Ursula and the servant Heinrich, "The world opposes, but can not frustrate my work." Her words came true, the world was too slow in its movements. The amtmann did not send in his report to the authorities of Zürich till the 16th, whereupon it was taken into consideration, and orders were transmitted to him that Margaret and Elizabeth were to be sent to an asylum. It was then too late. After the investigation, the amtmann required the cobbler, John Morf, to march home to Illnau, John and Conrad Moser to return to their home, and Ursula Kündig to be sent back to her father. This command was not properly executed. Ursula remained, and though John Moser obeyed, he was prepared to return to the holy Margaret directly he was summoned. As soon as the high priestess had come out of the room where she had been examined by the amtmann, she went to her own bed-chamber, where boards had been laid over the gaps between the rafters broken by the axes and picks, during the night. Elizabeth, Susanna, Ursula, and the maid sat or stood round her and prayed. At eight o'clock, the father and his son, Caspar, rejoined her, also her eldest sister, Barbara, arrived from Trüllikon. The servant, Heinrich, formed one more in the re-assembled community, and the ensuing night was passed in prayer and spiritual exercises. These were not conducted in quiet. To the exhortations of Margaret, both Elizabeth and the housemaid entreated that the devil might be beaten out of them. But now Ursula interfered, as the poor girl Elizabeth had been badly bruised in her bosom by the blows she had received on the preceding night. When the Saturday morning dawned, Margaret stood up on her bed and said, "I see the many souls seeking salvation through me. They must be assisted; would that a sword were in my hand that I might fight for them." A little later she said, with a sigh of relief, "The Lamb has conquered. Go to your work." Tranquillity lasted for but a few hours. Magdalena, Moser's wife, had arrived, together with her husband and Conrad. The only one missing was the dearly beloved Jacob, who was far on his way homeward to Illnau and his hardly used wife, Regula. At ten o'clock, the old father, his five daughters, his son, the two brothers, John and Conrad Moser, Ursula Kündig, the maid Jäggli, and the man Heinrich Ernst, twelve in all, were assembled in the upper room. Margaret and Elizabeth sat side by side on the bed, the latter half stupified, looking fixedly before her, Margaret, however, in a condition of violent nervous surrexitation. Many of the weapons used in wrecking the furniture lay about; among these were the large hammer, and an iron wedge used for splitting wood. All there assembled felt that something extraordinary was about to happen. They had everyone passed the line that divides healthy common-sense from mania. Margaretta now solemnly announced, "I have given a pledge for many souls that Satan may not have them. Among these is the soul of my brother Caspar. But I cannot conquer in the strife for him without the shedding of blood." Thereupon she bade all present recommence beating themselves with their fists, so as to expel the devil, and they executed her orders with wildest fanaticism. The holy maid now laid hold of the iron wedge, drew her brother Caspar to her, and said, "Behold, the Evil One is striving to possess thy soul!" and thereupon she began to strike him on head and breast with the wedge. Caspar staggered back; she pursued him, striking him and cutting his head open, so that he was covered with blood. As he afterwards declared, he had not the smallest thought of resistance; the power to oppose her seemed to be taken from him. At length, half stunned, he fell to the ground, and was carried to his bed by his father and the maid Jäggli. The old man no more returned upstairs, consequently he was not present at the terrible scene that ensued. But he took no steps to prevent it. Not only so, but he warded off all interruption from without. Whilst he was below, someone knocked at the door. At that moment Susanna was in the room with him, and he bade her inquire who was without. The man gave his name as Elias Vogal, a mason, and asked leave to come in. Old Peter refused, as he said the surgeon was within. Elias endeavoured to push his way in but was resisted, and the door barred against him. Vogel went away, and meeting a policeman told him what had taken place, and added that he had noticed blood-stains on the sleeves of both old Peter and Susanna. The policeman, thinking that Peter's lie was truth, and that the surgeon was really in the house, and had been bleeding the half-crazy people there, took no further notice of what he had heard, and went his way. Meanwhile, in the upper room the comedy had been changed into a ghastly tragedy. As soon as the wounded Caspar had been removed, the three sisters, Barbara, Magdalena, and Susanna left the room, the two latter, however, only for a short while. Then the holy Margaret said to those who remained with her, "To-day is a day of great events. The contest has been long and must now be decided. Blood must flow. I see the spirit of my mother calling to me to offer up my life." After a pause she said, "And you--all--are you ready to give your lives?" They all responded eagerly that they were. Then said Margaret, "No, no; I see you will not readily die. But I--I must die." Thereupon Elizabeth exclaimed, "I will gladly die for the saving of the souls of my brother and father. Strike me dead, strike me dead!" Then she threw herself on the bed and began to batter her head with a wooden mallet. "It has been revealed to me," said Margaret, "that Elizabeth will sacrifice herself." Then taking up the iron hammer, she struck her sister on the head. At once a spiritual fury seized on all the elect souls, and seizing weapons they began to beat the poor girl to death. Margaret in her mania struck at random about her, and wounded both John Moser and Ursula Kündig. Then she suddenly caught the latter by the wrist and bade her kill Elizabeth with the iron wedge. Ursula shrank back, "I cannot! I love her too dearly!" "You must," screamed the saint; "it is ordained." "I am ready to die" moaned Elizabeth. "I cannot! I cannot!" cried Ursula. "You must," shouted Margaret. "I will raise my sister again, and I also will rise again after three days. May God strengthen your arm." As though a demoniacal influence flowed out of the holy maid, and maddened those about her, all were again seized with frenzy. John Moser snatched the hammer out of her hand, and smote the prostrate girl with it again, and yet again, on head and bosom and shoulders. Susanna brought down a crow-bar across her body, the servant-man Heinrich belaboured her with a fragment of the floor planking, and Ursula, swept away by the current, beat in her skull with the wedge. Throughout the turmoil, the holy maid yelled: "God strengthen your arms! Ursula, strike home! Die for Christ, Elizabeth!" The last words heard from the martyred girl were an exclamation of resignation to the will of God, as expressed by her sister. One would have supposed that when the life was thus battered out of the unfortunate victim, the murderers would have come to their senses and been filled with terror and remorse. But it was not so. Margaret sat beside the body of her murdered sister, the blaze of spiritual ecstasy in her eyes, the blood-stained hammer in her right hand, terrible in her inflexible determination, and in the demoniacal energy which was to possess her to the last breath she drew. Her bosom heaved, her body quivered, but her voice was firm and her tone authoritative, as she said, "More blood must flow. I have pledged myself for the saving of many souls. I must die now. You must crucify me." John Moser and Ursula, shivering with horror, entreated, "O do not demand that of us." She replied, "It is better that I should die than that thousands of souls should perish." So saying she struck herself with the hammer on the left temple. Then she held out the weapon to John Moser, and ordered him and Ursula to batter her with it. Both hesitated for a moment. "What!" cried Margaret turning to her favourite disciple, "will you not do this? Strike and may God brace your arm!" Moser and Ursula now struck her with the hammer, but not so as to stun her. "And now," said she with raised voice, "crucify me! You, Ursula, must do the deed." "I cannot! I cannot!" sobbed the wretched girl. "What! will you withdraw your hand from the work of God, now the hour approaches? You will be responsible for all the souls that will be lost, unless you fulfil what I have appointed you to do." "But O! not I--!" pleaded Ursula. "Yes--you. If the police authorities had executed me, it would not have fallen to you to do this, but now it is for you to accomplish the work. Go, Susan, and fetch nails, and the rest of you make ready the cross." In the meantime, Heinrich, the man-servant, frightened at what had taken place, and not wishing to have anything more to do with the horrible scene in the upper chamber, had gone quietly down into the wood-house, and was making stakes for the vines. There Susanna found him, and asked him for nails, telling him for what they were designed. He composedly picked her out nails of suitable length, and then resumed his work of making vine stakes. Susanna re-ascended to the upper room, and found Margaret extended on the bed beside the body of Elizabeth, with the arms, breast, and feet resting on blocks of wood, arranged, whilst Susanna was absent, by John Moser and Ursula, under her in the fashion of a cross. Then began the horrible act of crucifixion, which is only conceivable as an outburst of religious mania, depriving all who took part in it of every feeling of humanity, and degrading them to the level of beasts of prey. At the subsequent trial, both Ursula and John Moser described their condition as one of spiritual intoxication. The hands and feet of the victim were nailed to the blocks of wood. Then Ursula's head swam, and she drew back. Again Margaret called her to continue her horrible work. "Go on! go on! God strengthen your arm. I will raise Elizabeth from the dead, and rise myself in three days." Nails were driven through both elbows and also through the breasts of Margaret; not for one moment did the victim express pain, nor did her courage fail her. No Indian at the stake endured the cruel ingenuity of his tormentors with more stoicism than did this young woman bear the martyrdom she had invoked for herself. She impressed her murderers with the idea that she was endowed with supernatural strength. It could not be otherwise, for what she endured was beyond the measure of human strength. That in the place of human endurance she was possessed with the Berserker strength of the _furor religiosus_, was what these ignorant peasants could not possibly know. Conrad Moser could barely support himself from fainting, sick and horror-struck at the scene. He exclaimed, "Is not this enough?" His brother, John, standing at the foot of the bed, looked into space with glassy eyes. Ursula, bathed in tears, was bowed over the victim. Magdalena Moser had taken no active part in the crucifixion; she remained the whole time, weeping, leaning against a chest. The dying woman smiled. "I feel no pain. Be yourselves strong," she whispered. "Now, drive a nail or a knife through my heart." Ursula endeavoured to do as bidden, but her hand shook and the knife was bent. "Beat in my skull!" this was the last word spoken by Margaret. In their madness Conrad Moser and Ursula Kündig obeyed, one with the crowbar, the other with the hammer. It was noon when the sacrifice was accomplished--dinner-time. Accordingly, all descended to the sitting-room, where the meal that Margaret Jäggli had been in the meantime preparing was served and eaten. They had scarce finished before a policeman entered with a paper for old Peter to sign, in which he made himself answerable to produce his daughters before the magistrates when and where required. He signed it with composure, "I declare that I will cause my daughters, if in good health, to appear before the Upper Amtsmann in Andelfingen when so required." Then the policeman departed without a suspicion that the two girls were lying dead in the room above. On Sunday the 16th, the servant Heinrich was sent on horseback to Illnau to summon Jacob Morf to come to Wildisbuch and witness a great miracle. Jacob came there with Heinrich, but was not told the circumstances of the crucifixion till he reached the house. When he heard what had happened, he was frightened almost out of his few wits, and when taken upstairs to see the bodies, he fainted away. Nothing--no representations would induce him to remain for the miraculous resurrection, and he hastened back to Illnau, where he took to his bed. In his alarm and horror he sent for the pastor, and told him what he had seen. But the rest of the holy community remained stead-fast in their faith. On the night of Sunday before Monday morning broke, Ursula Kündig and the servant man Heinrich went upstairs with pincers and drew out the nails that transfixed Margaretta. When asked their reason for so doing, at the subsequent trial, they said that they supposed this would facilitate Margaretta's resurrection. _Sanctus furor_ had made way for _sancta simplicitas_. The night of Monday to Tuesday was spent in prayer and Scripture-reading in the upper chamber, and eager expectation of the promised miracle, which never took place. The catastrophe could no longer be concealed. Something must be done. On Tuesday, old John Peter pulled on his jacket and walked to Trüllikon to inform the pastor that his daughter Elizabeth had died on the Saturday at 10 a.m., and his daughter Margaretta at noon of the same day. We need say little more. On Dec. 3rd, 1823, the trial of all incriminated in this frightful tragedy took place at Zürich and sentence was pronounced on the following day. Ursula Kündig was sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment, Conrad Moser and John Peter to eight years, Susanna Peter and John Moser to six years, Heinrich Ernst to four years, Jacob Morf to three, Margaret Jäggli to two years, Barbara Baumann and Casper Peter to one year, and Magdalena Moser to six months with hard labour. The house at Wildisbuch was ordered to be levelled with the dust, the plough drawn over the foundation, and that no house should again be erected on the spot. Before the destruction, however, a pilgrimage of Pietists and believers in Margaret Peter had visited the scene of her death, and many had been the exclamations of admiration at her conduct. "Oh, that it had been I who had died!" "Oh, how many souls must she have delivered!" and the like. _Magna est stultitia et prævalebit._ At a time like the present, when there is a wave of warm, mystic fever sweeping over the country, and carrying away with it thousands of ignorant and impetuous souls, it is well that the story--repulsive though it be--should be brought into notice, as a warning of what this spiritual excitement may lead to--not, indeed, again, maybe, into bloodshed. It is far more likely to lead to, as it has persistently, in every similar outbreak, into moral disorders, the record of which, in the case of Margaretta Peter, we have passed over almost without a word. Authority: Die Gekreuzigte von Wildisbuch, von J. Scherr, 2nd Edit., St. Gall. 1867. Scherr visited the spot, collected information from eye-witnesses, and made copious extracts from the records of the trial in the Zürich archives, where they are contained in Vol. 166, folio 1044, under the heading: "Akten betreffened die Gräuel--Scenen in Wildisbuch." A Northern Raphael. Here and there in the galleries of North Germany and Russia may be seen paintings of delicacy and purity, delicacy of colour and purity of design, the author of which was Gerhard von Kügelgen. The majority of his paintings are in private hands; but an Apollo, holding the dying Hyacinthus in his arms, is in the possession of the German Emperor; Moses on Horeb is in the gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts at Dresden; a St. Cæcilia and an Adonis, painted in 1794 and 1795, were purchased by the Earl of Bristol; a Holy Family is in the Gallery at Cassel; and some of the sacred subjects have found their way into churches. In 1772, the wife of Franz Kügelgen, a merchant of Bacharach on the Rhine, presented her husband with twin sons, the elder of whom by fifteen minutes is the subject of this notice. His brother was named Karl. Their resemblance was so great that even their mother found a difficulty in their early childhood in distinguishing one from the other. Bacharach was in the Electorate of Cologne, and when the Archbishop-Elector, Maximilian Franz, learned that the twins were fond of art, in 1791 he very liberally gave them a handsome sum of money to enable them to visit Rome and there prosecute their studies. Gerhard was at once fascinated by the statuary in the Vatican, and by the pictures of Raphael. The ambition of his life thenceforward was to combine the beauty of modelling of the human form that he saw in the Græco-Roman statues with the beauty of colour that he recognised in Raphael's canvases. Karl, on the other hand, devoted himself to landscapes. In 1795 the brothers separated, Gerhard that he might visit Munich. Thence, in the autumn, he went to Riga with a friend, and there he remained rather over two years, and painted and disposed of some fifty-four pictures. Then he painted in St. Petersburg and Revel, and finally settled into married life and regular work at Dresden in 1806. There he became a general favourite, not only on account of his artistic genius, but also because of the fascination of his modest and genial manner. He was honoured by the Court, and respected by everyone for his virtues. Orders flowed in on him, and his paintings commanded good prices. The king of Saxony ennobled him, that is to say, raised him out of the bürger-stand, by giving him the privilege of writing a _Von_ before his patronymic. Having received an order from Riga for a large altar picture, he bought a vineyard on the banks of the Elbe, commanding a charming prospect of the river and the distant blue Bohemian mountains. Here he resolved to erect a country house for the summer, with a large studio lighted from the north. The construction of this residence was to him a great pleasure and occupation. In November, 1819, he wrote to his brother, "My house shall be to us a veritable fairy palace, in which to dwell till the time comes, when through a little, narrow and dark door we pass through into that great habitation of the Heavenly Father in which are many mansions, and where our whole family will be re-united. Should it please God to call me away, then Lily (his wife) will find this an agreeable dower-house, in which she can supervise the education of the children, as the distance from the town is only an hour's walk." The words were written, perhaps, without much thought, but they foreshadowed a terrible catastrophe. Kügelgen would pass, before his fairy palace was ready to receive him, through that little, narrow door into the heavenly mansions. The holy week of 1820 found him in a condition of singularly deep religious emotion. He was a Catholic, but had, nevertheless, allowed his son to be confirmed by a Protestant pastor. The ceremony had greatly affected him, and he said to a friend, who was struck at the intensity of his feeling, "I know I shall never be as happy again till I reach Heaven." On March 27th, on the very day of the confirmation, he went in the afternoon a walk by himself to his vineyard, to look at his buildings. He invited one of his pupils to accompany him, but the young man had some engagement and declined. At 5 p.m. he was at the new house, where he paid the workmen, gave some instructions, and pointed out where he would do some planting, so as to enchance the picturesqueness of the spot. At some time between six and seven he left, to walk back to Dresden, along the road from Bautzen. Every one who has been at the Saxon capital knows that road. The right bank of the Elbe above Dresden rises in picturesque heights covered with gardens and vineyards, from the river, and about a mile from the bridge is the Linkes Bad, with its pleasant gardens, theatre, music and baths. That road is one of the most charming, and, therefore, the most frequented outside the capital. On the evening in question the Easter moon was shining. Kügelgen did not return home. His wife sent his son, the just confirmed boy, aged 17 years, to the new house, to inquire for her husband. The boy learned there that he had left some hours before. He returned home, and found that still his father had not come in. The police were communicated with, and the night was spent in inquiries and search, but all in vain. On the following morning, at 9 a.m., as the boy was traversing the same road, along with a gensdarme, he deemed it well to explore a footpath beside the river, which was overflown by the Elbe, and there, finally, amongst some reeds they discovered the dead body of the artist, stripped of his clothes to his shirt and drawers, lying on his face. Gerhard von Kügelgen had been murdered. His features were cut and bruised, his left temple and jaw were broken. Footsteps, as of two persons, were traceable through the river mud and across a field to the highway. Apparently the artist had been murdered on the road, then carried or dragged to the path, stripped there, and then cast among the rushes. About twenty-four paces from where he lay, between him and the highway, his cap was found. The excitement, the alarm, aroused in Dresden was immense. Not only was Kügelgen universally respected, but everyone was in dismay at the thought that his own safety was jeopardised, if a murder such as this could be perpetrated on the open road, within a few paces of the gates. Indeed, the place where the crime was committed was but a hundred strides from the Linkes Bad, one of the most popular resorts of the Dresdeners. It was now remembered that only a few months before, near the same spot, another murder had been committed, that had remained undiscovered. In that case the victim had been a poor carpenter's apprentice. On the same day as the body of Kügelgen was found, the Government offered a sum equal to £150 for the discovery of the murderer. A little later, some children found among the rubbish, outside the Black Gate of the Dresdener Vorstadt, a blue cloth cloak, folded up and buried under some stones. It was recognised as having belonged to Kügelgen. Moreover, in the pocket was the little "Thomas-à-Kempis" he always carried about with him. It was concluded that the murderer had not ventured to bring all the clothing of Kügelgen into the town, through the gate, and had, therefore, hidden portions in places whence he could remove them one by one, unobserved. The murderer was, undoubtedly, an inhabitant of the city. From March 29th to April 4th the police remained without any clue, although a description of the garments worn by the murdered man, and of his watch, was posted up at every corner, and sent round to the nearest towns and villages. The workmen who had been engaged on Kügelgen's house were brought before the police. They had left after his departure, and had received money from him; but they were discharged, as there was no evidence against them. As no light seemed to fall on this mysterious case, the police looked up the circumstances of the previous murder. On December 29th, 1819, a carrier on the highroad had found a body on the way. It was ascertained to be that of a carpenter's apprentice, named Winter. His skull had been broken in. Not a trace of the murderer was found; not even footprints had been observed. However, it was learned that the wife of a labourer had been attacked almost at the same spot, on the 28th December, by a man wearing a military cap and cloak; and she had only escaped him by the approach of a carriage, the sound of the wheels having alarmed him, and induced him to fly. He had fled in the direction of the Black Gate and the barracks. The anxiety of the Dresdeners seemed justified. There was some murderous ruffian inhabiting the Vorstadt, who hovered about the gates, waylaying, not wealthy men only, but poor charwomen and apprentices. The military cloak and cap, the direction taken by the assailant in his flight, gave a sort of clue--and the police suspected that the murderer must be sought among the soldiers. On April 4th two Jewish pawnbrokers appeared before the police, and handed over a silver watch which had been left with them at 9 a.m. on the 20th March--that is to say on the morning after the murder of Kügelgen--and which agreed with the advertised description of the artist's lost watch. It was identified at once. The man who had pawned it, the Jews said, wore the uniform of an artillery soldier. At the request of the civil authorities, the military officers held an inquisition in the barracks. All the artillery soldiers were made to pass before the Jew brokers, but they were unable to identify the man who had deposited the watch with them. Somewhat later in the day one of these Jews, as he was going through the street, saw a man in civil dress, whom he thought he recognised as the fellow who had given him the watch. He went up to him at once and spoke about the watch. The man at first acknowledged that he had pawned one, then denied, and threatened the Jew when he persevered in clinging to him. A gendarme came up, and hearing what the controversy was about, arrested the man, who gave his name as Fischer, a gunner. Fischer was at once examined, and he doggedly refused to allow that he had given up a watch to the Jew. Suspicion against him was deepened by his declaring that he had heard nothing of the murder--a matter of general talk in Dresden--and that he had not seen the notices with the offer of reward for the discovery of the murderer. On the following day, April 5th, however, he admitted having pawned the watch, which he pretended to have found outside the Black Gate. A few hours later he withdrew this confession, saying that he was so bewildered with the questions put to him, and so alarmed at his arrest, that he did not well know what he said. It was observed that Fischer was a man of very low intellectual power. The same day he was invested in his uniform, and presented before the pawnbrokers. Both unanimously declared that he was _not_ the man who had entered their shop and deposited the watch with them. They both declared that though Fischer had the same height and general build as the man in question, and the same fair hair, yet that the face was different. With this, the case against Fischer broke down; nevertheless, though he had been handed over by the military authorities to the civil power, he remained under arrest. The public was convinced of his guilt, and the police hoped by keeping him in prison to draw from him later some information which might prove serviceable. And, in fact, after he had been a fortnight under arrest, he volunteered a statement. He was conducted at once before the magistrate, and confessed that he had murdered Von Kügelgen. He, however, stoutly denied having laid hands on the carpenter Winter. Nevertheless, on the way back to his cell he told his gaoler that he had committed this murder as well. Next day he was again brought before the magistrate, and confessed to both murders. He was taken to the spots where the two corpses had been found, and there he renewed his confession, though without entering into any details. But on the next morning, April 21, he begged to be again heard, and he then asserted that his former confessions were false. He had confessed merely because he was weary of his imprisonment and the poor food he was given, and decided to die. When spoken to by the magistrates seriously, and remonstrated with for his contradictions, he cried out that he was innocent. Let them torture him as much as they pleased, he wished to die. But hardly was he back in his prison than he told the gaoler that it was true that he was the murderer of both Kügelgen and Winter. Again he confessed before the magistrate, and again, on the 27th, withdrew his confession and protested his innocence. On the 21st April a new element in the case came to light, that perplexed the question not a little. A Jewish pawnbroker, Löbel Graff, announced that on February 3, 1820, he had received from the gunner Kaltofen, a green coat, and on the 4th April a dark-blue cloth coat, stained with spots of oil, also a pair of cloth trousers. As both coats seemed to him suspicious, and to resemble those described in the advertisements, he had questioned Kaltofen about them, but had received equivocal answers, and Kaltofen at last admitted that he had bought them from the gunner Fischer. John Gottfried Kaltofen was a young man of 24 years, servant to one of the officers, and therefore did not live in the barracks. He was now taken up. His manner and appearance were in his favour. He was frank, and at once admitted that he had disposed of the two coats to Graff, and that he had bought them of Fischer. On confrontation with the latter he repeated what he had said. Fischer fell into confusion, denied all knowledge of Kaltofen, protested his innocence, and denied the sale of the coats, one of which had in the meantime been identified as having belonged to Winter, and the other to Kügelgen. On April 27th a search was made in the lodgings of Kaltofen, and three keys were found there, hidden away, and these proved to have belonged to Kügelgen. At first Kaltofen declared that he knew nothing of these keys, but afterwards said that he remembered on consideration that he had found them in the pocket of the blue coat he had purchased from Fischer, and had put them away before disposing of the coat, and had given them no further thought. Not many minutes after Fischer had been sent back to prison, he begged to be brought before the magistrate again, and now admitted that it was quite true that he had sold both coats to Kaltofen. Whilst this confession was being taken down, however, he again hesitated, broke down, and denied having sold them to Kaltofen, or any one else. "I can't say anything more," he cried out; "my head is dazed." By this statement he remained, protesting his innocence, and he declared that he had only confessed his guilt because he was afraid of ill-treatment in the prison if he continued to assert his innocence. It must be remembered that the gaolers were as convinced of his guilt as were the public of Dresden; and it is noticeable that under pressure from them Fischer always acknowledged his guilt; whereas, when before the magistrates he was ready to proclaim that he was innocent. At this time it was part of the duty of a gaoler, or was supposed to be such, to use every possible effort to bring a prisoner to confession. And now, on April 27th, a third gunner appeared on the scene. His name was Kiessling, and he asked the magistrate to take down his statement, which was to the effect that Kaltofen, who had been discharged, had admitted to him that he had murdered Kügelgen with a cudgel, and that he had still got some of his garments hidden in his lodgings. But--so said Kiessling--Kaltofen had jauntily said he would lay it all on Fischer. Kiessling, moreover, produced a pair of boots, that he said Kaltofen had left with him to be re-soled, as he was regimental shoemaker. And these boots were at once recognised as having been those worn by Kügelgen when he was murdered. Kaltofen was at once re-arrested, and brought into confrontation with Kiessling. He retained his composure, and said that it was quite true that he had given a pair of boots to Kiessling to re-sole, but they were a pair that he had bought in the market. But, in the meantime, another investigation of his lodgings had been made, and a number of articles found that had certainly belonged to the murdered men, Winter and Kügelgen. They were ranged on the table, together with the pair of boots confided to Kiessling, and Kaltofen was shown them. Hitherto, the young man had displayed phlegmatic composure, and an openness of manner that had impressed all who saw him in his favour. His intelligence, had, moreover, contrasted favourably with that of Fischer. But the sight of all these articles, produced before him, staggered Kaltofen, and, losing his presence of mind, he turned in a fury upon his comrade, the shoemaker, and swore at him for having betrayed his confidence. Only after he had poured forth a torrent of abuse, could the magistrate bring him to say anything about the charge, and then--still hot and panting from his onslaught on Kiessling--he admitted that he, not Fischer, was the murderer in both cases. Fischer, he said, was wholly innocent, not only of participation in, but of knowledge of the crimes. The summary of his confession, oft repeated and never withdrawn, was as follows:--Being in need of money, he had gone outside the town thrice in one week, at the end of December, 1819, with the intent of murdering and robbing the first person he could attack with security. For this purpose, he had provided himself with a cudgel under his cloak. On the 29th December he selected Winter as his first victim. He allowed him to pass, then stole after him, and suddenly dealt him a blow on the back of his head, before the young man turned to see who was following him. Winter dropped, whereupon he, Kaltofen, had struck him twice again on the head. Then he divested his victim of collar, coat, hat, kerchief, watch, and a little money--not more than four shillings in English coins, and a few tools. He was engaged on pulling off his boots and trousers, when he was alarmed by hearing the tramp of horses and the sound of wheels, and he ran off across the fields with his spoil. He got Kiessling to dispose of the hat for him, the other articles he himself sold to Jews. Whether it was he also who assaulted the poor woman we are not informed. In like manner Kaltofen proceeded with Kügelgen. He was again in want of money. He had been gambling, and had lost what little he had. On the Monday in Holy Week, 1820, he took his cudgel again and went out along the Bautzen Road. The moon shone brightly, and he met a gentleman walking slowly towards Dresden, in a blue cloak. He allowed him to pass, then followed him. As a woman was walking in the same direction, but at a quicker rate, he delayed his purpose till she had disappeared behind the first houses of the suburb. Then he hastened on, walking lightly, and springing up behind Kügelgen, struck him on the right temple with his cudgel from behind. Kügelgen fell without uttering a cry. Kaltofen at once seized him by the collar and dragged him across a field to the edge of the river. There he dealt him several additional blows, and then proceeded to strip him. Whilst thus engaged, he remembered that the dead man had dropped his walking-stick on the high road when first struck. Kaltofen at once desisted from what he was about, to return to the road and recover the walking-stick. On coming back to his victim, he thought there was still life in him; Kügelgen was moving and endeavouring to rise. Whereupon, with his cudgel, Kaltofen repeatedly struck him, till all signs of life disappeared. He now completed his work of spoliation, pulled off the boots, untied the neckerchief, and ransacked the pockets. He found in addition to the watch the sum of about half-a-guinea. He then stole away among the rushes till he reached the Linkes Bad, where he returned to the main road. He concealed the cloak at the Black Gate, but carried the rest of his plunder to his lodgings. His confession was confirmed by several circumstances. Kiessling was again required to repeat what he had heard from Kaltofen, and the story as told by him agreed exactly with that now confessed by the murderer. Kiessling added that Kaltofen had told him he was puzzled to account for Fischer's self-examination, as he knew that the man had nothing to do with the murder. A third examination of Kaltofen's lodgings resulted in the discovery of all the rest of the murdered man's effects. Moreover, when Kaltofen was confronted with the two Jews who had taken the silver watch on the 24th, they immediately recognised him as the man who had disposed of it to them. Finally, he confessed to having been associated with Kiessling in two robberies, one of which was a burglarious attack on his own master. The case was made out clearly enough against Kaltofen, and it seemed equally clear that Fischer was innocent. Moreover, from the 24th April onwards, Fischer never swerved from his protestation of complete innocence. When questioned why he had confessed himself guilty, he said that he had been pressed to do so by the gaoler, who had several times fastened him for a whole night into the stocks, and had threatened him with severer measures unless he admitted his guilt. The gaoler admitted having so treated Fischer once, but Fischer insisted that he had been thus tortured on two consecutive nights. It was ascertained that Fischer had not only known about the murder of Kügelgen, but had attended his funeral, and yet he had pretended entire, or almost entire, ignorance when first arrested. When asked to explain this, he replied that he was so frightened that he took refuge in lies. That he was a dull-minded, extremely ignorant man, was obvious to the judges and to all who had to do with him; he was aged thirty, and had spent thirteen years in the army, had conducted himself well, but had never been trusted with any important duties on account of his stupidity. He had a dull eye, and a heavy countenance. Kaltofen, on the other hand, was a good-looking, well-built young fellow, of twenty-four, with a bright, intelligent face; his education was above what was ordinary in his class. It was precisely this that had excited in him vanity, and craving for pleasures and amusements which he could not afford. His obliging manners, his trimness, and cheerfulness, had made him a favourite with the officers. As already intimated, he was fond of play, and it was this that had induced him to commit his murders. He admitted that he had felt little or no compunction, and he said frankly that it was as well for society that he was taken, otherwise the death of Kügelgen would have been followed by others. He spoke of the crimes he had committed with openness and indifference, and maintained this condition of callousness to the end. It seems to have been customary on several occasions for the Lutheran pastors who attended the last hours of criminals to publish their opinions as to the manner in which they prepared for death, and their ideas as to the motives for the crimes committed, an eminently indecent proceeding to our notions. In this case, the chaplain who attended on Kaltofen rushed into the priest after the execution. He said, "Play may have occasioned that want of feeling which will commit the most atrocious crime, without compunction, for the gratification of a temporary requirement. Kaltofen, without being rude and rough towards his fellows, but on the contrary obliging and courteous, came to regard them with brutal indifference." Only twice did he feel any twinge of conscience, he said, once before his first murder, and again at the funeral of his second victim, which he attended. The criminal was now known, had confessed, and had confessed that he had no accomplice. Moreover, he declared that Fischer was wholly innocent. Not a single particle of evidence was forthcoming to incriminate Fischer, apart from his own retracted confessions. Nevertheless he was not liberated. The police could not believe that Kaltofen had been without an accomplice. There were stabs in the face and body of Kügelgen, and Kaltofen had professed to have used no other weapon than a cudgel. The murderer said that he had dragged the body over the field to the rushes, and it was agreed that there must have been evidence of this dragging. Some witnesses had, indeed, said they had seen such, but others protested that there were footprints as of two men. This, however, could be explained by Kaltofen's admission that he had gone back to the road for the walking-stick. Then, again, Fischer, when interrogated, had given particulars which agreed with the circumstances in a remarkable manner. He was asked to explain this. "Well," said he, "he had heard a good deal of talk about the murders, and he was miserable at the thought of spending long years in prison, and so had confessed." When asked how he knew the particulars of the murder of Winter, he said that he had been helped to it by the gaoler. He had said first, "I went to his left side"--whereupon the gaoler had said, "Surely you are wrong, it was on the right," thereat Fischer had corrected himself and said, "Yes, of course--on the right." The case was now ready for final sentence, and for this purpose all the depositions were forwarded on September 12th to the Judicial Court at Leipzig. But, before judgment was pronounced, the depositions were hastily sent for back to Dresden--for, in the meantime, the case had passed into a new phase. On October 5th, the gaoler--the same man who had brought about the confession of Fischer--announced that Kaltofen had confided to him that Fischer really had been his accomplice in both the murders. Kaltofen at once was summoned before the magistrate, and he calmly, and with emphasis, declared that Fischer had assisted him on both occasions, and that he had not allowed this before, because he and Fischer had sworn that neither would betray the other. Fischer had never mentioned his name, and he had accordingly done his utmost to exculpate Fischer. According to his account, he and Fischer had been walking together on the morning of March 26th, between 9 and 10, when they planned a murder together for the following day. However, there was rebutting evidence to the effect that on the morning in question Fischer had been on guard, at the hour named, before the powder magazine; he had not been released till noon. Other statements of Kaltofen proved to be equally untrue. What could have induced Kaltofen to deliberately charge a comrade in arms with participation in the crime, if he were guiltless? There was no apparent motive. He could gain no reprieve by it. It did not greatly diminish his own guilt. It was necessary to enter into as close investigation as was possible into the whereabouts of Fischer at the time of the two murders. It was not found possible to determine where he was at the time when Winter was killed, but some of his comrades swore that on March 27th he had been present at the roll-call at 6 p.m., and had come into barrack before the second roll-call at half-past eight. The murder of Kügelgen had taken place at eight o'clock, and the distance between the barrack and the spot where it had been committed was 3487 paces, which would take a man about 25 minutes to traverse. If, as his comrades asserted, Fischer had come in shortly after eight, then it was quite impossible that he could have been present when Kügelgen was murdered; but not great reliance can be placed on the testimony of soldiers as to the hour at which a comrade came into barrack just seven months before on a given day. The case was perplexing. The counsel for Fischer--his name was Eisenstück--took a bold line of defence. He charged the gaoler with having manipulated Kaltofen, as he had Fischer. This gaoler's self-esteem was wounded by the discovery that Kaltofen and not Fischer was the murderer, and his credit was damaged by the proceedings which showed that he had goaded an unhappy man, confided to his care, into charging himself with a crime he had never committed. Eisenstück asserted that this new charge was fabricated in the prison by the gaoler in concert with Kaltofen for his own justification. But, whatever may be thought of the character and conduct of this turnkey, it is difficult to understand how he could prevail on a cool-headed man like Kaltofen thus to take on himself the additional guilt of perjury, and such perjury as risked the life of an innocent man. Kaltofen never withdrew this assertion that Fischer was an accomplice. He persisted in it to his last breath. The depositions were again sent to the faculty at Leipzig, on Dec. 18th, to give judgment on the following points. 1. The examination of the body of Kügelgen had revealed stabs made with a sharp, two-edged instrument, as well as blows dealt by a blunt weapon. Kaltofen would admit that he had used no other instrument than a cudgel. 2. It would have been a difficult matter for one man to drag a dead body from the road to the bed of rushes, without leaving unmistakable traces on the field traversed; and such were not, for certain, found. It was therefore more probable that the dead man had been carried by two persons to the place where found. It must be observed that crowds poured out of Dresden to see the place where the body lay as soon as it was known that Kügelgen had been discovered, and consequently no accurate and early examination of tracks across the field had been made. 3. That it would have been difficult for Kaltofen alone to strip the body. This may be doubted; it would be difficult possibly, but not impossible, whilst the body was flexible. 4. A witness had said that she had met two men outside the Black Gate on the evening of the 27th March, of whom one was wrapped in a cloak and seemed to be carrying something under it. We should much like to know when the woman gave this evidence. Unfortunately, that is what is not told us. 5. Kaltofen, in a letter to his parents, had stated that he had an accomplice, but had not named him. These were the points that made it appear that Kaltofen had an accomplice. An accomplice in some of his crimes he had--Kiessling. There were other points that made it appear that Fischer had assisted him in the murders. 6. Fischer's denial that he knew anything about the murder of Kügelgen when he was arrested, whereas it was established that he had attended the funeral of the murdered man. 7. His repeated confessions that he had assisted at the murders, and his acquaintance with the particulars and with the localities. 8. Kaltofen's asseverations that Fischer was his associate in the murders. In favour of Fischer it may be said that his conduct in the army had for thirteen years been uniformly good, and there was no evidence that he had been in any way guilty of dishonesty. Nor was he a man of extravagant habits like Kaltofen, needing money for his pleasures. He was a simple, inoffensive, and very stupid man. His confessions lose all their effect when we consider how they were extorted from him by undue influence. Against Kaltofen's later accusation must be set his repeated declaration, during six months, that Fischer was innocent. Not only this, but his assertion in confidence to Kiessling that he was puzzled what could have induced Fischer to avow himself guilty of a crime, of which he--Kaltofen--knew him to be innocent. When Kiessling gave this evidence on April 24th, Kaltofen did not deny that he had said this, but flew into a paroxysm of fury with his comrade for betraying their private conversation. Again, not a single article appertaining to either of the murdered men was found with Fischer. All had been traced, without exception, to Kaltofen. It was the latter who had concealed Kügelgen's coat, and had given his watch to the Jews. It was he who had got Kiessling to dispose of Winter's hat for him, and had given the boots of the last victim to Kiessling to be repaired. On January 4th, 1821, the Court at Leipzig issued its judgment; that Kaltofen, on account of two murders committed and confessed, was to be put to death on the wheel; "but that John George Fischer be discharged on account of lack of evidence of complicity in the murders." The gaoler was discharged his office. Kaltofen appealed against the sentence, but in vain. The sentence was confirmed. The ground of his appeal was, that he was not alone guilty. The King commuted the penalty of the wheel into execution by the sword. The sentence of the court produced the liveliest commotion in Dresden. The feeling against Fischer was strong and general; the gaoler had but represented the universal opinion. Fischer--who had confessed to the murder--Fischer, whom Kaltofen protested was as deeply stained in crime as himself, was to go scot free. The police authorities did not carry out the sentence of discharge in its integrity; they indeed released him from prison, but placed him under police supervision, and he was discharged from the Artillery on the plea that he had forsworn himself. The pastor Jaspis was entrusted with the preparation of Kaltofen for death; and we know pretty well what passed between him and the condemned man, as he had the indecency to publish it to the world. Jaspis had, indeed, visited him in prison when he was first arrested, and then Kaltofen had asserted that he had committed the murders entirely unassisted. On Jaspis remarking to him in April, 1820, that there were circumstances that rendered this eminently improbable, Kaltofen cut him short with the answer, "I was by myself." Afterwards, when he had changed his note, Jaspis reminded him of his previous declaration, but Kaltofen pretended not to remember ever having made it. Towards the end of his days, Kaltofen was profoundly agitated, and was very restless. When Jaspis gave him a book of prayers and meditations for such as were in trouble, he put it from him, and said the book was unsuitable, and was adapted only to the innocent. He had visitors who combined piety with inquisitiveness, and came to discuss with him the state of his soul. Kaltofen's vanity was inflamed, and he was delighted to pose before these zealots. When he heard that Jaspis had preached about him in the Kreuz Kirche on the Sunday before his execution, he was greatly gratified, and said, "He would really like to hear what had been said about him." Jaspis thereupon produced his sermon, and read it over to the wretched man--but tells us that even the most touching portions of the address failed to awake any genuine compunction in his soul. Unless he could play the saint, before company, he was cold and indifferent. His great vanity, however, was hurt at the thought that his assertion was disbelieved, that Fischer was his associate in his crimes. He was always eager and inquisitive to know what rumours circulated in the town concerning him, and was gratified to think that he was the topic of the general conversation. On the night before his execution he slept soundly for five hours, and then lit his pipe and smoked composedly. His condition was, however, not one of bluntness of sense, for he manifested considerable readiness and consciousness up to the last. He had drawn up a dying address which he handed to pastor Jaspis, and on which he evidently placed great importance, as when his first copy had caught fire when he was drying it, he set to work to compose a second. He knew his man--Jaspis--and was sure he would publish it after the execution. The paper was a rigmarole in which he posed to the world. On reaching the market-place where the execution was to take place, he repeated his confession, but on this occasion without mention of a confederate. His composure gave way, and he began to sob. On reaching the scaffold, however, the sight of the vast crowd assembled to see him die restored to him some of his composure, as it pleased his vanity; but he again broke down, as he made his last confession to the Lutheran pastor. His voice trembled, and the sweat broke out on his brow. Then he sprang up and shouted, so that all could hear--"Gentlemen, Fischer deserved the same punishment as myself." In another moment his head fell from his body. The words had been audible throughout the market-place by everyone. Who could doubt that his last words were true? Fischer happened that very day (July 12th) to be in Dresden. He had been seen, and had been recognised. He had come to Dresden to see his counsel, and ask him to use his influence to obtain his complete discharge from police supervision, and restoration to his rights as an honest man and a soldier, with a claim to a pension. A vast crowd of people rolled from the place of execution to the house of Eisenstück, shouting, and threatening to tear Fischer to pieces. But Eisenstück was not the man to be terrified. He summoned a carriage, entered it along with Fischer, and drove slowly, with the utmost composure, through the angry crowd. On August 26th, 1822, by command of the king, Fischer's name was replaced in the army list, and he received his complete discharge from all the consequences of the accusations made against him. He was guaranteed his pension for his "faithful services through 16 years, and in the campaigns of 1813, 1814, and 1815, in which he had conducted himself to the approval of all his officers." How are we to explain the conduct of Kaltofen? The simplest way is to admit that he spoke the truth; but against this is to be opposed his denial that Fischer was guilty during the first six months that he was under arrest. And it is impossible to believe that Fischer was guilty, on the sole testimony of Kaltofen, without any confirmatory evidence. It is rather to be supposed that the inordinate vanity of the young culprit induced him to persist in denouncing his innocent brother gunner, so as to throw off his own shoulders some of the burden of that crime, which, he felt, made him hateful in the eyes of his fellow-citizens, and perhaps to induce them to regard him as misled by an older man, more hardened and experienced in crime, thus arousing their pity and sympathy in place of their disgust. Jaspis, the pastor, did not himself believe in the criminality of Fischer, and proposes a solution which he gives conjecturally only. He suggests that Kaltofen was misled by the confession of Fischer into the belief that he really had committed a murder or two, though not those of Winter and Kügelgen, and that when he declared on the scaffold that "Fischer deserved to die as much as himself," he spoke under this conviction. This explanation is untenable, for the miserable man had repeatedly charged Fischer with assisting him in committing these two particular crimes. The explanation must be found in his self-conceit and eagerness to present himself in the best and most affecting light before the public. And he gained his point to some extent. The mob believed him, pitied him, became sentimental over him, wept tears at his death, and cursed the unfortunate Fischer. The apparent piety, the mock heroics, the graceful attitudes, and the good looks of the murderer had won their sympathies, and the general opinion of the vulgar was that they had assisted at the sublimation of a saint to the seventh heaven, and not at the well-deserved execution of a peculiarly heartless and brutal murderer. A month had hardly passed since Kaltofen's execution before Dresden was shocked to hear of another murder--on this occasion by a young woman. On August 12th, 1821, this person, who had been in a state of excitement ever since the edifying death of Kaltofen, invited to her house a young girl, just engaged to be married, and deliberately murdered her; then marched off to the police and confessed her crime--the nature of which she did not disguise. She desired to make the same affecting and edifying end as Kaltofen. Above all, she wanted to get herself talked about by all the mouths in Dresden. The police on visiting her house found the murdered girl lying on the bed. On the door in large letters the murderer had inscribed the date of Kaltofen's martyrdom, July 12th, and she had committed her crime on the same day one month after, desirous to share his glory. Such was one consequence of this execution. A small farce also succeeded it. Influenced by the general excitement provoked by the murder of Kügelgen, the Jews had assembled and agreed, should any of them be able to discover the murderer, that they would decline the £150 offered by Government for information that might lead to the apprehension of the guilty. But Hirschel Mendel, the Jew who had produced the watch, put in his claim; whereupon Löbel Graff, who had produced the coat, put in a counter claim. This occasioned a lawsuit between the two Jews for the money. A compromise was finally patched up, by which each received half. Gerhard von Kügelgen had been buried in the Catholic cemetery at Dresden on Maundy Thursday evening by moonlight. A great procession of art students attended the funeral cortège with lighted torches, and an oration was pronounced over his grave by his friend Councillor Böttiger. His tomb may still be seen in the cemetery; on it is inscribed:-- FRANZ GERHARD VON KÜGELGEN. Born 6 Feb., 1772. Died 27 March, 1820. On the other side is the text, St. John xiv. 27. Kügelgen left behind him two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Wilhelm, pursued his father's profession as an artist, and the Emperor of Russia sent an annual grant of money to assist him in his studies. There is a pleasant book, published anonymously by him, "An Old Man's Youthful Reminiscences," the first edition of which was issued in 1870, and which had reached its eighth edition in 1876. Kügelgen's twin brother, Karl Ferdinand, after spending some years in St. Petersburg and in Livonia, settled at Reval, and died in 1832. He was the author of a "Picturesque Journey in the Crimea," published in 1823. Authority:--F. Ch. A. Hasse: Das Leben Gerhards von Kügelgen. Leipzig, 1824. He gives in the Supplement an excerpt from the records of the trial. As frontispiece is a portrait of the artist by himself, very Raphaelesque. The Poisoned Parsnips. At the time when the banished Bourbons were wandering about Europe seeking temporary asylums, during the period of Napoleon's supremacy, a story circulated in 1804 relative to an attempt made in Warsaw, which then belonged to Prussia, upon the life of the Royal Family then residing there. It was said that a plot had been formed, that was well nigh successful, to kill Louis XVIII., his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême, and such of the Court as sat at the Royal table, with a dish of poisoned parsnips. It was, moreover, whispered that at the bottom of the plot was no other than Napoleon himself, who sought to remove out of his way the legitimate claimants to the Gallic throne. The article in which the account of the attempt was made public was in the _London Courier_ for August 20th, 1804, from which we will now take the leading facts. The Royal Family was living in Warsaw. Napoleon Bonaparte employed an agent of the name of Galon Boyer at Warsaw to keep an eye on them, and this man, it was reported, had engaged assassins at the instigation of Napoleon to poison Louis XVIII. and the rest of the Royal Family. The _Courier_ of August 21st, 1804, says: "Some of the daily papers, which were not over anxious to discredit the conspiracy imputed to Mr. Drake,[1] affect to throw some doubt upon the account of the attempt upon the lives of the Royal Family at Warsaw. They seem to think that had Bonaparte desired such a plan, he could have executed it with more secrecy and effect. Undoubtedly his plans of assassination have hitherto been more successful, because his hapless victims were within his power--his wounded soldiers at Jaffa, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Pichegru, and the Duke D'Enghien. He could send his bloodhounds into Germany to seize his prey; but Warsaw was too remote for him; he was under the necessity of having recourse to less open means of sending his assassins to act secretly. But it is deemed extraordinary that the diabolical attempt should have failed. Why is it extraordinary that a beneficent Providence should interpose to save the life of a just prince? Have we not had signal instances of that interposition in this country? For the accuracy of the account we published yesterday, we pledge ourselves[2] that the fullest details, authenticated by all Louis XVIII.'s Ministers--by the venerable Archbishop of Rheims--by the Abbé Edgeworth, who administered the last consolation of religion to Louis the XVI., have been received in this country. All those persons were present when the poisoned preparation was analysed by very eminent physicians, _who are the subjects of the King of Prussia_. [1] Drake was envoy of the British Government at Munich; he and Spencer Smith, Chargé d'Affaires at Würtemberg, were accused by Napoleon of being at the bottom of a counter revolution, and an attempt to obtain his assassination. It was true that Drake and Smith were in correspondence with parties in France with the object of securing Hagenau and Strassburgo and throwing discord among the troops of the Republic, but they never for a moment thought of obtaining the assassination of the First Consul, as far as we can judge from their correspondence that fell into the hands of the French police. [2] Unfortunately the British Museum file is imperfect, and does not contain the Number for August 20th. "The two wretches who attempted to corrupt the poor Frenchman were openly protected by the French Consul or Commercial Agent. "The Prussian Governor would not suffer them to be arrested in order that their guilt or innocence might be legally investigated. Is it to be believed that had there been no foundation for the charge against them, the French agent would have afforded them less open protection, and thereby strengthened the charge brought against them? If they were protected and paid by the French agent, is it probable that he paid them out of his own pocket, employed them in such a plot of his own accord, and without order and instructions from his own Government, from Bonaparte? Besides, did not the President Hoym acknowledge his fears that some attempt would be made upon the life of Louis the XVIII.? "The accounts transmitted to this country were sent from Warsaw one hour after the king had set out for Grodno." The _Courier_ for August 24th, 1804, has the following note:--"We have another strong fact which is no slight evidence in our minds of Bonaparte's guilt. The plot against Louis the XVIII. was to be executed at the end of July--it would be known about the beginning of August. At that very period Bonaparte prohibits the importation of all foreign journals without exception--that is, of all the means by which the people could be informed of the diabolical deed. Why does he issue this prohibition at the present moment, or why does he issue it at all? Fouché says in his justification of it that it is to prevent our knowing when the expedition sails. Have we ever received any news about the expedition from the French papers? No, no! the prohibition was with a view to the bloody scene to be acted at Warsaw." The _Courier_ of August 22nd contained full particulars. We will now tell the whole story, from beginning to end, first of all as dressed out by the fancy of Legitimists, and then according to the real facts of the case as far as known. Napoleon, it will be remembered, had been appointed First Consul for life on August 2nd, 1802, but the Republic came to an end, and the French Empire was established by the Senate on May 18th, 1804. It was supposed--and we can excuse the excitement and intoxication of wrath in the minds of all adherents of the Bourbons which could suppose it--that Napoleon, who was thus refounding the Empire of Charlemagne, desired to secure the stability of this new throne by sweeping out of his way the legitimate claimants to that of France. The whole legend of the attempt to assassinate Louis XVIII. by means of a dish of poisoned parsnips is given us in complete form by the author of a life of that prince twenty years after the event.[3] It is to this effect: When the King (Louis XVIII.) was preparing for his journey from Warsaw to Grodno an atrocious attempt to assassinate him was brought to light, which leaves no manner of doubt that it was the purpose of those who were the secret movers in the plot to remove by poison both the King and Queen and also the Duke of Angoulême and his wife. Two delegates of Napoleon had been in Warsaw seeking for a man who could execute the plan. A certain Coulon appeared most adapted to their purpose, a man indigent and eager for money. He had previously been in the service of one of the emigré nobles, and had access to the kitchen of the Royal Family. [3] A. de Beauchamp, Vie de Louis XVIII. Paris, 1824. The agents of Napoleon gave Coulon drink, and as he became friendly and lively under the influence of punch, they communicated to him their scheme, and promised him money, the payment of his debts, and to effect his escape if he would be their faithful servant in the intrigue. Coulon pretended to yield to their solicitations, and a rendezvous was appointed where the plans were to be matured. But no sooner was Coulon at liberty than he went to his former master, the Baron de Milleville, master of horse to the Queen, and told him all. The Baron sought the Duc de Pienne, first gentleman of the Royal household, and he on receiving the information communicated it to the Count d'Avaray, Minister of Louis XVIII. Coulon received orders to pretend to be ready to carry on the plot. He did this with reluctance, but he did it. He told the agents of Napoleon that he was in their hands and would blindly execute their orders. They treated him now to champagne, and revealed to him the details of the attempt. He was to get into the kitchen of the Royal household, and was to pour the contents of a packet they gave him into one of the pots in which the dinner for the Royal table was being cooked. Coulon then demanded an instalment of his pay, and asked to be given 400 louis d'or. One of the agents then turned to the other and asked if he thought Boyer would be disposed to advance so much--this was Galon Boyer, the head agent sent purposely to Warsaw as spy on the Royal Family, and the principal mover in the attempt. The other agent replied that Boyer was not at the moment in Warsaw, but he would be back in a couple of days. Coulon stuck to his point, like a clever rascal, and refused to do anything till he felt gold in his palm, and he was bidden wait till Boyer had been communicated with. He was appointed another meeting on the moors at Novawies outside the city. As, next evening, Coulon was on his way to the place named, he observed that he was followed by a man. Suddenly out of the corn growing beside the road started a second. They were the agents. They paid him a few dollars, promised to provide handsomely for him in France, by giving him 400 louis d'or and a situation under Government; and handed him a bottle of liquor that was to stimulate his courage at the crucial moment, and also a paper packet that contained three parsnips, that had been scooped out and filled with poison. These he was to insinuate into one of the pots cooking for dinner, and induce the cook to overlook what he had done, and serve them up to the Royal Family. The King then lived in a chateau at Lazienki, about a mile out of Warsaw. Thither hastened Coulon as fast as his legs could carry him, and he committed the parsnips to the Baron de Milleville. The Count d'Avaray and the Archbishop of Rheims put their seals on the parcel; after that the parsnips had first been shown to the Prussian authorities, and they had been asked in all form to attest the production of the poisoned roots, and to order the arrest of the two agents of Napoleon, and to confront them with Coulon--and had declined. Louis, when informed of the attempt, showed his wonted composure. He wrote immediately to the Prussian President, Von Hoym, and requested him to visit him at Lazienki, and consult what was to be done. Herr Von Hoym did not answer; nor did he go to the King, but communicated with his superiors. Finally there arrived a diplomatic reply declining to interfere in the matter, as it was the concern of the police to investigate it, and it should be taken up in the ordinary way. Thereupon the King requested that Coulon and his wife should be secured, and that specialists should be appointed who, along with the Royal physician, might examine the parsnips alleged to be poisoned. But the Prussian Courts declined again to take any steps. The policy of the Prussian Cabinet under Count Haugwitz was favourable to a French alliance, and the King of Prussia was among the first of the greater Powers which had formally recognised the French Emperor. On condition that the French troops occupying Hanover should not be augmented, and that war, if it broke out with Russia, should be so carried on as not to inconvenience and sweep over Prussian territory, Prussia had undertaken to observe a strict neutrality. In return for these concessions, which were of great moment to Napoleon, he openly proclaimed his intention to augment the strength of Prussia, and it was hoped at Berlin that the price paid would be the incorporation of Hanover with Prussia. At this moment, consequently, the Prussian Government was most unwilling to meddle in an investigation which threatened to lead to revelations most compromising to the character of Napoleon, and most inconvenient for itself. As the Prussian courts would not take up the matter of the parsnips, a private investigation was made by the Count d'Avaray, with the Royal physician, Dr. Lefèvre, and the Warsaw physician, Dr. Gagatkiewicz, together with the Apothecary Guidel and a certain Dr. Bergozoni. The seals were broken in their presence, and the three roots were examined. It was ascertained that they were stuffed with a mixture of white, yellow, and red arsenic. This having been ascertained, and a statement of the fact duly drawn up, and signed, the president of the police, Herr von Tilly, was communicated with. He, however, declined to interfere, as had the President von Hoym. "Thus," says M. Beauchamp, "one court shuffled the matter off on another, backwards and forwards, so as not to have to decide on the matter, a specimen of the results of the system adopted at this time by the Prussian Cabinet." No other means of investigation remained but for Count d'Avaray to have the matter gone into by the court of the exiled King. They examined Coulon, who held firmly to his story as told to the Baron de Milleville, and all present were convinced that he spoke the truth. As the King could obtain no justice from the hands of Prussia, he suffered the story to be made public in order that the opinion of all honourable men in Europe might be expressed on the conduct of both Napoleon and of the Prussian Ministry. "The impression made," says M. Beauchamp, "especially in England, was deep. Men recalled Bonaparte's former crimes that had been proved--the poisoning at Jaffa, the--at the time--very fresh indignation provoked by the murder of the Count de Frotté, of Pichegru, of Captain Wright, of the Duke d'Enghien, of Toussaint l'Ouverture; they recalled the lack of success he had experienced in demanding of Louis XVIII. a formal renunciation of his claims, and weighed well the determination of his character. Even the refusal of the Prussian courts to go into the charge (for if it had been investigated they must needs have pronounced judgment on it)--encouraged suspicion. Hardly an English newspaper did not condemn Napoleon as the instigator of an attempt that providentially failed." Such is the legend as formulated by M. de Beauchamp. Fortunately there exists documentary evidence in the archives of the courts at Berlin that gives an altogether different complexion to the story, and entirely clears the name of Napoleon from stain of complicity in this matter. It throws, moreover, a light, by no means favourable, on those of the Legitimist party clustered about the fallen monarch. Louis XVIII., obliged to fly from one land to another before the forces of Napoleon, was staying for a while at Warsaw, in the year 1804, under the incognito of the Count de l'Isle. His misfortunes had not broken his spirit or diminished his pretensions. He was surrounded by a little court in spite of his incognito; and as this little court had no affairs of State to transact, it played a niggling game at petty intrigue. This court consisted of the Count d'Avaray, the Archbishop of Rheims, the Duke de Pienne, the Marquis de Bonney, the Duke d'Avré de Croy, the Count de la Chapelle, the Counts Damas Crux and Stephen de Damas, and the Abbés Edgeworth and Frimont. Louis had assured Napoleon he would rather eat black bread than resign his pretensions. At Warsaw he maintained his pretensions to the full, but did not eat black bread; he kept a very respectable kitchen. The close alliance between Prussia and France forced him to leave Warsaw and migrate into Russia. At this time there lived in Warsaw a certain Jean Coulon, son of a small shopkeeper at Lyons, who had led an adventurous life. At the age of nine he had run away from home and attached himself to a wandering dramatic company; then had gone into service to a wigmaker, and had lived for three years at Barcelona at his handicraft. But wigs were going out of fashion, and he threw up an unprofitable trade, and enlisted in a legion of emigrés, but in consequence of some quarrel with a Spaniard was handed over to the Spanish authorities. He purchased his pardon by enlisting in the Spanish army, but deserted and joined the French Republican troops, was in the battle of Novi, ran away, and joined the corps raised at Naples by Cardinal Ruffo. When this corps was dispersed, he went back to Spain, again enlisted, and was shipped for St. Lucia. The vessel in which he was, was captured by an English cruiser, and he was taken into Plymouth and sent up to Dartmoor as prisoner of war. After two years he was exchanged and was shipped to Cuxhaven. Thence he went to Altona, where he asked the intervention of the Duke d'Avré in his favour. The Duke recommended him to the Countess de l'Isle, and he was taken into the service of her master of horse, the Baron de Milleville, and came to Warsaw in September, 1803. There he married, left his service and set up a café and billiard room that was frequented by the retainers and servants of the emigré nobility that hovered about the King and Queen. He was then aged 32, could speak Italian and Spanish as well as French, and was a thorough soldier of fortune, impecunious, loving pleasure, and wholly without principles, political or religious. The French Chargé d'Affaires at Warsaw was Galon Boyer; he does not appear in the documents relative to the _Affaire Coulon_, not because the Prussian Government shirked its duty, but because he was in no way mixed up with the matter of the parsnips. It is quite true that, as M. de Beauchamp asserts, the Court of Louis XVIII. did endeavour to involve the Prussian authorities in the investigation, but it was in such a manner that it was not possible for them to act. On July 23rd, when the Count de l'Isle was determined to leave Warsaw, Count d'Avaray called on the President von Hoym, and told him in mysterious language that he was aware of a conspiracy in which were involved several Frenchmen and as many as a dozen Poles that sought the life of his august master. Herr von Hoym doubted. He asked for the grounds of this assertion, and was promised full particulars that same evening at eight o'clock. At the hour appointed, the Count appeared breathless before him, and declared that now he was prepared with a complete disclosure. However, he told nothing, and postponed the revelation to 10 o'clock. Then Avaray informed him that the keeper of the Café Coulon had been hired by some strangers to meet him that same night on the road to Novawies, to plan with him the murder, by poison, of the Count de l'Isle. The whole story seemed suspicious to von Hoym. It was now too late for him to send police to watch the spot where the meeting was to take place, which he might have done had d'Avaray condescended to tell him in time, two hours earlier. He asked d'Avaray where Coulon lived that he might send for him, and the Count professed he did not know the address. Next day Count d'Avaray read to the President von Hoym a document, which he said had been drawn up by members of the court of the Count de l'Isle, showed him a paper that contained twelve small parsnips, and requested him to subscribe the document and seal the parcel of parsnips. Naturally, the President declined to do this. He had not seen Coulon, he did not know from whom Coulon had received the parcel, and he mistrusted the whole story. However, he requested that he might be furnished with an exact description of the two mysterious strangers, and when he had received it, communicated with the police, and had inquiry made for them in and about Warsaw. No one had seen or heard of any persons answering to the description. Presently the Marquis de Bonney arrived to request the President, in the name of the Count de l'Isle, to have the parsnips examined by specialists. He declined to do so. On July 26th, the Count d'Avaray appeared before the head of the Police, the President von Tilly, and showed him an attestation made by several doctors that they had examined three parsnips that had been shown them, and they had found in them a paste composed of arsenic and orpiment. Von Tilly thought the whole story so questionable that he refused to meddle with it. Moreover, a notary of Warsaw, who had been requested to take down Coulon's statement, had declined to testify to the genuineness of the confession, probably because, as Coulon afterwards insinuated, he had been helped to make it consistent by those who questioned him. Louis XVIII. left Warsaw on July 30, and as the rumour spread that Coulon's wife had bought some arsenic a week before at an apothecary's shop in the place, the police inspector ordered her arrest. She was questioned and declared that she had, indeed, bought some rat poison, without the knowledge of her husband. Coulon was now taken up and questioned, and he pretended that he had given his wife orders to buy the rat poison, because he was plagued with vermin in the house. Then the authorities in Warsaw sent all the documents relating to this matter, including the _procès verbal_ drawn up by the courtiers of Louis XVIII., to Berlin, and asked for further instructions. According to this _procès verbal_ Coulon had confessed as follows: On the 20th July two strangers had entered his billiard room, and had assured him that, if he were disposed to make his fortune, they could help him to it. They made him promise silence, and threatened him with death if he disclosed what they said. After he had sworn fidelity and secrecy, they told him that he was required to throw something into the pot in which the soup was being prepared for the King's table. For so doing they would pay him 400 louis d'or. Coulon considered a moment; then the strangers promised they would provide a situation for his wife in France. After that one of them said to his fellow in Italian, "We must be off. We have no time to lose." Next day, in the evening, a third stranger appeared at his door, called him forth into the street, walked about with him through the streets of old and new Warsaw, till he was thoroughly bewildered, and did not know where he was, and, finally, entered with him a house, where he saw the two strangers who had been with him previously. Champagne was brought on the table, and they all drank, and one of the strangers became tipsy. When Coulon promised to do what was required of him, he was told to secure some of the mutton-chops that were being prepared for the Royal table, and to manipulate them with the powder that was to be given him. That the cook might not notice what he was about, he was to treat him to large draughts of brandy. Coulon agreed, but asked first to touch the 400 louis d'or. Then the tipsy man shouted out, "That is all right, but will Boyer consent to it?" The other stranger tried to check him, and said, "What are you saying? Boyer is not here, he has gone out of town and will not be back for a couple of days." After Coulon had insisted on prepayment, he had been put off till the next evening, when he was to meet the strangers at 11 o'clock on the road to Novawies. There he was to receive money, and the powder for the King. He was then given one ducat, and led home at one o'clock in the morning. On the following night, at 11 o'clock, he went on the way to Novawies, and then followed what we have already given from the story of the man, as recorded by M. de Beauchamp. He received from the men a packet containing the parsnips, and some money--only six dollars. They put a kerchief under the earth beneath a tree, and bade him, if he had accomplished his task, come to the tree and remove the kerchief, as a token to them; if, however, he failed, the kerchief was to be left undisturbed. The tree he had marked well, it was the forty-fifth along the road to Novawies. A small end of the kerchief peeped out from under the soil. The strangers had then given him a bottle of liqueur to stimulate his courage for the undertaking. After that Coulon was left alone, he said that he staggered homewards, but felt so faint that he would have fallen to the ground had not a Prussian officer, who came by, noticed his condition and helped him home. At the conclusion of the _procès verbal_ came an exact description of the conspirators. Such was the document produced originally by the Count d'Avaray, and we can hardly wonder that, on hearing it, the Prussian civil and police authorities had hesitated about taking action. The so-called confession of Coulon seemed to them to be a rhodomontade got up for the purpose of obtaining money out of the ex-King and his Court. From Berlin orders were sent to Warsaw to have the matter thoroughly sifted. Coulon and his wife were now again subjected to examination. He adhered at first to his story, but when he endeavoured to explain the purchase of the arsenic, and to fit it into his previous tale, he involved himself in contradictions. The President at this point addressed him gravely, and warned him of the consequences. His story compromised the French chargé d'affaires, M. Galon Boyer, and this could not be allowed to be passed over without a very searching examination that must inevitably reveal the truth. Coulon was staggered, and hastily asked how matters would stand with him if he told the truth. Then, after a little hesitation, he admitted that "he thought before the departure of the Count de l'Isle he would obtain for himself a sum of money, with which to escape out of his difficulties. He had reckoned on making 100 ducats out of this affair." He now told quite a different tale. With the departure of the court of the emigrés, he would lose his clientelle, and he was concerned because he owed money for the café and billiard table. He had therefore invented the whole story in hopes of imposing on the court and getting from them a little subvention. But he said he had been dragged on further than he intended by the Count d'Avaray, who had swallowed his lie with avidity, and had urged him to go on with the intrigue so as to produce evidence against the conspirators. That was why he had made up the figment of the meeting with the strangers on the road and their gift to him of the parsnips, which he admitted that he had himself scooped out and filled with the rat poison paste he had bought at the apothecary's. So far so good. What he now said was precisely what the cool heads of the Prussian authorities had believed from the first. But Coulon did not adhere to this second confession. After a few days in prison he professed his desire to make another. He was brought before the magistrate, and now he said that the whole story was got up by the Count d'Avaray, M. de Milleville, and others of the surroundings of the exiled King, for the purpose of creating an outbreak of disgust in Europe against Napoleon, and of bringing about a revolt in France. He declared that he had been promised a pension of six ducats monthly, that when he gave his evidence M. de Milleville had paid him 35 ducats, and that he had been taken into the service, along with his wife, of the ex-Queen, as reward for what he had done. There were several particulars which gave colour to this last version of Coulon's story. It was true that he had been given some money by Milleville; it was perhaps true that in their eagerness to prove a case of attempted assassination, some of those who conducted the inquiry had helped him to correct certain discrepancies in his narrative. Then, again, it was remarkable that, although the Count d'Avaray knew about the projected murder, he would not tell the Prussian President the facts till 10 o'clock at night, when it was too late to send the police to observe the pretended meeting on the Novawies road; and when Herr von Hoym asked for directions as to where Coulon lived that the police might be sent to arrest him on his return, and during his absence to search the house, the Count had pretended to be unable to say where Coulon lived. It was also true that de Milleville had repeatedly visited Coulon's house during the course of the intrigue, and that it was immediately after Coulon had been at Milleville's house that his wife was sent to buy the rat poison. Coulon pretended to have heard M. de Milleville say that "This affair might cause a complete change in the situation in France, when tidings of what had been done were published." Moreover, he said that he had been despatched to the Archbishop of Rheim's with the message "Le coup est manqué." But it is impossible to believe that the emigré court can have fabricated such a plot by which to cast on the name of Napoleon the stain of attempted assassination. The whole story reads like the clumsy invention of a vulgar adventurer. Coulon's second confession is obviously that of his true motives. He was in debt, he was losing his clientelle by the departure of the Count, and it is precisely what such a scoundrel would do, to invent a lie whereby to enlist their sympathies for himself, and obtain from them some pecuniary acknowledgment for services he pretended to have rendered. The little court was to blame in its gullibility. Its blind hatred of Napoleon led it to believe such a gross and palpable lie, and, if doubts arose in any of their minds as to the verity of the tale told them, they suppressed them. Coulon was found guilty by the court and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. The judgment of the court was that he had acted in concert with certain members of the retinue of the Count de l'Isle, but it refrained from naming them. The Murder of Father Thomas in Damascus. The remarkable case we are about to relate awoke great interest and excitement throughout three quarters of the world, and stirred up that hatred of the Jews which had been laid asleep after the persecutions of the Middle Ages, just at the time when in all European lands the emancipation of the Jew was being recognised as an act of justice. At the time the circumstances were imperfectly known, or were laid before the public in such a partial light that it was difficult to form a correct judgment upon them. Since then, a good deal of light has been thrown on the incident, and it is possible to arrive at a conclusion concerning the murder with more unbiased mind and with fuller information than was possible at the time. The Latin convents of Syria stand under the immediate jurisdiction of the Pope, and are, for the most part, supplied with recruits from Italy. They are very serviceable to travellers, whom they receive with genial hospitality, and without distinction of creed. They are nurseries of culture and of industry. Every monk and friar is required to exercise a profession or trade, and the old charge against monks of being drones is in no way applicable to the busy members of the religious orders in Palestine. In the Capuchin Convent at Damascus dwelt, in 1840, a friar named Father Thomas, a Sardinian by birth. For thirty-three years he had lived there, and had acted as physician and surgeon, attending to whoever called for his services, Mussulman or Christian, Turk, Jew or Frank alike. He set limbs, dosed with quinine for fever, and vaccinated against smallpox. Being well known and trusted, he was in constant practice, and his practice brought him, or, at all events, his order, a handsome annual income. His manners were, unfortunately, not amiable. He was curt, even rude, and somewhat dictatorial; his manners impressed as authoritative in the sickroom, but were resented in the market-place as insolent. On February 5th, 1840, Father Thomas disappeared, together with his servant, a lay brother who always attended him. This disappearance caused great commotion in Damascus. France has been considered in the East as the protector of Christians of the Latin confession. The French Consul, the Count Ratti-Menton, considered it his duty to investigate the matter. Father Thomas had been seen to enter the Jews' quarter. Several Israelites admitted having seen him there. No one saw him leave it: consequently, it was concluded he had disappeared, been made away with, there. As none but Jews occupied the Ghetto, it was argued that Father Thomas had been murdered by Israelites. That was settled as a preliminary. But in the meantime the Austrian Consul had been making investigation as well as the Count Ratti-Menton, and he had obtained information that Father Thomas and his servant had been noticed engaged in a violent quarrel and contest of words with some Mohammedans of the lowest class, in the market-place. No weight was attached to this, and the French Consul pursued his investigations in the Jews' quarter, and in that quarter alone. Sheriff Pacha was Governor of Syria, and Count Ratti-Menton required him to allow of his using every means at his disposal for the discovery of the criminal. He also requested the Austrian Consul to allow a domiciliary visitation of all the Jews' houses, the Austrian Government being regarded as the protector of the Hebrews. In both cases consent was given, and the search was begun with zeal. Then a Turk, named Mohammed-el-Telli, who was in prison for non-payment of taxes, sent word to the French Consul that, if he would obtain his release, he would give such information as would lead to the discovery of the murderer or murderers. He received his freedom, and denounced, in return, several Jews' houses as suspicious. Count Ratti-Menton at the head of a troop of soldiers and workmen, and a rabble assembled in the street, invaded all these houses, and explored them from attic to cellar. One of the first names given by Mohammed-el-Telli was that of a Jewish barber, Negrin. He gave a confused and contradictory account of himself, but absolutely denied having any knowledge of the murder. In vain were every means used during three days at the French Consulate to bring him to a confession; after that he was handed over to the Turkish authorities. They had him bastinadoed, then tortured. During his torture, Mohammed-el-Telli was at his side urging him to make a clean breast. Unable to endure his sufferings longer, the barbar declared his readiness to tell all. Whether what he said was based on reports circulating in the town, or was put into his mouth by his tormentors, we cannot tell. According to his story, on the evening of February the 5th a servant of David Arari summoned him into his house. He found the master of the house along with six other Israelitish rabbis and merchants, to wit, Aaron and Isaac Arari, Mussa Abul Afia, Moses Salonichi, and Joseph Laniado. In a corner of the room lay or leaned against the wall Father Thomas, gagged and bound hand and foot. The merchants urged Negrin to murder the Capuchin in their presence, but he stedfastly refused to do so. Finally finding him inflexible, they bought his silence with 600 piastres (hardly £6) and dismissed him. Thereupon, the governor ordered the arrest of David Arari and the other Jews named, all of whom were the richest merchants in the town--at all events the richest Jewish merchants. They, with one consent, solemnly protested their innocence. They, also, were subjected to the bastinado; but as most of them were aged men, and it was feared that they might succumb under the blows, after a few lashes had been administered, they were raised from the ground and subjected to other tortures. For thirty-six hours the unhappy men were forced to stand upright, and were prevented from sleeping. They still persisted in denial, whereupon some of them were again beaten. At the twentieth blow they fainted. The French Consul complained that the beating was inefficient--so the Austrian Consul reported, and at his instigation they were again bastinadoed, but again without bringing them to confession. In the meantime, David Arari's servant, Murad-el-Fallat, was arrested, the man who was said to have been sent for the barber. He was dealt with more sharply than the others. He was beaten most cruelly, and to heighten his pain cold water was poured over his bruised and mangled flesh. Under the anguish he confessed that he had indeed been sent for the barber. That was an insufficient confession. He was threatened with the bastinado again, and promised his release if he would reveal all he knew. Thereupon he repeated the story of the barber, with additions of his own. He and Negrin, said he, had by command of the seven rich merchants put the Father to death, and had then cut up the body and hidden the remains in a remote water conduit. The barber, threatened with fresh tortures, confessed to the murder. Count Ratti-Menton explored the conduit where the two men pretended the mutilated body was concealed, in the presence of the servant and barber, both of whom were in such a condition through the barbarous treatment to which they had been subjected, that they could not walk, and had to be carried to the spot. And actually there some bones were found, together with a cap. A surgeon pronounced that these were human bones. It was at once concluded that these were the remains of Father Thomas, and as such were solemnly buried in the cemetery of the Capuchin Convent. David Arari's servant. Murad-el-Fallet, had related that the blood of Father Thomas had been collected in a copper vessel and drawn off and distributed among the Jews for religious purposes. It was an old and favourite belief among the ignorant that the Jews drank the blood of Christians at Easter, or mingled it with the Paschal unleavened dough. At the same time the rumour spread that the rich Hebrew Picciotto, a young man, nephew of the Austrian Consul at Aleppo, had sent his uncle a bottle of blood. The seven merchants were led before the bones that had been discovered. They persisted in the declaration of their innocence. From this time forward, all scruple as to their treatment vanished, and they were tortured with diabolical barbarity. They received the bastinado again, they were burned where their flesh was tenderest with red hot pincers. Red hot wires were passed through their flesh. A German traveller, present at the time, declares that the first to acknowledge the truth of the charge was brought to do so by immersing him after all these torments for several hours in ice cold water; after which the other six were lashed with a scourge made of hippopotamus hide, till half unconscious, and streaming with blood, they were ready to admit whatever their tormentors strove to worry out of them. The Protestant missionary, Wildon Pieritz, in his account enumerates the sufferings to which these unhappy men were subjected. They were, 1st, bastinadoed. 2nd. Plunged in large vessels of cold water. 3rd. Placed under pressure till their eyes started out of their sockets. 4th. Their flesh, where most sensitive, was twisted and nipped till they went almost mad with agony. 5th. They were forced to stand upright for three whole days, and not suffered even to lean against a wall. Those who fell with exhaustion were goaded to rise again by the bayonets of the guard. 6th. They were dragged about by their ears, so that they were torn and bled. 7th. Thorns were driven up the quick of their nails on fingers and toes. 8th. Their beards were singed off, so that the skin was scorched and blistered. 9th. Flames were put under their noses so as to burn their nostrils. The French Consul--let his name go down to posterity steeped in ignominy--Count Ratti-Menton, was not yet satisfied. He was bent on finding the vials filled with the blood. Each of the seven questioned said he had not got one, but had given his vial to another. The last, Mussa Abul Afia, unable to endure his torments any longer, gave way, and professed his willingness to turn Mussulman. Nevertheless, he was again subjected to the scourge, and whipped till he named another confederate--the Chief Rabbi Jacob Antibi, as the man to whom the blood had been committed. Mussa's confession, committed to writing, was as follows:--"I am _commanded_ to say what I know relative to the murder of Father Thomas, and why I have submitted to become a Mussulman. It is, therefore, my duty to declare the truth. Jacob Antibi, Chief Rabbi, about a fortnight before the event, said to me--'You know that according to our religion we must have blood. I have already arranged with David Arari, to obtain it in the house of one of our people, and you must be present and bring me the blood.' I replied that I had not the nerve to see blood flow; whereupon, the Chief Rabbi answered that I could stand in the ante-chamber, and I would find Moses Salonichi and Joseph Laniado there. I then consented. On the 10th of the month, Achach, about an hour and a half before sun-down, as I was on my way to the synagogue, I met David Arari, who said to me: 'Come along to my house, you are wanted there.' I replied that I would come as soon as I had ended my prayers. 'No, no--come immediately!' he said. I obeyed. Then he told me that Father Thomas was in his house, and that he was to be sacrificed that evening. We went to his house. There we entered a newly-furnished apartment. Father Thomas lay bound in the midst of all there assembled. After sunset we adjourned to an unfurnished chamber, where David cut the throat of the monk. Aaron and Isaac Arari finished him. The blood was caught in a vat and then poured into a bottle, which was to be taken to the Chief Rabbi Jacob. I took the bottle and went to him. I found him in his court waiting for me. When he saw me enter, he retreated to his cabinet, and I followed him thither, saying, 'Here, I bring you what you desired.' He took the bottle and put it behind a book-case. Then I went home. I have forgotten to say that, when I left Arari's house, the body was undisturbed. I heard David and his brother say that they had made a bad choice of a victim, as Father Thomas was a priest, and a well-known individual, and would therefore be sought for, high and low. They answered that there was no fear, no one would betray what had taken place. The clothing would be now burnt, the body cut to pieces, and conveyed by the servants to the conduit, and what remained would be concealed under some secret stairs. I knew nothing about the servant of Father Thomas. The Wednesday following, I met David, Isaac, and Joseph Arari, near the shop of Bahal. Isaac asked David how all had gone on. David replied that all was done that was necessary, and that there was no cause for fear. As they began to talk together privately, I withdrew, as I was not one who associated with the wealthiest of the Jews, and the Arari were of that class. The blood is required by the Jews for the preparation of the Paschal bread. They have been often accused of the same, and been condemned on that account. They have a book called Serir Hadurut (no such a book really exists) which concerns this matter; now that the light of Islam has shone on me, I place myself under the protection of those who hold the power in their hands." Such was his confession. The French Consul, unable to find the blood, was bent on discovering more criminals; and the servant of David Arari, after further pressure, was ready to give further particulars. He said that, after the Father had been murdered, he was sent to a rich Israelite, Marad Farhi, to invite him to slaughter the servant of the Capuchin friar in the same way as his master had been slaughtered. When he took the message, he found the young merchant, Isaac Picciotto, present, and delivered his message before him. Next day this Picciotto and four other Jews, Marad Farhi, Meir, and Assan Farhi, and Aaron Stamboli, all men of wealth, came to his master's house, and informed David Arari that they had together murdered the Capuchin's serving-man in the house of Meir Farhi. On another occasion this same witness, Murad-el-Fallat, said that the murder of the servant took place in the house of David Arari; but no importance was attached in this remarkable case to contradictions in the evidence. Picciotto, as son of a former Austrian Consul, a nephew of the Consul at Aleppo, was able to take refuge under the protection of Merlato, the Austrian Consul at Damascus. On the demand of Count Ratti-Menton, he was placed on his trial, but proved an _alibi_; on the evening in question, he and his wife had been visiting an English gentleman, Mr. George Macson. Arari's servant now extended his revelations. He said that he had been present at the murder of the attendant on the Capuchin. This man had been bound and put to death by seven Jews, namely, by the four already mentioned, young Picciotto, Jacob Abul Afia, and Joseph Menachem Farhi. The French Consul was dissatisfied that Picciotto should escape. He demanded of the Austrian Consul that he should be delivered over to the Mussulman Court to be tortured like the rest into confession. The Austrian Consul was in a difficult position. He stood alone over against a fanatical Christian and an embittered Mohammedan mob, and in resistance to the Egyptian Government and the representative of France. But he did not hesitate, he absolutely refused to surrender Picciotto. The general excitement was now directed against the Consul; he was subjected to suspicion as a favourer of the murderers, as even incriminated in the murder. His house was surrounded by spies, and every one who entered or left it was an object of mistrust. All Damascus was in agitation; everyone sought to bring some evidence forward to help on the case against the Jews. According to one account, thirty-three--according to the report of the Austrian Consul, sixty-three Jewish children, of from four to ten years old, were seized, thrown into prison and tortured, to extract information from them as to the whereabouts of their parents and relations--those charged with the murder of the servant, and who had fled and concealed themselves. Those witnesses who had appeared before the court to testify to the innocence of the accused, were arrested, and treated with Oriental barbarity. Because Farach Katasch and Isaac Javoh had declared that they had seen Father Thomas on the day of the murder in another quarter of the town than the Ghetto, they were put to the torture. Isaac Javoh said he had seen Father Thomas on the road to Salachia, two miles from the Jews' quarter, and had there spoken to him. He was racked, and died on the rack. A boy admitted that he had noticed Father Thomas and his servant in another part of the town. For so saying, he was beaten with such barbarity that he died twenty-four hours after. A Jewish account from Beyrut says: "A Jew dedicated himself to martyrdom for the sanctity of the ever-blessed Name. He went before the Governor, and said to him, 'Is this justice you do? It is a slander that we employ blood for our Paschal bread; and that it is so is known to all civilized governments. You say that the barber, who is a Jew, confessed it. I reply that he did so only under the stress of torture. Very likely the Father was murdered by Christians or by Turks.' The Governor, and the dragoman of the French Consul, Baudin by name, retorted, 'What! you dare to charge the murder on Turks or Christians?' and he was ordered to be beaten and tortured to death. He was barbarously scourged and hideously tormented, and urged all the while to confess the truth. But he cried ever, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord thy God is one Lord!' and so crying he died." As the second murder, according to one account, was committed in the house of Meir Farhi, Count Ratti-Menton had the water conduits and drains torn up all round it, and in the drain near them was found a heap of bones, a bit of flesh, and a fragment of leather--according to one account a portion of a shoe, according to that of the Austrian Consul, a portion of a girdle. It had--supposing it to have belonged to the murdered man--been soaking for a month in the drain, nevertheless, the brother of the servant who had disappeared identified it as having belonged to the murdered man! Dr. Massari, Italian physician to Sheriff Pacha, and Dr. Rinaldo, a doctor practising in Damascus, declared that the bones were human remains, but they were examined by Dr. Yograssi, who proved them to be--sheep bones. One may judge from this what reliance can be placed on the assumption that the first collection of bones that were given Christian burial were those of a man, and of Father Thomas. As for the bit of flesh, it was thought to be a piece of liver, but whether of a human being or of a beast was uncertain or unascertained. The Jews' houses were now subjected to search. Count Ratti-Menton swept through the streets at the head of twenty sbirri, entering and ransacking houses at his own caprice, the Jews' houses first of all, and then such houses of Christians as were supposed to be open as a harbour of shelter to the persecuted Israelites. Thus one night he rushed not only into the house of, but even the women's bedrooms of a merchant, Aiub, who stood under Austrian protection, hunting after secreted Jews, an outrage, in popular opinion, even in the East. The Jews charged with the murder of the servant had not been secured. The greater number of the well-to-do Hebrews had fled the town. A hue-and-cry was set up, and the country round was searched. Their families were taken up and tortured into confessing where they were. A German traveller then in Damascus says that the prisons were crowded with unfortunates, and that the pen refuses to detail the torments to which they were subjected to wring from them the information required. The wife of Meir Farhi and their child were imprisoned, and the child bastinadoed before its mother's eyes. At the three hundredth blow the mother's heart gave way, and she betrayed the hiding-place of her husband. He was seized. The hippopotamus scourge was flourished over his head, and knowing what his fellows had suffered, he confessed himself guilty. Assan Farhi, who was caught in his hiding-place, was imprisoned for a week in the French Consulate, and then delivered over to Turkish justice. Bastinado and the rack convinced him of his guilt, but he found means to despatch from his dungeon a letter to Ibrahim Pacha protesting his innocence. It is as impossible as it is unnecessary to follow the story of the persecution in all its details. The circumstances have been given by various hands, and as names are not always recorded, it is not always possible to distinguish whether single cases are recorded by different writers with slight variations, or whether they are reporting different incidents in the long story. The porter of the Jews' quarters, a man of sixty, died under bastinado, to which he was subjected for no other crime than not confessing that he had seen the murdered men enter the Ghetto. In the meantime, whilst this chase after those accused of the second murder was going on, the seven merchants who had confessed to the murder of the Father had been lying in prison recovering from their wounds and bruises. As they recovered, the sense of their innocence became stronger in them than fear for the future and consideration of the past. They withdrew their confessions. Again were they beaten and tormented. Thenceforth they remained stedfast. Two of the seven, David Arari, aged eighty and Joseph Laniado, not much younger, died of their sufferings. Laniado had protested that he could bring evidence--the unimpeachable evidence of Christian merchants at Khasbin--that he had been with them at the time when it was pretended he had been engaged on the murder. But he died before these witnesses reached Damascus. Then Count Ratti-Menton pressed for the execution of the rest. So stood matters when Herr von Hailbronner, whose report on the whole case is both fullest and most reliable, for the sequence of events, arrived in Damascus. He took pains to collect all the most authentic information he could on every particular. Damascus was in the wildest commotion. All classes of the people were in a condition of fanatic excitement. The suffering caused by the pressure of the Egyptian government of Mohamed Ali, the threat of an Oriental war, the plague which had broken out in Syria, the quarantine, impeding all trade, were matters that were thrust into the background by the all-engrossing story of the murder and the persecution of the Jews. The condition of the Hebrews in Damascus became daily more precarious. The old antagonism, jealousy of their riches, hatred caused by extortionate usury, were roused and armed for revenge. The barber, though he had confessed that he was guilty of the murder, was allowed to go scot-free, because he had betrayed his confederates. What an encouragement was offered to the rabble to indulge in false witness against rich Jews, whose wealth was coveted! Mohamed Ali's government desired nothing better than the confiscation of their goods. A pack of ruffians sought occasion to extract money out of this persecution by bribes, or to purchase pardon for past offences by denouncing the innocent. It is well at this point to look a little closer at the French Consul, the Count Ratti-Menton. On him rests the guilt of this iniquitous proceeding, rather than on the Mussulman judges. He had been twice bankrupt when French Consul in Sicily. Then he had been sent as Consul to Tiflis, where his conduct had been so disreputable, that on the representation of the Russian Government he had been recalled. He had then been appointed Consul at Damascus. In spite of all this, and the discredit with which his conduct with regard to the Jews, on account of the murder of Father Thomas, had covered him, his part was warmly taken up by the Ultramontane Press, and the French Government did its utmost to shield him. M. Thiers even warmly defended him. The credit of France was thought to be at stake, and it was deemed advisable to stand by the agent of France, and make out a case for him as best might be. It is quite possible, it is probable, that he was thoroughly convinced that the Jews were guilty, but that does not justify his mode of procedure. It is possible also that bribes may--as was said--have been offered him by the Jews if he would desist from his persecution, but that he refused these bribes shows that he was either not an unredeemed rascal, or that he conceived he had gone too far to withdraw. The Turkish and Egyptian authorities acted as always has been and will be their manner, after their nature, and in their own interest. We expect of them nothing else, but that the representative of one of the most enlightened nations of Europe, a man professing himself to be a Christian, and civilized, a member of a noble house, should hound on the ignorant and superstitious, and give rein to all the worst passions of an Oriental rabble, against a helpless and harmless race, that has been oppressed, and ill-treated, and slandered for centuries, is never to be looked over and forgiven. The name of Ratti-Menton must go down branded to posterity; and it is to be regretted that M. Thiers should have allowed his love of his country to so carry him away as to induce him to throw the shield over a man of whose guilt he must have been perfectly aware, having full information in his hands. This shows us to what an extent Gallic vanity will blind the Gallic eye to the plain principles of truth and right. Ratti-Menton had his agents to assist him--Baudin, chief of his bureau at the Consulate; Francois Salins, a native of Aleppo, who acted as interpreter, spy, and guard to the Consulate; Father Tosti, a French Lazarist, who, according to the Austrian Consul, "seemed to find in this case an opportunity for avenging on the race the death of his Divine Master; also a Christian Arab, Sehibli Ayub, a man of bad character, who was well received by Ratti-Menton, because of his keenness as spy, and readiness as denunciator. What followed now passes all belief. After that countless poor Jews had been accused, beaten, tortured, and killed, it occurred to the judges that it would be as well to ascertain the motive for the crime. It had been said by those who had confessed that the Pater and his servant had been put to death in order to obtain their blood to mingle with the dough for the Paschal wafer. The disappearance of the two men took place on February 5th. Easter fell that year on April 18th, so that the blood would have to be preserved two months and a half. That was an inconsequence which neither the French Consul nor the Egyptian authorities stooped to consider. Orders were issued that the Talmud and other sacred books of the Jews should be explored to see whether, or rather where in them, the order was given that human blood should be mingled with the Paschal dough. When no such commands could be discovered, it was concluded that the editions presented for examination were purposely falsified. Now, there were distinct indications pointing in quite another direction, which, if followed, might have elucidated the case, and revealed the actual criminals. But these indications were in no case followed. Wildon Pieritz, an Evangelical Missionary, then in Damascus, as well as the Austrian Consul, agree in stating that three days before the disappearance of Father Thomas he was seen in violent altercation with a Turkish mule-driver, who was heard to swear he would be the death of the priest. The altercation was so violent that the servant of Father Thomas seized the mule-driver by the throat and maltreated him so that blood flowed--probably from his nose. Father Thomas lost his temper and cursed the mussulman and his religion. The scene created great commotion, and a number of Turks were very angry, amongst them was one, a merchant, Abu Yekhyeh, who distinguished himself. Wildon Pieritz in a letter to the _Journal de Smyrne_ on May 14th, 1840, declares that when the news of the disappearance of Father Thomas began to excite attention, this merchant, Abu Yekhyeh, hanged himself. We may well inquire how it was that none of these facts came to be noticed. The answer is to hand. Every witness that gave evidence which might exculpate the accused Jews, and turn attention in another direction, was beaten and tortured, consequently, those who could have revealed the truth were afraid to do so. Even among the Mohammedans complaints arose that the French Consul was acting in contravention to their law, and a feeling gradually grew that a great injustice was being committed--that the Jews were innocent. Few dared allow this in the first fever of popular excitement, but nevertheless it awoke and spread. At first the Austrian Consul had been subjected not to annoyance only, but to danger of life, so violent had been the popular feeling against him because of the protection he accorded to one of the accused. Fortunately Herr Merlato was a man of pluck. He was an old soldier who had distinguished himself as a marine officer. He not only resolutely protected young Picciotto, but he did his utmost to hinder the proceedings of Ratti-Menton; he invoked the assistance of the representatives of the other European Powers, and finally every Consul, except the French, agreed to unite with him in representations to their governments of the iniquitous proceedings of Ratti-Menton, and to use their influence with the Egyptian authorities to obtain the release of the unhappy accused. The bastinadoes and tortures now ceased. Merlato obtained the release of several of those who were in confinement; and finally the only Jews who remained in prison were the brothers Arari, Mussa Salonichi, and the renegade Abul Afia. Of the supposed murderers of the servant only the brothers Farhi were still held in chains. Matters were in this condition when the news of what had taken place at Damascus reached Europe and set all the Jews in commotion. Every effort was made by them, in Vienna, Leipzig, Paris and London, indeed in all the great cities of Europe, to convince the public of the absurdity of the charge, and to urge the governments to interfere in behalf of the sufferers. Finally all the representatives of the European governments at Alexandria, with the exception of the French, remonstrated with Mohamed Ali. They demanded that the investigation should be begun _de novo_; the French Consul-General, M. Cochelet, alone objected. But the action of the Jews of Europe had more influence with Mohamed Pacha than the representations of the Consuls. The house of Rothschild had taken the matter up, and Sir Moses Montefiore started from London, and M. Cremieux from Paris as a diplomatic embassy to the Viceroy at Alexandria to convince him, by such means as is most efficacious to an Oriental despot, of the innocence of the accused at Damascus. The arguments these delegates employed were so extremely satisfactory to the mind of Mohamed Pacha, that he quashed the charges against the Jews of Damascus, in spite of the vehement protest of M. Cochelet, the representative of France. When the Viceroy issued a firman ordering the incarcerated Jews to be discharged as innocent and suffered to abide in peace, M. Cochelet strove in vain to have the firman qualified or altered into a pardon. Thus ended one of the most scandalous cases of this century. Unfortunate, innocent men were tortured and put to death for a crime that had never been proved. That the two Europeans had been murdered was merely matter of conjecture. No bodies had been found. There was no evidence worth a rush against the accused, and no motive adduced deserving of grave consideration. "What inhumanities were committed during the eight months of this persecution," wrote Herr Von Hailbronner, "will never be wholly known. But it must call up a blush of shame in the face of an European to remember that Europeans provoked, favoured and stimulated it to the last." Authorities: "Morgenland and Abendland," by Herr Von Hailbronner,--who, as already mentioned, was present in Damascus through part of the time. "Damascia," by C. H. Löwenstein, Rödelheim, 1840. Reports and debates in the English Parliament at the time. The recently published Diaries of Sir Moses Montefiore, 2 vols., 1890; his Centenal Biography, 1884, vol. I., p. 213-288; and the article summing up the whole case in "Der Neue Pitaval," by Dr. J. C. Hitzig and Dr. W. Häring, 1857, Vol. I. Some Accusations against Jews. The story just given of the atrocious treatment of the Jews of Damascus on a false accusation naturally leads to a brief sketch of their treatment in the Middle Ages on similar charges. Not, indeed, that we can deal with all of the outrages committed on the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--that would require volumes--but only notice some of those which they have had to suffer on the same or analogous false charges. These false accusations range under three heads:-- 1. They have been charged with poisoning the wells when there has been an outbreak of plague and malignant fever. 2. They have been charged with stealing the Host and with stabbing it. 3. Lastly, with having committed murders in order to possess themselves of Christian blood, to mingle with the dough wherewith to make their Paschal cakes. We will leave the first case on one side altogether, and as we have already considered one instance--not by any means the last case of such an accusation levied against them in Europe--we will take it before we come to the instances of their being accused of stealing the Host. But _why_ should they be supposed to require Christian blood? One theory was that by common participation in it, the Jewish community was closer bound together; another, that it had a salutary medicinal effect. That is to say, having made up their minds in the Middle Ages that Jews did sacrifice human beings and drink their blood, they beat about for the explanation, and caught at any wild theory that was proposed.[4] [4] Antonius Bonfinius: Rer. Hungaricarum Dec., v. 1., 3, gives _four_ reasons. Thomas Cantipratensis, Lib. II., c. 29, gives another and preposterous one, not to be quoted even in Latin. John Dubravius in his Bohemian History, under the year 1305, relates: "On Good Friday the Jews committed an atrocious crime against a Christian man, for they stretched him naked to a cross in a concealed place, and then, standing round, spat on him, beat him, and did all they could to him which is recorded of their having done to Christ. This atrocious act was avenged by the people of Prague upon the Jews, with newly-invented punishments, and of their property that was confiscated, a monument was erected." But there were cases earlier than this. Perhaps the earliest is that of S. William of Norwich, in 1144; next, S. Richard of Paris, 1179; then S. Henry of Weissemburg, in Alsace, in 1220; then S. Hugh of Lincoln, in 1255, the case of which is recorded by Matthew Paris. A woman at Lincoln lost her son, a child eight years old. He was found in a well near a Jew's house. The Jew was arrested, and promised his life if he would accuse his brethren of the murder. He did so, but was hanged nevertheless. On this accusation ninety-two of the richest Jews in Lincoln were arrested, their goods seized to replenish the exhausted Royal exchequer; eighteen were hung forthwith, the rest were reserved in the Tower of London for a similar fate, but escaped through the intervention of the Franciscans, who, says Matthew Paris, were bribed by the Jews of England to obtain their release. On May 15th, 1256, thirty-five of the wretched Jews were released. We are not told what became of the remaining thirty-nine, whether they had been discharged as innocent, or died in prison. The story of little Hugh has been charmingly told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. A girl of seven years was found murdered at Pforzheim, in 1271; the Jews were accused, mobbed, maltreated, and executed. In 1286, a boy, name unknown, disappeared in Munich, with the same results to the Jews. In 1292, a boy of nine, at Constance--same results. In 1303 "the perfidious Jews, accustomed to the shedding of Christian blood," says Siffrid, priest of Meisen, in 1307, "cruelly murdered a certain scholar, named Conrad, son of a knight of Weissensee, in Thuringia, after that they had tortured him, cut all his sinews, and opened his veins. This took place before Easter. The Almighty, who is glorious in His Saints, however did not suffer the murder of the innocent boy to remain concealed, but destroyed the murderers, and adorned the martyrdom of their innocent victim with miracles. For when the said Jews had taken the body of the lad to many places in Thuringia to bury it secretly, by God's disposition they were always foiled in their attempt to make away with it. Wherefore, returning to Weissensee, they hung it to a vine. Then the truth having been revealed, the soldiers rushed out of the castle, and the citizens rose together with the common people, headed by Frederick, son of Albert Landgrave of Thuringia, and killed the Jews tumultuously." The story of St. Werner, the boy murdered by the Jews in 1287, at Wesel, on the Rhine, and buried at Bacharach, is well known. The lovely chapel erected over his body is now a ruin. But Werner was not the only boy martyred by the Jews on the Rhine. Another was St. Johanettus of Siegburg. St. Andrew of Heiligenwasser, near Innsbrück, is another case, in 1462; St. Ludwig of Ravensburg, in 1429, again another. Six boys were said to have been murdered by Jews at Ratisborn, in 1486; and several cases come to us out of Spanish history. In Poland, in 1598, in the village of Swinarzew, near Lositz, lived a peasant, Matthias Petrenioff, with his wife, Anna. They had several children, among them a boy named Adalbert. One day in Holy Week the boy was in the fields ploughing with his father. In the evening he was sent home, but instead of going home directly, he turned aside to visit the village of Woznik, in which lived a Jew, Mark, who owned a pawnshop, and had some mills. The son of Mark, named Aaron, and the son-in-law, Isaac, overtook the boy as they were returning to Wosnik in their cart and took him up into it. As the child did not return home, his father went in search of him, and hearing that he had been seen in the cart between the two Jews, he went to the house of Mark and inquired for him. Mark's wife said she had not seen him. The peasant now became frightened. He remembered the stories that floated about concerning the murder of Christian children by Jews, and concluded that his boy had been put to death by Mark and his co-religionists. At length the body of the child was discovered in a pond, probably gnawed by rats--but the marks on the body were at once supposed to be due to the weapons of the Jews. Immense excitement reigned in the district, and finally two servants of the Jews, both Christians, one Athanasia, belonging to the Greek Church, and another, Christina, a Latin, confessed that their masters had murdered the boy. He had been concealed in a cellar till the eve of the Passover, when the chief Jews of the district had been assembled, and the boy had been bled to death in their presence. The blood was put into small phials and each Jew provided with one at least. This led to a general arrest of the Jews, when the rack produced the requisite confession. Isaac, son-in-law of Mark, in whose house the butchery was said to have taken place, declared under torture that the Jews partook of the blood of Christians in bread, and also in wine, but he professed to be unable to account for the custom. Filled, however, with remorse for having thus falsely accused his people and his relatives, he hung himself in prison. Mark and Aaron were condemned to be torn to pieces alive; and, of course, the usual spoliation ensued. We have the account of this atrocious judicial murder from the pen of a Jesuit, Szembeck, who extracted the particulars from the acts of the court of Lublin, in which the case was tried, and from those drawn up by order of the bishop of the diocese of Luz, in which the murder occurred, and who obtained or sanctioned a canonization of the boy-martyr. Another still more famous case is that of S. Simeon, of Trent, in 1475, very full details of which are given in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, as the victim was formally canonized by Pope Benedict XIV., and the Roman Martyrology asserts the murder by the Jews in these terms:-- "At Trent (on March 24th) the martyrdom of S. Simeon, a little child, cruelly slain by the Jews, who was glorified afterwards by several miracles." The story as told and approved at the canonization was as follows: On Tuesday, in Holy Week, 1475, the Jews met to prepare for the approaching Passover, in the house of one of their number, named Samuel; and it was agreed between three of them, Samuel, Tobias, and Angelus, that a child should be crucified, as an act of revenge against the Christians who cruelly maltreated them. Their difficulty, however, was how to get one. Samuel sounded his servant Lazarus, and attempted to bribe him into procuring one, but the suggestion so scared the fellow that he ran away. On the Thursday, Tobias undertook to get the boy, and going out in the evening, whilst the people were in church, he prowled about till he found a child sitting on the threshold of his father's door, aged twenty-nine months, and named Simeon. The Jew began to coax the little fellow to follow him, and the boy, after being lured away, was led to the house of Samuel, whence during the night he was conveyed to the synagogue, where he was bled to death, and his body pierced with awls. All Friday the parents sought their son, but found him not. The Jews, alarmed at the proceedings of the magistrates, who had taken the matter up, consulted together what was to be done. It was resolved to put the body back into its clothes and throw it into the stream that ran under Samuel's window, but which was there crossed by a grating. Tobias was to go to the bishop and magistrates and inform them that a child's body was entangled in the grate. This was done. Thereupon John de Salis, the bishop, and James de Sporo, the governor, went to see the spot, had the body removed, and conveyed to the cathedral. As, according to popular superstition, blood was supposed to flow from the wound when a murderer drew near, the officers of justice were cautioned to observe the crowds as they passed. It was declared that blood exuded as Tobias approached. On the strength of this, the house of Samuel and the synagogue were examined, and it is asserted that blood and other traces of the butchery were found. The most eminent physicians were called to investigate the condition of the corpse, and they pronounced that the child had been strangled, and that the wounds were due to stabs. The popular voice now accusing the Jews, the magistrates seized on them and threw them into prison, and on the accusation of a renegade more than five of the Jews were sentenced to death. They were broken on the wheel and then burnt. The body of the child is enshrined at Trent, and a basin of the blood preserved as a relic in the cathedral. This must suffice for instances of accusations of murder for religious purposes brought against the Jews, in every case false. Another charge brought against them was Sacrilege. Fleury in his Ecclesiastical History gives one instance. "In the little town of Pulca, in Passau, a layman found a bloody Host before the house of a Jew, lying in the street upon some straw. The people thought that this Host was consecrated, and washed it and took it to the priest, that it might be taken to the church, where a crowd of devotees assembled, concluding that the blood had flowed miraculously from wounds dealt it by the Jews. On this supposition, and without any other examination, or any other judicial procedure, the Christians fell on the Jews, and killed several of them; but wiser heads judged that this was rather for the sake of pillage than to avenge a sacrilege. This conjecture was justified by a similar event, that took place a little while before at Neuburg, in the same diocese, where a certain clerk placed an unconsecrated Host steeped in blood in a church, but confessed afterwards before the bishop that he had dipped this Host in blood for the purpose of raising hostility against the Jews."[5] [5] Fleury, Hist. Eccl., vi. p. 110. In 1290, a Jew named Jonathan was accused in Paris of having thrown a Host into the Seine. It floated. Then he stabbed it with his knife, and blood flowed. The Jew was burnt alive, and the people clamored for a general persecution of the Hebrews. In Bavaria, in 1337, at Dechendorf, some Hosts were discovered which the Jews had stabbed. The unhappy Hebrews were burnt alive. In 1326, a Jew convert, a favourite of Count William the Good, of Flanders, was accused of having struck an image of the Madonna, which thereupon bled. The Jew was tortured, but denied the accusation. Then he was challenged to a duel by a fanatic. He, wholly unaccustomed to the use of weapons, succumbed. That sufficed to prove his guilt. He was burnt. In 1351, a Jew convert was accused, at Brussels, of having pretended, on three occasions, to communicate, in order that he might send the Hosts to his brethren at Cologne, who stabbed them, and blood flowed. The traveller who has been in Brussels must certainly have noticed the painted windows all down the nave of S. Gudule, in the side aisles, to left and right. They represent, in glowing colours, the story of the miraculous Hosts preserved in the chancel to the north of the choir, where seven red lamps burn perpetually before them. The story is as follows: In 1370, a rich Jew of Enghien bribed a converted Hebrew, named John of Louvain, for 60 pieces of gold, to steal for him some Hosts from the Chapel of S. Catherine. Hardly, however, had the Jew, Jonathan, received the wafers, before he was attacked by robbers and murdered. His wife, alarmed, and thinking that his death was due to the sacrilege, resolved to get rid of the wafers. It may have been remarked in the stories of murders by Jews, that they were represented as finding great difficulty in getting rid of the dead bodies. In these stories of sacrilege, no less difficulty was encountered in causing the disappearance of the Hosts. Moreover, the Jews invariably proceeded in the most roundabout and clumsy way, inviting discovery. The widow of the murdered Jonathan conveyed the Hosts to the synagogue at Brussels. There, on Good Friday, the Jews took advantage of the Hosts to stab them with their knives, in mockery of Christ and the Christian religion. But blood squirted from the transfixed wafers. In terror, they also resolved to get rid of the miraculous Hosts, and found no better means of so doing than bribing a renegade Jewess, named Catharine, to carry them to Cologne. They promised her twenty pieces of gold for her pains. She took the Hosts, but, troubled in conscience, revealed what she had undertaken to her confessor. The ecclesiastical authorities were informed, Catherine was arrested, imprisoned, and confessed. All the Jews dwelling in Brussels were taken up and tortured; but in spite of all torture refused to acknowledge their guilt. However, a chaplain of the prince, a man named Jean Morelli, pretended to have overheard a converted Jew say, "Why do not these dogs make a clean breast? They know that they are guilty." This man was that John of Louvain who had procured the theft of the wafers. He was seized. He at once confessed his participation in the crime. That sufficed. All the accused, he himself included, were condemned to death. They were executed with hideous cruelty; after having had their flesh torn off by red-hot pinchers, they were attached to stakes and burnt alive, on the Vigil of the Ascension, 1370. Every year a solemn procession of the Saint Sacrement de Miracle commemorates this atrocity, or the miracle which led to it. Unfortunately, there exists no doubt whatever as to the horrible execution of the Jews on the false charge of having stolen the Hosts, but there is very good reason for disbelieving altogether the story of the miracle of the bleeding Hosts. Now, it is somewhat remarkable that not a word is said about this miracle before 1435, that is to say, for 65 years, by any writer of the period and of the country. The very first mention of it is found in a Papal bull of that date, addressed to the Dean and Chapter of S. Gudule, relative to a petition made by them that, as they wanted money for the erection of a chapel to contain these Hosts, indulgences might be granted to those who would contribute thereto. The Pope granted their request. Now, it so happens that the official archives at Brussels contains two documents of the date, 1370, relative to this trial. The first of these is the register of the accounts of the receiver-general of the Duke of Brabant. In that are the items of expenditure for the burning of these Jews, a receipt, and the text is as follows: "Item, recepta de bonis dictorum judeorum, postquam combusti fuerant circa ascensionem Domini lxx, quæ defamata fuerant de sacramentis punicè et furtivè acceptis." That is to say, that a certain sum flowed into the Duke's exchequer from the goods of the Jews, burnt for having "guiltily and furtively obtained the Hosts." "Punice" is an odd word, but its signification is clear enough. Now, in 1581, on May 1st, the magistrates of Brussels forbade the exercise of the Catholic religion, in a proclamation in which, when mentioning certain frauds committed by the Roman Church, they speak of "The Sacrament of the Miracle, which," say they, "by documentary evidence can be proved never to have bled nor to have been stabbed." No question--they had seen this entry in which no mention is made of the stabbing--no allusion made to the bleeding. Moreover, in the same archives is the contemporary episcopal letter addressed to the Dean of S. Gudule on the subject of these Hosts. In this document there is no mention made by the bishop of the stabbing or of the miracle. It is stated that the Hosts were obtained by the Jews in order that they might insult and outrage them. It is curious that the letter should not specify their having done this, and done it effectually, with their knives and daggers. Most assuredly, also, had there been any suspicion of a miracle, the bishop would have referred to it in the letter relative to the custody of these very Hosts. After the whole fable of the stabbing and bleeding had grown up, no doubt applied to these Hosts from a preceding case of accusation against Jews, that of 1351, less than thirty years before, it was thought advisable, if not necessary, to produce some evidence in favour of the story; but as no such evidence was obtainable, it was manufactured in a very ingenious manner. The entry in the register of accounts was published by the Père Ydens, after a notary had been required to collate the text. This notary--his name was Van Asbroek--gave his testimony that he had made an exact and literal transcript of the entry. What he and the Père Ydens gave as their exact, literal transcript was "recepta de bonis dictorum Judoeorum ... quæ defamata fuerant de sacramen_to puncto_ et furtive accep_to_." Ingenious, but disingenuous. In the first place they altered "sacramentis" from plural into singular, and then, the adverb _punicè_, "guiltily," into _puncto_, stabbed. Subsequently, Father Ydens and his notary have been quoted and requoted as authoritative witnesses. However, the document is now in the Archives at Brussels, and has been lithographed from a photograph for the examination of such as have not the means of obtaining access to the original.[6] The last jubilee of this apocryphal miracle was celebrated at Brussels in July, 1870. [6] Le Jubilé d'un faux Miracle (extrait de la Revue de Belgique), Bruxelles 1870. The Coburg Mausoleum. At the east end of the garden of the Ducal residence of Coburg is a small, tastefully constructed mausoleum, adorned with allegorical subjects, in which are laid the remains of the deceased dukes. Near the mausoleum rise a stately oak, a clump of rhododendron, a cluster of acacias, and a group of yews and weeping-willows. The mausoleum is hidden from the palace by a plantation of young pines. The Castle of Coburg is one of the most interesting and best preserved in Germany. It stands on a height, above the little town, and contains much rich wood-carving of the 15th and 16th centuries. Below the height, but a little above the town, is the more modern residence of the Dukes Ehrenburg, erected in 1626 by the Italian architect Bonallisso, and finished in 1693. It has that character of perverse revolt against picturesqueness that marked all the edifices of the period. It has been restored, not in the best style, at the worst possible epoch, 1816. The south front remains least altered; it is adorned with a handsome gateway, over which is the inscription, "Fried ernährt, Unfried verzehrt"--not easily rendered in English:-- "Peace doth cherish-- Strife makes perish." The princes of Coburg by their worth and kindly behaviour have for a century drawn to them the hearts of their subjects, and hardly a princely house in Germany is, and has been, more respected and loved. Duke Franz died shortly after the battle of Jena. During his reign, by his thrift, geniality, and love of justice he had won to his person the affections of his people, though they resented the despotic character of his government under his Minister Kretschmann. He was twice married, but left issue only by the second wife, Augusta, a princess of Reuss, who inherited the piety and virtues which seem to be inrooted in that worthy house. Only a few weeks after her return from Brussels, where she had seen her son, recently crowned King of the Belgians, did the Duchess Augusta of Sachsen-Coburg die in her seventy-sixth year, November 16th, 1831. The admiration and love this admirable princess had inspired drew crowds to visit the body, as it lay in state in the residence at Coburg, prior to the funeral, which took place on the 19th, before day-break, by the light of torches. The funeral was attended by men and women of all classes eager to express their attachment to the deceased, and respect for the family. A great deal was said, and fabled, concerning this funeral. It was told and believed that the Dowager Duchess had been laid in the family vault adorned with her diamond rings and richest necklaces. She was the mother of kings, and the vulgar believed that every royal and princely house with which she was allied had contributed some jewel towards the decoration of her body. Her eldest son, Ernst I., succeeded his father in 1806 as Duke of Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld, and in 1826 became Duke of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. The second son, Ferdinand, married in 1816 the wealthiest heiress of Hungary, the Princess Rohary, and his son, Ferdinand, became in 1836 King of Portugal, and his grandson, Ferdinand, by his second son, is the present reigning Prince of Bulgaria. The third son, Leopold, married Charlotte, only daughter of George IV. of England, and in 1831 became King of the Belgians. Of the five daughters, the eldest was married to the Grand-Duke Constantine of Russia, the second married the Duke of Kent, in 1818, and was the mother of our Queen, Victoria. The third married Duke Alexander of Würtemberg. Among those who were present at the funeral of the Duchess Augusta was a Bavarian, named Andreas Stubenrauch, an artisan then at Coburg. He was the son of an armourer, followed his father's profession, and had settled at Coburg as locksmith. He was a peculiarly ugly man, with low but broad brow, dark-brown bristly hair, heavy eyebrows and small cunning grey eyes. His nose was a snub, very broad with huge nostrils, his complexion was pale; he had a large mouth, and big drooping underlip. His short stature, his lack of proportion in build, and his uncomely features, gave him the appearance of a half-witted man. But though he was not clever he was by no means a fool. His character was in accordance with his appearance. He was a sullen, ill-conditioned, intemperate man. Stubenrauch had been one of the crowd that had passed by the bed on which the Duchess lay in state, and had cast covetous eyes at the jewellery with which the body was adorned. He had also attended the funeral, and had come to the conclusion that the Duchess was buried with all the precious articles he had noticed about her, as exposed to view before the burial, and with a great deal more, which popular gossip asserted to have been laid in the coffin with her. The thought of all this waste of wealth clung to his mind, and Stubenrauch resolved to enter the mausoleum and rob the body. The position of the vault suited his plans, far removed and concealed from the palace, and he made little account of locks and bars, which were likely to prove small hindrances to an accomplished locksmith. To carry his plan into execution, he resolved on choosing the night of August 18-19, 1832. On this evening he sat drinking in a low tavern till 10 o'clock, when he left, returned to his lodgings, where he collected the tools he believed he would require, a candle and flint and steel, and then betook himself to the mausoleum. In the first place, he found it necessary to climb over a wall of boards that encircled the portion of the grounds where was the mausoleum, and then, when he stood before the building, he found that to effect an entrance would take him more time and give him more work than he had anticipated. The mausoleum was closed by an iron gate formed of strong bars eight feet high, radiating from a centre in a sort of semicircle and armed with sharp spikes. He found it impossible to open the lock, and he was therefore obliged to climb over the gate, regardless of the danger of tearing himself on the barbs. There was but a small space between the spikes and the arch of the entrance, but through this he managed to squeeze his way, and so reach the interior of the building, without doing himself any injury. Here he found a double stout oaken door in the floor that gave access to the vault. The two valves were so closely dovetailed into one another and fitted so exactly, that he found the utmost difficulty in getting a tool between them. He tried his false keys in vain on the lock, and for a long time his efforts to prise the lock open with a lever were equally futile. At length by means of a wedge he succeeded in breaking a way through the junction of the doors, into which he could insert a bar, and then he heaved at one valve with all his might, throwing his weight on the lever. It took him fully an hour before he could break open the door. Midnight struck as the valve, grating on its hinges, was thrown back. But now a new and unexpected difficulty presented itself. There was no flight of steps descending into the vault, as he had anticipated, and he did not know the depth of the lower pavement from where he stooped, and he was afraid to light a candle and let it down to explore the distance. But Stubenrauch was not a man to be dismayed by difficulties. He climbed back over the iron-spiked gates into the open air, and sought out a long and stout pole, with which to sound the depth, so as to know what measures he was to take to descend. Going into the Ducal orchard, he pulled up a pole to which a fruit tree was tied, and dragged it to the mausoleum, and with considerable difficulty got it through the gateway, which he again surmounted with caution and without injury to himself. Then, leaning over the opening, holding the pole in both hands, he endeavoured to feel the depth of the vault. In so doing he lost his balance, and the weight of the pole dragged him down, and he fell between two coffins some twelve feet below the floor of the upper chamber. There he lay for some little while unconscious, stunned by his fall. When he came to himself, he sat up, felt about with his hands to ascertain where he was, and considered what next should be done. Without a moment's thought as to how he was to escape from his position, about the possibility of which he was not in the smallest doubt, knowing as he did his own agility and readiness with expedients, he set to work to accomplish his undertaking. With composure Stubenrauch now struck a light and kindled the candle. When he had done this, he examined the interior of the vault, and the coffins he found there, so as to select the right one. Those of the Duchess Augusta and her husband the late Duke were very much alike, so much so that the ruffian had some difficulty in deciding which was the right one. He chose, however, correctly that which seemed freshest, and he tore off it the black cover. Under this he found the coffin very solid, fastened by two locks, which were so rusted that his tools would not turn in them. He had not his iron bar and other implements with him now; they were above on the floor of the upper chamber. With great difficulty he succeeded at length in breaking one of the hinges, and he was then able to snap the lower lock, whereas that at the top resisted all his efforts. However, the broken hinge and lock enabled him to lift the lid sufficiently for him to look inside. Now he hoped to be able to insert his hand, and remove all the jewellery he supposed was laid there with the dead lady. To his grievous disappointment he saw nothing save the fading remains of the Duchess, covered with a glimmering white mould, that seemed to him to be phosphorescent. The body was in black velvet, the white luminous hands crossed over the breast. Stubenrauch was not the man to feel either respect for the dead or fear of aught supernatural. With both hands he sustained the heavy lid of the coffin as he peered in, and the necessity for using both to support the weight prevented his profane hand from being laid on the remains of an august and pious princess. Stubenrauch did indeed try more than once to sustain the lid with one hand, that he might grope with the other for the treasures he fancied must be concealed there, but the moment he removed one hand the lid crashed down. Disappointed in his expectations, Stubenrauch now replaced the cover, and began to consider how he might escape. But now--and now only--did he discover that it was not possible for him to get out of the vault into which he had fallen. The pole on which he had placed his confidence was too short to reach to the opening above. Every effort made by Stubenrauch to scramble out failed. He was caught in a trap--and what a trap! Nemesis had fallen on the ruffian at once, on the scene of his crime, and condemned him to betray himself. Although now for the first time deadly fear came over him, as he afterward asserted, it was fear because he anticipated punishment from men, not any dread of the wrath of the spirits of those into whose domain he had entered. When he had convinced himself that escape was quite impossible, he submitted to the inevitable, lay down between the two coffins and tried to go to sleep; but, as he himself admitted, he was not able to sleep soundly. Morning broke--it was Sunday, and a special festival at Coburg, for it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession of the Duke, so that the town was in lively commotion, and park and palace were also in a stir. Stubenrauch sat up and waited in hopes of hearing someone draw near who could release him. About 9 o'clock in the morning he heard steps on the gravel, and at once began to shout for assistance. The person who had approached ran away in alarm, declaring that strange and unearthly noises issued from the Ducal mausoleum. The guard was apprised, but would not at first believe the report. At length one of the sentinels was despatched to the spot, and he returned speedily with the tidings that there certainly was a man in the vault. He had peered through the grating at the entrance and had seen the door broken open and a crowbar and other articles lying about. The gate was now opened, and Stubenrauch removed in the midst of an assembled crowd of angry and dismayed spectators. He was removed to prison, tried, and condemned to eighteen months with hard labour. That is not the end of the story. After his discharge, Stubenrauch never settled into regular work. In 1836 he was taken up for theft, and again on the same charge in 1844. In the year 1854 he was discovered dead in a little wood near his home; between the fingers of his right hand was a pinch of snuff, and in his left hand a pistol with which he had blown out his own brains. In his pockets were found a purse and a brandy bottle, both empty. Jean Aymon. Jean Aymon was born in Dauphiné, in 1661, of Catholic parents. He studied in the college of Grenoble. His family, loving him, neglected nothing which might contribute to the improvement of his mind, and the professors of Grenoble laboured to perfect their intelligent pupil in mathematics, languages, and history. From Grenoble, Aymon betook himself to Turin, where he studied theology and philosophy. But there was one thing neither parents nor professors were able to implant in the young man--a conscience. He was thoroughly well versed in all the intricacies of moral theology and the subtleties of the school-men; he regarded crime and sin as something deadly indeed, but deadly only to other persons. Theft was a mortal sin to every one but himself. Truth was a virtue to be strictly inculcated, but not to be practised in his own case. His parents, thinking he would grow out of this obliquity of moral vision, persisted in their scheme of education for the lad--probably the very worst which, with his peculiar bent of mind, they could have chosen for him. Having finished his studies at Turin, his evil star led him to Rome, where his talents soon drew attention to him, and Hercules de Berzet, Bishop of Saint Jean de Maurienne, in Savoy, named him chaplain, and had him ordained, by brief of Innocent XI., before the age fixed by the Council of Trent, "because of the probity of his life, his virtues and other merits!"--such were the reasons. Shortly after his installation as chaplain to the bishop, his patron entrusted him with a delicate case. De Berzet had lately been deep in an intrigue to obtain a cardinal's hat. He had been disappointed, and he was either bent on revenge, or, perhaps, hoped to frighten the Pope into giving him that which he had solicited in vain. He set to work, raking up all the scandal of the Papal household, and acting the spy upon all the movements of the familiars of the court. After a very little while, this worthy prelate had succeeded in gathering together enough material to make all the ears in Europe tingle, and this was put into the hands of the young priest to work into form for publication. As Aymon looked through these scandalous memoirs, he made his own reflections. "The publication of this will raise a storm, undoubtedly; but the first who will perish in it will be my patron, and all who sail in his boat." Aymon noticed that M. de Camus, Bishop of Grenoble, was most compromised by the papers in his hands, and would be most interested in their suppression. Aymon, without hesitation, tied up the bundle, put it in his pocket, and presented himself before the bishop, ready to make them over to him for a consideration. He was well received, as may be supposed, and in return for the papers was given a living in the diocese. But this did not satisfy the restless spirit of Aymon; he had imbibed a taste for intrigue, and there was no place like the Eternal City for indulging this taste. He was, moreover, dissatisfied with his benefice, and expected greater rewards for the service he had done to the Church. Innocent XI. received him well, and in 1687 appointed him his protonotary. Further he did not advance. At the Papal Court he made his observations, and whether it was that he was felt to be somewhat of a spy, or through some intrigue, his star began to set, when Aymon, too well aware that a falling man may sink very low, suddenly fled from Rome, crossed the border into Switzerland, and in a few days was a convert to the straitest sect of the Calvinists. But the Swiss are poor, and their ministers are in comfortable, though not lucrative positions. Holland was the paradise of Calvinism, and to Holland Aymon repaired. Here he obtained a cure of importance, and married a lady of rank. But even now, Aymon was not satisfied. Among the Protestants of the Low Countries there are no bishops, and no man can soar higher than the pulpit of a parish church. Aymon was convinced that he had climbed as high as he could in the Church of Calvin, and that he had a soul for something higher still. His next step was extraordinary enough. He wrote in December, 1705, to M. Clement, of the Bibliothèque du Roi, at Paris, stating that he had in his possession the "Herbal" of the celebrated Paul Hermann, in forty folio volumes, and that he offered it to the King for 3200 livres, a trifle over what it had cost him. He added that he was a renegade priest, who had sought rest in Protestantism, but had found none--nay! he had discovered it to be a hot-bed of every kind of vice, and that he yearned for the Church of his baptism. He hinted that he had made some discoveries of the utmost political importance, and that he would communicate them to the King if he could be provided with a passport. Clement made inquiries of the superintendent of the Jardin-Royal as to the expediency of purchasing the "Herbal," and received a reply in the negative. Aymon wrote again, saying little more of the "Herbal," and developing his schemes. He said that he had State secrets to confide to the Ministers of the Crown, besides which, he volunteered to compose a large and important work on the state of Protestantism, "full of proofs so authentic, and so numerous, that, if given to the light of day, as I purpose, it would probably not only restrain all those who meditate seceding from the Roman Church, but also would persuade all those, who are not blinded by their passions, to return to the Catholic faith." Clement, uncertain what to answer, showed these letters to some clergy of his acquaintance, and, acting on their advice, he presented them to M. de Pontchartrain, who communicated the proposal of Aymon to the King. A passport was immediately granted, and Aymon left Holland, assuring his congregation that he was going for a little while to Constantinople on important matters of religion. On his arrival in Paris, he presented himself before M. Clement, to assure him of the fervour of his zeal and the earnestness of his conversion. Clement received him cordially, and took him to Versailles to see M. de Pontchartrain. In this interview Aymon made great promises of being serviceable to the Church and to the State, by the revelations he was about to make; but M. de Pontchartrain treated his protestations very lightly, and handed him over to the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. The conference with the cardinal was long. The archbishop addressed a homily to the repentant sinner, who listened with hands crossed on his breast, his eyes bent to earth, and his cheeks suffused with tears. Aymon sighed forth that he had quitted the camp of the Amalekites for ever, and that he was determined to turn against them their own weapons. Clement, who was present, now stepped forward and reminded the prelate that Aymon had abandoned a lucrative situation, at the dictates of conscience, and that though he might, of course, expect to be rewarded hereafter, still that remuneration in this life would not interfere with these future prospects. The cardinal quite approved of this sentiment, and promised to see what he could do for the convert. In the meantime, he wished Aymon to spend a retreat in some religious house, where he could meditate on the error of his past life, and expiate, as far as in him lay, his late delinquencies by rigorous penances. Aymon thanked the cardinal for thus, unasked, granting him the request which was uppermost in his thoughts, and then begged to be allowed the use of the Royal Library, in which to pursue his theological researches, and to examine the documents which were necessary for the execution of his design of writing a triumphant vindication of the Catholic faith, and a complete exposure of the abominations of Protestantism. M. Clement readily accorded this, at the request of the archbishop, and Jean Aymon was sent to the seminary of the Missions Etrangères. Aymon now appeared as a model penitent. He spent a considerable part of the night in prayer before the altar, he was punctual in his attendance on all the public exercises of religion, and his conversation, morning, noon, and night, was on the errors and disorders of the Calvinist Church. When not engaged in devotions, he was at the library, where he was indefatigable in his research among manuscripts which could throw light on the subject upon which he was engaged. Indeed, his enthusiasm and his zeal for discoveries wearied the assistants. Clement himself was occupied upon the catalogues, and was unable to dance attendance on Aymon; and the assistants soon learned to regard him as a bookworm who would keep them on the run, supplying him with fresh materials, if they did not leave him to do pretty much what he liked. Time passed, and Aymon heard no more of the reward promised by the cardinal. He began to murmur, and to pour his complaints into the reluctant ear of Clement, who soon became so tired of hearing them, that the appearance of Aymon's discontented face in the library was a signal for him to plead business and hurry into another apartment. Aymon declared that he should most positively publish nothing till the king or the cardinal made up to him the losses he had endured by resigning his post in Holland. All of a sudden, to Clement's great relief, Aymon disappeared from the library. At first he was satisfied to be freed from him, and made no inquiries; but after a while, hearing that he had also left the Missions Etrangères, he made search for the missing man. He was nowhere to be found. About this time Aymon's congregation at the Hague were gratified by the return of their pastor, not much bronzed by exposure to the sun of Constantinople, certainly, but with his trunks well-stocked with valuable MSS. A little while after, M. Clement received the following note from a French agent resident at the Hague:-- "Information is required relative to a certain Aymon, who says that he was chaplain to M. le Cardinal de Camus, and apostolic protonotary. After having lived some while at the Hague, whither he had come from Switzerland, where he had embraced the so-called Reformed religion, he disappeared, and it was ascertained that he was at Paris, whither he had taken an Arabic Koran in MS., which he had stolen from a bookseller at the Hague. He has only lately returned, laden with spoils--thefts, one would rather say, which he must have made at Paris, where he has been spending five or six months in some publicity.... He has with him the Acts of the last Council of Jerusalem held by the Greeks on the subject of Transubstantiation, and some other documents supposed to be stolen from the Bibliothèque du Roi. The man has powerful supporters in this country.--March 10, 1707." The "Council of Jerusalem" was one of the most valuable MSS. of the library--and it was in the hands of Aymon! Clement flew to the cabinet where this inestimable treasure was preserved under lock and key. The cabinet was safely enough locked--but alas! the MS. was no longer there. A few days after, Clement heard that Aymon had crossed the frontier with several heavy boxes, which, on inquiry, proved to be full of books. What volumes were they? The collections in the Royal Library consisted of 12,500 MSS. The whole had to be gone through. It was soon ascertained that another missing book was the original Italian despatches and letters of Carlo Visconti, Apostolic Nuncio at the Council of Trent. There was no time to be lost. Clement wrote to the Hague to claim the stolen volumes, and to institute legal proceedings for their recovery, before the collection could be dispersed, and he appointed, with full powers, William de Voys, bookseller at the Hague, to seize the two volumes said to be in the possession of Aymon. A little while after some more MSS. volumes were missed; they were "The Italian Letters of Prospero S Croce, Nuncio of Pius IV," "The Embassy of the Bishop of Angoulême to Rome in 1560-4," "Le Registre des taxes de la Chancellerie Romaine," "Dialogo politico sopra i tumulti di Francia," nine Chinese MSS., a copy of the Gospels of high antiquity in uncial characters, another copy of the Gospels, no less valuable, and the Epistles of S. Paul, also very ancient. Shortly after this, two Swiss, passing through the Hague, were shown by Aymon some MSS. which agreed with those mentioned as lost from the Royal Library; but besides these, they saw numerous loose sheets, inscribed with letters of gold, and apparently belonging to a MS. of the Bible. Clement had now to go through each MS. in the library and find what had been subtracted from them. Fourteen sheets were gone from the celebrated Bible of S. Denys. From the Pauline Epistles and Apocalypse, a MS. of the seventh century, and one of the most valuable treasures of the library, thirty-five sheets had been cut. There were other losses of less importance. Whilst Clement was making these discoveries, De Voys brought an action against Aymon for the recovery of the "Council of Jerusalem" and the "Letters of Visconti." Jean Aymon was not, however, a man to be despoiled of what he had once got. He knew his position perfectly, and he knew the temper of those around him. He was well aware that in order to gain his cause he had only to excite popular passion. His judges were enemies to both France and Catholicism, he had but to make them believe that a plot was formed against him by French Papists for obtaining possession of certain MSS. which he had, and which contained a harvest of scandals and revelations overwhelming to Catholics, and he knew that his cause was safe. He accordingly published a defence, bearing the following title:--"Letter of the Sieur Aymon, Minister of the Holy Gospel, to M. N., Professor of Theology, to inform people of honour and savants of the extraordinary frauds of certain Papistical doctors and of the vast efforts they are now making, along with some perverted Protestants, who are striving together to ruin, by their impostures, the Sieur Aymon, and to deprive him of several MSS., &c."--La Haye, dated 1707. Aymon in his pamphlet took high moral ground. He was not pleading his own cause. Persecuted, hunted down by Papists, by enemies of the Republic and of the religion of Christ, he scorned their calumnies and despised their rage. He would bow under the storm, he would endure the persecution cheerfully--for "Blessed are those that are persecuted for righteousness' sake;" but higher interests were at stake than his own fair fame. For himself he cared little; for the Protestant faith he cared everything. If the Papists obtained their suit, they would wrest from his grasp documents most compromising to themselves. They would leave no stone unturned to secure them--they _dare not_ leave them in the hands of a Protestant pastor. Their story of the "Acts of the Council of Jerusalem" was false. They said that it had been obtained by Olier de Nanteuil, Ambassador of France at Constantinople, in 1672, and had been transmitted to Paris, where Arnauld had seen and made use of it in preparing his great work on the "Perpetuity of the Faith." They further said that the Bibliothèque du Roi had obtained it in 1696. On the other hand, Aymon asserted that Arnauld had falsified the text in his treatise on the "Perpetuity of the Faith," and that, not daring to let his fraud appear, he had never given the MS. to the Royal Library, but had committed it to a Benedictine monk of S. Maur, who had assisted him in falsifying it and making an incorrect translation. This monk would never have surrendered the MS. but that conscience had given him no rest till he had transmitted it to one who would know how to use it aright. He, Aymon, had solemnly promised never to divulge the name of this monk, and even though he and the Protestant cause were to suffer for it, that promise should be held sacred. He challenged the library of the King to prove its claim to the "Council of Jerusalem!" All books in the Bibliothèque du Roi have the seal of the library on them. This volume had three seals--that of the Sultan, that of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and that of Olier de Nanteuil; but he defied any one to see the library mark on its cover, or on any of its sheets. Aymon wound up his audacious pamphlet by prophesying that the Papists of France would not be satisfied with this claim, but would advance many others, for they knew that in his hands were documents of the utmost importance to them to conceal. Aymon was too clever for Clement: he had mixed up truth with fiction in such a way that the points which Clement had to admit tended to make even those who were not bigoted hesitate about condemning Aymon. Clement replied to this letter by stating the whole story of Aymon's deception of the Cardinal de Noailles and others. With regard to the "Council of Jerusalem," it was false that it had ever been in a Benedicient monastery. "It is true," he said, "that in the Monastery of S. Germain-des-Prés there are documents relating to the controversies between the Catholics and Greek schismatics, but they are all in French." He produced an attestation, signed by the prior, to the effect that the MS. in question had never been within the walls of his monastery. Clement was obliged to allow that a Benedictine monk had been employed by Arnauld to translate the text of the Council; he even found him out, his name was Michel Foucquère; he was still alive, and the librarian made him affirm in writing that he had restored the volume, on the completion of his translation, to Dom Luc d'Achery. Clement sent a copy of the register in the library, which related how and when the volume had come into the possession of the King. It was true that it bore no library seal, but that was through an oversight. Aymon wrote a second pamphlet, exposing Clement more completely, pointing out the concessions he was obliged to make, and finally, in indignant terms, hurling back on him the base assertion made to injure him in the eyes of an enlightened Protestant public, that he had ever treated with the government or clergy of Paris relative to a secession to the ranks of Popery. But that he had been to Paris; that he had met the Cardinal Archbishop, he admitted; but on what ground? He had met him and twenty-four prelates besides, gathered in solemn conclave, and had lifted up his voice in testimony against them; had disputed with them, and, with the Word of God in his mouth, had put them all to silence! No idea of his ever leaving the reformed faith had ever entered his head. No! he had been on a mission to the Papists of France, to open their eyes and to convert them. The news of the robbery had, however, reached the ears of the King, Louis XIV., and he instructed M. de Torcy to demand on the part of Government the restitution of the stolen MSS. M. de Torcy first wrote to a M. Hennequin at Rotterdam, who replied that Aymon had justified himself before the Council of State from the imputations cast upon him. He had been interrogated, not upon the theft committed in Paris, but on his journey to France. Aymon had proved that this expedition had been undertaken with excellent intentions, and had been attended with supreme success, since he had returned laden with manuscripts the publication of which would cause the greatest confusion in the Catholic camp. Hennequin added, that after having been deprived of his stipend, as suspected, on it having been ascertained that he had visited Paris instead of Constantinople, Aymon, having cleared his character, had recovered it. Such was the first result of the intervention of Louis XIV. in this affair. "The stamp of the Royal Library is on all the MSS., except the 'Council of Jerusalem,'" said Clement. "Let the judges insist on examining the books in the possession of Aymon, and all doubt as to the theft will be removed." But this the judges refused to do. It was pretended that Aymon was persecuted; it was the duty of the Netherland Government to protect a subject from persecution. He had made discovries, and the Catholics dreaded the publication of his discoveries, therefore a deep plot had been laid to ruin him. Aymon had now formed around him a powerful party, and the Calvinist preachers took his side unanimously. It was enough to read the titles of the books stolen to be certain that they contained curious details on the affairs which agitated Catholics and Protestants from the sixteenth century. All that the Dutch authorities cared for now was to find some excuse for retaining these important papers, and the inquiry was mainly directed to the proceedings of Aymon in France. If, as it was said, he had gone thither to abjure Calvinism and betray his brethren, he deserved reprimand, but if, on the other hand, he had penetrated the camp of the enemy to defy it, and to witness a good confession in the heart of the foe, he deserved a crown. Clement, to display Aymon in his true colours, acting on the advice of the Minister, sent copies of Aymon's letters. It was not thought that the good faith of the French administration would be doubted. Aymon swore that the letters were not his own, but that they had been fabricated by the Government; and he offered to stake his head on the truth of what he said. At the same time he dared De Torcy to produce the originals. He had guessed aright: he knew exactly how far he could go. The Dutch court actually questioned the good faith of these copies, and demanded the originals. This, as Aymon had expected, was taken by De Torcy as an insult, and all further communication on the subject was abruptly stopped. It was a clever move of Aymon. He inverted by one bold stroke the relative positions of himself and his accuser: the judges at the Hague required M. de Torcy to re-establish his own honour before proceeding with the question of Aymon's culpability. In short, they supposed that one of the Ministers of the Crown, for the sake of ruining a Protestant refugee, had deliberately committed forgery. The matter was dropped. After a while Aymon published translations of some of the MSS. in his possession, and those who had expected great results were disappointed. In the meantime poor Clement died, heart-broken at the losses of the library committed to his care. At last the Dutch Government, after the publication of Aymon's book, and after renewed negotiation, restored the "Council of Jerusalem" to the Bibliothèque du Roi. It still bears traces of the mutilations and additions of Aymon. In 1710, the imposter published the letters of Prospero S. Croce, which he said he had copied in the Vatican, but which he had in fact stolen from the Royal Library. In 1716 he published other stolen papers. Clement was succeeded by the Abbé de Targny, who made vain attempts to recover the lost treasures. The Abbé Bignon succeeded De Targny, and he discovered fresh losses. Aymon had stolen Arabic books as well as Greek and Italian MSS. There was no chance of recovering the lost works through the courts of law, and Bignon contented himself with writing to Holland, England, and Germany to inquire whether any of the MSS. had been bought there. The Baron von Stocks wrote to say that he had purchased some leaves of the Epistles of S. Paul, some pages of the S. Denis Bible, and an Arabic volume from Aymon for a hundred florins, and that he would return them to the library for that sum. They were recovered in March, 1720. About the same time Mr. Bentley, librarian to the King of England, announced that some more of the pages from the Epistles of S. Paul were in Lord Harley's library; and that the Duke of Sunderland had purchased various MSS. at the Hague from Aymon. In giving this information to the Abbé Bignon, Mr. Bentley entreated him not to mention the source of his information. M. de Bozé thereupon resolved to visit England and endeavour to recover the MSS. But he was detained by various causes. In 1729, Earl Middleton offered, on the part of Lord Harley, to return the thirty-four leaves of the Epistles in his possession, asking only in return an acknowledgment sealed with the grand seal. Cardinal Fleury, finding that the Royal signature could hardly be employed for such a purpose, wrote in the King's name a letter to the Earl of Oxford of a flattering nature, and the lost MSS. were restored in September, 1729. Those in the Sunderland collection have not, I believe, been returned. And what became of Aymon? In 1718 he inhabited the Chateau of Riswyck. Thence he sent to the brothers Wetstein, publishers at Amsterdam, the proofs of his edition of the letters of Visconti. It appeared in 1719 in two 12mo volumes, under the title "Lettres, Anecdotes, et Mémoires historiques du nonce Visconti, Cardinel Préconisé et Ministre Secret de Pie IV. et de ses créatures." The date of his death is not known. Authority: Hauréau, J. Singularités Historiques et Litéraires. Paris, 1881. The Patarines of Milan. I. In the eleventh century, nearly all the clergy in the north of Italy were married.[7] It was the same in Sicily, and it had been the same in Rome,[8] but there the authority and presence of the Popes had sufficed to convert open marriage into secret concubinage. [7] "Cuncti fere cum publicis uxoribus ... ducebant vitam." "Et ipsi, ut cernitur, sicut laici, palam uxores ducunt."--_Andr. Strum. "Vit. Arialdi."_ "Quis clericorum non esset uxoratus vel concubinarius?"--_Andr. Strum. "Vit. S. Joan. Gualberti."_ [8] "Coeperunt ipsi presbyteri et diacones laicorum more uxores ducere suscepsosque filios hæredes relinquere. Nonnulli etiam episcoporum verecund â omni contemptâ, cum uxoribus domo simul in unâ habitare."--_Victor Papa "in Dialog."_ But concubinage did not in those times mean exactly what it means now. A _concubina_ was an _uxor_ in an inferior degree; the woman was married in both cases with the ring and religious rite, but the children of the concubine could not inherit legally the possessions of their father. When priests were without wives, concubines were tolerated wives without the legal status of wives, lest on the death of the priest his children should claim and alienate to their own use property belonging to the Church. In noble and royal families it was sometimes the same, lest estates should be dismembered. On the death of a wife, her place was occupied by a concubine, and the sons of the latter could not dispute inheritance with the sons of the former. Nor did the Church look sternly on the concubine. In the first Toledian Council a canon was passed with regard to communicating those who had one wife or one concubine;--such were not to be excluded from the Lord's Table,[9] so long only as each man had but one wife or concubine, and the union was perpetual. [9] "Qui unius mulieris, aut uxoris, aut concubinæ (ut ei placuerit) sit conjunctione contentus."--1st Conc. of Toledo, can. 17. "Hæ quippe, licet nec uxoribus, nec Reginarum decore et privilegiis gaudebant, erant tamen veræ uxores," say the Bollandist Fathers, and add, that it is a vulgar error "Concubinæ appellationem solis iis tribuere, quæ corporis sui usum uni viro commodant, nullo interim legitimo nexu devinctæ."--Acta SS., Jun. T. L. p. 178. But, though concubinage was universal among the clergy in Italy, at Milan the priests openly, boldly claimed for their wives a position as honourable as could be accorded them; and they asserted without fear of contradiction that their privilege had received the sanction of the great Ambrose himself. Married bishops had been common, and saintly married prelates not unknown. St. Severus of Ravenna had a wife and daughter, and though the late biographer asserts that he lived with his wife as with a sister after he became a bishop, this statement is probably made to get over an awkward fact.[10] When he was about to die, he went to the tomb where his wife and daughter lay, and had the stone removed. Then he addressed them thus--"My dear ones, with whom I lived so long in love, make room for me, for this is my grave, and in death we shall not be divided." Thereupon he descended into the grave, laid himself between his wife and daughter, and died. St. Heribert, Archbishop of Milan, had been a married man with a wife esteemed for her virtues.[11] [10] It is the same with St. Gregory, Nyssen, Baronius, Alban, Butler, and other modern Hagiographers make this assertion boldly, but there is not a shadow of evidence, in any ancient authorities for his life, that this was the case. [11] "Hic Archiepiscopus habuit uxorem nobilem mulierem; quæ donavit dotem suam monasterii S. Dionysii, quæ usque hodie Uxoria dicitur."--_Calvaneus Fiamma, sub ann. 1040._ By all accounts, friendly and hostile, the Lombard priests were married openly, legally, with religious rite, exchange of ring, and notarial deed. There was no shame felt, no supposition entertained that such was an offence.[12] [12] "Nec vos terreat," writes St. Peter Damiani to the wives of the clergy "quod forte, non dicam fidei, sed perfidiæ vos annulus subarrhavit; quod rata et monimenta dotalia notarius quasi matrimonii jure conscripserit: quod juramentum ad confirmandam quodammodo conjugii copulam utrinque processit. Ignorantes quia pro uniuscujusque fugaci voluptate concubitus mlle annorum negotiantur incendium." How was this inveterate custom to be broken through? How the open, honest marriage to be perverted into clandestine union? For to abolish it wholly was beyond the power of the Popes and Councils. It was in vain to appeal to the bishops, they sympathised with their clergy. It was in vain to invoke the secular arm; the emperors, the podestas, supported the parish-priests in their contumacious adherence to immemorial privilege. To carry through the reform on which they were bent, to utterly abolish the marriage of the clergy, the appeal must be made to the people. In Milan this was practicable, for the laity, at least the lower rabble, were deeply tinged with Patarinism, and bore a grudge against the clergy, who had been foremost in bringing the luckless heretics to the rack and the flames; and one of the most cherished doctrines of the Patarines was the unlawfulness of marriage. What if this anti-connubial prejudice could be enlisted by the strict reformers of the Church, and turned to expend its fury on the clergy who refused to listen to the expostulations of the Holy Father? The Patarines, whom the Popes were about to enlist in their cause against the Ambrosian clergy, already swarmed in Italy. Of their origin and tenets we must say a word. It is a curious fact that, instead of Paganism affecting Christianity in the earliest ages of the Church, it was Christianity which affected Paganism, and that not the Greek and Roman idolatry, which was rotten through and through, but the far subtler and more mystical heathenism of Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Mesopotamia. The numerous Gnostic sects, so called from their claim to be the possessors of the true _gnosis_, or knowledge of wisdom, were not, save in the rarest cases, of Christian origin. They were Pagan philosophical schools which had adopted and incorporated various Christian ideas. They worked up Biblical names and notions into the strange new creeds they devised, and, according as they blended more or less of Christian teaching with their own, they drew to themselves disciples of various tempers. Manes, who flourished in the middle of the third century, a temporary and nominal convert to the Gospel, blended some of these elder Gnostic systems with the Persian doctrines of Zoroaster, added to a somewhat larger element of Christianity than his predecessors had chosen to adopt. His doctrines spread and gained an extensive and lasting hold on the minds of men, suppressed repeatedly, but never disappearing wholly, adopting fresh names, emerging in new countries, exhibiting an irrepressible vitality, which confounded the Popes and Churchmen from the third to the tenth centuries. The tradition of Western Manicheism breaks off about the sixth century; but in the East, under the name of Paulicians, the adherents of Manichean doctrines endured savage persecutions during two whole centuries, and spread, as they fled from the sword and stake in the East, over Europe, entering it in two streams--one by Bulgaria, Servia, and Croatia, to break out in the wild fanaticism of the Taborites under Zisca of the Flail; the other, by way of the sea, inundating northern Italy and Provence. In Piedmont it obtained the name of Patarinism; in Provence, of Albigensianism. With Oriental Manicheism, the Patarines and Albigenses of the West held that there were two co-equal conflicting principles of good and evil; that matter was eternal, and waged everlasting war against spirit. Their moral life was strict and severe. They fasted, dressed in coarse clothing, and hardly, reluctantly suffered marriage to the weaker, inferior disciples. It was absolutely forbidden to those who were, or esteemed themselves to be, perfect. Already, in Milan, St Heribert, the married archbishop, had kindled fires, and cast these denouncers of wedlock into them. In 1031 the heretics held the castle of Montforte, in the diocese of Asti. They were questioned: they declared themselves ready to witness to their faith by their blood. They esteemed virginity, and lived in chastity with their wives, never touched meat, and prayed incessantly. They had their goods in common. Their castle stood a siege. It was at length captured by the Archbishop. In the market-place were raised a cross on one side, a blazing pyre on the other. The Patarines were brought forth, commanded to cast themselves before the cross, confess themselves to be heretics, or plunge into the flames. A few knelt to the cross; the greater number covered their faces, rushed into the fire, and were consumed.[13] [13] Landulf Sen. ii. c. 27. St. Augustine, in his book on Heresies, had already described these heretics. He, who had been involved in the fascinating wiles of Manicheism, could not be ignorant of them. He calls them Paternians, or Venustians, and says that they regarded the flesh as the work of the devil--that is, of the evil principle, because made of matter. In the eleventh century, in Lombardy, they are called Patarines, Patrins, or Cathari. Muratori says that they derived their name from the part of the town of Milan in which they swarmed, near the Contrada di Patari; but it is more probable that the quarter was called after them. In 1074 Gregory VII. in solemn conclave will bless them altogether, by name, as the champions of the Holy See, and of the Truth; in 1179 Alexander III. will anathematise them altogether, as heretics meet to be burned. Frederick II., when seeking reconciliation with Honorius III. and Gregory IX., will be never weary of offering hecatombs of Patarines, in token of his orthodoxy. Ariald, a native of Cuzago, a village near Milan, of ignoble birth, in deacon's orders, was chosen for the dangerous expedient of enlisting the Patarine heretics against the orthodox but relaxed clergy of that city. Milan, said a proverb, was famous for its clergy; Ravenna for its churches. In morals, in learning, in exact observance of their religious duties, the clergy of Milan were prominent among the priests of Lombardy. But they were all married. The Popes could expect no support from the Archbishop, Guido Vavasour; none from the Emperor Henry IV., then a child. Ariald was a woman-hater from infancy, deeply tinged with Patarinism. We are told that even as a little boy the sight of his sisters was odious to him.[14] He began to preach in Milan in 1057, and the populace was at once set on fire[15] by his sermons. They applauded vociferously his declaration that the married clergy were no longer to be treated as priests, but as "the enemies of God, and the deceivers of souls." [14] For authorities we have Andrew of Vallombrosa, _d._ A.D. 1170, a disciple of Ariald. He was a native of Parma. He afterwards went to Florence, where he was mixed up with the riots occasioned by St. John Gualberto in 1063. He joined the Order of Vallombrosa, and became Abbot of Strumi. At least, I judge, and so do the Bollandists, that Andrew of Vallombrosa and Andrew of Strumi are the same. [15] "Plebs fere universa sic est accensa." Then up rose from among the mob a clerk named Landulf, a man of loud voice and vehement gesture, and offered to join Ariald in his crusade. The crowd, or, at least, a part of it, enthusiastically cheered; another part of the audience, disapproving, deeming it an explosion of long-suppressed Manicheism, which would meet with stern repression, thought it prudent to withdraw. A layman of fortune, named Nazarius, offered his substance to advance the cause, and his house as a harbour for its apostles. The sermon was followed by a tumult. The whole city was in an uproar, and the married clergy were threatened or maltreated by the mob. Guido Vavasour de Velati, the Archbishop, was obliged to interfere. He summoned Ariald and Landulf before him, and remonstrated. "It is unseemly for a priest to denounce priests. It is impolitic for him to stir up tumult against his brethren. Let not brothers condemn brothers, for whose salvation Christ died." Then turning to Landulf, "Why do not you return to your own wife and children whom you have deserted, and live with them as heretofore, and set an example of peace and order? Cast the beam out of thine own eye, before thou pluckest motes out of the eyes of thy brethren. If they have done wrong, reprove them privately, but do not storm against them before all the people." He concluded by affirming the lawfulness of priests marrying, and insisted on the cessation of the contest.[16] Ariald obstinately refused to desist. "Private expostulation is in vain. As for obstinate disorders you apply fire and steel, so for this abuse we must have recourse to desperate remedies." [16] "Hæc cum Guido placide dixisset; eo finem orationis dixerit, ut sacerdotibus fas esset dicere uxores ducere."--_Alicatus, "Vit. Arialdi."_ He left the Archbishop to renew his appeals to the people. But dreading lest Guido should use force to restrain him, Ariald invoked the support of Anselm de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, and received promise of his countenance and advocacy at Rome. Guido Vavasour had succeeded the married Archbishop Heribert in 1040. His election had not satisfied the people, who had chosen, and proposed for consecration, four priests, one of whom the nobles were expected to select. But the nobles rejected the popular candidates, and set up in their place Guido Vavasour, and his nomination was ratified by the Emperor and by the Pope. He was afterwards, as we shall see, charged with having bribed Henry III. to give him the See, but was acquitted of the charge, which was denounced as unfounded by Leo IX. in 1059. The people, in token of their resentment, refused to be present at the first mass he sang. "He is a country bumpkin," said they. "Faugh! he smells of the cow-house."[17] Consequently there was simmering discontent against the Archbishop for Ariald to work upon; he could unite the lower people, whose wishes had been disregarded by the nobles, with the Patarines, who had been haled before ecclesiastical courts for their heresy, in one common insurrection against the clergy and the pontiff. [17] Arnulf., Gesta Archiepisc. Mediol. ap. Pertz, x. p. 17. According to Landulf the elder, a strong partisan of the Archbishop, another element of discontent was united to those above enumerated. The clergy of Milan had oppressed the country people. The Church had estates outside of Milan, vine and olive yards and corn-fields. The clergy had been harsh in exacting feudal rights and legal dues. Ariald, as a native of a country village, knew the temper of the peasants, and their readiness to resent these extortions. Ariald worked upon the country-folk; Landulf, rich and noble, and eloquent in speech, on the town rabble; and the two mobs united against the common enemy. Anselm de Badagio, priest and popular preacher at Milan, had been mixed up with Landulf and Ariald in the controversy relative to clerical marriage; but to stop his mouth the Archbishop had given him the bishopric of Lucca, in 1057, and had supplied his place as preacher at Milan by seven deacons. Landulf the elder relates that these deacons preached with such success that Anselm, in a fit of jealousy, returned to Milan to listen to their sermons, and scornfully exclaimed, "They may become preachers, but they must first put away their wives." According to the same authority, Ariald bore a grudge against the Archbishop for having had occasion to rebuke him on account of some irregularity of which he had been guilty. But Landulf the elder is not to be trusted implicitly; he is as bigoted on one side as is Andrew of Strumi on the other. In the meantime the priests and their wives were exposed to every sort of violence, and "a great horror fell on the Ambrosian clergy." The poor women were torn from their husbands, and driven from the city; the priests who refused to be separated from their companions were interdicted from the altar.[18] [18] "Sic ab eodem populo sunt persecuta et deleta (clericorum connubia) ut nullus existeret quin aut cogeretur tantum nefas dimittere, vel ad altare non accedere."--_Andr. Strum._ Landulf was sent to Rome to report progress, and obtain confirmation of the proceedings of the party from the Pope. He reached Piacenza, but was unable to proceed farther; he was knocked down, and finding the way barred by the enemies of his party, returned to Milan. Ariald then started, and eluding his adversaries, arrived safely at Rome. He presented himself before Pope Stephen X., who was under the influence of Hildebrand, and, therefore, disposed to receive him with favour. Stephen bade him return to Milan, prosecute the holy war, and, if need be, shed his blood in the sacred cause. The appeal to Rome was necessary, as the Archbishop and a large party of the citizens, together with all the clergy, had denounced Ariald and Landulf as Patarines. The fact was notorious that the secret and suspected Manichees in Milan were now holding up their heads and defying those who had hitherto controlled them. The Manichees suddenly found that from proscribed heretics they had been exalted into champions of orthodoxy. It was a satisfactory change for those who had been persecuted to become persecutors, and turn their former tyrants into victims. But now, to the confusion and dismay of the clergy, they found themselves betrayed by the Pope, and at the mercy of those who had old wrongs to resent. Fortified with the blessing of the Pope on his work, his orthodoxy triumphantly established by the supreme authority, Ariald rushed back to Milan, accompanied by papal legates to protect him, and proclaim his mission as divine. He was unmeasured in his denunciations. Dissension fast ripened into civil war. Ariald, at the head of a roaring mob, swept the clergy together into a church, and producing a paper which bound all of them by oath to put away their wives, endeavoured to enforce their subscription. A priest, maddened to resentment, struck the demagogue in the mouth. This was the signal for a general tumult. The adherents of Ariald rushed through the streets, the alarm bells pealed, the populace gathered from all quarters, and a general hunting down of the married clergy ensued. "How can the blind lead the blind?" preached Landulf Cotta. "Let these Simoniacs, these Nicolaitans be despised. You who wish to have salvation from the Lord, drive them from their functions; esteem their sacrifices as dogs' dung (_canina stercora_)! Confiscate their goods, and every one of you take what he likes![19] We can imagine the results of such license given to the lowest rabble. The nobles, over-awed, dared not interfere. [19] Arnulf., _Gesta Ep. Mediol._ ap. Pertz, x. p. 18. It is necessary not to confound Landulf Cotta, the demagogue, with Landulf the elder, the historian, and Landulf the younger, the disciple and biographer of Ariald. Nor were the clergy of the city alone exposed to this popular persecution. The preachers roved round the country, creating riots everywhere. This led to retaliation, but retaliation of a feeble, harmless sort. A chapel built by Ariald on his paternal estate was pulled down; and the married clergy resentfully talked of barking his chestnut trees and breaking down his vines, but thought better of it, and refrained. A more serious attempt at revenge was the act of a private individual. Landulf Cotta was praying in a church, when a priest aimed at him with a sword, but without seriously hurting him. A cripple at the church door caught the flying would-be assassin; a crowd assembled, and Landulf with difficulty extricated the priest alive from their hands. Ariald and Cotta now began to denounce those who had bought their cures of souls, or had paid fees on their institution to them. They stimulated the people to put down simony, as they had put down concubinage. "Cursed is he that withholdeth his hand from blood!" was the fiery peroration of a sermon on this subject by Ariald. "Landulf Cotta," says Arnulf, "being master of the lay folk, made them swear to combat both simony and concubinage. Presently he forced this oath on the clergy. From this time forward he was constantly followed by a crowd of men and women, who watched around him night and day. He despised the churches, and rejected priests as well as their functions, under pretext that they were defiled with simony. They were called Patari, that is to say, beggars, because the greater part of them belonged to the lowest orders."[20] [20] Ap. Pertz, l.c., pp. 19, 20. "What shall we do?" asked a large party at Milan. "This Ariald tells us that if we receive the Holy Sacrament from married or simoniacal priests, we eat our own damnation. We cannot live without sacraments, and he has driven all the priests out of Milan." The parties were so divided, that those who held with Ariald would not receive sacraments from the priests, the heavenly gift on their altars they esteemed as "dogs' dung;" they would not even join with them, or those who adhered to them, in prayer. "One house was all faithful," says Andrew of Strumi; "the next all unfaithful. In the third, the mother and one son were believing, but the father and the other son were unbelieving; so that the whole city was a scene of confusion and contention." In 1058 Guido assembled a synod at Fontanetum near Novara, and summoned Ariald and Landulf Cotta to attend it. The synod awaited their arrival for three days, and as they did not come, excommunicated them as contumacious. Landulf the younger, the biographer of Ariald, says that Pope Stephen X. reversed the sentence of the synod; but this account does not agree with what is related by Arnulf. Landulf the elder confounds the dates, and places the synod in the reign of Alexander II., and says that the Pope adopted a middle course, and sent ambassadors to Milan to investigate the matter. Bonizo of Sutri says the same. All agree that Hildebrand was one of these commissioners. Hildebrand was therefore able to judge on the spot of the results of an appeal to the passions of the people. It is the severest condemnation to his conduct in 1073, to know for certain that he had seen the working of the power he afterwards called out. He then saw how great was that power; he must have been cruelly, recklessly, wickedly indifferent to the crimes which accompanied its invocation. Landulf the elder says that the second commissary was Anselm of Lucca, whilst Bonizo speaks indifferently of the "bishops _a latere_" as constituting the deputation. Guido was not in Milan when it arrived, he did not dare to venture his person in the midst of the people. The ambassadors were received with the utmost respect; they took on themselves to brand the Archbishop as a simoniac and a schismatic, and, according to Landulf, to do many other things which they were not authorised by the Pope to do; so that the dissension, so far from being allayed by their visit, only waxed more furious. At the end of the year 1058, or the beginning of 1059, the Pope sent Peter Damiani, the harsh Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, on a new embassy to Milan.[21] They were received with respect by the Archbishop and clergy; but the pride of the Milanese of all ranks was wounded by seeing the Bishop of Ostia enthroned in the middle, with Anselm of Lucca, the suffragan of Milan, upon his right, and their Archbishop degraded to the left of the Legate, and seated on a stool at his feet. Milan assembled at the ringing of the bells in all the churches, and the summons of an enormous brazen trumpet which shrieked through the streets. The fickle people asked if the Church of St. Ambrose was to be trodden under the foot of the Roman Pontiff. "I was threatened with death," wrote Peter Damiani to Hildebrand, "and many assured me that there were persons panting for my blood. It is not necessary for me to repeat all the remarks the people made on this occasion." [21] We have a full account of this embassy in a letter of St. Peter Damiani to the Archdeacon Hildebrand (Petri Dam. _Opp._ iii; _Opusc._ v. p. 37), besides the accounts by Bonizo, Arnulf, and Landulf the elder. But Peter Damiani was not the man to be daunted at a popular outbreak. He placidly mounted the ambone, and asserted boldly the supreme jurisdiction of the chair of St. Peter. "The Roman Church is the mother, that of Ambrose is the daughter. St. Ambrose always recognised that mistress. Study the sacred books, and hold us as liars, if you do not find that it is as I have said." Then the charges against the clergy were investigated by the legates, and not a single clerk in Milan was found who had not paid a fee on his ordination; "for that was the custom, and the charge was fixed," says the Bishop of Ostia. Here was a difficulty. He could not deprive every priest and deacon in Milan, and leave the great city without pastors. He was therefore obliged to content his zeal with exacting from the bishops a promise that ordination in future should be made gratuitously; and the Archbishop was constrained to deposit on the altar a paper in which he pronounced his own excommunication, in the event of his relaxing his rigour in suppressing the heresy of the Simoniacs and Nicolaitans, by which latter name those who insisted on the lawfulness of clerical marriage were described. To make atonement for the past, the Archbishop was required to do penance for one hundred years, but to pay money into the papal treasury in acquittal of each year; which, to our simple understanding, looks almost as scandalous a traffic as imposing a fee on all clergy ordained. But then, in the one case the money went into the pocket of the bishops, and in the other into that of the Pope. The clergy who had paid a certain sum were to be put to penance for five years; those who had paid more, for ten (also to be compensated by a payment to Rome!), and to make pilgrimages to Rome or Tours. After having accomplished this penance they were to receive again the insignia of their offices. Then Peter Damiani re-imposed on the clergy the oaths forced on them by Ariald, and departed. The Milanese contemporary historian, Arnulf, exclaims, "Who has bewitched you, ye foolish Milanese? Yesterday you made loud outcries for the priority of a see, and now you trouble the whole organisation of the Church. You are gnats swallowing camels. You say, perhaps, Rome must be honoured because of the Apostle. Well, but the memory of St. Ambrose should deliver Milan from such an affront as has been inflicted on her. In future it will be said that Milan is subject to Rome."[22] [22] Pertz, x. p. 21. Guido attended a council held in Rome (April 1059), shortly after this visitation. Ariald also was present, to accuse the Archbishop of favouring simony and concubinage. The legates had dealt too leniently with the scandal. Guido was defended by his suffragans of Asti, Novara, Turin, Vercelli, Alba, Lodi, and Brescia. "Mad bulls, they," says Bonizo; and Ariald was forced to retire, covered with confusion. The Council pronounced a decree that no mercy should be shown to the simoniacal and married clergy.[23] An encyclical was addressed by Nicholas II. to all Christendom, informing it that the Council had passed thirteen canons, one of which prevented a layman from assisting at a mass said by a priest who had a concubine or a _subintroducta mulier_. Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons who should take "publicly" a concubine, or not send away those with whom they lived, were to be inhibited from exercising all ministerial acts and receiving ecclesiastical dues. [23] "Nulla misericordia habenda est." On the return of the bishops to their sees, one only of them, Adelmann of Brescia, ventured to publish these decrees. He was nearly torn to pieces by his clergy; an act of violence which greatly furthered the cause of the Patarines.[24] [24] Bonizo. It is deserving of remark that Bonizo, an ardent supporter of Hildebrand and the reforming party, calls that Papal party by the name of _Patari_, thus showing that it was really made up of the Manichean heretics. In the same year Pope Nicholas sent legates into different countries to execute, or attempt to execute, the decrees passed against simony and concubinage--as clerical marriage was called. Peter Damiani travelled through several cities of Italy to exhort the clergy to celibacy, and especially to press this matter on the bishops. Peter Damiani was not satisfied with the conduct of the Pope in assuming a stern attitude towards the priests, but overlooking the fact that the bishops were themselves guilty of the same offence. A letter from him to the Pope exists, in which he exhorts him to be a second Phinehas (Numb. xxv. 7), and deal severely with the bishops, without which no real reform could be affected.[25] [25] _Opp._ t. iii.; _Opusc._ xiii. p. 188. Anselm de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, the instigator of Landulf and Ariald, or at least their staunch supporter, was summoned on the death of Nicholas to occupy the throne of St. Peter, under the title of Alexander II. But his election was contested, and Cadalus, an anti-Pope, was chosen by a Council of German and Lombard prelates assembled at Basle. The contests which ensued between the rival Pontiffs and their adherents distracted attention from the question of clerical marriage, and the clergy recalled their wives. In 1063, in Florence, similar troubles occurred. The instigator of these was St. John Gualberto, founder of the Vallombrosian Order. The offence there was rather simony than concubinage. The custom of giving fees to those who appointed to benefices had become inveterate, and in many cases had degenerated into the purchase of them. A Pope could not assume the tiara without a lavish largess to the Roman populace. A bishop could not grasp his pastoral staff without paying heavy sums to the Emperor and to the Pope. The former payment was denounced as simony, the latter was exacted as an obligation. But under some of the Emperors the bishoprics were sold to the highest bidder. What was customary on promotion to a bishopric became customary on acceptance of lesser benefices, and no priest could assume a spiritual charge without paying a bounty to the episcopal treasury. When a bishop had bought his throne, he was rarely indisposed to sell the benefices in his gift, and to recoup a scandalous outlay by an equally scandalous traffic. The Bishop of Florence was thought by St. John Gualberto to have bought the see. He was a Pavian, Peter Mediabardi. His father came to Florence to visit his son. The Florentines took advantage of the unguarded simplicity of the old man to extract the desired secret from him.[26] [26] "Cui Florentini clam insidiantes tentando dicere coeperunt," &c.... "ille utpote simplicissimus homo coepit jurejurando dicere," &c.--_Andrew of Genoa_, c. 62. "Master Teulo," said they, "had you a large sum to pay to the King for your son's elevation?" "By the body of St. Syrus," answered the father, "you cannot get a millstone out of the King's house without paying for it." "Then what did you pay?" asked the Florentines greedily.[27] [27] "Alacres et avidi rem scisitari." "By the body of St. Syrus!" replied the old man, "not less than three thousand pounds." No sooner was the unguarded avowal made, than it was spread through the city by the enemies of the bishop.[28] [28] For the account of what follows, in addition to the biography by Andrew of Strumi, we have the _Dialogues_ of Desiderius of Monte Cassino, lib. iii. St. John Gualberto took up the quarrel. He appeared in Florence, where he had a monastery dedicated to St. Salvius, and began vehemently to denounce the prelate as a simoniac, and therefore a heretic. His monks, fired by his zeal, spread through the city, and exhorted the people to refuse to accept the sacramental acts of their bishop and resist his authority. The people broke out into tumult. The bishop appealed to the secular arm to arrest the disorder, and officers were sent to coerce the monks of St. Salvius. They broke into the monastery at night, sought Gualberto, but, unable to find him, maltreated the monks. One received a blow on his forehead which laid bare the bone, and another had his nose and lips gashed with a sword. The monks were stripped, and the monastery fired. The abbot rolled himself in an old cloak extracted from under a bed, where it had been cast as ragged, and awaited day, when the wounds and tears of the fraternity might be exhibited to a sympathising and excitable people. Nor were they disappointed. At daybreak all the town was gathered around the dilapidated monastery, and people were eagerly mopping up the sacred blood that had been shed, with their napkins, thinking that they secured valuable relics. Sympathy with the injured was fanned into frenzied abhorrence of the persecutor. St. John Gualberto appeared on the scene, blazing with the desire of martyrdom,[29] and congratulated the sufferers on having become confessors of Christ. "Now are ye true monks! But why did ye suffer without me?" [29] "Martyrii flagrans amore."--_Andr. Strum._ The secular clergy of Florence were, it is asserted, deeply tainted with the same vice as their bishop. They had all paid fees at their institution, or had bought their benefices. They lived in private houses, and were for the most part married. Some were even suspected to be of immoral life.[30] [30] "Quis clericorum propriis et paternis rebus solummodo non studebat? Qui potius inveniretur, proh dolor! qui non esset uxoratus vel concubinarius? De simoniâ quid dicam? Omnes pene ecclesiasticos ordines hæc mortifera bellua devoraverat, ut, qui ejus morsum evaserit, rarus inveniretur."--_Andr. Strum._ But the preaching of the Saint, the wounds of the monks, converted some of the clergy. Those who were convinced by their appeals, and those who were wearied of their wives, threw themselves into the party of Gualberto, and clubbed together in common life.[31] [31] "Exemplo vero ipsius et admonitionibus delicati clerici, spretis connubiis, coeperunt simul in ecclesiis stare, et communem ducere vitam."--Atto Pistor., _Vit. S. Joan. Gualb._ The Vallombrosian monks appealed to Pope Alexander II. against the bishop,[32] their thirst for martyrdom whetted not quenched.[33] If the Pope desired it, they would try the ordeal of fire to prove their charge. Hildebrand, then only sub-deacon, but a power in the councils of the Pope, urged on their case, and demanded the deposition of the bishop. But Alexander, himself among the most resolute opponents of simony, felt that there was no case. There was no evidence, save the prattle of an old man over his wine-cups. He refused the petition of the monks, and was supported by the vast majority of the bishops--there were over a hundred present.[34] [32] For what follows, in addition to the above-quoted authorities, we have Berthold's _Chronicle_ from 1054 to 1100; Pertz, _Mon. Sacr._ v. pp. 264-326. [33] "Securiores de corona, quam jam gustaverant, martyrii."--_Andr. Strum._ [34] "Favebat enim maxima pars Episcoporum parti Petri, et omnes pene erant monachis adversi."--_Andr. Strum._ Even St. Peter Damiani, generally unmeasured in his invectives against simony, wrote to moderate the frantic zeal of the Vallombrosian monks, which he denounced as unreasonable, intemperate, unjust. But the refusal of the Pope to gratify their resentment did not quell the vehemence of the monks and the faction adverse to the bishop. The city was in a condition of chronic insubordination and occasional rioting. Godfrey Duke of Tuscany was obliged to interfere; and the monks were driven from their monastery of St. Salvi, and compelled to retire to that of St. Settimo outside of the gates. Shortly after, Pope Alexander visited Florence. The monks piled up a couple of bonfires, and offered to pass between them in proof of the truth of their allegation. He refused to permit the ordeal, and withdrew, leaving the bishop unconvicted, and therefore unrebuked. The clergy of Florence now determined to demand of the bishop that he should either go through the ordeal himself, or suffer the monks to do so. As they went to the palace, the people hooted them: "Go, ye heretics, to a heretic! You who have driven Christ out of the city! You who adore Simon Magus as your God!" The bishop sullenly refused; he would neither establish his innocence in the fire, nor suffer the monks to convict him by the ordeal. The Podesta of Florence then, with a high hand, drove from the town the clergy who had joined the monastic faction. They went forth on the first Saturday in Lent, 1067, amidst a sympathising crowd, composed mostly of women,[35] who tore off their veils, and with hair scattered wildly over their faces, threw themselves down in the road before the confessors, crying, "Alas! alas! O Christ, Thou art expelled this city, and how dost Thou leave us desolate? Thou art not tolerated here, and how can we live without Thee? Thou canst not dwell with Simon Magus. O holy Peter, didst thou once overcome Simon? and now dost thou permit him to have the mastery? We deemed him bound and writhing in infernal flames, and lo! he is loose, and risen again to thy dishonour." [35] "Maxime feminarum." And the men said to one another, "Let us set fire to this accursed city, which hates Christ."[36] [36] "Et nos, viri fratres, civitatem hanc incendamus atque cum parvulis et uxoribus nostris, quocumque Christus ierit, secum camus. Si Christiani sumus, Christum sequamur."--_Andr. Strum._ The secular clergy were in dismay; denounced, deserted, threatened by the people, they sang no psalms, offered no masses. Unable to endure their position, they again visited the bishop, and entreated him to sanction the ordeal of fire. He refused, and requested the priests not to countenance such an unauthorised venture, should it be made. But the whole town was bent on seeing this ordeal tried, and on the Wednesday following, the populace poured to the monastery of St. Settimo. Two piles of sticks were heaped near the monastery gate, measuring ten feet long by five wide, and four and a half feet high. Between them lay a path the length of an arm in width. Litanies were chanted whilst the piles were reared, and then the monks proceeded to elect one who was to undergo the fire. The lot fell on a priest named Peter, and St. John Gualberto ordered him at once to the altar to say mass. All assisted with great devotion, the people crying with excitement. At the _Agnus Dei_ four monks, one with the crucifix, another with holy water, the third with twelve lighted tapers, the fourth with a full censer, proceeded to the pyres, and set them both on fire. This threw the people into an ecstasy of excitement, and the voice of the priest was drowned in the clamour of their tongues. The priest finished mass, and laid aside his chasuble. Holding the cross, in alb and stole and maniple, he came forth, followed by St. John Gualberto and the monks, chanting. Suddenly a silence fell on the tossing concourse, and a monk appointed by the abbot stood forth, and in a clear voice said to the people, "Men, brethren, and sisters! we do this for the salvation of your souls, that henceforth ye may learn to avoid the leprosy of simony, which has infected nearly the whole world; for the crime of simony is so great, that beside it every other crime is as nothing." The two piles were burning vigorously. The priest Peter prayed, "Lord Christ, I beseech Thee, if Peter of Pavia, called Bishop of Florence, has obtained the episcopal throne by money, do Thou assist me in this terrible ordeal, and deliver me from being burned, as of old Thou didst deliver the three children in the midst of the burning furnace." Then, giving the brethren the kiss of peace, he stepped fearlessly between the burning pyres, and came forth on the farther side uninjured. His linen alb, his silken stole and maniple, were unburnt. He would have again rushed through the flames in the excess of his confidence, but was prevented by the pious vehemence of the people, who surrounded him, kissed his feet, clung to his vestments, and would have crushed him to death in their eagerness to touch and see him, had he not been rescued by the strong arms of burly monks. In after years he told, and talked himself into believing, that as he passed through the fire, his maniple fell off. Discovering his loss ere he emerged, he turned back, and deliberately picked it up. But of this nothing was said at the time.[37] [37] It is not mentioned in the epistle of the Florentines to the Pope, narrating the ordeal and supposed miracle, which is given by Andrew of Strumi and Atto of Pistoja. A letter was then drawn up, appealing to the Pope in the most vehement terms, to deliver the sheep of the Florentine flock from the ravening wolf who shepherded them, and urging him, not obscurely, to use force if need be, and compel by his troops the evacuation of the Florentine episcopal throne. Peter of Pavia, the bishop, a man of gentle character, yielded to the storm. He withdrew from Florence, and was succeeded by another Peter, whom the people called Peter the Catholic, to distinguish him from the Simoniac. But Muratori adduces evidence that the former continued to be recognised by the Pope some time after his supposed degradation. Thus ended the schism of Florence in the entire triumph of the Patarines. Hildebrand was not unobservant; he proved afterwards not to be forgetful of the lesson taught by this schism,--the utilization of the rude mob as a powerful engine in the hands of the fanatical or designing. It bore its fruit in the canons of 1074. II. Anselmo de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, had succeeded Nicholas II. to the Papal throne in 1061. Cadalus of Parma had been chosen by the German and Lombard prelates on October 28th, and he assumed the name of Honorius II. But no Roman Cardinal was present to sanction this election. Cadalus was acknowledged by all the simoniacal and married clergy, when he entered Italy; but the Princess Beatrice and the Duke of Tuscany prevented him from advancing to Rome. From Parma Cadalus excommunicated Alexander, and from Rome, Alexander banned Honorius. The cause of Alexander was that of the Patarines, but the question of marriage and simony paled before the more glaring one, of which of the rival claimants was the actual Pope. The voice of Landulf Cotta was silenced. A terrible cancer had consumed the tongue which had kept Milan for six years in a blaze of faction. But his room was speedily filled by a more implacable adversary of the married clergy--his brother, Herlembald, a stern, able soldier. An event in Herlembald's early life had embittered his heart against the less rigid clergy. His plighted bride had behaved lightly with a priest. He was just returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his zeal kindled to enthusiasm. He went to Rome, where he was well received by Alexander II. He came for authority to use his sword for the Patarines. The sectaries in Milan had said to him, "We desire to deliver the Church, besieged and degraded by the married priests; do thou deliver by the law of the sword, we will do so by the law of God." Alexander II., in a public consistory, created Herlembald "Defender of the Church," gave him the sacred banner of St. Peter, and bade him go back to Milan and shed blood--his, if necessary, those of the anti-Patarines certainly--in this miserable quarrel. The result was that the Patarines were filled with new zeal, and lost all compunction at shedding blood and pillaging houses. Herlembald established himself in a large mansion, which he fortified and filled with mercenaries; over it waved the consecrated banner of St. Peter. From this stronghold he issued forth to assail the obnoxious clergy. They were dragged from their altars and consigned to shame and insult. The services of the Church, the celebration of the sacraments, were suspended, or administered only by the one or two priests who adhered to the Patari. It is said that, in order to keep his rude soldiery in pay, Herlembald made every clerk take a solemn oath that he had ever kept innocence, and would wholly abstain from marriage or concubinage. Those who could not, or would not, take this oath were expelled the city, and their whole property confiscated to support the standing corps of hireling ruffians maintained by the Crusader. The lowest rabble, poor artisans and ass-drivers, furtively placed female ornaments in the chambers of the priests, and then, attacking their houses, dragged them out and plundered their property. By 1064, when a synod was held at Mantua by the Pope, Milan was purged of "Simoniacs and Nicolaitans," and the clergy who remained were gathered together into a house to live in common, under rule. Guido of Milan and all the Lombard prelates attended that important synod, which saw the triumph of Alexander, his reconciliation with the Emperor, and the general abandonment of the anti-Pope, Cadalus. In the following year, Henry IV. was under the tutelage of Adalbert of Bremen; he had escaped from Anno, Archbishop of Cologne, who had favoured the strict faction and Alexander II. The situation in Lombardy changed simultaneously. Herlembald had assumed a power, an authority higher than that of the archbishop, whom he refused to recognise, and denounced as a heretic. Guido, weary of the nine years of strife he had endured, relieved from the fear of interference from Germany, resolved on an attempt to throw off the hateful yoke. The churches of Milan were for the most part without pastors. The married clergy had been expelled, and there were none to take their place. The Archbishop had been an obedient penitent for five years, compromising his one hundred years of penitence by payments into the Papal treasury; but as the cause of Alexander declined, his contrition languished, died out; and he resumed his demands for fees at ordinations and institutions, at least so clamoured Ariald and Herlembald in the ears of Rome. A party in Milan had long resented the despotism of the "Law of God and the law of the sword" of Ariald and Herlembald, and an effort was made to break it, with the sanction, no doubt, of the Archbishop. A large body of the citizens rose, "headed," says Andrew of Strumi, "by the sons of the priests," and attacked the church and house of Ariald, but, unable to find him, contented themselves with wrecking the buildings. Thereupon Herlembald swept down at the head of his mercenaries, surrounded the crowd, and hewed them to pieces to the last man, "like the vilest cattle."[38] [38] Hæc ut nobilis Herembaldus ceterique Fideles audiere, sumptis armis, in audacem plebem et temerariam irruere; quos protinus exterminavere omnes, quasi essent vilissimæ pecudes,"--_Andr. Strum._ Guido, the Archbishop, now acted with resolution, and boldly took up the cause of the married clergy. Having heard that two priests of Monza, infected with Patarinism, had turned their wives out of their houses, he ordered the arrest of the priests, and punished them with imprisonment in the castle of Lecco. On hearing this, the Patarines flew to arms, and swarmed out of Milan after Ariald, who bore the banner of St. Peter, as Herlembald was absent at Rome. They met the mounted servants of the Archbishop near Monza, surprised them, and wrested from them a promise to surrender the priests. Three days after, the curates were delivered up. Ariald, at the head of the people, met them outside the gates, received them with enthusiasm, crying, "See, these are the brave martyrs of Christ!" and escorted them to a church, where they intoned a triumphant _Te Deum_. Herlembald returned from Rome to Milan with a bull of excommunication fulminated by the Pope against the Archbishop. Guido summoned the Milanese to assemble in the cathedral church on the vigil of Pentecost. In the meantime the Patarines were torn into factions on a subtle point mooted by Ariald. That demagogue had ventured to assail in a sermon the venerable custom of the Milanese, which required them to fast during the Rogation days. Was he greater than St. Ambrose? Did he despise the authority of the great doctor? On this awful subject the Patarines divided, and with the division lost their strength. Neither Herlembald nor Ariald seems to have been prepared for the bold action of the Archbishop. On the appointed day the cathedral was filled with substantial citizens and nobles. Herlembald missed the wolfish eyes, ragged hair, and hollow cheeks of his sectaries, and, fearing danger, leaped over the chancel rails, and took up his position near the altar. The Archbishop mounted the ambone with the bull of excommunication in his hand. "See!" he exclaimed, "this is the result of the turbulence of these demagogues, Ariald and Herlembald. This city, out of reverence to St. Ambrose, has never obeyed the Roman Church. Shall we be crushed? Take away out of the land of the living these disturbers of the public peace who labour day and night to rob us of our ancient liberties." He was interrupted by a shout of "Let them be killed." Guido paused, and then cried out, "All who honour and cleave to St. Ambrose, leave the church, that we may know who are our adversaries." Instantly from the doors rolled out the dense crowd, seven hundred in number, according to the estimation of Andrew, the biographer of Ariald. Only twelve men were left within who stood firm to the Patarine cause. Ariald had, in the meantime, taken refuge in the choir beside Herlembald. The clergy selected Ariald, the laity Herlembald, for their victims. Ariald was dragged from the church, severely wounded. Herlembald escaped better; using his truncheon, he beat off his assailants till he had climbed to a place of safety, whence he could not be easily dislodged. As night fell, the Patarines gathered, stormed, and pillaged the palace of the Archbishop, and, bursting into the church, liberated Herlembald. Guido hardly escaped on horseback, sorely maltreated in the tumult. His adherents fled like smoke before the tempest. Ariald was found bleeding and faint, and was conveyed by the multitude in triumph to the church of St. Sepolcro. Then Herlembald called to the roaring mob to be still. "Let us ask Master Ariald whose house is to be first given up to sack." But Ariald earnestly dissuaded from further violence, and entreated the vehement dictator to spare the lives and property of their enemies. The surprise to the Archbishop's party was, however, temporary only. By morning they had rallied, and the city was again in their hands. Guido published an interdict against Milan, which was to remain in force as long as it harboured Ariald. No mass was said, no bells rang, the church doors were bolted and barred. Ariald was secretly removed by some of his friends to the village of St. Victor, where also Herlembald had been constrained to take refuge with a party of mercenaries. Thence they made their way to Pavia and to Padua, where they hoped to obtain a boat, and escape to Rome. But the whole country was up against them, and Herlembald was obliged to disband his soldiers, and attempt to escape in disguise. Ariald was left with a priest whose acquaintance Herlembald had made in Jerusalem. But a priest was the last person likely to secrete the tyrant and persecutor of the clergy. He treacherously sent word to the Archbishop, and Ariald was taken by the servants of Olivia, the niece of Guido, and conveyed to an island on the Lago Maggiore. He was handed over to the cruel mercies of two married priests, who directed his murder with cold-blooded heartlessness, if we may trust the gossips picked up later. His ears, nose and lips were cut off. He was asked if he would acknowledge Guido for archbishop. "As long as my tongue can speak," he replied, "I will not." The servants of Olivia tore out his tongue; he was beaten by the two savage priests, and when he fainted, was flung into the calm waters of the lovely lake. Andrew of Vallombrosa, or Strumi, followed in his trace, and hung about the neighbourhood till he heard from a peasant the awful story. He sought the mangled body.[39] It was found and transported to Milan on the feast of the Ascension following. For ten days it was exposed in the church of St. Ambrose, that all might venerate it, and was finally disposed in the convent of St. Celsus. In the memory of man, never had such a crowd been seen. The Archbishop deemed it prudent to retire, and Herlembald profited by his absence to recover his power, and make the people swear to avenge the martyr, and unite to the death for the "good cause." The events in Milan had their counterpart in the other cities of Lombardy, especially at Cremona, where the bishopric had been obtained by Arnulf, nephew of Guido of Milan. In that city, twelve men, headed by one Christopher, took the Patarine oath to fight the married clergy; the people joined them, and forced their oath on the bishop-elect before he was ordained. But, as in 1067, he seized a Patarine priest, a sedition broke out, in which the bishop was seriously injured. The inhabitants of Cremona, after Easter, sent ambassadors to the Pope, and received from him a reply, given by Bonizo, exhorting them not to allow a priest, deacon or sub-deacon, suspected of concubinage or simony, to hold a benefice or execute his ministry. The consequence of this letter was that all suspected clerks were excluded from their offices; and shortly after, the same course was followed at Piacenza. Asti, Lodi, and Ravenna also threw in their lot with the Patarines. [39] Ariald was murdered on June 27, 1065. Andrew of Strumi says 1066; but he followed the Florentine computation--he had been a priest of Florence--which made the year begin on March 25. In 1067, Alexander II. sent legates to Milan to settle the disturbances therein. Adalbert of Bremen had fallen, and again the Papal party were in the ascendant. The fortunes of Milan fluctuated with the politics of those who held the regency in the minority of Henry IV. Guido, now advanced in years, and weary of ruling so turbulent a diocese, determined to vacate a see which he had held for twenty-seven years; the last ten of incessant civil war. He burdened it with a pension to himself, and then made it over to Godfrey, the sub-deacon, along with the pastoral staff and ring. Godfrey crossed the Alps, took the oath of allegiance to the Emperor, promised to use his utmost endeavours to exterminate the Patarines, and to deliver Herlembald alive into the hands of the Emperor, laden with chains. Friend and foe, without scruple, designate the followers of the Papal policy as Patarines; it is therefore startling, a few years later, when the Popes had carried their point, to find them insisting on the luckless Patarines being given in wholesale hecatombs to the flames, as damnable heretics. It was an ungracious return for the battle these heretics had fought under the banner of St. Peter. But Herlembald refused to acknowledge Godfrey, he devastated the country with fire and sword wherever Godfrey was acknowledged, and created such havoc that not a day passed in the holy Lenten fast without the effusion of much Christian blood. Finally, Herlembald drove the archbishop-elect to take refuge in the strong fortress of Castiglione. Guido, not receiving his pension, annulled his resignation, and resumed his state. But he unwisely trusted to the good faith of Herlembald; he was seized,[40] and shut up in a monastery till his death, which took place August 23, 1071. [40] "Gloriosus hac vice delusus," says Arnulf. The year before this, 1070, Adelheid, Margravine of Turin, mother-in-law of the young Emperor, attacked the Patarines, and burnt the cities of Lodi and Asti. On March 19, 1071, as Herlembald was besieging Castiglione, a terrible conflagration broke out in Milan, and consumed a great part of the city and several of the stateliest churches. Whilst the army of Herlembald was agitated by the report of the fire, Godfrey burst out of Castiglione, and almost routed the besiegers. Before the death of Guido, Herlembald, with the sanction of the Pope, had set up a certain Otto to be Archbishop, nominated by himself and the Papal legate, without consulting the electors of Milan or the Emperor, January 6, A.D. 1072. Otto was but a youth, just admitted into holy orders, likely to prove a pliant tool in the strong hand of the dictator. It was the Feast of the Epiphany, and the streets were thronged with people, when the news leaked out that an archbishop had been chosen, and was now holding the customary banquet after election in the archiepiscopal palace. The people were furious, rose and attacked the house, hunted the youthful prelate out of an attic, where he had taken refuge, dragged him by his legs and arms into the church, and compelled him to swear to renounce his dignity. The Roman legate hardly escaped with his robes torn. Herlembald, who had been surprised, recovered the upper hand in Milan on the morrow, but not in the open country, which was swept by the imperial troops. The suffragan bishops of Lombardy assembled at Novara directly they heard of what had taken place in Milan, and consecrated Godfrey as their archbishop. Otto appealed to Rome (January, 1072), and a few weeks later the Pope assembled a synod, and absolved Otto of his oath extorted from him at Milan, acknowledged him as archbishop, and struck Godfrey with interdict. Alexander II. died April 21, 1073, and the tiara rested on the brows of the great Hildebrand. On June 24, Hildebrand, now Gregory VII., wrote to the Margravine Beatrice to abstain from all relations with the excommunicated bishops of Lombardy; on June 28, to William, Bishop of Pavia, to oppose the usurper, the excommunicate Godfrey of Milan; on July 1, to all the faithful of Lombardy to refrain from that false bishop, who lay under the apostolic ban. From Capua, on September 27, he wrote to Herlembald, exhorting him to fight valiantly, and hold out Milan against the usurper Godfrey. Again, on October 9, to Herlembald, bidding him be of good courage; he hoped to detach the young Emperor from the party of Godfrey, and bade him receive amicably those who, with true sentiments of contrition, came over to the Patarine, that is, the Papal side. On March 10, 1074, Gregory held one of the most important synods, not of his reign only, but ever held by any Pope. The acts of this assembly have been lost or suppressed, but its most important decisions were summed up in a letter from Gregory to the Bishop of Constance. This letter has not been printed in the Registrum; but fortunately it has been preserved by two contemporary writers, Paul of Bernried, and Bernold of Constance, the latter of whom has supplied a detailed apology for the law of celibacy promulgated in that synod. Gregory absolutely forbade all priests sullied with the _crimen fornicationis_, which embraced legitimate marriage, either to say a mass or to serve at one; and the people were strictly enjoined to shun their churches and their sacraments; and when the bishops were remiss, he exhorted them themselves to enforce the pontifical sentence.[41] [41] "Audivimus quod quidam Episcoporum apud vos commorantium, aut sacerdotes, et diaconi, et subdiaconi, mulieribus commisceantur aut consentiant aut negligant. His præcipimus vos nullo modo obedire, vel illorum præceptis consentire, sicut ipsi apostolicæ sedis præceptis non obediunt neque auctoritati sanctorum patrum consentiunt." "Quapropter ad omnes de quorum fide et devotione confidimus nunc convertimur, rogantes vos et apostolicâ auctoritate admonentes ut quidquid Episcopi dehinc loquantur aut taceant, vos officium eorum quos aut simoniace promotos et ordinatos aut in crimine fornicationis jacentes cognoveritis, nullatenus recipiatis."--Letter to the Franconians (Baluze, _Misc._ vii. p. 125). The results shall be described in the words of a contemporary historian, Sigebert of Gemblours. "Many," says he, "seeing in this prohibition to hear a mass said by a married priest a manifest contradiction to the doctrine of the Fathers, who believed that the efficacy of sacrament, such as baptism, chrism, and the Body and Blood of Christ, is independent of the dignity of the minister, thence resulted a grievous scandal; never, perhaps, even in the time of the great heresies, was the Church divided by a greater schism. Some did not abandon their simony, others disguised their avarice under a more acceptable name; what they boasted they had given gratuitously, they in reality sold; very few preserved continence. Some through greed of lucre, or sentiments of pride, simulated chastity, but many added false oaths and numerous adulteries to their debaucheries. The laity seized the opportunity to rise against the clerical order, and to excuse themselves for disobedience to the Church. They profaned the holy mysteries, administering baptism themselves, and using the wax out of their ears as chrism. They refused on their death-beds to receive the _viaticum_ from the married priests; they would not even be buried by them. Some went so far as to trample under foot the Host, and pour out the precious Blood consecrated by married priests."[42] [42] Pertz, viii. p. 362. The affairs of the church of Milan continued in the same unsatisfactory condition. The contest between the Patarines and their adversaries had taken greater dimensions. The question which divided them was now less that of the marriage of the clergy than which of the rival archbishops was to be acknowledged. Godfrey was supported by the Emperor, Otto by the Pope. The parties were about even; neither Godfrey nor Otto could maintain himself in Milan; the former fortified himself in the castle of Brebbio, the latter resided at Rome. Henry IV., in spite of all the admonitions of the Pope, persisted in supporting the cause of Godfrey. Milan was thus without a pastor. The suffragan bishops wished to execute their episcopal functions in the city, and to consecrate the holy oils for the benediction of the fonts at Whitsuntide. Herlembald, when one of the bishops had sent chrism into the city for the purpose, poured it out on the ground and stamped on it, because it had been consecrated by an excommunicated prelate. In March, 1075, another conflagration broke out in the city, and raged with even greater violence than the fire of 1071. Herlembald had again poured forth the oils, as he had the year before; and had ordered Leutprand, a priest, as Easter came, to proceed to the consecration of chrism. This innovation roused the alarm of the Milanese; the subsequent conflagration convinced them that it was abhorrent to heaven. All the adversaries of the Patarines assembled outside the city, and swore to preserve intact the privileges of St. Ambrose, and to receive only the bishop nominated or approved by the King. Then, entering the city, they fell unexpectedly on the Patarines. Leutprand was taken and mutilated, his ears and nose were cut off. The standard of St. Peter was draggled in the dust, and Herlembald fell with it, cut down by a noble, Arnold de Rauda. Every insult was heaped on the body of the "Defender of the Church," and the sacred banner was trampled under foot. Messengers were sent to Henry IV. to announce the triumph, and to ask him to appoint a new Archbishop of Milan. Henry was so rejoiced at the victory, that he abandoned Godfrey, and promised the Milanese a worthy prelate. His choice fell on Tebald, a Milanese sub-deacon in his Court. Pope Urban II. canonised Herlembald. Ariald seems never to have been formally enrolled among the saints, but he received honours as a saint at Milan, and has been admitted into several Italian Martyrologies, and into the collection of the Bollandists. Baronius wisely expunged Herlembald and Ariald from the Roman Martyrology; nevertheless, the disgraceful fact remains, that the ruffian Herlembald has been canonised by Papal bull. The seeds of fresh discord remained. Leutprand, or Liprand, the priest, was curate of the Church of St. Paul;[43] having suffered mutilation in the riot, he was regarded in the light of a Patarine confessor. But no outbreak took place till the death of Anselm IV., Archbishop of Milan (September 30, 1101), at Constantinople, where he was on his way with the Crusaders to the Holy Land. His vicar, the Greek, Peter Chrysolaus, Bishop of Savonia, whom the Lombards called Grossulani, perhaps because of the coarse habit he wore (more probably as a corruption for Chrysolaus), had been left in charge of the see of Milan. On the news of the death of the Archbishop reaching that city, the Primicerius convoked the electors to choose a successor. The vote fell on Landulf, Ordinary of Milan; but he was not yet returned from Jerusalem, whither he had gone as a crusader. Grossulani declared the election informal. Thereupon the Abbot of St. Dionysius, at the head of a large party of the electors, chose Peter Grossulani. There is no evidence of his having used bribery in any form; but he may have acted unjustly in cancelling the election of Landulf. It is, however, fair to observe that Landulf, on his return, supported Grossulani; consequently, it is probable that the latter acted strictly in accordance with law and precedent. [43] The life of Liprand was written by Landulf the younger, his sister's son, in his _Hist. Mediolan._ 1095-1137. But the election displeased Liprand and the remains of the Patarines. They appealed to Rome, but Grossulani, supported by the Countess Matilda and St. Bernard, abbot of Vallombrosa, overcame their objections. Pope Paschal II. ratified the election, and sent the pall to the Archbishop. Ardericus de Carinate had been sent to Rome on behalf of Grossulani. The people came out of the gates, on his approach, to learn the result. Ardericus, hanging the pall across his umbrella (_protensi virga_), waved it over his head, shouting, "Ecco la stola! Ecco la stola!" (Here is the pall!) and led the way into the cathedral, whither Grossulani also hastened, and ascending the pulpit in his pontifical habit, placed the coveted insignia about his neck. Liprand was not satisfied. By means of private agitation, he disturbed the tranquillity of public feeling, and the Archbishop, to calm the minds of the populace, was obliged to convoke a provincial synod at Milan (1103), in which, in the presence of his suffragans, the clergy and the people, he said, "If anyone has a charge to make against me, let him speak openly at the present time, or he shall not be heard." Liprand would not appear before the council and formally make charge, but he mounted the pulpit in the Church of St. Paul and preached against the Archbishop as a simoniac. He declared his readiness to prove his charge by the ordeal of fire. The bishops assembled in council refused to suffer the attempt to be made. However, Liprand was not deterred. "Look at my amputated nose and ears!" he cried, "I am a confessor for Christ. I will try the ordeal by fire to substantiate my charge. Grossulani is a simoniac, by gift of hand, gift of tongue, and gift of homage." And he gave his wolf-skin cloak and some bottles of wine in exchange for wood, which the crowd carried off and heaped up in a great pile against the wall of the monastery of St. Ambrogio. The Archbishop sent his servants, and they overturned the stack, and scattered the wood. Then the crowd of "boys and girls, men and women," poured through the main streets, roaring, "Away with Grossulani, away with him!" and clamoured around the doors of the archiepiscopal palace, so that Grossulani, fearing for his life, said, "Be it so, let the fellow try the fire, or let him leave Milan." His servants with difficulty appeased the people, by promising that the ordeal should be undergone on the following Palm Sunday evening. "I will not leave the city," said Liprand; "but now I have no money for buying wood, and I will not sell my books, as I keep them for my nephew Landulf, now at school." So the magistrates of the city prepared a pile of billets of oak wood. On the appointed day Liprand, barefooted, in sackcloth, bearing a cross, went to the Church of Saints Gervasius and Protasius and sung mass. Grossulani also, bearing a cross, entered the same church and mounted the pulpit, attended by Ariald de Marignano, and Berard, Judge of Asti. Silence being made, and Liprand having taken his place barefooted "on the marble stone at the entrance to the choir, containing an image of Hercules," Grossulani addressed the people; "Listen, and I will silence this man in three words." Then turning to Liprand, he asked, "You have charged me with being a simoniac. To whom have I given anything? Answer me." Liprand, raising his eyes to the pulpit, pointed to those who occupied it and said, "Look at those three great devils, who think to confound me by their wit and wealth.[44] I appeal to the judgment of God." [44] "Proposuisti quod ego sum simoniacus per munus a manu. Modo die: cui dedi; Tunc presbyter super populum oculos aperuit, et digitum ad eos, qui stabunt in pulpito, extendit, dicens, Videte tres grandissimos diabolos, qui per ingenium et pecuniam suam putant me confundere." Grossulani said, "But I ask what act of simony do you lay to my charge?" Liprand answered, "Do you answer me, What is the lightest form of simony?" The Archbishop, after some consideration, answered, "To refrain from deposing a simoniac." "And I say that is simony which consists in deposing an abbot from his abbacy, a bishop from his bishopric, and an archbishop from his archbishopric."[45] [45] It is very evident from this discussion that Grossulani was innocent of true simony; the whole charge against him was due to his having quashed the election of Landulf, and thus of having deposed, after a fashion, "an archbishop from his archbishopric." The people became impatient, and began to shout, "Come out, come out to the ordeal!" Then Liprand "jumped down from the stone, containing the image of Hercules," and went forth accompanied by the multitude to the field where the pyre was made. There arose then a difficulty about the form of oath to be administered. Liprand, seeing that there was some hesitation, said, "Let me manage it, and see if I do not satisfy you all!" Whereupon he took hold of the hood of the Archbishop and shook it, and said in a loud voice, "That Grossulani, who is under this hood, he, and no other, has obtained the archbishopric of Milan simoniacally, by gift of hand, gift of tongue, and gift of service. And I, who enter on this ordeal, swear that I have used no charm, or incantation, or witchcraft." The Archbishop, unwilling to remain, remounted his horse and rode to the Church of St. John "ad concham," but Ariald of Marignano remained to see that the ordeal was rightly carried out. When the pile was lighted, he said to the priest, "In heaven's name, return to your duty, and do not rush on certain death." But Liprand answered, "Get thee behind me, Satan," and signing himself, and blessing the fire with consecrated water, he rushed through the flames, barefooted, in sackcloth cassock and silk chasuble. He came out on the other side uninjured; a sudden draught had parted the flames as he entered, and when he emerged his feet were not burnt, nor was his silk chasuble scorched. The people shouted at the miracle, and Grossulani was obliged to fly from the city. It was soon rumoured, however, that Liprand was suffering from a scorched hand and an injured foot. It was in vain for his friends to assure the people that his hand had been burnt when he was throwing the holy water on the flames before he entered them, and that his foot was injured not by the fire, but by the hoof of a horse as he emerged from the flames. One part of the mob began to clamour against Liprand that he was an impostor, the other to exalt him as a saint, and the streets became the scene of riot and bloodshed. At this juncture Landulf of Vereglate, who had been just elected to the vacant see, arrived from Jerusalem, and finding that the Archbishop had fled the city, he appealed to the people to cease from their riots, and promised to have Grossulani deposed, or at least the charges brought against him properly investigated at Rome. The tumults were with difficulty allayed, and the Archbishop, Landulf, and Liprand went to Rome (A.D. 1103). A Synod was convened and Liprand brought his vague accusations of simony against the Archbishop. Landulf refused to support him, so that it is hardly probable that he can have felt himself aggrieved by the conduct of Grossulani. Liprand, being unable to substantiate his charge of simony, was obliged to change the nature of his accusation, and charged the Archbishop with having forced him to submit to the ordeal of fire. The Pope and the Synod required the Archbishop to clear himself by oath; accordingly Grossulani did so, in the following terms: "I, Grossulani, by the grace of God Archbishop, did not force Liprand to enter the fire." Azo, Bishop of Acqui, and Arderic, Bishop of Lodi, took the oath with him; at the same time the pastoral staff slipped from the hands of the Archbishop and fell on the floor, a sign, the biographer of Liprand says, that he forswore himself.[46] [46] It is evident from the account of Landulf the younger himself, that the Archbishop did not force the priest to enter on the ordeal. The Archbishop withdrew his authority confirmed by the Holy See, and he returned to Milan, where he was well received. The Archbishop took an unworthy opportunity, in 1110, of ridding the city of the presence of Liprand for that priest having taken into his house and cured a certain Herebert of Bruzano, an enemy of the Archbishop, who was ill with fever. Grossulani deprived Liprand of his benefice, and the priest retired into the Valteline. Troubles broke out in Milan between the two parties, which produced civil war, and the Archbishop was driven out of the city, whereupon Liprand returned to it. The friends of Grossulani persuaded him to visit Jerusalem, and he started, after having appointed Arderic, Bishop of Lodi, his vicar (A.D. 1111). During his absence both parties united to reject him, and they elected Jordano of Cliva in his room (Jan. 1, A.D. 1112). Mainnard, Archbishop of Turin, hastened to Rome, and received the pall from the Pope, on condition that it should not be worn for six months. But the rumours having spread that Grossulani was returning from Jerusalem, Mainnard came to Milan, and placed the pall on the altar of St. Ambrose, whence Jordano took it and laid it about his shoulders. On the return of Grossulani, civil war broke out again between the two factions, which ended in both Archbishops being summoned to Rome in 1116; and the Pope ordered Grossulani to return to his bishopric of Savonia, and confirmed Jordano in the archbishopric of Milan. But before this Liprand had died 3rd January, 1113. His sanctity was almost immediately attested by a miracle, in spite of the disparagement of his virtues by the party of the Archbishop Grossulani; for a certain knight of Piacenza, having swallowed a fish-bone which stuck in his throat, in sleep saw the priest appear to him and touch his throat, whereupon a violent fit of coughing ensued, in which the bone was ejected; this was considered quite sufficient to establish the claim of Liprand to be regarded as a saint. The Anabaptists of Münster. To the year 1524 Münster, the capital of Westphalia, had remained faithful to the religion which S. Swibert, coadjutor of S. Willibrord, first Bishop of Utrecht, had brought to it in the 7th century. But then Lutheranism was introduced into it. Frederick von Wied at that time occupied the Episcopal throne. He was brother to Hermann, Archbishop of Cologne, who was afterwards deprived for his secession to Lutheranism. The religious revolution in the Westphalian capital at its commencement presents the same symptoms which characterised the beginning of the Reformation elsewhere. The town council were prepared to hail it as a means of overthrowing the Episcopal authority, and establishing the municipal power as supreme in the city. Already the State of Juliers had embraced the new religion, and faith had been shaken in Osnabrück, Minden, and Paderborn, when the first symptoms appeared in Münster. Four priests, the incumbents of the parishes of St. Lambert, St. Ludger, St. Martin, and the Lieb-Frau Church, commonly called Ueberwasser, declared for the Reform. The contemporary historian, Kerssenbroeck, an eye-witness of all he describes, says of them, "They indulged in the most violent abuse of the clergy, they cursed good works, assured their auditors that such works would not receive the smallest recompense, and permitted every one to give way to all the excesses of so-called Evangelical liberty."[47] They stirred up their hearers against the religious orders, and the people clamoured daily at the gates of the monasteries and nunneries, insisting on being given food; and the monks and nuns were too much frightened to refuse those whom impunity rendered daily more exacting.[48] On the night of the 22nd March, 1525, they attacked the rich convent of nuns at Nizink, with intentions of pillaging it. They failed in this attempt, and the ringleaders were seized and led before the magistrates, followed by an excited and tumultuous crowd of men and women, "evangelically disposed," as the chronicler says. Hoping to ally the effervescence, the magistrates asked the cause of complaint against the nuns of Nizink, and then came out the true reason, for which religious prejudice had served as a cloak. They complained that the monks and nuns exercised professions to the prejudice of the artisans; and they demanded of the magistracy that their looms should be broken, the religious forbidden to work at trades, and their superabundant goods to be distributed among the poor. The orators of the band declared in conclusion "that if the magistrates refused to grant these requests, the people would disregard their orders, displace them by force of arms, and put in their stead men trustworthy and loyal, and devoted to the interests of the citizens."[49] Alarmed at these threats, the magistrates yielded, and promised to take every measure satisfactory to the insurgents.[50] On the 25th May, accordingly, the Friars of St. Francis and the nuns of Nizink were ordered to give up their looms and accounts. The friars yielded, but the ladies stoutly refused. The magistrates, however, had all the looms carried away, whilst a mob howled at the gates, and agitators, excited by the four renegade priests, ran about the town stirring up the people against the religious. "All the worst characters," says the old chronicler, "joined the rioters; the curious came to swell the crowd, and people of means shut themselves into their houses."[51] For Johann Groeten, the orator of the band, now proclaimed that having emptied the strong boxes of the monks and nuns, they would despoil all those whose fortunes exceeded two thousand ducats. [47] Kerssenbroeck, p. 114. [48] _Ibid._ p. 115. [49] Kerssenbroeck, p. 116. [50] _Ibid._ p. 117. [51] _Ibid._ p. 120. The rioters next marched to the town hall, where the senators sat trembling, and they demanded the immediate confirmation of a petition in thirty-four articles that had been drawn up for them by their leaders. At the same time the mob announced that unless their petition was granted they would execute its requirements with their own hands. It asked that the canons of the cathedral should be required to pay the debts of the bishop deceased; that criminal jurisdiction should be withdrawn from the hands of the clergy; that the monks and nuns should be forbidden to exercise any manufacture, to dry grain, make linen, and rear cattle; that the burden of taxation should be shared by the clergy; that rectors should not be allowed to appoint or dismiss their curates without consent of the parish; that lawsuits should not be allowed to be protracted beyond six weeks; that beer licences should be abolished, and tolls on the bridges done away with; that monks and nuns should be allowed free permission to leave their religious societies and return to the world; that the property of religious houses should be sold and distributed amongst the needy, and that the municipality should allow them enough for their subsistence; that the Carmelites, the Augustinians, and the Dominicans should be suppressed; that pious foundations for masses for the repose of souls should be confiscated; and that people should be allowed to marry in Lent and Advent. The magistrates yielded at once, and promised to endeavour to get the consent of the other estates of the diocese to the legalising of these articles.[52] [52] Kerssenbroeck, p. 126. On the morrow of the Ascension, 1525, the magistrates closed the gates of the town, and betook themselves to the clergy of the chapter to request them to accept the thirty-four articles. The canons refused at first, but, in fear of the people, they consented, but wrote to the bishop to tell him what had taken place, and to urge him to act with promptitude, and not to forget that the rights and privileges of the Church were in jeopardy. It was one of the misfortunes in Germany, as it was in France, that the clergy were exempt from taxation. This precipitated the Revolution in France, and aroused the people against the clergy; and in Germany it served as a strong motive for the adoption of the Reformation. The canons now fled the town, protesting that their signatures had been wrested from them by violence, and that they withdrew their consent to the articles. The inferior clergy remained at their post, and exhibited great energy and decision. They deprived Lubert Causen, minister of St. Martins, one of the most zealous fautors of Lutheranism in Münster, and the head of the reforming party. When his parishioners objected, a packet of love-letters he had written to several girls in the town, and amongst others some to a young woman of respectable position whom he had seduced, came to light, and were read in the Senate. The reformer had in his letters used scriptural texts to excuse and justify the most shameless libertinage.[53] Johann Tante, preacher at St. Lambert, and Gottfried Reining, of Ueberwasser, were also deprived. As for the Lutheran preacher at St. Ludger, Johann Fink, "his mouth was stopped by the gift of a fat prebendal stall, and from that moment he entirely lost his zeal for the gospel of Wittenberg, and never uttered another word against the Catholic religion."[54] [53] Kerssenbroeck, p. 128. [54] _Ibid._ By means of the mediation of the Archbishop of Cologne, a reconciliation was effected. The articles were abolished and the signatures annulled, and the members of the chapter returned to Münster, which had felt their absence by the decrease in trade, and the inconstant people "showed at least as much joy at their return as they had shown hatred at their departure."[55] [55] _Ibid._ p. 138. There can be no question but that the Reformation in Germany was provoked to a large extent by abuses and corruptions in the Church. To a much larger extent it was a revolt against the Papacy which had weakened and numbed the powers of the Empire throughout the Middle Ages from the time of the Emperor Henry IV. But chiefly as a social and political movement it was the revolt of municipalities against the authority of collegiate bodies of clergy and the temporal jurisdiction of prince-bishops, or of grand dukes and margraves and electors favouring the change because it allowed them at a sweep to confiscate vast properties and melt down tons of chalices and reliquaries into coin. In Münster lived a draper, Bernhard Knipperdolling by name, who assembled the malcontents in his house, or in a tavern, and poured forth in their ears his sarcasms against the Pope, the bishops, the clergy and the Church. He was well known for his dangerous influence, and the bishop, Frederic von Wied, arrested him as he passed near his residence at Vecht. The people of Münster, exasperated at the news of the captivity of their favourite, obliged the magistrates and the chapter to ask the bishop to release him. Frederick von Wied yielded with reluctance, using these prophetic words, "I consent, but I fear that this man will turn everything in Münster and the whole diocese upside down." Knipperdolling left prison, after having taken an oath to keep the peace; but on his return to Münster he registered a vow that he would terribly revenge his incarceration and would make the diocese pay as many ducats as his captivity had cost him hellers.[56] [56] Kerssenbroeck, p. 143. There was another man in Münster destined to exercise a fatal influence on the unfortunate city. This was a priest named Bernard Rottmann.[57] As a child he had been chorister at St. Maurice's Church at Münster, where his exquisite voice had attracted notice. He was educated in the choir school, then went to Mainz, where in 1524 he took his Master's degree, and returning to Münster, was ordained priest in 1529. He was then given the lectureship of the church in which, as a boy, he had sung so sweetly. He shortly exhibited a leaning towards Lutheranism, and the canons of St. Maurice, who had placed great hopes on the young preacher, thinking that he acted from inexperience and without bad intent, gave him a paternal reprimand, and provided him with funds to go to the University of Cologne, and study there dogmatic and controversial theology; at the same time undertaking to retain Rottmann in the receipt of his salary as lecturer, and to this they added a handsome pension to assist him in his studies. [57] _Ibid._ 148; Latin edition, p. 1517-9; Dorpius, f. 391 a. The young man received this money, and then, instead of going to Cologne, betook himself to Wittenberg, where he attached himself to Melancthon. On his return to Münster, the canons, unaware of the fraud that had been played upon them, reinstated Rottmann in the pulpit. He was too crafty to publish his new tenets in his discourses, and thus to insure the loss of his situation, but he employed his secret influence in society to spread Lutheranism. After a while, when he considered his party strong enough to support him, he threw off the mask, and preached boldly against the priests and the bishops, and certain doctrines of the Catholic Church. The more violent he became in his attacks, the more personal and caustic in his language, the greater grew the throng of people to hear him. Then he preached against Confession, which he called "the disturber of consciences," and contrasted it with Justification by Faith only, which set consciences at ease; he preached against good works, against the obligation to observe the moral law, and assured his hearers that grace was freely imputed to them, live as they liked, and that the Gospel afforded them entire freedom from all restraints. "The shameless dissolution which now began to spread through the town," says Kerssenbroeck, "proved that the mob adopted the belief in the impunity of sin; all those who were ruined in pocket, hoping to get the possessions of others, joined the party of innovators, and Rottmann was extolled by them to the skies."[58] [58] Kerssenbroeck, p. 152. The Senate forbade the citizens to attend Rottmann's sermons, but their orders were disregarded. The populace declared that Master Bernard was the only preacher of the true Gospel, and they covered with slander and abuse those who strove to oppose his seductive doctrine. "Some of the episcopal councillors, however," says the historian, "favoured the innovator. The private secretary of the bishop, Leonhard Mosz, encouraged him secretly, and promised him his support in the event of danger."[59] [59] Kerssenbroeck, p. 152. But the faithful clergy informed the bishop of the scandal, and before Mosz and others could interfere, a sentence of deprivation was pronounced against him. Rottmann, startled by this decisive measure, wrote a series of letters to Frederick von Wied, which have been preserved by Kerssenbroeck, in which he pretended that he had been calumniated before "the best and most just of bishops," and excused himself, instead of boldly and frankly announcing his secession from the Catholic Church. In reply, the bishop ordered him to quit Münster, and charged his councillors to announce to him that his case would be submitted to the next synod. Rottmann then wrote to the councillors a letter which exhibits his duplicity in a clearer light. Frederick von Wied, hearing of this letter, ordered the recalcitrant preacher to quit the convent adjoining the church of St. Maurice, and to leave the town. Rottmann thereupon took refuge in the house of Knipperdolling and his companions. Under the protection of these turbulent men, the young preacher assumed a bolder line, and wrote to the bishop demanding a public discussion, and announcing that shortly his doctrine would be published in a pamphlet, and thus be popularised. On the 23rd of January, 1532, Rottmann's profession of faith appeared, addressed in the form of a letter to the clergy of Münster.[60] Like all the professions of faith of the period, it consisted chiefly of a string of negations, with a few positive statements retained from the Catholic creed on God, the Incarnation, &c. He denied the special authority of the priesthood, reduced the Sacraments to signs, going thereby beyond Luther; rejected doctrines of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, Purgatory, the intercession of saints, and the use of images, pilgrimages, vows, benedictions, and the like. It would certainly have been more appropriately designated a Confession of Disbelief. This pamphlet was widely circulated amongst the people, and the party of Lutheran malcontents, headed by Knipperdolling, and Herman Bispink, a coiner and forger of title-deeds, grew in power, in numbers, and in audacity. [60] Kerssenbroeck, p. 165 _et seq._; Latin edition, Mencken, p. 1520-8: Sleidan, French tr., p. 406. On the 23rd of February, 1532, Knipperdolling and his associates assembled the populace early, and carried Rottmann in triumph to the church of St. Lambert. Finding the doors shut, they mounted the preacher on a wooden pulpit before the bone-house. The Reformer then addressed the people on the necessity of proclaiming evangelical liberty and of destroying idolatry; of overthrowing images and the Host preserved in the tabernacles. His doctrine might be summed up in two words: liberty for the Evangelicals to do what they liked, and compulsion for the Catholics. The sermon produced a tremendous effect; before it was concluded the rioters rushed towards the different churches, burst open the doors, tore down the altars, reliquaries, statues; and the Sacrament was taken from the tabernacles and trampled under foot. The cathedral alone, defended by massive gates, escaped their fury.[61] [61] Kerssenbroeck, p. 185; Bullinger, "Adversus Anabaptist." lib. ii. c. 8. Proud of this achievement, the insurgents defied all authority, secular and ecclesiastical, and installed Bernhard Rottmann as preacher and pastor of the Evangelical religion in St. Lambert's Church. "Thenceforth," says the Münster contemporary historian, "it may well be understood that they did not limit themselves to simple tumults, but that murders, pillage, and the overthrow of all public order followed. The success of this first enterprise had rendered the leaders masters of the city." Bishop Frederick von Wied felt that his power was at an end. He was a man with no very strong religious zeal or moral courage. He resigned his dignity in the sacristy of the church of Werne, reserving to himself a yearly income of 2,000 florins. Duke Eric of Brunswick, Prince of Grubenhagen, Bishop of Paderborn and Osnabrück, was elected in his room. The nomination of Eric irritated the Lutheran party. He was a man zealous for his religion, and with powerful relations. Rottmann at once sent him his twenty-nine articles, and the artisans of Münster, who had embraced the cause of Rottmann, handed in a petition to the magistrates (April 16th, 1532) to request that compulsion might be used to force every one to become Lutheran, "because it seems to us," said they, "that this doctrine is in all points and entirely conformable to the Gospel, whilst that which is taught by the rest of the clergy is absurd, and ought to be rejected."[62] The bishop-elect wrote to the magistrates, insisting on the dismissal of Rottmann, but in their answer they not only declined to obey, but offered an apology for his conduct. [62] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 189-90. The bishop wrote again, but received no answer. Wishing to use every means of conciliation, before adopting forcible measures, he sent a deputation to Münster to demand the expulsion of the preacher, but without success. The people, becoming more insubordinate, determined to take possession of other churches. One of the most important is the church of Unsere Lieb-frau, or Ueberwasser, a church whose beautiful tower and choir attract the admiration of the traveller visiting Münster. This church and parish depended on the convent of Ueberwasser; the rector was a man of zeal and power, a Dr. Martin, who was peculiarly obnoxious to the Lutheran party. A deputation was sent to the abbess, Ida von Merfelt, to insist on the dismissal of the rector and the substitution of an Evangelical preacher.[63] The lady was a woman of courage; she recommended the deputation to return to their shops and to attend to their own business, and announced that Dr. Martin should stay at his post; and stay he did, for a time. [63] _Ibid._ p. 203. The bishop was resolved to try force of arms, when suddenly he died, May 9th, 1532, after having drunk a goblet of wine. Several writers of the period state that it was poisoned. A modern historian says he died of excess of drink--on what authority I do not know.[64] He had brought down upon himself the dislike of the Lutherans for having vigorously suppressed the reforming movement in Paderborn. The history of that movement in this other Westphalian diocese is too suggestive to be passed over. In 1527 the Elector John Frederick of Saxony passed through Paderborn and ordered his Lutheran preachers to address the people in the streets through the windows of the house in which he lodged, as the clergy refused them the use of the churches. Next year the agitation began by a quarrel between some of the young citizens and the servants of the chapter, and ended in the plundering and devastation of the cathedral and the residences of the canons. The leader of the Evangelical party in Paderborn was Johann Molner of Buren, a man who had been expelled from the city in 1531 for murder and adultery; he left, taking with him as his mistress the wife of the man he had murdered, and retired to Soest, "where," says a contemporary writer, Daniel von Soest, "he did not remain satisfied with this woman only." He returned to Paderborn as a burning and shining gospel light, and led the iconoclastic riot. Duke Philip of Grubenhagen supported his brother, and the town was forced to pay 2,000 gulden for the damage done, and to promise to pay damages if any further mischief took place, and this so cooled the zeal of the citizens of Paderborn for the Gospel that it died out.[65] [64] Stürc, "Gerchichte v. Osnabrück." Osnab. 1826, pt. iii. p. 25. [65] Vehse, "Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe." Hamburg, 1859, vol. xlvii. p. 4-6. Bessen, "Geschichte v. Paderborn"; Paderb. 1820, vol. ii. p. 33. The chapter retired to Ludwigshausen for the purpose of electing the successor to Bishop Eric, who had only occupied the see three months; their choice fell on Francis von Waldeck, Bishop of Minden, and then of Osnabrück. The choice was not fortunate; it was dictated by the exigencies of the times, which required a man of rank and power to occupy the vacant throne, so as to reduce the disorder by force of arms. Francis of Waldeck was all this, but the canons were not at that time aware that he had himself strong leanings towards Lutheranism; and after he became Bishop of Münster he would have readily changed the religion of the place, had it not been that such a proceeding would, under the circumstances, have involved the loss of his income as prince-bishop. Later, when the disturbances were at an end, he proposed to the Estates the establishment of Lutheranism and the suppression of Catholicism, as we shall see in the sequel. He even joined the Smalkald union of the Protestant princes against the Catholics in 1544. With sentiments so favourable to the Reform, the new bishop would have yielded everything to the agitators, had they not assumed a threatening attitude, and menaced his temporal position and revenue, which were the only things connected with the office for which he cared. The inferior clergy of Münster wrote energetically to him on his appointment, complaining of the innovations which succeeded each other with rapidity in the town. "The Lutheran party," said they in this letter, "are growing daily more invasive and insolent," and they implored the bishop to protect their rights and liberty of conscience against the tyranny of the new party, who, not content with worshipping God in their own way, refused toleration to others, outraged their feelings by violating all they held most sacred, and disturbed their services by unseemly interruptions. Francis of Waldeck renewed the orders of his predecessor. The senate acknowledged the receipt of his letter, and promised to answer it on a future occasion. However, the warmest partisans of Rottmann were resolved to carry matters to a climax, and at once to overthrow both the episcopal and the civil authority. Knipperdolling persuaded the butcher Modersohn and the skinner Redekker that, as provosts of their guilds, they were entitled to convene the members of their trades without the intervention of the magistrates. These two men accordingly convoked the people for the 1st July.[66] The assembly was numerously attended, and opened tumultuously. When silence was obtained, a certain Johann Windemuller rose and proclaimed the purpose of the convention. "The affair is one of importance," said he; "we have to maintain the glory of God, our eternal welfare, the happiness of all our fellow-citizens, and the development of our franchises; all these things depend on the sacred ecclesiastical liberty announced to us by the worthy Rottmann. We must conclude an alliance against the oppressors of the Gospel, that the doctrine of Rottmann, which is incontestably the true one, may be protected." These words produced such enthusiasm, that the audience shouted with one voice that "they would defend Rottmann and his doctrine to their last farthing, and the last drop of their blood." Some of those present, by their silence, expressed their displeasure, but a draper named Johann Mennemann had the courage to raise his voice against the proposal. A furious band at once attacked him with their fists, crying out that the enemies of the pure Gospel must be destroyed; "already the bold draper was menaced with their daggers, when one of his friends succeeded in effecting his escape from the popular rage." However, he was obliged to appear before the heads of the guilds and answer for his opposition. Mennemann replied, that in weighty matters concerning the welfare of the commonwealth, tumultuous proceedings were not likely to produce good resolutions, and that he advised the separation of the corporations, that the questions might be maturely considered and properly weighed.[67] [66] Kerssenbroeck, p. 207; Dorpius, f. 391 b. 392. [67] _Ibid._ p. 208. The corporations of trades now appointed twenty-six individuals, in addition to the provosts, to decide on measures adapted to carry out the resolution. This committee decided "that one religion alone should be taught in the town for the future and for ever after;" and that "if any opposition was offered by the magistrates, the whole body of the citizens should be appealed to."[68] [68] Kerssenbroeck, p. 209. These decisions were presented to the senate on the 11th July, which replied that they were willing not to separate themselves from evangelical truth, but that they were not yet satisfied on which side it was to be found, and that they would ask the bishop to send them learned theologians who should investigate the matter. This reply irritated Rottmann, Knipperdolling, and their followers. On the 12th July fresh messengers were sent to the Rath (senate) to know whether it might be reckoned upon. The answer was equivocal. A third deputation insisted on an answer of "Yes" or "No," and threatened a general rising of the people unless their demands were acceded to.[69] The magistrates, in alarm, promised their adhesion to the wishes of the insurgents, who demanded at once that "sincere preachers of the pure Gospel" should be installed in every church of Münster. The councillors accordingly issued orders to all the clergy of the city to adopt the articles of Bernard Rottmann, or to refute them by scriptural arguments, or they must expect the Council to proceed against them with the extremest rigour of the law. [69] _Ibid._ pp. 210, 211. Then, to place the seal on their cowardly conduct, they wrote to the prince-bishop on the 25th, to excuse themselves of complicity in the institution of Rottmann, but at the same time they undertook the defence of the Reformer, and assured the bishop that his doctrine was sound and irrefutable. At the same time they opened a communication with the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, asking that bulwark of the Reformation to protect them. Philip wrote back, promising his intervention, but warning them not to make the Gospel an excuse for revolt and disorder, and not to imagine that Christian liberty allowed them to seize on all the property of the Church. At the same time he wrote to the prince-bishop to urge upon him not to deprive the good and simple people of Münster of their evangelical preachers.[70] [70] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 213-23. In the meantime the seditious members of the town guilds grew impatient; and on the 6th August they sent a deputation to the town council reminding it of its promise, and insisting on the immediate deprivation of all the Catholic clergy. The magistrates sought to gain time, but the deputation threatened them with the people taking the law into their own hands, rejecting the authority of the council, and electing another set of magistrates. "The Rath, on hearing this," says Kerssenbroeck, "were filled with alarm, and they considered it expedient to yield, in part at least, to the populace, and to deprive the clergy of their rights, rather than to expose themselves rashly to the greatest dangers."[71] [71] _Ibid._ p. 272. They resolved therefore to forbid the Catholic clergy the use of the pulpits of the churches, and to address the people in any form. This was done at once, and all ceremonies "contrary to the pure word of God" were abolished, and the faithful in the different parishes were required to receive and maintain the new pastors commissioned by the burgomaster and corporation to minister to them in things divine. On the 10th August, a crowd, headed by Rottmann, the preacher Brixius, and Knipperdolling, fell upon the churches and completed the work of devastation which had been begun in February. The Cathedral and the Church of Ueberwasser alone escaped their Vandalism, because the fanatics were afraid of arousing too strong an opposition. The same day the celebration of mass and communion in one kind were forbidden under the severest penalties; the priests were driven out of their churches, and Rottmann, Brixius, Glandorp, Rolle, Wertheim, and Gottfried Ninnhoven, Lutheran preachers, were intruded in their room.[72] [72] _Ibid._ pp. 228-34. The peace among these new apostles of the true Gospel was, however, subject to danger. Pastor Brixius had fallen in love with the sister of Pastor Rottmann, and the appearance of the girl proved to every one that the lovers had not waited for the ceremony of marriage. Rottmann insisted on this brother pastor marrying the young woman to repair the scandal. But no sooner was the bride introduced into the parsonage of St. Martin, of which Brixius was in possession, than the first wife of the evangelical minister arrived in Münster with her two children. Brixius was obliged to send away the new wife, but a coldness ensued between him and Rottmann; "however, fearing to cause dissension amongst their adherents by an open quarrel, they came to some arrangement, and Brixius retained his situation."[73] [73] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 228, 229. These acts of violence and scandals had inspired many of the citizens with alarm. Those who were able sent their goods out of the town; the nuns of Ueberwasser despatched their title-deeds and sacred vessels to a place of safety. Several of the wealthy citizens and senators, who would not give up their religion, deserted Münster, and settled elsewhere. The two burgomasters, Ebroin Drost and Willebrand Plonies, resigned their offices and left the city never to return.[74] The provosts of the guilds next insisted on the severe repression of all Catholic usages and the performance of sacraments by the priests; they went further, and insisted on belief in the sacrifice of the altar and adoration of the Host being made penal. The clergy wrote to the bishop imploring his aid, and assuring him that their position was daily becoming more intolerable; but Francis of Waldeck recommended patience, and promised his aid when it lay in his power to assist them. [74] _Ibid._ p. 230. On the 17th September, 1532, he convoked the nobles of the principality at Wollbeck, gave them an account of the condition of Münster, and conjured them to assist him in suppressing the rebellion.[75] The nobles replied, that before adopting violent measures, it would be advisable to attempt a reconciliation. Eight commissioners were chosen from amongst the barons, who wrote to the magistrates, and requested them to send their deputies to Wollbeck on Monday, September 23rd, "so as to come to some decision on what is necessary for the welfare of the republic." The envoys of the city appeared, and after the opening of the assembly, the grand marshal of the diocese described the condition of the city, and declared that if it pursued its course of disobedience, the nobility were prepared to assist their prince in re-establishing order. The delegates were given eight days to frame an answer. The agitation in Münster during these days was great. The evangelical preachers lost no time in exciting the people. The deputies returned to the conference with a vague answer that the best way to settle the differences would be to submit them to competent and enlightened judges; and so the matter dropped. [75] _Ibid._ p. 248 _et seq._ The bishop's officers now captured a herd of fat cattle belonging to some citizens of Münster, which were on their way to Cologne, and refused to surrender them till the preachers of disaffection were sent away.[76] [76] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 268-9. The party of Rottmann and Knipperdolling now required the town council to raise 500 soldiers for the defence of the town, should it be attacked by the prince-bishop--to strike 2000 ducats in copper for the payment of the mercenaries, such money to circulate in Münster alone--to order the sentinels to forbid egress to the Catholic clergy, should they attempt to fly--and to impose on the Catholic clergy a tax of 4000 florins a month for the support of the troops. As the clergy had been deprived of their benefices, forbidden to preach and minister the sacraments, this additional act of persecution was intolerable in its injustice. The senate accepted these requisitions with some abatement--the number of soldiers was reduced to 300.[77] [77] _Ibid._ p. 279 _et seq._ The bishop, finding that the confiscation of the oxen had not produced the required results, adopted another expedient which proved equally ineffectual. He closed all the roads by his cavalry, declared the city in a state of blockade, and forbade the peasantry taking provisions into Münster. The artizans then marched out and took the necessary food; they paid for it, but threatened the peasants with spoliation without repayment, unless they frequented the market with their goods as usual. This menace produced its effect; Münster continued to be provisioned as before.[78] [78] _Ibid._ p. 283 _et seq._ Proud of their success, the innovators attacked Ueberwasser Church, and ordered the abbess to dismiss the Catholic clergy who ministered there, and to replace them by Gospel preachers. She declined peremptorily, and the mob then drove the priests out of the church and presbytery, and instituted Lutherans in their place.[79] [79] _Ibid._ pp. 284, 285. Notwithstanding the decrees of the senate, the priests continued their exhortations and their ministrations in such churches as the Evangelicals were unable to supply with pastors, of whom there was a lack. Brixius, the bigamist minister of St. Martin's, having found in one of them a monk preaching to a crowd of women, rushed up into the pulpit, crying out that the man was telling them lies; "but," says Kerssenbroeck, "the devotees surrounded the unfortunate orator, beat him with their fists, slippers, wooden shoes and staves, so that he fled the church, his face and body black and blue." Probably these women bore him a grudge also for his treatment of Rottmann's sister, which was no secret. "Furious at this, he went next day to exhibit the traces of the combat to the senate, entreating them to revenge the outrage he had received--he a minister of the Holy Gospel; but, for the first time, the magistrates showed some sense, and declared that they would not meddle in the matter, because the guilty persons were too numerous, and that some indulgence ought to be shown to the fair sex."[80] [80] Kerssenbroeck, p. 330. The town council now sent deputies to the Protestant princes, Dukes Ernest and Francis of Lüneburg, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and Count Philip of Waldeck, brother of the prince-bishop, to promise the adhesion of the city to the Smalkald union, and to request their assistance against their bishop. The situation was singular. The city sought assistance of the Protestant union against their prince, desiring to overthrow his power, under the plea that he was a Catholic bishop. And the bishop, at heart a Lutheran, and utterly indifferent to his religious position and responsibilities, was determined to coerce his subjects into obedience, that he might retain his rank and revenue as prince, intending, when the city returned to its obedience, to shake off his episcopal office, to Lutheranize his subjects, and remain their sovereign prince, and possibly transform the ecclesiastical into a hereditary principality, the appanage of a family of which he would be the founder. He had already provided himself with a concubine, Anna Pölmann, by whom he had children. Whilst the senate was engaged in treating with the Protestant princes, negotiations continued with the bishop, at the diets convoked successively at Dulmen and Wollbeck, but they were as fruitless as before. The deputies separated on the 9th December, agreeing to meet again on the 21st of the same month. At this time there arrived in Münster a formal refutation of the theses of Rottmann, by John of Deventer, provincial of the Franciscans at Cologne.[81] The magistrates had repeatedly complained that "the refusal of the Catholics to reply to Bernard Rottmann was the sole cause of all the evil." At the same time they had forbidden the Catholic clergy to preach or to make use of the press in Münster. This answer came like a surprise upon them. It was carried by the foes of the clergy to the magistrates. The news of the appearance of this counterblast created the wildest excitement. "The citizens, assembled in great crowds, ran about the streets to hear what was being said. Some announced that the victory would remain with Rottmann, others declared that he would never recover the blow." [81] Kerssenbroeck, p. 332. The provosts of the guilds hastily drew up a petition to the senate to expel the clergy from the town, and to confiscate their goods; but the magistrates refused to comply with this requisition, which would have at once stirred up civil war.[82] [82] _Ibid._ pp. 335-7. Rottmann mounted the pulpit on St. Andrew's day, and declared that on the following Sunday he would refute the arguments of John of Deventer. Accordingly, on the day appointed, he preached to an immense crowd, taking for his text the words of St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 12), "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." The sermon was not an answer to the arguments of John of Deventer, but a furious attack upon the Pope and Catholicism. Knipperdolling also informed the people that he would rather have his children killed and cooked and served up for dinner than surrender his evangelical principles and return to the errors of the past.[83] [83] _Ibid._ p. 338. On the 21st December, 1532, Francis of Waldeck assembled the diet of the principality, and asked its advice as to the advisability of proclaiming war against Münster, should the city persist in its obstinacy.[84] The clergy and nobles replied that, according to immemorial custom, the prince must engage in war at his own cost, and that they were too heavily burdened with taxes for the Turkish war to enable them to undertake fresh charges. Francis of Waldeck reminded them that he was obliged to pay a pension of 2000 florins to his predecessor, Frederick von Wied, and he affirmed that he also was not in a condition to have recourse to arms. [84] _Ibid._ p. 340 _et seq._ Whilst the prince, his barons and canons were deliberating, Rottmann had assumed the ecclesiastical dictatorship in the cathedral city, and had ordered, on his sole authority, the suppression of the observance of fast-days. The spirit of opposition and protestation that had been evoked already manifested itself in strange excesses. "Some of the Evangelicals refused to have the bread put into their mouths at Communion," says Kerssenbroeck, "but insisted on helping themselves from the table, or they stained themselves in taking long draughts at the large chalices. It is even said that some placed the bread in large soup tureens, and poured the wine upon it, and took it out with spoons and forks, so that they might communicate in both kinds at one and the same moment."[85] [85] Kerssenbroeck, p. 347. The Reformer of Münster began to entertain and to express doubts as to the validity of the baptism of infants, which he considered had not the warrant of Holy Scripture. Melancthon wrote urgently to him, imploring him not to create dissensions in the Evangelical Church by disturbing the arrangement many wise men had agreed upon. "We have enemies enough," added Melancthon; "they will be rejoiced to see us tearing each other and destroying one another.... I speak with good intention, and I take the liberty of giving my advice, because I am devoted to you and to the Church."[86] [86] _Ibid._ p. 348. Luther wrote as well, not to Rottmann, but to the magistrates of Münster, praising their love of the Gospel, and urging them to beware of being drawn away by the damnable errors of the Sacramentarians, Zwinglians, _aliorumque schwermerorum_.[87] The senators received this apostolic epistle with the utmost respect and reverence imaginable; they communicated it to Rottmann and his colleagues, and ordered them to obey it. But the senate had long lost its authority; and this injunction was disregarded.[88] "Disorder and infidelity made progress; the idle, rogues, spendthrifts, thieves, and ruined persons swelled the crowd of Evangelists."[89] [87] _Ibid._ p. 349. [88] Kerssenbroeck, p. 351. [89] _Ibid._ p. 351. However, it was not enough to have introduced the new religion, to satisfy the Evangelicals the Catholics must be completely deprived of the exercise of their religion. In spite of every hindrance, mass had been celebrated every Sunday in the cathedral. All the parish churches had been deprived of their priests, but the minster remained in the hands of the Catholics. As Christmas approached, many men and women prepared by fasting, alms, and confession, to make their communion at the cathedral on the festival of the Nativity. The magistrates, hearing of their design, forbade them communicating, offering, as an excuse, that it would cause scandal to the partisans of the Reform. They also published a decree forbidding baptisms to be performed elsewhere than in the parish churches; so as to force the faithful to bring their children to the ministrations of men whom they regarded with aversion as heretics and apostates.[90] [90] _Ibid._ p. 353. No envoys from the capital attended the reunion of the chambers at Wollbeck on the 20th December. But Münster sent a letter expressing a hope that the difference between the city and the prince might be terminated by mediation. This letter gave the diet a chance of escaping from its very difficult position of enforcing the rule of the prince without money to pay the soldiers. The diet undertook to lay the suggestion before the prince-bishop, and to transmit his reply to the envoys of Münster. Francis of Waldeck then quitted his diocese of Minden, and betook himself to Telgte,[91] a little town about four miles from Münster, where he was to receive the oath of allegiance and homage of his subjects in the principality. The estates assembled at Wollbeck, and all the leading nobles and clergy of the diocese hastened to Telgte and assembled around their sovereign on the same day. A letter was at once addressed to the senate of Münster by the assembled estates, urging it to send deputies to Telgte, the following morning, at eight o'clock, to labour together with them at the re-establishment of peace. [91] _Ibid._ p. 354 _et seq._ Sleidan, French tr. p. 407. The deputies did not appear; the senate addressed to the diet, instead, a letter of excuses. The estates at once replied that in the interest of peace, they regretted the obstinacy with which the senate had refused to send deputies to Telgte; but that this had not prevented them from supplicating the bishop to yield to their wishes; and that they were glad to announce that he was ready to submit the mutual differences to the arbitration of two princes of the Empire, one to be named by himself, the other by the city of Münster. And until the arbitration took place, the prince-bishop would provisionally suspend all measures of severity, on condition that the ancient usages should be restored in the churches, the preachers should cease to innovate, and that the imprisoned vassals of the bishop should be released. This missive was sent into the town on the 25th; the magistrates represented to the bearer "that it would be scandalous to occupy themselves with temporal affairs on Christmas-day," and on this pretext they persuaded him to remain till the morrow in Münster. Then orders were given for the gates of the town to be closed, and egress to be forbidden to every one. Having taken these precautions, the magistrates assembled the provosts of the guilds, and held with them a conference, which terminated shortly before nine o'clock the same evening; after which the subaltern officers of the senate were sent round to rap at every door, and order the citizens to assemble at midnight, before the town-hall. A nocturnal expedition had been resolved upon; but the movement in the town had excited the alarm of the Catholics, who, thinking that a general massacre of those who adhered to the old religion was in contemplation, hid themselves in drains and cellars and chimneys. Arms were brought out of the arsenal, cannons were mounted, waggons were laden with powder, shot, beams, planks and ladders. At the appointed hour, the crowd, armed in various fashions, assembled before the Rath-haus.[92] The magistrates and provosts then selected six hundred trusty Evangelicals, and united them to a band of three hundred mercenaries and a small troop of horse. The rest were dispersed upon the ramparts and were recommended to keep watch; then it was announced to the party in marching order that they were to hasten stealthily to Telgte and capture the prince-bishop, his councillors, the barons, and all the members of the estates then assembled in that little town. [92] Kerssenbroeck, p. 358 _et seq._ Sleidan, French tr. p. 408. Sleidan also gives the number as 900; Dorpius, f. 392 b. However, the diet, surprised at not seeing their messenger return, conceived a slight suspicion. Whether he feared that his person was in danger so near Münster is not known, but fortunately for himself, the prince, that same evening, left Telgte for his castle of Iburg. The members of the diet, after long waiting, sent some men along the road to the capital to ascertain whether their messenger was within sight. These men returned, saying that the gates of Münster were closed and that no one was to be seen stirring. The fact was singular, not to say suspicious, and a troop of horse was ordered to make a reconnaissance in the direction of Münster. It was already late at night, so, having given the order, the members of the diet retired to their beds. The horse soldiers beat the country, found all quiet, withdrew some planks from a bridge over the Werse, between Telgte and Münster, to intercept the passage, and then returned to their quarters, for the night was bitterly cold. On surmounting a hill, crowned by a gibbet, they, however, turned once more and looked over the plain towards the city. A profound silence reigned; but a number of what they believed to be will-o'-the-wisps flitted here and there over the dark ground. As, according to popular superstition in Westphalia, these little lights are to be seen in great abundance at Yuletide, the horsemen paid no attention to them, but continued their return. These lights, mistaken for marsh fires, were in fact the burning matches of the arquebuses carried by those engaged in the sortie. On their return to Telgte, the horse soldiers retired to their quarters, and in half-an-hour all the inhabitants of the town were fast asleep. Meanwhile, the men of Münster advanced, replaced the bridge over the Werse, traversed the plain, and reached Telgte at two o'clock in the morning. They at once occupied all the streets, according to a plan concerted beforehand, then invaded the houses, and captured the members of the diet, clergy, nobles and commons. Three only of the cathedral chapter escaped in their night shirts with bare feet across the frozen river Ems. The Münsterians, having laid their hands on all the money, jewels, seals, and gold chains they could find, retreated as rapidly as they had advanced, carrying off with them their captives and the booty, but disappointed in not having secured the person of the prince. They entered the cathedral city in triumph on the morning of the 26th December, highly elated at their success, and nothing doubting that with such hostages in their hands, they would be able to dictate their own terms to the sovereign. But the expedition of Telgte had made a great sensation in the empire. Francis of Waldeck addressed himself to all the members of the Germanic body, and appealed especially to his metropolitan, the Elector of Cologne, for assistance, and also to the Dukes of Cleves and Gueldres. The elector wrote at once to Münster in terms the most pressing, because some of his own councillors were among the prisoners. He received an evasive answer. The Protestant princes of the Smalkald league even addressed letters to the senate, blaming energetically their high-handed proceeding. Philip Melancthon also wrote a letter of mingled remonstrance and entreaty.[93] The only result of their appeals was the restoration to the prisoners of their money and the jewels taken from them. [93] Kerssenbroeck, p. 368. John von Wyck, syndic of Bremen, was despatched by the senate of Münster to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, to ask him to undertake the office of mediator between them and their prince. The Landgrave readily accepted the invitation, and Francis of Waldeck was equally ready to admit his mediation, as he was himself, as has been already stated, a Lutheran at heart. The people of Münster, finding that the bishop was eager for a pacific settlement, insisted on the payment of the value of the oxen he had confiscated, as a preliminary, before the subject of differences was entered upon. The prince-bishop consented, paid 450 florins, and allowed the Landgrave of Hesse to draw up sixteen articles of treaty, which met with the approval of both the senate and himself. The terms of the agreement were as follows:[94]-- I. The prince-bishop was to offer no violence to the inhabitants of Münster in anything touching religion. "The people of Münster shall keep the pure Word of God," said the article; "it shall be preached to them, without any human additions by their preachers, in the six parish churches. These same preachers shall minister the sacraments and order their services and ceremonies as they please. The citizens shall submit in religious matters to the judgment of the magistrates alone, till the questions at issue are decided by a General Council." [94] _Ibid._ p. 392 _et seq._ II. The Catholics were to exercise their religion freely in the cathedral and in the capitular churches not included in the preceding article, _until Divine Providence should order otherwise_. The Lutheran ministers were forbidden to attack the Catholics, their dogmas and rights, _unless the Word of God imperiously required it_;--a clause opening a door to any amount of abuse. As the speciality of Protestantism of every sort consists in negation, it would be impossible for an Evangelical pastor to hold his position without denouncing what he disbelieved. Article III. interdicted mutual recriminations. Article IV., in strange contradiction with Article I., declared that the town of Münster should obey the prince-bishop as legitimate sovereign in matters spiritual and temporal. The bishop in the Vth Article promised to respect the privileges of the subject. The VIth Article forbade any one making an arbitrary use of the Word of God to justify refusal of obedience to the magistrates. Article VII. reserved to the clergy their revenues, with the exception of the six parish churches, of which the revenues were to be employed for the maintenance of the Evangelical pastors. By the VIIIth Article the senate promised not to interfere with the collation to benefices not in their hands by right. The IXth Article allowed the citizens to deprive their pastors in the Lutheran churches, without the intervention of the bishop. The rest of the Articles secured a general amnesty, permission to the refugees to return, and to the imprisoned members of the diet to obtain their freedom. This treaty was fair enough in its general provisions. If, as was the case, a large number of the citizens were disposed to adopt Lutheranism, no power on earth had any right to constrain them, and they might justly claim the free exercise of their religion. But there were suspicious clauses inserted in the 1st and 2nd Articles which pointed to the renewal of animosity and the re-opening of the whole question. This treaty was signed on the 14th February, 1533, by Philip of Hesse, as mediator, Francis, Count of Waldeck, Prince and Bishop of Münster, the members of chapter, the representatives of the nobles of the principality, and the burgomasters and senators of Münster, together with those of the towns of Coesfeld and Warendorf, in their own name and in behalf of the other towns of the diocese. The captive estates were liberated on the 18th February. How the magistrates and town kept the other requirements of the treaty we shall soon see. The senate having been constituted supreme authority in spiritual things by the Lutheran party, now undertook the organisation of the Evangelical Church in the city; and a few days after the treaty had been signed, it published an "Evangelical Constitution," consisting of ten articles, for the government of the new Church.[95] [95] Kerssenbroeck, p. 398 _et seq._ The 8th article had a threatening aspect. "The ministers of the Divine Word shall use their utmost endeavours to gain souls to the true faith, and to direct them in the ways of perfection. _As for those who shall refuse to accept the pure doctrine_, and those who shall blaspheme and be guilty of public crimes, the senate will employ against them all the rigour of the laws, and the sword of justice." Rottmann was appointed by the magistrates Superintendent of the Lutheran Church in Münster, a function bearing a certain resemblance to that of a bishop.[96] Then, thinking that a bishop should be the husband of one wife at least, Rottmann married the widow of Johann Vigers, late syndic of Münster. "She was a person of bad character," says Kerssenbroeck, "whom Rottmann had inspired during her husband's life with Evangelical principles and an adulterous love."[97] It is asserted, with what truth it is impossible at this distance of time to decide, that Vigers was drowned in his bath at Ems, in a fit, and that his wife allowed him to perish without attempting to save him. Anyhow, no sooner was he dead, than she returned full speed to Münster and married her lover.[98] [96] _Ibid._ p. 402. [97] _Ibid._ p. 403. [98] _Ibid._ p. 404. The reformer and his adherents had been given their own way, and the senate hoped they would rest satisfied, and that tranquillity would be re-established in the city. But their hopes were doomed to disappointment. Certain people, if given an inch, insist on taking an ell; of these people Rottmann was one. Excited by him, the Evangelicals of the town complained that the magistrates had treated the Papists with too great leniency, that the clergy had not been expelled and their goods confiscated according to the original programme. It was decided tumultuously that the elections must be anticipated; and on the 3rd March, the people deposed the magistrates and elected in their room the leaders of the extreme reforming party.[99] Knipperdolling was of their number; only four of the former magistrates were allowed to retain office, and these were men whom they could trust. Hermann Tilbeck and Kaspar Judenfeld were named burgomasters; Heinrich Modersohn and Heinrich Redekker were chosen provosts or tribunes of the people.[100] [99] Kerssenbroeck, p. 404. [100] _Ibid._ p. 405. Next to the senate came the turn of the parishes. On the 17th March, under the direction of Rottmann, the people proceeded to appoint the ministers to the churches in the town. Their choice was not happy; it fell on those most unqualified to exercise a salutary influence, and restrain the excitement of a mob already become nearly ungovernable.[101] [101] _Ibid._ p. 406. The new senate endeavoured to strengthen the Evangelical cause by uniting the other towns of the diocese in a common bond of resistance. They invited these towns to send their deputies to meet those of the capital at a little inn between Münster and Coesfeld, on the 20th March. The assembly took place; but so far from the other cities agreeing to support Münster, their deputies read those of the capital a severe lecture, and refused to throw off their old religion and their allegiance to the bishop.[102] [102] Kerssenbroeck, p. 407 _et seq._ On the 24th March, 1533, the burgomaster Tilbeck, accompanied by the citizen Kerbink, went to Ueberwasser, summoned the abbess before him, and ordered her to maintain at the expense of the abbey the preachers lately appointed to the church in connection with the convent. She was forced to submit.[103] [103] _Ibid._ p. 413. On the 27th of the same month one of the preachers invaded the church of St. Ledger, still in the hands of the Catholics, at the head of his congregation, broke open the tabernacle, drew out the Host, broke it, and blowing the fragments into the air, screamed to the assembled multitude, "Look at your good God flying away." The same day the treaty was violated towards the Franciscans. Some of the senators ordered them to quit their convent, their habit, and their order, unless they desired still more rigorous treatment, "because the magistrates were resolved to make the Church flourish again in her ancient purity, and because they wanted to convert the convent into a school."[104] [104] _Ibid._ p. 413. The superior replied that he and his brethren followed strictly the rule of their founder, and that this house belonged to them by right of succession, and that they were no charge to the town. He said that if a building was needed for an Evangelical school, he was ready to surrender to the magistrates a portion of the convent buildings; all he asked in return was that he and his brethren should be allowed to live in tranquillity. This proposal saved the Franciscans for a time. The Evangelical school was established in their convent, "but at the end of a month it had fallen into complete disorder, whereas the old Papist school had not lost one of its pupils, and was as flourishing as ever."[105] [105] Kerssenbroeck, p. 415. Whilst the senators menaced the monasteries, Knipperdolling and his friend Gerhardt Kibbenbroeck pillaged the church of S. Lambert. Scarcely a day now passed without some fresh act of violence done to the Catholics, or Vandalism perpetrated on the churches. On the 5th April the prior and monks of Bispinkhoff were forbidden by the magistrates to hear confessions in their own church. The same day the Lutherans broke the altar and images in the church of Ueberwasser, and scraped the paintings off the walls. On Palm Sunday, April 6th,[106] at Ueberwasser, some of the nuns, urged by the preachers in their church, cast off their vows, and joining the people, chanted the 7th verse of the 124th Psalm according to Luther's translation-- "Der Strich ist entzwei, Und wir sind frei." [106] _Ibid._ p. 416. "The snare is broken, and we are delivered;" and then they received Communion with the pastors. On the 7th the mob pillaged the church of the Servites, and defaced it. Next day the Franciscans, who had made the wafers for the Holy Sacrament for the churches in the diocese, were forbidden to make them any more. On the 9th Knipperdolling, heading a party of the reformed, broke into the cathedral during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, rushed up to the altar, and drove away the priest, exclaiming, "Greedy fop, haven't you eaten enough good Gods yet?" Two days later the magistrates ordered the chapter to surrender into their hands their title deeds and sacred vessels. On the 14th, Belkot, head of the city tribunal of Münster, entered the church of S. Ledger, and carried off all its chalices, patens, and ciboriums, whilst others who accompanied him destroyed the altars, paintings, and statuary, and profaned the church in the most disgusting manner. The unhappy Catholics, unable to resist, uttered loud lamentations, and did not refrain from calling the perpetrators of the outrage "robbers and sacrilegious," for which they were summoned before the magistrates, and threatened with imprisonment unless they apologised.[107] [107] Kerssenbroeck 417. As the news of the conversion of the city of Münster to the Gospel spread, strangers came to it from all parts, to hear and to learn, as they gave out, pure Evangelical truth. Amongst these adventurers was a man destined to play a terribly prominent part in the great drama that was about to be enacted at Münster. This was John Bockelson, a tailor, a native of Leyden, in Holland. He had quitted his country and his wife secretly to hear Rottmann. He entered Münster on the 25th July, and lodged with a citizen named Hermann Ramers. Having been instructed in the Gospel according to Luther, he went to preach in Osnabrück, but from thence he was driven. He then returned to his own home. There he became an Anabaptist, under the instruction of John Matthisson, who sent him with Gerrit Buchbinder as apostles of the sect to Westphalia in the month of November, 1533. The time had now arrived when the Lutheran party, which had so tyrannically treated the Catholics in the city of Münster, was itself to be despotically put down and trampled upon by a sect which sprang from its own womb. Rottmann had for some while been wavering in his adhesion to Lutheranism.[108] He doubted first, and then disbelieved in the Real Presence, which Luther insisted upon. He thought that the reformation of the Wittenberg doctor was not sufficiently thoroughgoing in the matter of ceremonial; then he doubted the scriptural authority for the baptism of infants. Two preachers, Heinrich Rott and Herman Strapedius, fell in with his views. The former had been a monk at Haarlem, but had become a Lutheran preacher. He regarded the baptism of infants as one of those things which are indifferent to salvation. Strapedius was more decided; he preached against infant baptism as an abomination in the sight of God. He was named by the people preacher at S. Lambert's, the head church of the city, in spite of the opposition of the authorities.[109] [108] Kerssenbroeck, p. 429 _et seq._; Sleidan, French tr. p. 409; Bullinger, "Adv. Anabapt.," 116, ii. c. 8. [109] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 431, 432; Dorp., f. 322-3. The Lutheran senate of Münster, which a few months previously had been elected enthusiastically by the people, now felt that before these fiery preachers, drifting into Anabaptism, their power was in as precarious a position as was that of those whom they had supplanted. Alarmed at the rapid extension of the new forms of disbelief, they twice forbade Rottmann to preach against the baptism of infants and the Real Presence, and ordered him to conform in his teaching to authorised Lutheran doctrine. He treated their orders with contempt. Then they summoned him before them: he appeared, but on leaving the Rath-haus, preached in the square to the people with redoubled violence. The senate, at their wits' end, ordered a public discussion between Rottmann and the orthodox Lutherans, represented by Hermann Busch. The discussion took place before the city Rath, and the senate decided that Busch had gained the day, and they therefore forbade all innovation in the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Rottmann and his colleague disregarded the monition, and continued their sermons against the rags of Popery which still disfigured the Lutheran Church. Several of the ministers in the town, whether from conviction or from interest, finding that their congregations drained away to the churches where the stronger-spiced doctrine was preached, joined the movement. It was simply a carrying of negation beyond the pillars of Hercules planted by Luther. Luther had denied of the sum total of Catholic dogmas, say ten, and had retained ten. The Anabaptist denied two more, and retained only eight. On the 10th August a tumultuous scene took place in the church of S. Giles.[110] A Dutch preacher began declaiming against baptism of children. Johann Windemoller, ex-senator, a vehement opponent of Anabaptist disintegration of Lutheran doctrine, who was in the congregation, rushed up the pulpit stairs, and pulled the preacher down, exclaiming, "Scoundrel! how dare you take upon you the office of preacher--you who, a few years ago, were thrust into the iron-collar, and branded on the cheek for your crimes? Do you think I do not know your antecedents? You talk of virtue, you gibbet-bird? You who are guilty of so many crimes and impieties? Go along with you, take your doctrine and your brand elsewhere." [110] Kerssenbroeck, p. 434. Windemoller was about to turn the pastor out of the church, when a number of women, who had joined the Anabaptist party, fell, howling, upon Windemoller, crying that he wanted to deprive them of the saving Gospel and Word of Truth, and they would have strangled him had he not beat a precipitate retreat. The same afternoon, some citizens who brought their children to this church to be baptized were driven from the doors with shouts of derision. The magistrates played a trump card, and ordered Rottmann to leave the town, together with the ministers who followed his teaching.[111] Bernard Rottmann replied much in the same strain as he had answered the bishop, stating that his doctrine was strictly conformable to the pure word of God, and that he demanded a public discussion, in which his doctrines might be tested by Scripture alone, without human additions. Finally he protested that he would not abstain from preaching, nor desert his flock, whether the senate persisted in its sentence or not. Five ministers signed this defiant letter--Rottmann, Johann Clopris, Heinrich Roll, Gottfried Strahl, and Denis Vinnius. These men at once hastened to collect the heads of the corporations and provosts together, and urge them to take their part against the Rath. They were quite prepared to do so, and the magistrates yielded on condition that Bernard and his following of preachers should abstain from speaking on the disputed questions of infant baptism and the Eucharist. Rottmann consented, in his own name and in that of his friends, in a paper dated October 3rd, 1533.[112] The senate was, however, well aware that its power was tottering to its fall, and that the preachers had not the remotest intention of fulfilling their engagement. They saw that these men were gradually absorbing into themselves the supreme authority in the city, and that a magistracy which opposed them could at any moment be by them dismissed their office. In alarm they wrote to the prince-bishop, and sent him messengers to lay before him the precarious condition of the affairs in the capital, imploring him to consider the imminence of the peril, and to send them learned theologians who could combat the spread of erroneous doctrine, and introduce those conformable to the pure word of God.[113] [111] _Ibid._ p. 436. [112] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 437-9. [113] _Ibid._ p. 441. It was a singular state of affairs indeed. The magistrates had appealed to the pure word of God, as understood by Luther, against Catholicism, and now the Anabaptists appealed to the same oracle, with equal confidence against Lutheranism; the two parties leaned on the same support--who was to decide which party Scripture upheld? The answer of Francis of Waldeck was such as might have been expected from a man endowed with some common sense. He reminded the magistrates that it was their own fault if things had come to such a pass; he feared that now the evil had gained the upper hand, and that gentleness was out of place; a decided face could alone secure to the magistrates moral authority. He was ready to support them if they would maintain their allegiance for the future. He would send them a learned theologian, Dr. Heinrich Mumpert, prior of the Franciscans of Bispinkhoff, to preach against error in the cathedral. The senate was in a dilemma. They had no wish to return to Catholicism, and they dreaded the progress of schism. They stood on an inclined plane. Above was the rock of an infallible authority; below, faith shelved into an abyss of negation they shrank from fathoming. If they looked back, they saw Catholicism; if they looked forward, they beheld the dissolution of all positive belief. Like all timorous men they shrank from either alternative, and attempted for a little longer to maintain their slippery position. They declined the offer of the Catholic doctor, and turned to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse for assistance. The Landgrave at once acceded to the request of the magistrates, and sent them Theodore Fabricius and Johann Melsinger, guaranteeing to their senate their orthodoxy.[114] [114] Kerssenbroeck, p. 443; Sleidan, p. 410; Dorpius, f. 393 b. While these preachers were on their way, disorder increased in Münster. The faction of Rottmann grew apace, and spread into the Convent of Ueberwasser, where the nuns were daily compelled to hear the harangues of two zealous Evangelical pastors, who exerted themselves strenuously to demolish the faith of the sisters down to the point fixed as the limit of negation by Luther. But these pastors having become infected with Rottmann's views, continued the work of destruction, and lowered the temple of faith two additional stages. The result of these sermons on the excitable nuns was that the majority broke out into revolt, and refused to observe abstinence and practise self-mortification; and proclaimed their intention of returning to the world and marrying. The bishop wrote to them, imploring them to consider that they were all of them members of noble families, and that they must be careful in no way to dishonour their families by scandalous behaviour. The mutineers seemed disposed to yield, but we shall presently see that their submission was only temporary.[115] [115] Kerssenbroeck, p. 443. On the 15th October, the senate wrote to the bishop, and informed him that they would not permit the prior Mumpert to preach in the cathedral.[116] They acknowledged that according to the treaty of Telgte, the city had consented to allow the Catholics the use of the cathedral, "until such time as the Lord shall dispose otherwise," but, they said, at the time of the conclusion of the treaty, there was no preacher at the minster; which was true, for the Catholic clergy had been forbidden the use of the pulpit; and they declared that "in all good conscience, they could not permit the institution of one whose doctrine and manner of life were not conformable to the gospel." [116] _Ibid._ p. 444. Francis of Waldeck, without paying attention to this refusal, ordered Mumpert to preach and celebrate the Eucharist in the cathedral church, on Sunday, 26th October, 1533. The prior obeyed. The fury of the Evangelicals was without limits; and in a second letter, more insolent than the first, the magistrates told the bishop that "they would not suffer a fanatical friar to come and teach error to the people." The bishop's sole reply was a command to the prior to continue his course. At this moment the learned divines sent by Philip of Hesse arrived in the city, and hearing of the sermons in the minster, to which the people flocked, and which were likely to produce a counter current in a Catholic direction, they insisted, as a preliminary to their mission, that the mouth of the Catholic preacher should be stopped. "We pray you," said they to the magistrates, "to forbid this man permission to reside in the town, lest our pure doctrine be choked by his abominable sermons. An authority claiming to be Christian should not tolerate such a scandal." The senate hastened to satisfy the Hessian theologians, by not merely ordering the Catholic preacher to leave the city, but by outlawing him, so that he was obliged in haste to fly a place where his life might be taken by any unscrupulous persons with impunity.[117] [117] Kerssenbroeck, p. 444 _et seq._ Francis of Waldeck, justly irritated, wrote to Philip of Hesse, remonstrating at the interference of his commissioners in the affairs of another man's principality.[118] The Landgrave replied that, so far from deserving reproach, he merited thanks for having sent to Münster two divines of the first class, who would preach there the pure Word of God, and would strangle the monster of Anabaptism. With the outlawry of the Catholic preacher, the struggle between Catholicism and Lutheranism closed; the struggle for the future was to be between Lutheranism and Anabaptism; a struggle desperate on the part of the Lutherans, for what basis had they for operation? The Catholics had an intrenched position in the authority of a Church, which they claimed to be invested with divine inerrancy, by commission from Christ; but the Lutheran and Anabaptist fought over the pages of the Bible, each claiming Scripture as on his side. It was a war within a camp, to decide which should pitch the other outside the rampart of the letter. [118] _Ibid._ p. 457 _et seq._ Fabricius and Melsinger fought for Infant Baptism and the Real Presence, Rottmann and Strapedius against both. "Do you call this the body and blood of Christ?" exclaimed Master Bernard one day, whilst he was distributing the Sacrament; and flinging it on the ground, he continued, "Were it so, it would get up from the ground and mount the altar of itself without my help. Know by this that neither the body nor blood of Christ are here."[119] [119] Dorpius, f. 394. Peter Wyrthemius, a Lutheran preacher, was interrupted, when he attempted to preach, by the shouts and jeers of the Anabaptists, and was at last driven from his pulpit. Rottmann kept his promise not to preach Anabaptist doctrine in the pulpit, but he printed and circulated a number of tracts and pamphlets, and held meetings in private houses for the purpose of disseminating his views.[120] His reputation increased rapidly, and extended afar. Disciples came from Holland, Brabant, and Friesland, to place themselves under his direction; women even confided to him the custody of their children. [120] Kerssenbroeck, p. 448. The most lively anxiety inspired the senate to make another attempt to regain their supremacy in the direction of affairs. On the 3rd or 4th November, the heads of the guilds and the provosts and patricians of the city were assembled to deliberate, and it was resolved that Rottmann and his colleagues should be expelled the town and the diocese; and to remove from them the excuse that they feared arrest when they quitted the walls of Münster, the magistrates obtained for them a safe-conduct, signed by the bishop and the upper chapter.[121] [121] _Ibid._ p. 449. Next day, the magistrates and chief citizens reassembled in the market square, and voted that "not only should the Anabaptist preachers be exiled, but also those of the magistrates who had supported them; and that this sentence should receive immediate execution."[122] [122] Kerssenbroeck, p. 450 _et seq._ This was too sweeping a measure to pass without provoking resistance. The burgomaster, Tilbeck, who felt that the blow was aimed at himself, exclaimed, angrily: "Is this the reward I receive for having prudently governed the republic? But we will not suffer the innocent to be oppressed, and we shall treat you in such a manner as will calm your insolence." These words gave the signal for an open rupture. Knipperdolling and Hermann Krampe, both members of the senate, drew their swords and ranged themselves beside the burgomaster, calling the people to arms. The mob at once rushed upon the senators. The servants of the chapter and the clergy in the cathedral close, hastened carrying arms to the assistance of the magistrates. Both parties sought a place of defence, each anticipating an attack. The Lutherans occupied the Rath-haus and barricaded the doors. The Anabaptists retired behind the strong walls of the cemetery of St. Lambert. The night was spent by both parties under arms, and a fight appeared imminent on the morrow. Then the syndic Johann von Wyck persuaded the frightened senate to moderate their sentence, and hurrying to the Anabaptists, he urged them to be reconciled to the magistrates. An agreement was finally concluded, whereby Rottmann was forbidden for the future to preach, and every one was to be allowed to believe what he liked, and to disbelieve what he chose. Master Bernard, however, evaded his obligation by holding meetings in private houses at night, to which his followers were summoned by the discharge of a gun.[123] Considering that it was now necessary that his adherents should have their articles of belief, or rather of disbelief, as a bond of union and of distinction between themselves and the Lutherans, he drew up a profession of faith in nineteen articles. That which he had published nine months before was antiquated, and represented the creed of the Lutheran faction, against which he was now at variance. [123] Kerssenbroeck, p. 453 _et seq._ This second creed contained the following propositions:-- The baptism of children is abominable before God. The habitual ceremonies used at baptism are the work of the devil and of the Pope, who is Antichrist. The consecrated Host is the great Baal. A Christian (that is, a member of Rottmann's sect) does not set foot in the religious assemblies of the impious (_i.e._, of the Catholics and Lutherans). He holds no communication and has no relations with them; he is not bound to obey their authorities; he has nothing in common with their tribunals; nor does he unite with them in marriage. The Sabbath was instituted by the Lord God, and there is no scriptural warrant for transferring the obligation to the Sunday. Papists and Lutherans are to be regarded as equally infamous, and those who give faith to the inventions of priests are veritable pagans. During fourteen centuries there have been no true Christians. Christ was the last priest; the apostles did not enjoy the priestly office. Jesus Christ did not derive His human nature from Mary.[124] [124] This is corroborated by the Acta, Handlungen, &c., fol. 385. "_The Preachers_: Do you believe that Christ received His flesh off the flesh of Mary, by the operation of the Holy Ghost? _John of Leyden_: No; such is not the teaching of Scripture." And he explained that if the flesh had been taken from Mary, it must have been sinful, for she was not immaculate. Every marriage concluded before re-baptism is invalid. Faith in Christ must precede baptism. Wives shall call their husbands lords. Usury is forbidden. The faithful shall possess all things in common. The publication of this formulary of faith, if such it may be called, which is a string of negative propositions, increased the alarm of the more sober citizens, who, feeling the insecurity of property and life under a powerless magistracy, prepared to leave the town. Many fled and left their Lutheranism behind them. Lening, one of the preachers sent by the Landgrave of Hesse, ran away. Fabricius had more courage. He preached energetically against Rottmann, assisted by Dr. Johann Westermann, a Lutheran theologian of Lippe.[125] [125] Kerssenbroeck, p. 456; Sleidan, p. 411. According to Kerssenbroeck, however, half the town followed by the Anabaptist leader, and brought their goods and money to lay them at his feet. Those who had nothing of their own, in a body joined the society which proclaimed community of goods. The bishop again wrote to the magistrates, urging them to permit the Catholic preacher, Mumpert, the use of the cathedral pulpit, but the senate refused, and continued their vain efforts to build their theological system on a slide. At their request, Fabricius and Westermann drew up (November 28, 1533) a symbol of belief in opposition to that formulated by Rottmann, and it was read and adopted by the Lutherans in the Church of St. Lambert. A large number of the people gave in their adhesion to this last and newest creed, and the magistrates, emboldened thereby, made a descent upon the house of the ex-superintendent, and confiscated his private press, with which he had printed his tracts.[126] [126] _Ibid._ p. 456. It was then that the two apostles, Buchbinder and Bockelson, sent by Matthisson into Westphalia, appeared in the city. They remained there only four days, during which they re-baptised the preachers and several of their adepts, and then retired prophesying their speedy return and the advent of the reign of grace. Rottmann, highly exasperated against Fabricius for having drawn up his counter-creed, went on the 30th November to the churchyard of St. Lambert, and standing in an elevated situation, preached to the people on his own new creed, whilst Fabricius was discoursing within to his congregation on his own profession of faith. When service was over Fabricius came out, and was immediately attacked by Rottmann with injurious expressions, which, however, so exasperated the congregation of the Lutheran, that they fell upon the late superintendent of the Evangelical Church, and threatened him with their sticks and fists. On the 1st December, Fabricius complained in the pulpit of the insult he had received, and appealed to the people to judge between his doctrine and that of Master Bernard by the difference there was between their respective behaviour.[127] [127] Kerssenbroeck, p. 461. A new Anabaptist orator now appeared on the stage; he was a blacksmith's apprentice, named Johann Schroeder. On the 8th December he occupied the position in the cemetery of St. Lambert from which Rottmann had been forced to fly, and defied the Lutherans to oppose him with the pure Word of God. He denounced them as still in darkness, as wrapped in the trappings of Popery, and as enemies to the Gospel of Christ and Evangelical liberty. Then he dared Fabricius to meet him in a public discussion, and prove his doctrine by the text of Scripture.[128] [128] _Ibid._ p. 461. The magistrates resolved on one more attempt to arrest the disorder. On the 11th November they informed Rottmann that, unless he immediately left the city, they would decree his outlawry. Rottmann sent a message to them in reply, "That he would not go; that he was not afraid; and that exile was to him an empty word, for, wherever he was, the heavenly Father would cover him with His wings." He took no further notice of the order, except only that he instituted a bodyguard of armed citizens to accompany him wherever he went. On the Sunday following, December 14th, he betook himself, surrounded by his guard, to the church of the Servites, where he intended to preach. But finding the doors locked, he placed himself under a lime-tree near the building and pronounced his discourse, without any one venturing to lay a hand upon him.[129] [129] Kerssenbroeck, p. 163; Dorpius, f. 394 a. The magistrates were equally unsuccessful in silencing the blacksmith Schroeder. This man, having preached again on the 15th December, was taken by the police and thrown into prison. Next day the members of the Blacksmiths' Guild marched to the Rath-haus, armed with their hammers and with bars of iron, to demand the release of their comrade. A violent dispute arose between the senators and the exasperated artisans. The former declared that Schroeder, whose trade was to shoe horses and not to preach, had deserved death for having incited to sedition. The reply of the blacksmiths was very similar to that made by the senate to the bishop when he ordered the expulsion of Rottmann. "Schroeder," said they, "has been urged on by love of truth, and he has preached with so much zeal that he has made himself hoarse. He has been guilty neither of murder nor of any crime worthy of death. How dare you maltreat this one who has given edifying instruction to his fellow citizens? Must nothing be done without your authorisation?" Upon the heels of the arguments came menaces. The senate yielded again, and promised to release Schroeder on the morrow. "Not to-morrow," shouted the blacksmiths; "restore our comrade to us immediately, or we will burst open the prison doors." The magistrates bowed to the storm, taking, however, the worse than useless precaution of making Schroeder swear, before they knocked off his chains, that he would not attempt to revenge on them his captivity.[130] [130] Kerssenbroeck, p. 464. On the 21st December, Rottmann resumed the use of his pulpit in the church of the Servites, treating the orders of the senate with supreme contempt. Westermann, tired of a struggle with the swelling tide, deserted Münster, leaving Fabricius alone to fight against the growing power of the Anabaptists. The year 1534 opened under gloomy auspices at Münster. In the first few days of January, the new sect dealt the Lutherans the same measure these latter had dealt the Catholics a twelvemonth before. They invaded their churches and disturbed divine worship. Fabricius attacked Rottmann violently in a sermon preached on the 4th January, and offered to have a public discussion with him on the moot points of doctrine. The senate accepted the proposition with transport, but Rottmann refused. "Not," said he, "that I am afraid of entering the lists against this Lutheran, but that men are so corrupt that they would certainly condemn that side which had for its support right and the word of Scripture."[131] [131] _Ibid._ pp. 466, 467. On the same day that Rottmann sent in his refusal, a band of women tumultuously entered the town-hall and demanded that "the miserable foreign vagabond Fabricius, who could not even speak the dialect of the country, and who, inspired by an evil spirit, preaches all kinds of absurdities in a tongue scarcely intelligible, should be driven out of the city. Set in his place the worthy Rottmann," said the women; "he is prudent, eloquent, instructed in every kind of knowledge, and he can speak our language. Grant us this favour, Herrn Burgmeistern, and we will pray God for you." The burgomasters requested the ladies not to meddle with matters that concerned them not, but to return to their families and kitchens. This invitation drove them into a paroxysm of rage, and they shouted at the top of their shrill voices: "Here are fine burgomasters! They are neglecting the interests of the town! Here are tender fathers of their country who attend to nothing! You are worse than murderers, for _they_ kill the body, but _you_ assassinate souls by depriving them of the Evangelical Word which is their nourishment." The women then retired, but returned next day reinforced by others, and among them were six nuns who had deserted the convent of Ueberwasser and exhibited greater violence than the rest. The women entered the hall where the senators were sitting and demanded peremptorily that Rottmann should be instituted to the church of St. Lambert. They were turned out of the hall without much ceremony, but they waited the exit of the magistrates when their session was at an end; then they bespattered them with cow and horse dung, and cursed them as Papists. "At first you favoured our holy enterprise, but you have returned to Popery like dogs to their vomit. Since you have devoured the good Hessian God which Fabricius offers you in communion, you oppress the pure Word of God. To the gallows, to the gallows with you all!" The senators fled to their houses, pursued by the women, covered with filth, and deafened by their yells.[132] [132] Kerssenbroeck, p. 468. Rottmann and his colleagues exercised an extraordinary influence over the people; they persuaded the rich ladies and citizens' wives of substance to sell their goods, give up their jewels, and cast everything they had into a common fund. The prompt submission of so many proves that the number of fanatics who were sincere in their convictions was considerable. These proceedings led to estrangement in families. Kerssenbroeck relates that the wife of one of the senators, named Wardemann, having been rebaptised by Rottmann, "was so vigorously confirmed in her faith by her husband, who had been informed by a servant maid of the circumstance, that she could not walk for several weeks." Other women, who had given up their jewels and money to Rottmann, were also severely chastised by their husbands.[133] [133] _Ibid._ p. 472. The magistrates, afraid to touch Rottmann's person, hoped to weaken him by dismissing his assistants. They therefore, on the 15th January, 1534, ordered their officers to take the Anabaptist preachers, Clopris, Roll, and Strahl, and to turn them out of the town, with orders never to re-enter it. The mandate was executed; but the ministers returned by another gate, and were conducted in triumph to their parsonages by the whole body of the Anabaptists.[134] [134] Kerssenbroeck, p. 473. The fugitive nuns of Ueberwasser, to the number of eight, were re-baptised by Rottmann on the 11th January, and became some of his most devoted adherents. Their conduct in the sequel was characterised by the most shameless lubricity. The prince-bishop at this time published a decree against the Anabaptists, outlawed Rottmann and five other preachers of that sect in Münster, and ordered his officers to check the spread of the schism through the other towns of his principality. On the 23rd January, Rottmann having noticed some Catholics and Lutherans amongst his audience in the church of the Servites, abruptly stopped his sermon, saying that it was not meet to cast the pearls of the new revelation before swine.[135] Then he descended from the pulpit, and refused to remount it again. But probably the real cause of this sudden cessation was, that the views of the leader were undergoing a third change, and he was unwilling to announce his new doctrine to an audience of which all were not prepared to receive it. He continued to assemble the faithful in private houses, and to hold daily assemblies, in which they were initiated into the further mysteries of his revelation. In every parish a house was provided for the purpose, and none were admitted without a pass-word. In these gatherings the mystic was able to give full development to his views without the restraint of an only partially sympathising audience. [135] _Ibid._ p. 476. On the evening of the 28th January, at seven o'clock, the Anabaptists stretched chains across the streets, assembled in armed bands, closed the city gates, and placed sentinels in all directions. A terrible anxiety reigned in the city. The Lutherans remained up and awake all night, a prey to fear, with their doors and windows barricaded, waiting to see what these preparations signified. The night passed, broken only by the tramp of the sectarian fanatics, and lighted by the glare of their torches. Dawn broke and nothing further had taken place, when suddenly two men, dressed like prophets, with long ragged beards, ample garments, and flowing mantles, staff in hand paced through the town solemnly, up one street and down another, raising their eyes to heaven, sighing, and then looking down with an expression of compassion on the multitude, which bowed before them and saluted them as Enoch and Elias. After having traversed the greater part of the town, the two men entered the door of Knipperdolling's house.[136] [136] Kerssenbroeck, p. 476. The names of these prophets were John Matthisson and John Bockelson. The first was the chief of the Anabaptist sect in Holland. The part which the second was destined to play in Münster demands that his antecedents should be more fully given. Bockelson was the bastard son of Bockel, bailiff of the Hague, and a certain Adelhaid, daughter of a serf of the Lord of Zoelcken, in the diocese of Münster. This Adelhaid purchased her liberty afterwards and married her seducer. John was brought up at Leyden, where he was apprenticed to a tailor. He visited England, Portugal, and Lubeck, and returned to Leyden in his twenty-first year. He then married the widow of a boatman, who presented him with two sons. John Bockelson was endowed by nature with a ready wit and with a retentive memory. He amused himself by learning nearly the whole of the Bible by heart, and by composing obscene verses and plays. In addition to his business of tailoring, he opened a public-house under the sign of "The Three Herrings," which became a haunt of women of bad repute. The passion for change came over Bockelson after leading this sort of life for a while, and he visited Münster in 1533, as we have already seen, and thence passed to Osnabrück, from which place he was expelled. After wandering about Westphalia for a while he returned to Leyden. Next year, in company with Matthisson, the head of the Anabaptists, he visited Münster, which the latter declared prophetically was destined to be the new Jerusalem, the capital of a regenerate world, where the millennial kingdom was to be set up.[137] [137] Kerssenbroeck, part ii. p. 51 _et seq._; Heresbach, p. 31; Hast, p. 324. The two adventurers reached their destination on the 13th January, and Knipperdolling received them into his house. Some of the preachers were informed of their arrival, but were required to keep the matter secret till the time ordained of God should come for their revealing themselves to the world. A council was being held in the house of Knipperdolling, when the prophets entered it after having finished their peregrination of the town. Rottmann, Roll, Clopris, Strapedius, Vinnius, and Strahl were engaged in a warm discussion. Some of the party were of opinion that the moment had arrived, now that all the Anabaptists were under arms, for a general purification of the city by the massacre or expulsion of Catholics and Lutherans; the others thought that the hour of vengeance had not yet struck, and that the day of the Lord must not be antedated. The quarrel was appeased by the appearance of the two prophets, who were hailed as messengers sent from heaven to announce the will of God. Then Matthisson and his companion knelt down and wept, and having meditated some moments, they uttered their decision in voices broken by sobs. "The time for cleansing the threshing-floor of the Lord is not yet come. The slaughter of the ungodly must be delayed, that souls may be gathered in, and that souls may be formed and educated in houses set apart, and not in churches which were lately filled with idols. But," said they in conclusion, "the day of the Lord is at hand." These words reconciled the council. On the evening of the 29th, the Anabaptists laid aside their arms and returned to their homes.[138] The events of the night had utterly dispelled the last traces of courage in the magistrates; they did not venture to notice the threatening aspect of the armed fanatics, or to remonstrate with them for barricading the streets. To avert all possible danger from themselves was their only object; and to effect this they published an act of toleration, permitting every man to worship God and perform his public and private devotions as he thought proper. [138] Kerssenbroeck, part i. p. 477 _et seq._ The power of Rottmann had become so great, through the events just recorded, that a false prophecy did not serve to upset his authority. On the 6th February, at the head of a troop of his admirers, he invaded the Church of Ueberwasser, "to prevent the Evangelical flame kindled in the hearts of the nuns from dying out."[139] Having summoned all the sisters into the church, he mounted the pulpit and preached to them a sermon on matrimony, in which he denounced convents and monasteries, in which the most imperious laws of nature were left unfulfilled, and "he urged the nuns to labour heartily for the propagation of the human race;" and then he completely turned the heads of the young women, by announcing to them with an inspired air, that their convent would fall at midnight, and would bury beneath its ruins every one who was found within its walls. "This salutary announcement has been made to me," said he, "by one of the prophets now present in this town, and the Heavenly Father has also favoured me with a direct and special revelation to the same effect."[140] [139] Kerssenbroeck, p. 479. [140] Hast, p. 329 _et seq._ This was enough to complete the conversion of the nuns, already shaken in their faith by the sermons they had been compelled to listen to for some time past. In vain did the Abbess Ida and two other sisters implore them to remain and despise the prophecy. The infatuated women, in paroxysms of fear and excitement, fled the convent and took refuge in the house of Rottmann, where they changed their clothes, and then ran about the town uttering cries of joy. The prophecy of Rottmann had been repeated by one to another throughout Münster. No one slept that night. Crowds poured down the streets in the direction of Ueberwasser, and the square in front of the convent was densely packed with breathless spectators, awaiting the ruin of the house. Midnight tolled from the cathedral tower. The crowd waited another hour. It struck one, and the convent had not fallen. Master Bernard was not the man to be disconcerted by so small a matter. "Prophecies," cried he, "are always conditional. Jonah foretold that Nineveh should be destroyed in forty days, but since the inhabitants repented, it remained standing. The same has taken place here. Nearly all the nuns have repented, have quitted their cloister and their habit, have renounced their vows--thus the anger of the Heavenly Father has been allayed."[141] [141] Kerssenbroeck, p. 479. The preacher Roll was next seized with prophetic inspiration. He ran through the town, foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolling, his hair and garments in disorder, his face haggard, uttering at one moment inarticulate howls, and at another, exhortations to the impenitent to turn and be saved, for that the day of the Lord was at hand.[142] [142] Dorpius, p. 394. A young girl of eighteen, the daughter of a tailor named Gregory Zumberge, was next seized. "On the 8th February she was possessed with a sort of oratorical fury, and she preached with fire and extraordinary volubility before an astonished crowd." The same day the spirit fell on Knipperdolling and Bockelson; they ran about the streets with bare heads and uplifted eyes, repeating incessantly in shrill tones, "Repent, repent, repent, ye sinners; woe, woe!" Having reached the market-place, they fell into one another's arms before a crowd of citizens and artizans who ran up from all directions. At the same moment, the tailor, Gregory Zumberge, father of the preaching damsel, arrived with his hair flying, his arms extended, his face contorted, and a wild light playing in his eyes, and cried, "Lift up your heads, O men, O dear brothers! I see the majesty of God in the clouds, and Jesus waving the standard of victory. Woe to ye impious ones who have resisted the truth! Repent, repent! I see the Heavenly Father surrounded by thousands of angels menacing you with destruction! Be converted! the great and terrible day of the Lord is come.... God will truly purge His floor, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.... Renounce your evil ways and adopt the sign of the New Convenant, if you wish to escape the wrath of the Lord." "It is impossible," says the oft-quoted writer, who was eye-witness in the town of all he describes, "impossible to imagine the gestures and antics which accompanied this discourse. Now the tailor leaped about on the stones and seemed as though about to fly; then he turned his head with extraordinary rapidity, beating his hands together, and looking up to heaven and then down to earth. Then, all at once, an expression of despair came over his face, and he fell on the pavement in the form of a cross, and rolled in the mud. A good number of us young fellows were there," continues Kerssenbroeck, "much astonished at their howling, and looking attentively at the sky to see if there really was anything extraordinary to be seen there; but not distinguishing anything we began to make fun of the illuminati, and this decided them to retire to the house of Knipperdolling."[143] [143] Kerssenbroeck, p. 483. There a new scene commenced. The ecstatics left doors and windows wide open, that all that passed within might be seen and heard by the dense crowd which packed the street without. Those in the street saw Knipperdolling place himself in a corner, his face to the wall, and carry on in broken accents a familiar conversation with God the Father. At one moment he was seen to be listening, then to be replying, making the strangest gestures. This went on for some time, till another actor appeared. This was a blind Scottish beggar, very tall and gaunt--a zealous Anabaptist. He was fantastically dressed in rags, and wore high-heeled boots to add to his stature. Although blind, he ran about exclaiming that he saw strange visions in the sky. This was enough to attract a crowd, which followed him to the corner of the König's Strasse, when, just as he was exclaiming, "Alas, alas! Heaven is going this instant to fall!" he tumbled over a dung-heap which was in his way. This accident woke him from his ecstasy, and he picked himself up in great confusion, and never prophesied again.[144] [144] _Ibid._ p. 479. But his place was speedily supplied by another man named Jodocus Culenburg, who, in order to convey himself with greater rapidity whither the Spirit called him, rode about the town on a horse, announcing in every street that he heard the peal of the Last Trumpet. Several women also were taken with the prophetic spirit, and one, named Timmermann, declared that "the King of Heaven was about to appear like a lightning-flash, and would re-establish Jerusalem." Another woman, whose cries and calls to repentance had caused her to lose her voice, ran about with a bell attached to her girdle, urging the bystanders with expressive gestures to join the number of the elect and be saved.[145] [145] Kerssenbroeck, p. 484. These fantastic scenes had made a profound impression on many of the citizens of Münster. A nervous affection accompanying mystic excitement is always infectious. The agitation of minds and consciences became general; men and women had trances, prayed in public, screamed, had visions, and fell into cataleptic fits. In those days people knew nothing of physical and psychological causes; the general excitement was attributed by them to supernatural agency. It was simply a question whether these signs were produced by the devil or by the Spirit of God. The Catholics attributed the signs to the agency of Satan; the Lutherans were in nervous uncertainty. Were they resisting God or the devil? Fear lest they should be found in the ranks of those fighting against the Holy Spirit drew off numbers of the timorous and most conscientious to swell the ranks of the mystical sect. Münster was exhibiting on a large scale what is reproduced in our own land in many a Wesleyan and Ranter revival meeting. The time had now come, thought Rottmann, for the destruction of the enemies of God. Secret notice was sent to the different Anabaptist congregations to be prepared to strike the blow on the 9th of February. Accordingly, early in the morning, 500 fanatics seized on the gates of the city, the Rath-haus, and the arms it contained; cannons were planted in the chapel of St. Michael, the tower of St. Lambert's church, and in the market place; barricades of stones, barrels, and benches from the church were thrown up. The common danger united Catholics and Lutherans; they saw clearly that the intention of their adversaries was either to massacre them, or to drive them out of the town. They retreated in haste to the Ueberwasser quarter, and took up their position in the cemetery, planted cannons, placed bodies of armed men in the tower of the cathedral, and retook two of the city gates. They also arrested several of the senators who had joined the Anabaptist sect, but they had not the courage to lay their hands on the burgomaster, Tilbeck, who was also of that party. Two of the preachers, Strahl and Vinnius, were caught, and were lodged in the tower of Ueberwasser church.[146] [146] Dorpius, f. 394. Messages were sent to the villages and towns around announcing the state of affairs, and imploring assistance. The magistrates even wrote in the stress of their terror to the prince-bishop, asking him to come speedily to their rescue from a position of imminent peril. Francis of Waldeck at once replied by letter, promising to march with the utmost rapidity to Münster, and demanding that one of the gates might be opened to admit him. This letter was taken to Hermann Tilbeck; but the burgomaster, intent on securing the triumph of the fanatics, with whom he was in league, suppressed the letter, and did not mention either its arrival or its contents to the senate. He, however, informed the Anabaptists of their danger, and urged them to come to terms with the Lutherans as speedily as possible. At the same time the pastor, Fabricius, unable to restrain his religious prejudices, even in the face of danger, sped among the Lutheran ranks, inciting his followers against the Catholics, and urging them to make terms with the fanatics rather than submit to the bishop. "Beware," said he, "lest, in the event of your gaining a victory, the Papists should recover their power, for it is they who are the real cause of all these evils and disorders."[147] [147] Kerssenbroeck, p. 405 _et seq._ Montfort., "Tumult. Anabap.," p. 15 _et seq._; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 8. Whilst the preacher was sowing discord in the ranks of the party of order, Rottmann and the two prophets, Matthisson and Bockelson, roused the enthusiasm of their disciples to the highest pitch, by announcing to them a glorious victory, and that the Father would render His elect invulnerable before the weapons of their adversaries. The Anabaptist women ran about the streets making the most extraordinary contortions and prodigious leaps, crying out that they saw the Lord surrounded by a host of angels coming to exterminate the worshippers of Baal. Thus passed the night. At daybreak Knipperdolling recommenced his course through the streets, uttering his doleful wail of "Repent, repent! woe, woe!" Approaching too near the churchyard wall of Ueberwasser, he was taken and thrown into the tower with Strahl and Vinnius. At eight o'clock the drossar of Wollbeck arrived at the head of a troop of armed peasants to reinforce the party of order, and several ecclesiastics entered the town to inform the magistrates that the prince-bishop was approaching at the head of his cavalry. Before the lapse of many hours the city might have been pacified and order re-established, had it not been for the efforts of Tilbeck the burgomaster, and Fabricius the divine. Mistrust of their allies had now fully gained possession of the Lutherans, and the burgomaster took advantage of the hesitation to dismiss the drossar of Wollbeck and his armed band, and to send to the prince, declining his aid. By his advice, also, the Anabaptists agreed to lay down their arms and make a covenant with the senate for the establishment of harmony. Hostages were given on either side and the prisoners were liberated. Peace was finally concluded on these conditions: 1st. That faith should be absolutely free. 2nd. That each party should support the other. 3rd. That all should obey the magistrates. The treaty having been signed, the two armed bodies separated, the cannons were fired into the air, the drossar of Wollbeck and the ecclesiastics withdrew, with grief at their hearts, predicting the approaching ruin of Münster. The prince-bishop was near the town with his troops when the fatal news was brought him. He shed tears of mortification, turned his horse and departed.[148] [148] Same authorities; Sleidan, p. 411. Peace was secured for the moment by this treaty, but order was not re-established. No sooner had the armed Anabaptists quitted the market-place than it swarmed with women who had received from Rottmann the sign of the New Covenant. "The madness of the pagan bacchantes," says the eye-witness of these scenes, Kerssenbroeck,[149] "cannot have surpassed that of these women. It is impossible to imagine a more terrible, crazy, indecent, and ridiculous exhibition than they made. Their conduct was so frenzied that one might have supposed them to be the furies of the poets. Some had their hair disordered, others ran about almost naked, without the least sense of shame; others again made prodigious gambles, others flung themselves on the ground with arms extended in the shape of a cross; then rose, clapped their hands, knelt down, and cried with all their might, invoking the Father, rolling their eyes, grinding their teeth, foaming at the mouth, beating their breasts, weeping, laughing, howling, and uttering the most strange inarticulate sounds.... Their words were stranger than their gestures. Some implored grace and light for us, others besought that we might be struck with blindness and damnation. All pretended that they saw in heaven some strange sights; they saw the Father descending to judge their holy cause, myriads of angels, clouds of blood, black and blue fires falling upon the city, and above the clouds a rider mounted on a white horse, brandishing his sword against the impenitent who refused to turn from their evil ways.... But the scene was constantly varying. Kneeling on the ground, and turning their eyes in one direction, they all at once exclaimed together, with joined hands, 'O Father! Father! O most excellent King of Zion, spare the people!' Then they repeated these words for some while, raising the pitch of their voices, till they attained to such a shriek that a host of pigs could not have produced a louder noise when assembled on market-day. [149] Kerssenbroeck, p. 495 _et seq._ "There was on the gable of one of the houses in the market-place a weathercock of a peculiar form, lately gilt, which just then caught the sun's rays and blazed with light. This weathercock caused the error of the women. They mistook it for the most excellent King of Zion. One of the citizens discovering the cause, climbed the roof of the house and removed this new sort of majesty. A calm at once succeeded to the uproar; ashamed and full of confusion, the visionaries dispersed and returned to their homes. Unfortunately the lesson did not restore them to their senses." Shortly after the treaty was signed, the burgomaster, Tilbeck, openly joined the Anabaptists, and was rebaptised with all his family by Rottmann.[150] [150] Kerssenbroeck, p. 496. The more sensible and prudent citizens, including nearly all the Catholics and a good number of Lutherans, being well aware that the treaty was, in fact, a surrender of all authority into the hands of the fanatics, deserted the town in great numbers, carrying with them all their valuables. The emigration began on 12th February. The Anabaptists ordered that neither weapons nor victuals should be carried out of the gates, and appointed a guard to examine the effects of all those who left the city. The emigration was so extensive, that in a few days several quarters of the town were entirely depopulated.[151] [151] Kerssenbroeck; Dorpius, ff. 394-5. Then Rottmann addressed a circular letter to the Anabaptists of all the neighbouring towns to come and fill the deserted mansions from which the apostates had fallen. "The Father has sent me several prophets," said he, "full of His Spirit and endowed with exalted sanctity; they teach the pure word of God, without human additions, and with sublime eloquence. Come then, with your wives and children, if you hope for eternal salvation; come to the holy Jerusalem, to Zion, and to the new temple of Solomon. Come and assist us to re-establish the true worship of God, and to banish idolatry. Leave your worldly goods behind, you will find here a sufficiency, and in heaven a treasure."[152] [152] _Ibid._, p. 502; Mencken, p. 1545. In response to this appeal, the Anabaptists streamed into the city from all quarters, from Holland, Friesland, Brabant, Hesse, Osnabrück, and from the neighbouring towns, where the magistrates exerted themselves to suppress a sect which they saw imperilled the safety of the commonwealth. In a short while the deserted houses were peopled by these fanatics. Bernhard Krechting, pastor of Gildehaus, arrived at the head of a large portion of his parishioners. Hermann Regewart, the ex-Lutheran preacher of Warendorf, sought a home in the new Jerusalem. Rich and well-born persons, bitten with the madness, arrived, such were Peter Schwering and his wife, the wealthiest citizens of Coesfeld; Werner von Scheiffort, a country gentleman; the Lady von Becke with her three daughters, of whom the two eldest were broken nuns, and the youngest was betrothed to the Lord of Dörlö; and the Grograff of Schoppingen, Heinrich Krechting, with his wife, his children, and a number of the inhabitants of that town, with carts laden with their effects. The Grograff took up his abode in Kerssenbroeck's house, along with his family and servants, and, as the chronicler bitterly remarks, he took care to occupy the best part of the mansion.[153] [153] Kerssenbroeck, p. 503. Amongst those who escaped from the town were the syndic, Von Wyck, who had led the opposition against the bishop, and the burgomaster, Caspar Judenfeld. The latter retired to Hamm and was left unmolested, but Von Wyck had played too conspicuous a part to escape so easily. By the orders of the prince-bishop he was arrested and executed at Vastenau.[154] [154] _Ibid._ p. 505. Münster now became the theatre of the wildest orgies ever perpetrated under the name of religion. It is apparently a law that mysticism should rapidly pass from the stage of asceticism into that of licence. At any rate, such has been the invariable succession of stages in every mystic society that is allowed unchecked to follow its own course. In the Roman Church those thus psychologically affected are locked up in convents. The religious passion verges so closely on the sexual passion that a slight additional pressure given to it bursts the partition, and both are confused in a frenzy of religious debauch. The Anabaptist fanatics were rapidly approaching this stage. The prophet Matthisson led the way by instituting a second baptism, administered only to the inner circle of the elect, which was called the baptism of fire. The adepts were sworn to secrecy, and refused to explain the mode of administration. But public curiosity was aroused, and by learning the password, some were enabled to slip into the assembly and see what took place. Amongst these was a woman who was an acquaintance of Kerssenbroeck, and from whose lips he had an account of the rite. "Matthisson," says he, "secretly assembled the initiated of both sexes during the night, in the vast mansion of Knipperdolling. When all were assembled, the prophet placed himself under a copper chandelier, hung in the centre of the ceiling, lighted with three tapers." He then made an instruction on the new revelation of the Divine will, which he pretended had been made to him, and the assembly became a scene of frantic orgies too horrible to be described. The assemblies in which these abominations were perpetrated, prepared the way for the utter subversion of all the laws of decency and morality, which followed in the course of a few months. When Carnival arrived, a grand anti-Catholic procession was organised, to incite afresh the hostility of the people to the ancient Church, its rites and ceremonies. First, a company of maskers dressed like monks, nuns, and priests in their sacred vestments, led the way, capering and singing ribald songs. Then followed a great chariot, drawn by six men in the habits of the religious orders. On the box sat a fellow dressed as a bishop, with mitre and crosier, scourging on the labouring monks and friars. On the car was a man represented as dying, with a priest leaning over him, a huge pair of spectacles on his nose, administering to the sick man the last sacraments of the Church, and addressing him in the most absurd manner, loudly, that the bystanders might hear and laugh at his farcical parody of the most sacred things of the old religion. The next car was drawn by a man dressed as a priest in surplice and stole. The other cars contained groups suitable for turning into ridicule devotion to saints, belief in purgatory, the mass, &c.[155] [155] Kerssenbroeck, p. 509. The prophets now decided that it was necessary to be prepared in the event of a siege. They, therefore, commissioned the preacher Roll to visit Holland and raise the Anabaptists there, urge them to arm and to march to the defence of the New Jerusalem. Roll started from Münster on the 21st of February, but the Spanish Government in the Netherlands, alarmed at what was taking place in the capital of Westphalia, ordered a strict watch to be kept on the movements of the fanatics, and Roll was seized and executed at Utrecht. The next step taken by the prophets was to discharge the members of the senate from the performance of their office, because they had been elected "according to the flesh," and to choose to fill their room another body of men "elected according to the Spirit." Bernard Knipperdolling and Gerhardt Kippenbroeck, both drapers, were appointed burgomasters. One of the first acts of the new magistrates was to forbid the removal of furniture, articles of food, and money from the town, and to permit a general pillage of all the churches and convents in the city. The Anabaptist mob first attacked the religious houses, and carried off all the sacred vessels, the gold, the silver, and the vestments. Then they visited the chapel of St. Anthony, outside the gate of St. Maurice, and after having sacked it completely, they tore it down. They burnt the church of St. Maurice, then fell upon the church of St. Ledger, but had not the patience to complete its demolition. Thence they betook themselves to the cathedral, broke it open, and destroyed altars, with their beautiful sculptured and painted oak retables, miracles of delicate workmanship and Gothic beauty, the choir stalls, statues, paintings, frescoes, stained glass, organ, vestments, and carried off the chalices and ciboriums. The great clock, the pride of Münster, as that of Strasburg is of the Alsatian capital, was broken to pieces with hammers. A valuable collection of MSS., collected by the poet Rudolf Lange, and presented to the minister, together with the rest of the volumes in the library, were burned. Two noble paintings, one of the Blessed Virgin, the other of St. John the Baptist, on panel, by Franco, were split up and turned into seats for privies to the guard-house near the Jews' cemetery. The heads and arms were broken off the statues that could not be overthrown--statues of apostles, prophets, and sibyls, which decorated the interior of the cathedral and the neighbouring square. The tabernacle was broken open, and the Blessed Sacrament was danced and stamped on. The font was shattered with crowbars, in token of the abhorrence borne by the fanatics to infant baptism; the tombs of the bishops and canons were destroyed, and the bodies torn from their graves, and their dust was scattered to the winds.[156] [156] Kerssenbroeck, p. 510; Sleidan, p. 411; Dorpius, f. 395. But whilst this was taking place in Münster, Francis von Waldeck was preparing for war. On the 23rd February he held a meeting at Telgte to consolidate plans, and now from all sides assistance came. The Elector of Cologne, the Duke of Cleves, even the Landgrave of Hesse, now exasperated at the ill-success of his endeavours to establish tranquillity and to effect a compromise, the Duke of Brunswick, the Regent of Brabant, the Counts of Lippe and Berntheim, and many other nobles and cities sent soldiers, artillery, and munitions. The bishop appointed the generals and principal officers, then he made all the soldiers take an oath of fidelity to himself, and concluded with them an agreement, consisting of the following ten articles: 1. The soldiers are to be faithful to the prince, and to obey their officers. 2. The towns, arms, and munitions taken in war shall belong to the prince. 3. If, after the capture of the city, the prince-bishop permits its pillage by the troops, he shall not be obliged to pay them any prize-money. 4. If the pillage be accorded, the town hall is not to be touched. 5. The prince shall have half the plunder. 6. The nobles, canons, and those who have escaped from the city shall be allowed the first bid for their articles when offered for sale. 7. No fixtures shall be removed by the soldiery. 8. After the capture of the town, the custody of the gates and ramparts shall be confided to those whom the prince-bishop shall appoint. 9. The city taken, and its pillage permitted, the soldiers shall be allowed eight days for distribution and sale of the plunder. The soldiers shall receive their pay with punctuality. 10. The heads of the revolt shall, as far as possible, be taken alive and delivered up to the bishop for a recompense.[157] [157] Kerssenbroeck, p. 513 _et seq._ Sleidan, lib. x. pp. 412-3; Heresbach, p. 36. The Anabaptists were not afraid at these preparations; they made ready vigorously for the defence of the New Zion. As a preliminary, a body of five hundred burnt the convent of St. Maurice, outside the city gates, and levelled all the houses of the suburbs, which obscured the view, and might serve as cover for the besiegers. On the 26th February Matthisson preached in the afternoon to a congregation summoned by the discharge of a culverin. At the end of the sermon he assumed an inspired air, and announced that he had an important revelation to communicate. Having arrested the attention of his hearers, he said in a solemn tone, "The Father requires the purification of the New Jerusalem and of His temple; for our republic, which has begun so prosperously, cannot grow and endure if a prey to the confusion produced by the presence of impious sects. My advice is that we kill without further delay the Lutherans, the Papists, and all those who have not the right faith, that there may remain in Zion but one body, one society, which is truly Christian, and which can offer to the Father a pure and well-pleasing worship. There is but one way of preserving the faithful from the contagion of the impious, and that is to sweep them off the face of the earth. Nothing is easier than the execution of this scheme. We form the majority in a strong city, abundantly supplied with all necessaries; there is nothing to fear from within or from without."[158] [158] Kerssenbroeck, p. 516. This suggestion would have been carried into immediate execution by the frenzied sectarians, had it not been for the intervention of Knipperdolling, who, fearing that a general massacre of Lutherans and Catholics would combine the forces of the Smalkald union and of the Imperialists against the city, urgently insisted on milder measures. "Let us be content," said he, "with driving, to-morrow, out of the city those miserable creatures who refuse the sign of the New Covenant; thus shall we thoroughly purge the floor of the Lord, and nothing that is impure will remain in the New Jerusalem."[159] [159] _Ibid._ p. 517; Sleidan, p. 412. This advice was accepted, and it was unanimously decided that the morrow should witness the expulsion of Catholics and Lutherans. The 27th February was a bitterly cold day. A hard frost had set in, the north wind blew, cutting to the bone all exposed to the blast, the country was white with snow, and the streams were crusted over with ice. At every gate was a double guard; the squares were thronged with armed fanatics, and in and out among them passed the prophets, staff in hand, uttering maledictions on the Lord's enemies, and words of encouragement to those sealed on their brows and hands. Matthisson sought out those who did not belong to the sect, and with menacing gestures and flaring eyes called them to repentance before the door was shut. "Turn ye, turn ye, sinners," he cried in his harsh tones. "Judgment is preparing for you. The elements are in league against you; your iniquities have made nature rise to scourge you. The sword of the Lord's anger is hung above your heads. Turn, ye sinners, and receive the sign of our alliance, that ye be not cast out from the chosen people!" Then he flung himself down in the great square, and called on the Father; and lying with arms extended on the frozen ground, and his face pinched with cold turned towards the sky, he fell into a trance. The Anabaptists knelt around him, and lifting their hands to heaven besought the Father to reveal His will by the mouth of the prophet whom He had sent. Then Matthisson, slowly returning from his ecstasy, like one awaking out of a dream, said, "This is the will and order of the Father: the miscreants, unless they be converted and be baptised, must be expelled this place. This holy city shall be purified of all that is unclean, for the conversation of the ungodly corrupts and defiles the people of God. Away with the sons of Esau! this place, this New Zion, this habitation belongs to the sons of Jacob, to the true Israel." The enthusiasm of Matthisson communicated itself to the assembly. The Anabaptists separated to sweep the streets, sword and pike in hand, and drove the ungodly beyond their walls, shouting, "The lot is ours; the tares must be gathered from among the wheat; the goats from the sheep; the unholy from the godly; away, away!" Doors were burst open, and the fanatics invaded every house, driving before them men, women, and children, from garret and cellar, wherever concealed, in spite of their cries and entreaties. Men of all professions, men and women of every age were banished; they were not allowed to take anything with them. The sword of the Lord was brandished against them; the hale and the infirm, the master and the servant, none were spared. Those who lagged were beaten; those who were sick and unable to fly were carried to the market-place to be rebaptised by Rottmann. Through the gates streamed the terrified crowd, shivering, half clothed, mothers clasping their babes to their breasts, children sustaining between them their aged parents, all blue with cold, as the fierce wind thick strewn with sleet rushed upon them at the corners, and over the bare plain without the city walls, growling and cruel, as though it too were wrought up into religious frenzy, and came as an auxiliary to the savage work. Thousands traversed the frozen plans, uncertain whither to fly for refuge, uttering piteous cries, lamentations, or low moans; whilst from the walls of the heavenly city thundered a salvo of joy, and the Anabaptists shouted, because the Lord's day of vengeance had come, and the millennium was set up on earth. "Never," says Kerssenbroeck, "never did I see anything more afflicting. The women carried their naked nurslings in their arms, and in vain sought rags wherewith to clothe them; miserable children, hanging to their fathers' coats, ran barefooted, uttering piercing cries; old people, bent by age, tottered along calling down God's vengeance on their persecutors; lastly, some sick women driven from their beds during the pangs of maternity fell in labour in the snow, deprived of all human succour."[160] [160] Kerssenbroeck, p. 5222. Amongst those expelled was Fabricius, the Lutheran divine, who escaped in disguise. He was so greatly hated by the sectarians, that had he been recognised, he would not have been suffered to quit the city alive. The Frau Werneche, a rich lady, too stout to walk, and unable to find a conveyance, was obliged to remain in Münster. Rottmann insisted on her receiving the sign of the New Covenant. "I have been baptised already, as were my ancestors," said the good woman. Rottmann replied that if she persisted in her impiety she must be slain with the sword, lest the wrath of the Father should be kindled against the Holy City. The poor lady, who had no desire for martyrdom, cried out, impatiently, "Well, then, be it so! baptise me in the name of all the devils of hell, for I have already been baptised in the name of God." Rottmann, not very particular, administered the rite, and the stout lady remained in Münster. The apostle now sent letters into all the country, announcing the glad tidings of the approaching reign of Christ on earth, and inviting the Anabaptists of the neighbourhood to flock into Zion. One of these epistles of Rottmann has been preserved.[161] [161] Kerssenbroeck, p. 520; Dorpius, f. 395. "Bernard, servant of Jesus Christ in His Church of Münster, salutes affectionately his very dear brother Henry Schlachtschap. Grace and peace from God, and the strength of the Holy Spirit, be with you and with all the faithful. "Dear Brother in Christ,-- "The marvellous works of God are so great and so diverse that it would not be possible for me to describe them all, had I a hundred tongues. I am, therefore, unable to do so with my single pen. The Lord has splendidly assisted us. He has delivered us out of the hands of our enemies, and has driven them from the city. Seized by a panic terror, they fled in multitudes. This is the beginning of what the Lord announced by His prophets--that all the saints would assemble in this New Zion. These prophets have charged me to write to you, that you may order all the brethren to hasten to us with all the gold and silver they can collect; as for their other goods, let them be left to the sisters, who will dispose of them, and then join us here also. Beware of doing anything after the flesh; do all in the Spirit. The rest by word of mouth. Health in the Lord." This appeal had all the more success because several executions had taken place at Wollbeck and Bevergern and other places, together with confiscation of goods, and this had struck alarm into the Anabaptists scattered throughout the principality. Numbers, therefore, answered the appeal, and went up, as the tribes of the Lord, to Jerusalem, out of Leyden, Coesfeld, Warendorf, and Gröningen. The vacated houses were re-occupied, the Münster Baptists selecting for themselves the best. Knipperdolling, Kippenbroeck, and others, took possession of the residences of the canons; servants installed themselves in the dwellings of their masters as if they were their own; and the deserted monasteries were given up as hostels to receive the influx from the country, till houses could be provided for them.[162] [162] Kerssenbroeck, p. 523. On the 28th February, Francis von Waldeck left Telgte at the head of his army and invested the capital. Batteries were planted, seven camps were established for the infantry, and six for the cavalry around Münster. These camps were in connection with one another, for mutual support in the event of a sortie, and were rapidly fortified. Thus began the siege which was to last sixteen months minus four days, during which a multitude of untrained, undisciplined fanatics, commanded by a Dutch tailor-innkeeper, held out against a numerous and well-armed force. But there was an element of strength in the besieged that lacked in the besiegers. Those within the walls were members of a vast confraternity, which ramified over Germany, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, its members bound together by a common enthusiasm, in more or less direct relation with the chiefs who commanded in the Westphalian capital. In spite of the siege, news from without was constantly brought into the city, and messengers were sent out to stir up the members of the society in other countries and provinces to rise and march to the relief of the city which, they all believed, was destined to be their religious capital. The Münster brothers looked for a speedy deliverance wrought by the efficacy of the arms of their brothers in Holland, Juliers, Cleves, and Brabant. The Low Countries swarmed with Anabaptists who had organised communities in Amsterdam, Leyden, Utrecht, Haarlem, Antwerp, and Ghent; they had arms stored in cellars and garrets, and waited only the proper moment to rise in a body, massacre their opponents, and deliver the Holy City. Several attempts to rise were made, but the vigilance of the Spanish Government in the Netherlands prevented the rising; and the hopes of the besieged were never realised. On the other hand, the army of the prince-bishop was composed of mercenaries, of soldiers from different provinces and principalities, speaking different dialects, with different interests, and differing also in faith. The Lutheran troops would not cordially unite with the Catholics, and the latter mistrusted their Protestant allies, whose sympathies they believed lay with the Anabaptist besieged. And the head of the whole army was a Catholic prelate with Lutheran proclivities, who knew nothing of war, had an empty purse, and desired to reduce his own subjects by the aid of foreign mercenaries, with little expense to himself, and damage to his subjects. The Anabaptists organised their defence with prudence. They elected captains and standard-bearers, and divided all the citizens capable of bearing arms into regiments and companies. Every one was given his place and his functions, and it was decided that the magistrates should be required to mount guard when it came to their turn. Boys were drilled and taught the use of the arquebus; women prepared brands steeped in pitch and sulphur to fling at the enemy, and they melted lead from the roofs into bullets. Mines were dug and charged with powder, fresh bastions were thrown up, and curtains were erected before the gates, into which were built the tombs and sarcophagi of the bishops and canons.[163] [163] Kerssenbroeck, p. 531 _et seq._; Hast, p. 344. The newly-elected senate, though composed of the most zealous Anabaptists, was powerless before Matthisson. A sect governed by the inspiration of the moment, professing to be guided by the Spirit speaking through the mouths of prophets, ready to spring into the maddest excesses at the dictates of visionaries, could not long submit to the government of a magistracy whose power was temporal. The way was rapidly preparing for the establishment of a spiritual despotism. It was in vain for the senate to pass an order without the sanction of Matthisson, in vain for them to attempt resistance to the execution of his mandates. One day he announced that it was the will of the Father that all the goods of the citizens who had fled, or had been expelled, should be collected into one place, that they might be distributed amongst the saints, as every man had need. He thereupon despatched men to bring together all that was left behind in the city by the refugees, and convey the articles to houses which he designated in every parish. He was promptly obeyed. Garments, linen, beds, furniture, crockery, food, wine--everything was brought away in carts. The jewels, the gold, and the silver, were deposited in the chancery. Then the prophet ordered three days of prayer to be instituted, "that God might reveal to him the persons chosen by Him to keep guard over the accumulated treasure."[164] [164] Kerssenbroeck; Dorpius, f. 395. When the three days were at an end, Matthisson announced that the Father had indicated to him seven individuals who were to be the deacons to serve tables in the New Jerusalem. He therefore appointed the men to distribute out of the common store to those who needed that which would satisfy their necessities.[165] [165] _Ibid._ p. 585. It must not, however, be supposed that, with the expulsion of the impious from the holy city, all opposition had disappeared. A very considerable number of citizens, shopkeepers, and merchants, rather than desert their houses, abandon their goods to pillage, and lose their trade, had consented to be re-baptised. The reign of the prophets was becoming to them daily more irksome. A blacksmith, named Hubert Rüscher, or Trutling, had the courage to oppose Matthisson, to charge him with being a false prophet, and an impostor.[166] The prophet, feeling the danger of his position, saw that a measure, decided and terrible, must be adopted to suppress the murmurs, and frighten those who desired to shake off his yoke. "Judgment must begin at the house of God," said Matthisson; and he ordered the immediate execution of the smith. Tilbeck, the burgomaster, and Redecker, a magistrate, interposed, but were, by order of the prophet, cast into prison. Then Bockelson, bursting through the crowd, announced with frantic gesture that the Father had commissioned him to slay with the sword he bore all those who withstood the will of Heaven as interpreted by the prophets whom He had sent. Then brandishing his weapon, he rushed upon the blacksmith, but Matthisson forestalled him, by running his halbert through the body of the unfortunate man. Finding that he still breathed, he despatched him with a carbine, crying, "So perish all who are guilty of similar crimes." Then, at his command, the multitude chanted a hymn of praise, and dispersed, silent and trembling, to their homes.[167] [166] Kerssenbroeck, p. 535 _et seq._; Monfortius, p. 19; Sleidan and Dorpius call the man Truteling; Sleidan, p. 412; Dorpius, f. 395 b. [167] Monfortius, p. 19. Matthisson took immediate advantage of the power this bold stroke had given him to deal another blow. When the treasure of the enemies of Zion had been confided to the care of deacons, the faithful had kept their own goods. But this was to be no longer tolerated. The prophet issued a decree, requiring all, old and young, male and female, under pain of death, to bring all their possessions in gold and silver, under whatever form it might be, into the treasury; "Because," said he, "such things profit not the true Christian." The majority of the citizens obeyed, in fear and trembling; but many buried their vessels and ornaments of precious metal, and declared that they possessed no jewels.[168] However, the amount of money, chains, rings, brooches, and cups, brought together was very considerable. It was placed in the chancery, and confided to four of Matthisson's most devoted adherents. [168] Kerssenbroeck, p. 538. A few days after, he summoned all the inhabitants into the Cathedral square, where, in a long discourse, he announced that the wrath of God was excited against those who had allowed themselves to be rebaptised on the 26th of February, out of human considerations, because they did not desire to leave their homes and their effects, or out of fear; and he advised them all to betake themselves to the church of St. Lambert, to entreat the Father to pardon them for having lied to the Holy Ghost, and soiled by their presence the city of the children of God; "and if the Father does not remit your offence," concluded he in a loud and terrible voice, "you must perish by the sword of the Just One." In an agony of terror, the unfortunate citizens crowded the church, and the doors were fastened behind them. They passed several hours within, weeping, groaning, and deploring their lot, a prey to inexpressible terror.[169] [169] Kerssenbroeck, p. 539. At length Matthisson entered, accompanied by armed men, and the prisoners, supposing they were about to be slaughtered, fell at his feet and embraced his knees, entreating him, with tears, as the favourite of God, to mediate with Him and obtain their pardon. The prophet replied that he must consult the Father; he knelt down, and fell into an ecstasy. After a few moments he rose, leaped with joy, and declared that the Father, though greatly irritated, had granted his prayer, and suffered the penitents to live. Then the poor creatures were purified, hymns of praise were sung, and they were pronounced admitted into the household of the true Israel. The doors were thrown open, and they were allowed to disperse. On the 15th of March, a new decree appeared, forbidding the faithful to possess, read, or look at any books except the Bible, and requiring all the books, in print or MS., and all legal documents that were found in the town, to be brought to the Cathedral square, and there to be consigned to the flames. Thus perished many a treasure of inappreciable value. In the meantime the appeal of Rottmann to the Anabaptists of the Low Countries to come and deliver Zion had produced its effect. Thousands assembled in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam, crossed the Zuyder Zee, landed at Zwoll, and marched towards Münster, pillaging and burning churches and convents. But Baron Schenk von Teutenburg, imperial lieutenant, met them, utterly routed them, cut to pieces a large number, and made many prisoners.[170] [170] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 541, 542; Bullinger, ii. c. 10. The prophets of Münster, warned of their advance, but ignorant of their dispersion, reckoned on an approaching deliverance, and continued their follies. On Good Friday, April 3, 1534, they organised a general festival, with bells pealing, and a mock procession carrying candles. The treaty concluded with the prince-bishop, through the intervention of Philip of Hesse, was attached to the tail of an old horse, and the beast was driven out of the gate of St. Maurice in the direction of the enemy's camp.[171] [171] _Ibid._ p. 542. Easter approached, and with it great things were expected. A rumour circulated that a mighty deliverance of Israel would be wrought on the Feast of the Resurrection. Whether Matthisson started the report or was carried away by it, it is impossible to decide; but it is certain that, on the eve, he announced in an access of enthusiasm, after a trance, that he had received orders from the Father to put to flight the armies of the aliens with a handful of true believers.[172] [172] _Ibid._, 542; Hast, p. 348. Accordingly, on the morrow, carrying a halbert, he headed a few zealots who shared his confidence; the gate of St. Ludgar was thrown open, and he rushed forth with his followers upon the army of the prince-bishop; whilst the ramparts were crowded by the inhabitants of Münster, shouting and praying, and expecting to see a miracle wrought in his favour. But he had not advanced very far before a troop of the enemy surrounded his little band, and, in spite of a desperate resistance, he and his companions were cut to pieces.[173] [173] Kerssenbroeck, 542; Sleidan, p. 413; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 9; Heresbach, p. 138; Buissierre, p. 310. John Bockelson, seeing that the confidence of the Anabaptists was shaken by the failure of this prediction and the fall of the great prophet, lost not a moment in establishing his own supremacy. He called all the people together, and declared to them that Matthisson had died by the just judgment of God, because he had disobeyed the commandment of the Father to go forth with a very small handful, and because he had relied on his own strength instead of on Divine aid. "But," added he, "he neglected all those precautions he ought to have taken, solemn prayer and fasting, after the example of Judith; and he forgot that victory is in the hands of God; he was proud and vain, therefore was he forsaken of the Lord. His terrible end was revealed to me eight days ago by the Holy Ghost; for, as I was sleeping in the house of Knipperdolling, after having meditated on the Divine Law, Matthisson appeared to me pierced through by the lance of an armed man, with all his bowels gushing forth. Then was I frightened beyond measure at this terrible spectacle; but the armed man said to me, 'Fear not, well-beloved son of the Father, but be faithful to thy calling, for the judgment of God will fall upon Matthisson; and when he is dead, marry his widow.' These words cast me into profound amazement, for I have already a legitimate wife at Leyden. Nevertheless, that I might have a witness worthy of confidence to this extraordinary revelation, I trusted the secret to Knipperdolling; he is present, let him be brought forth."[174] [174] Kerssenbroeck, p. 543; Montfort., p. 24. Thereupon Knipperdolling stepped forward and declared by oath that Bockelson had spoken the truth, and he mentioned the place, the day, and the hour when the revelation was confided to him. From that moment Bockelson passed with the people not only as a prophet, but as a favourite of Heaven, one specially chosen of the Father, and was held in far higher estimation, accordingly, than had been the fallen prophet. He was seized with inspiration. On the 9th of April, he declared that "the Father ordered, under pain of incurring his dire wrath, that every exalted thing should be laid low, and that the work was to begin at the church steeples." Consequently three architects of the town were ordered to demolish them. They succeeded in pulling down all the spires in Münster. That of Ueberwasser church was singularly beautiful. It was reduced to a stump; and the modern visitor to the ancient Westphalian capital has cause to deplore its loss. The towers were only saved to be used as positions for cannon to play upon the besiegers.[175] [175] Bullinger, ii. c. 8; Sleidan, p. 271; Dorpius, f. 396. Bockelson had another vision, which served to consolidate his power. "The Father," said he, "had appeared to him, and had commanded him to appoint Knipperdolling to be the executioner of the new republic." This was not precisely satisfactory to Knipperdolling; he aimed at a higher office, but he dissembled his irritation, and accepted the sword offered him by John of Leyden with apparent transports of joy.[176] Four under-executioners were named to assist him, and to accompany him wherever he went. [176] Kerssenbroeck, p. 545; Heresbach, p. 139; Sleidan, p. 413; Dorpius, f. 396. The nomination of Knipperdolling was the prelude to other important changes. Bockelson aspired to exercise absolute power, without opposition or control. To arrive at his ends, a wild prophetic scene was enacted. He ran, during the night, through the streets of Münster stark naked, uttering howls and crying, "Ye men of Israel who inhabit this holy Zion! fear the Lord, and repent for your past lives. Turn ye, turn ye! The glorious King of Zion, surrounded by multitudes of angels, is about to descend and judge the world, at the peal of His terrible trumpet. Turn, ye blind ones, and be converted." [177] [177] Kerssenbroeck, p. 596; Monfort, pp. 25, 26; Heresbach, p. 99 _et seq._ Exhausted with his run and his shouts, and satisfied with having thoroughly alarmed the inhabitants, he returned to the house of Knipperdolling, who was also in a paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, leaping, rolling on the ground, and performing many other extravagant actions. Bockelson, on entering, cast himself down in a corner and pretended to have lost the power of speech; and as the crowd, assembled round him, asked him the meaning of what had taken place, he signed to them to bring him tablets, on which he wrote, "By the order of the Father, I remain dumb for three days." At the expiration of this period he convoked the people, and declared to them that the Father had revealed to him that Israel must have a new constitution, with new laws and new magistrates, divinely appointed. The former magistracy had been elected by men, but the new one was to be designated by the Holy Ghost. Bockelson then dissolved the senate, and, as the mouthpiece of God, he declared the names of the new officers, to the number of twelve, who were to bear the title of The Elders of the Tribes of Israel, in whose hands all power, temporal and spiritual, was to be placed. Those appointed were, as might have been expected, the prophet's most devoted adherents.[178] Hermann Tilbeck, the old burgomaster, was brought out of prison, and it was announced to him that he was to be of the number of elders; but perhaps a little cooled in this enthusiasm by his sojourn in chains, he burst into tears, and in accents of humility prayed, "Oh, Father! I am not worthy so great an honour; give me strength and light to govern with wisdom." [178] Dorpius, f. 396 b. Rottmann, who, since the arrival of the prophet, had played but a subordinate part, judged the occasion favourable for thrusting himself into prominence. He therefore preached a long sermon, in which he declared that God was the author of the new constitution, and then, calling the elders before him by name, he committed to each a drawn sword, with the words, "Receive with this weapon the right of life or death, which the Father has ordered me to confer upon you, and use the sword conformably to the Lord's will." Then the proceedings closed with the multitude singing the _Gloria in excelsis_ in German, on their knees. The senate resigned its functions without apparent regret or opposition, and the twelve elders assumed the plenitude of power. They abolished the laws and formulated new ones, published edicts, resolved difficulties, judged causes, subject to no control save the will of the prophet; but that will they regarded as identical with the Divine will, as superior to all law, and every one obeyed its smallest requirements. Immediately after the installation of the government, an edict in ten parts was published.[179] The first part, divided into thirteen articles, contained the moral law; the second part, in thirty-three articles, contained the civil law. [179] Kerssenbroeck, pt. ii. pp. 1-9; Monfortius, pp. 26, 27; Hast, p, 352 _et seq._ The first part forbade thirteen crimes under pain of death: blasphemy, disobedience, adultery, impurity, avarice, theft, fraud, lying and slander, idle conversation, disputes, anger, envy, and discontent against the government. The second part required every citizen to conform his life and belief to the Word of God; to fulfil exactly his duties to others and to the State. It ordered a strict system of vigilance against night surprises by the enemy, and required one of the elders to sit in rotation every day as judge to try cases brought before him; also, that whatsoever was decided by the elders as necessary for the welfare of the New Jerusalem should be announced to the assembly-general of Israel, by the prophet John of Leyden, servant of the Most High; that Bernard Knipperdolling, the executioner, should denounce to the elders the crimes committed within the holy city; and that he might exercise his office with greater security he was never to go forth unaccompanied by his four assistants. It ordered that henceforth repasts should be taken publicly and in common; that every one should accept what was set before him, should eat it modestly, in silence; that the brothers and the sisters should eat at separate tables; and that, during the meal, portions of the Old Testament should be read to them. The next articles named the individuals who were to execute the offices of butcher, shoemaker, smith, tailor, brewer, and the like, to the Lord's people. Two articles forbade the introduction of new fashions, and the wearing of garments with holes in them. Article XXIX. ordered every stranger belonging to another religion, who should enter the city of Münster, to be examined by Knipperdolling. No communication of any sort with strangers was permitted to the children of Zion. Article XXXII. forbade, under pain of death, desertion from the military service, or exchange of companies without the sanction of the elders. Article XXXIII. required that in the event of a decease, all the goods and chattels of the defunct should be taken to Knipperdolling, who would convey them to the elders, and they would distribute them as they judged fitting. That some of these provisions were indicative of great prudence is not to be doubted. All food having been seized upon and being served out publicly to all the citizens alike, and in moderation, the capabilities of prolonging the defence were greatly increased; and the military dictatorship and strict discipline within the city maintained by the prophet, enabled the Anabaptists to preserve an invulnerable front to an enemy torn by faction and with divided responsibilities. To increase the disaffection and party strife in the hostile camp, the people of Münster sent arrows amongst the besiegers, to which were attached letters, one of which has been preserved by Kerssenbroeck.[180] It is an exhortation to the enemy to beware lest by attacking the people of the Lord, who held to the pure Word of God, they should be regarded by him as in league with Antichrist, and urging them to repentance. [180] Kerssenbroeck, pt. ii. p. 9. Besiegers and besieged heaped on each other reciprocal insults, exhibiting themselves to one another in postures more expressive of contempt than decent.[181] [181] _Ibid._ pp. 11, 12. A chimney-sweep, named William Bast, had about this time a vision ordering him to burn the cities of the ungodly. Bast announced his mission to the elders and to the prophet, and was bidden go forth in the Lord's name. He accordingly left Münster, eluded the vigilance of the enemy's sentinals, and reached Wollbeck, where was the powder magazine of the Episcopal army. He fired several houses, and the flames spread, but were fortunately extinguished before they reached the powder. Bast had escaped to Dreusteindorf, where also he attempted to execute his mission, but was caught, brought back to Wollbeck, and burnt alive. In the meantime various sorties had taken place, in which the besiegers suffered, being caught off their guard. On May 22nd, the prince-bishop, finding the siege much more serious than he had anticipated, began to bombard the town; but as fast as the walls gave way, they were repaired by the women and children at night. A general assault was resolved on for the 26th May; of this the besieged were forewarned by their spies. Unfortunately for the investing army, the soldiers of Guelders got drunk on the preceding day in anticipation of their victory, and marched reeling and shouting against the city as the dusk closed in. The Anabaptists manned the walls, and easily repulsed their tipsy assailants; but in the meantime the rest of the army, observing the march of the men of Guelders, and hearing the discharge of firearms, rushed to their assistance, without order; the Münsterians rallied, repulsed them with great carnage, and they fled in confusion to the camp. The Anabaptists had only lost two officers and eight soldiers in the fray; and their success convinced them that they were under the special providence of God, which had rendered them invincible.[182] They, therefore, repaired their walls with energy, erected several additional bastions, and continued their sorties. [182] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 15, 16; Sleidan, p. 413. On the 30th May, a party of the fanatics issued from a subterraneous passage upon the sentinels opposite the Judenfeld gate, spiked nineteen cannon, and laid a train of gunpowder from the store, which they reached, to the mouth of their passage. The troops stationed within sight marched hastily to repulse the sortie, when the train was fired, the store exploded, and a large number of soldiers were destroyed.[183] [183] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 15, 16. The prince-bishop next adopted an antiquated expedient, which proved singularly inefficacious. He raised a huge bank against the walls, by requisitioning the services of the peasants of the country round. The besieged poured a shower of bullets amongst the unfortunate labourers, who perished in great numbers, and the mole remained unfinished.[184] [184] _Ibid._ p. 21. Francis of Waldeck, discouraged, and at the end of his resources, sent his deputies to the Diet of Neuss on the 25th June, to announce to the Archbishop of Cologne and the Duke of Juliers his failures, and to ask for additional troops. The two princes replied that they would not abandon their ally in his difficulties, and they promised to bear a part of the cost of the siege, advanced 40,000 florins for the purchase of gunpowder, promised to despatch forces to his assistance, and sent at once prudent advisers.[185] The prince was, in fact, utterly incompetent as a general and incompetent as a bishop. The pastoral staff has a crook at the head and a spike at the bottom. Liturgiologists assure us that this signifies the mode in which a bishop should exercise discipline--the gentle he should restrain or direct with mercy, the rebellious he should treat with severity. To the former he should be lenient, with the latter prompt. Francis of Waldeck wielded gracefully and effectively neither end of his staff. [185] Hast, p. 357; Sleidan, p. 413. He shortly incurred a risk, and but for the fidelity of one of his subjects in Münster, he would have fallen a victim to assassination. A young Anabaptist maiden, named Hilla Phnicon, of singular beauty, conceived the notion that she had been called by God to be the Judith of this new Bethulia, and was to take the head from off the shoulders of the great, soft, bungling Holophernes, Francis of Waldeck.[186] [186] Kerssenbroeck, p. 26 _et seq._ Rottmann, Bockelson, and Knipperdolling encouraged the girl in her delusion, and urged her not to resist the inspirations of the Father. Accordingly, on the 16th June, Hilla dressed herself in the most beautiful robes she could procure, adorned her hair with pearls, and her arms with bracelets, selecting from the treasury of the city whatever articles she judged most conducive to the end; the treasury being for the purpose placed at her disposal by order of the prophet. Furnished with a linen shirt steeped in deadly poison, which she had herself made, as an offering to the prince, she left Münster, and delivered herself up into the hands of the drossar of Wollbeck, who, after having dispoiled her of her jewels, questioned her as to her object in deserting the city. She replied with the utmost composure, that she was a native of Holland, and that she had lived in Münster with her husband, till the change of religion had so disgusted her that she could endure it no longer, and that she had fled on the first opportunity, and that her husband would follow her on a suitable occasion. "It is to ask pardon for him that I am come," said she; "and he will be able to indicate to his highness a means of entering the city without loss." The perfect self-possession of the lady convinced the drossar of her sincerity, and he promised to introduce her to the prince at Iburg within two days. Everything seemed to favour the adventuress; but an unexpected event occurred on the 18th, the day appointed for the audience, which spoiled the plot. The secret had been badly kept, and it was a matter of conversation, hope, and prayer in Münster. A citizen named Ramers, who had remained in the city, and had been rebaptised rather than lose his business and give up his house to pillage, having heard of it, escaped from the town on the 18th, and revealed the projects of Hilla to one of the generals of the besieging army. The unfortunate young woman was thereupon put to the question, and confessed. She was conducted to Bevergern and decapitated. At the moment when she was being prepared for execution, she assured the bystanders that they would not be able to take her life, for the prophet John "chosen friend of the Father, had assured her that she would return safe and sound to Zion." The bishop sent for Ramers, provided for his necessities, and ordered that his house and goods should be spared in the event of the capture of Münster. As soon as one danger disappeared, another rose up in its place. The letters attached to arrows fired by the Anabaptists into the hostile camp, as well as their secret agents, had wrought their effect. The Lutheran auxiliaries from Meissen complained that they were called to fight against the friends of the Gospel, and on the night of the 30th June they deserted in a body.[187] Other soldiers escaped into Münster and offered their arms to the Anabaptists. Disaffection was widely spread. Disorder, misunderstandings, and ill-concealed hatred reigned in the camp. The besieged reckoned among their assailants numerous and warm friends, and were regularly informed of all the projects of the general. Their emissaries bearing letters to the Anabaptists in other territories easily traversed the ranks of the investing army, and when they had accomplished their mission they returned with equal ease to the gates of Münster, which opened to receive them. [187] Kerssenbroeck, p. 36. One of the soldiers of the Episcopal army, who had taken refuge in Münster, was lodged in the house of Knipperdolling, in which also dwelt John Bockleson. The deserter observed that the Leyden prophet was wont to leave his bedroom at night, and he ventured to watch his conduct and satisfy himself that it was not what it ought to be.[188] He mentioned to others what he had observed. The scandal would soon get wind. One only way remained to cut it short. John Bockleson consulted with Rottmann and the other preachers, and urged that polygamy should be not only sanctioned but enjoined on the elect. [188] _Ibid._ p. 38; H. Montfort., p. 28. Some of those present having objected to this new doctrine, the prophet cast his mantle and the New Testament on the ground, and solemnly swore that this which he enjoined was the direct revelation of the Almighty. He threatened the recalcitrant ministers, and at last, half-persuaded and wholly frightened, they withdrew their objections; and he appointed the pastors three days in which to preach polygamy to the people.[189] The new doctrine having been ventilated, an assembly of the people was called, and it was formerly laid down by the prophet as the will of God, that every man was to have as many wives as he wanted.[190] [189] Sleidan, p. 414; Dorp. f 396. [190] Kerssenbroeck, p. 38. The result of this new step was to bring about a reaction which for a moment threatened the prophet's domination with downfall. On the 30th July, Heinrich Mollenhecke, a blacksmith, supported by two hundred citizens, burghers and artisans, declared openly that he was resolved to put down the new masters of Münster, and to restore everything upon the ancient footing. With the assistance of his companions, he captured Bockleson, Knipperdolling, and the preachers Rottmann, Schlachtscap, Clopris, and Vinnius, and cast them into prison. Then a council was held, and it was resolved that the gates should be opened to the bishop, the old magistracy should be restored, and the exiled burgesses should be recalled, and their property restored to them: and that all this should be done _on the morrow_. Had it been done on the spot we should have heard no more of John of Leyden. The delay saved him and ruined the reactionary party. It allowed time for his adherents to muster.[191] Mollenhecke and his party, when they met on the following morning to execute their design, were attacked and surrounded by a multitude of fanatics headed by Heinrich Redecker. The blacksmith had succeeded in collecting only a handful. "No pen can describe the rage with which their adversaries fell upon them, and the refinements of cruelty to which they became victims. After having overwhelmed them with blows and curses, they were imprisoned, but they continued inflicting upon them such horrible tortures that the majority of these unfortunates would have a thousand times preferred death."[192] Ninety-one were ordered to instant execution. Twenty-five were shot, the other sixty-six were decapitated by Knipperdolling to economize powder, and lest the sound of the discharge of firearms within the city should lead the besiegers to believe that fighting was going on in the streets. Some had their heads cut off, others were tied to a tree and shot, others again were cut asunder at the waist, and others were slowly mutilated. Knipperdolling himself executed the men, so many every day, in the presence of the prophet, till all were slain.[193] [191] Kerssenbroeck, p. 39 _et seq._; Heresbach, pp. 41, 42; H. Montfort., pp. 29, 30; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 9, p. 56. [192] Kerssenbroeck, p. 40. [193] _Ibid._ p. 41; Dorpius, f. 536 b. "The partisans of the emancipation of the flesh having thus obtained the mastery in Münster," says the eye-witness, "it was impossible, a few days later, to discover in the capital of Westphalia the last and feeble traces of modesty, chastity, and self-restraint." Three men, John [OE]chinckfeld, Henry Arnheim, and Hermann Bispinck, having, however, the hardihood to assert that they still believed that Christian marriage consisted in the union of one man with one woman, were decapitated by order of John of Leyden.[194] [194] H. Montfort., p. 29; C. Heresbach, p. 42. With the death of these men disappeared every attempt at resistance. The horrors which were perpetrated in Münster under the name of religious liberty almost exceed belief. The most frantic licence and savage debauchery were practised. The prophet took two wives, besides his favourite sultana, the beautiful Divara, widow of Matthisson, and his lawful wife at Leyden. These were soon discovered to be too few, and the harem swelled daily.[195] [195] Kerssenbroeck, p. 42. Dorpius confirms the horrible account given by Kerssenbroeck from what he saw himself, f. 498. "We must draw a veil," says Kerssenbroeck, "over what took place, for we should scandalise our readers were we to relate in detail the outrageous scenes of immorality which took place in the town, and the villanies which these maniacs committed to satisfy their abominable lusts. They were no more human beings, they were foul and furious beasts. The hideous word _Spiritus meus concupiscit carnem tuam_ was in every mouth; those who resisted these magic words were shut up in the convent of Rosenthal; and if they persisted in their obstinacy after exhortation, their heads were cut off. In one day four were simultaneously executed on this account. On another occasion a woman was sentenced to be decapitated, after childbirth, for having complained of her husband having taken to himself a second wife."[196] [196] Kerssenbroeck, p. 43 _et seq._ Henry Schlachtscap preached that no man after the Ascension of Christ had lived in true matrimony, if he had contracted marriage on account of beauty, wealth, family, and similar causes, for that true marriage consisted solely in that which was instigated by the Spirit. A new prophet now appeared upon the scene, named Dusentscheuer, a native of Warendorf. He rushed into the market-place uttering piercing cries, and performing such extraordinary antics that a crowd was speedily gathered around him. Then, addressing himself to the multitude, he exclaimed, "Christian brothers, the celestial Father has revealed to me, and has commanded me to announce to you, that John Bockelson of Leyden, the saint and prophet of God, must be king of the whole earth; his authority will extend over emperors, kings, princes, and all the powers of the world; he will be the chief authority; and none shall arise above him. He will occupy the throne of his father David, and will carry the sceptre till the Lord reclaims it from him."[197] [197] _Ibid._ p. 47; Sleidan, p. 419; Bullinger, lib. ii. p. 56; Montfort., p. 31; Heresbach, pp. 136-7, "Historia von d. Münsterischen Widerteuffer," f. 328 b; Dorpius, f. 397. Bockelson and the twelve elders were present. A profound silence reigned in the assembly. Dusentscheuer, advancing to the elders, demanded their swords of office; they surrendered them into his hands; he placed eleven at the feet of Bockelson, and put the twelfth into his hand, saying--"Receive the sword of justice, and with it the power to subjugate all nations. Use it so that thou mayst be able to give a good account thereof to Christ, when He shall come to judge the quick and the dead."[198] Then drawing from his pocket a phial of fragrant oil, he poured it over the tailor's head, pronouncing solemnly the words, "I consecrate thee in the presence of thy people, in the name of God, and by His command, and I proclaim thee king of the new Zion." When the unction was performed, Bockelson cast himself in the dust and exclaimed, "O Father! I have neither years, nor wisdom, nor experience, necessary for such sovereignty; I appeal to Thy grace, I implore Thy assistance and Thy all-powerful protection!... Send down upon me, therefore, Thy divine wisdom. May Thy glorious throne descend on me, may it dwell with me, may it illumine my labours; then shall I be able to accomplish Thy will and Thy good pleasure, and thus shall I be able to govern Thy people with equity and justice." [198] Kerssenbroeck, p. 43 _et seq._ Then, turning himself towards the crowd, Bockelson declared that he had long known by revelation the glory that was to be his, but he had never mentioned it, lest he should be deemed ambitious, but had awaited in patience and humility the accomplishment of God's holy will. He concluded by saying that, destined by the Father to reign over the whole world, he would use the sword, and slay all those who should venture to oppose him.[199] Nevertheless murmurs of disapprobation were heard. "What!" thundered the Leyden tailor, "you dare to resist the designs of God! Know then, that even were you all to oppose me, I should nevertheless become king of the whole earth, and that my royalty, which begins now in this spot, will last eternally." The new prophet Dusentscheuer and the other preachers harangued the people during three consecutive days on the new revelation, read to the people the 23rd chapter of Jeremiah and the 27th of Ezekiel, and announced that in the King John the prophecies of the old seers were accomplished, for that he was the new David whom God had promised to raise up in the latter days. They also read aloud the 13th chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and accompanied the lecture with commentaries on the necessity and divine obligation of submission to authority.[199] [199] Kerssenbroeck, p. 47; and the authors before quoted. At the expiration of these three days, Dusentscheuer requested John of Leyden to complete the spoliation of the inhabitants, so that everything they possessed might be placed in a common fund. "It has been revealed to me," said he, "that the Father is violently irritated against the men and women because they have abused grievously their food and drink and clothing. The Father requires for the future, that no one of either sex shall retain more than two complete suits and four shirts; the rest must be collected and placed in security. It is the will of the Lord that the provisions of beef and pork found in every house shall also be seized and be consecrated to the general use."[200] [200] Kerssenbroeck, p. 49. The order was promptly obeyed. Eighty-three large waggons were laden with confiscated clothes, and all the provisions found in the city were brought to the king, who confided the care and apportionment of them to Dusentscheuer. Bockelson now organised his court with splendour. He appointed his officers, chamberlain, stewards, marshals, and equerries, in imitation of the Court of the Emperor and Princes of Germany. Rottmann was named his chaplain; Andrew von Coesfeld, director of police; Hermann Tilbeck, grand-marshal; Henry Krechting, chancellor; Christopher Waldeck, the bishop's son, who had fallen into his power, was in derision made one of the pages; and a privy council of four, composed of Bernard Krechting, Henry Redecker, and two others of inferior note, was instituted under the presidency of Christian Kerkering. John had also a grand-master of the kitchen, a cup-bearer, taster, carver, gentlemen of the bedchamber, &c.[201] [201] _Ibid._ p. 55 Montfort., pp. 31-3; Sleidan, p. 418; Bullinger, p. 57; Heresbach, pp. 137-8. But John Bockelson not only desired to be surrounded by a court; he determined also to display all the personal splendour of royalty. Accordingly, at his order, two crowns of pure gold were made, one royal, the other imperial, encrusted with jewels. Around his neck hung a gold chain enriched with precious stones, from which depended a globe of the same metal transfixed by two swords, one of gold, the other of silver. The globe was surmounted by a cross which bore the inscription, "Ein König der Gerechtigkeit über all" (a King of Righteousness over all). His sceptre, spurs, baldrick and scabbard were also of gold, and his fingers blazed with diamonds. On one of the rings, which was exceedingly massive, was cut, "Der König in dem nyen Tempel furet dit zeichen vur sein Exempel" (the King of the new Temple bears this symbol as his token). The royal garments were magnificent, of crimson and purple, and costly stuffs of velvet, silk, and gold and silver damask, with superb lace cuffs and collars, and his mantle lined with costly furs. The elders, the prophets, and the preachers followed suit, and exchanged their sad-coloured garments for robes of honour in gay colours. The small house of Knipperdolling no longer contented the tailor-king; he therefore furnished, and moved into, a handsome mansion belonging to the noble family of Von Büren. The house next door was converted into the palace of his queens, and was adorned with royal splendour. A door of communication, broken through the partition wall, allowed King John to visit his wives at all hours. He now took to himself thirteen additional wives, and a large train of concubines. Among his sixteen legitimate wives was a daughter of Knipperdolling. Divara of Haarlem remained the head queen, though she was the oldest. The rest were all under twenty, and were the most beautiful girls of Münster. They all bore the title of queens, but Divara alone had a court, officers, and bodyguard, habited in a livery of chestnut brown and green; the livery of the king being scarlet and blue.[202] [202] Kerssenbroeck, p. 55 _et seq._; and the authors above cited. Kerssenbroeck gives long details of the dress, ornaments, and manner of life of the king; also "Historia von d. Münsterischen Widerteuffer," f. 329. The king usually had his meals with his wives, and during the repasts he examined them with great attention, feasting his eyes on their beauty. The names of the sixteen queens were inscribed on a tablet on which the king, after dinner, designated the lady who had attracted his favour.[203] [203] Kerssenbroeck gives the names of all the wives except one, which he conceals charitably, as the poor child--she was very young--fell ill, but recovered, and was living respectably after the siege with her relatives in the city. The King of Zion had abolished the names of the days of the weeks, and had replaced them by the seven first letters of the alphabet. He ordered that whenever a child was born in the town, it should be announced to him, and then he gave it a name, whose initial letter corresponded with the letter of the day on which it entered the world. But, as Kerssenbroeck observes, the debauchery which reigned in Münster had the result of diminishing the births, so that the number of children born during the latter part of the siege was extraordinarily small. Bockelson had only two children by all his wives, and both were daughters. Divara was the first to give birth; the event took place on a Sunday, designated by the letter A; it was given the name of Averall (for Ueberall--Above all); the second child, born on Monday, was called Blydam (the Blythe).[204] [204] Kerssenbroeck, p. 59. Thrice in the week Bockelson sat in judgment in the market-place on a throne decked in purple silk, and richly adorned with gold. He betook himself to this place of audience with great pomp. A band of musical instruments headed the pageant, then followed the councillors in purple, and the grand-marshal with the white wand in his hand. John, wearing the royal insignia, mounted on a white horse, splendidly caparisoned, followed between two pages fantastically dressed, one bearing a Bible, the other a naked sword, symbols of the spiritual and temporal jurisdiction exercised by his majesty. The bodyguard surrounded his royal person, to keep off the crowd and to protect him from danger. Knipperdolling, Rottmann, the secretary Puthmann, and the chancellor Krechting followed; then the executioner and his four assistants, a train of courtiers, and servants closed the procession. The whole ceremony was as regal, as punctiliously observed, as at a royal court where the traditions date from many centuries.[205] [205] Kerssenbroeck, p. 62; H. Montfort., p. 33; Hast, p. 363 _et seq._; Sleidan, p. 415; "Historia von de Münsterischen Widerteuffer," f. 328 b. When the king reached the market-place, a squire held the horse, he slowly mounted the steps of the throne, and inclining his sceptre, announced the opening of the audience. Then the plaintiffs approached, prostrated themselves flat upon the ground twice, and spoke. The majority of the cases were matrimonial complaints, often exceedingly indecent; "the greatest abominations formulated in the most hideously cynical terms before the most cynical of judges." Capital sentences, or penalties little less severe, were pronounced against insubordinate wives.[206] [206] Kerssenbroeck. Sleidan says, "Almost every case and complaint brought before him concerned married people and divorces. For nothing was more frequent, so that persons who had lived together for many long years now separated for the first time."--p. 415-6. The same ceremonial was observed whenever his majesty went to hear the preaching in the market-square, with the sole exception, that on this occasion he was accompanied by the sixteen queens, magnificently dressed. Queen Divara rode a palfrey caparisoned in furs, led by a page; the court and the fifteen other queens followed on foot. On reaching the market-place, the ladies entered a house opposite the throne, and assisted at the sermon, sitting at the windows. The pulpit and the throne were side by side; a long broad platform united them. When the sermon was concluded, the king, his queens, court, ministers, and the preacher, assembled on the platform and danced to the strains of the royal band. It was from this platform that King John, as sovereign pontiff, blessed polygamous marriages, saying to the brides and the bridegrooms, "What God hath joined let no man put asunder; go, act according to the divine law, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth." This sanction was necessary for the validity of these unions. John, wishing to exercise all the prerogatives of royalty, struck coins of various values, bearing on one side the inscription, "Das Wort is Fleisch geworden und wohnet unter uns" (The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us); or "Wer nicht gebohren ist aus Wasser und Geist der kann nicht eingehen--" the rest on the reverse--"In das Reich Gottes. Den es ist nur ein rechter König über alle, ein Gott, ein Glaube, eine Tauffe" (who is not born of Water and the Spirit, cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. For there is only one true King over all, one God, one Faith, one Baptism). And in the middle, "Münster, 1534." Whilst the city of Münster was thus passing from a republic to a monarchy, the siege continued; but the besiegers made no progress. Refugees informed the prince-bishop of what had taken place within the walls. On the 25th August he assembled the captains and the princes and nobles who had come into the camp to observe the proceedings, to request them to advise him how to put an end to all these horrors and abominations. It was proposed that a deputation should be sent into the town to propose a capitulation on equitable terms; and in the event of a refusal to offer a general assault.[207] [207] Kerssenbroeck, p. 65 _et seq._; Montfort., pp. 27, 28. On the 28th August an armistice of three hours' duration was concluded, and the deputation obtained a safe-conduct authorising them to enter the city. But instead of being brought before the inhabitants of the town, to whom they were commissioned to make the propositions, they were introduced to the presence of Bockelson and his court. The envoys informed King John of the terms proposed by the bishop. They were extremely liberal. He promised a general amnesty if the place were surrendered, and arms laid down. King John replied haughtily, that he did not need the clemency of the prince-bishop, for that he stood strengthened by the almighty and irresistible power of God. "It is your pretended bishop," said he, "who is an impious and obstinate rebel, he who makes war without previous declaration against the faithful servants of the celestial Father. Never will I lay down my arms which I have taken up for the defence of the Gospel; never in cowardly fashion will I surrender my capital: on the contrary, I know how to defend it, even to the last drop of my blood, if the honour of God requires it."[208] [208] Kerssenbroeck, p. 21. The bishop, when he learnt that his deputies had been refused permission to address the citizens, attached letters, sealed with his Episcopal seal, to arrows, which were shot into the town. In these letters he promised a general pardon to all those who would leave the party of the Anabaptists, and escape from the town before the following Thursday. But Bockelson forbade, on pain of death, any one touching or opening one of these letters, and ordered the instant decapitation of man, woman, or child who testified anxiety to leave Münster. The bishop and the princes resolved on attempting an assault without further delay. John of Leyden received information of their purpose through his spies. He at once mounted his white horse, convoked the people, and announced to them that the Father had revealed to him the day and hour of the projected attack; he appointed his post to every man, gave employment to the women and children, and displayed, at this critical moment, the zeal, energy, and readiness which would have done credit to a veteran general.[209] [209] Kerssenbroeck, p. 68. The assault was preluded by a bombardment of three days. The battlements yielded, breaches were effected in the walls, the roofs of the houses were shattered, the battered gates gave way, and all promised success. But the besieged neglected no precaution. During the night the walls were repaired and the gates strengthened. Women laboured under the orders of the competent directors during the hours of darkness, thus allowing their husbands to take their requisite repose. They carried stones and the munitions of war to the ramparts, and learning to handle the cross-bow, they succeeded in committing no inconsiderable amount of execution among the ranks of the Episcopal army. Other women prepared lime and boiling pitch "to cook the bishop's soup for him."[210] On the 31st August, at daybreak, the roar of the Hessian devil, as a large cannon belonging to the Landgrave Philip was called, gave the signal. Instantly the city was assaulted in six places. The ditches were filled, petards were placed under the gates, the palisades were torn down, and ladders were planted. But however vigorous might be the attack, the defence was no less vigorous. Those on the walls threw down the ladders with all upon them, and they fell bruised and mangled into the fosse, the heads of those who had reached the battlements were crushed with stones and cudgels, and their hands, clasping the parapet, were hacked off. Women hurled stones upon the besiegers, and enveloped them in boiling pitch, quicklime, and blazing sulphur. [210] _Ibid._ p. 70. Repulsed, they returned to the charge eight or ten times, but always in vain. The whole day was consumed in ineffectual assaults, and when the red sun went down in the west, the clarions pealed the retreat, and the army, dispirited and bearing with it a train of wounded, withdrew, leaving the ground strewn with dead. Had the Anabaptists made a night assault, the defeat and dispersion of the Episcopal troops would have been completed. But instead, they sang a hymn and spent the night in banqueting. The prince-bishop, despondent and at his wits' end for money, called his officers to a consultation on the 3rd September, and it was unanimously resolved to turn the investment into an effective blockade. This resolution was submitted to the electors of Cologne and Saxony, the Duke of Cleves, and the Landgrave of Hesse, and these princes approved of the design of Francis von Waldeck. It was determined to raise seven redoubts, united by ramparts and a ditch, around the city, so as completely to close it, and prevent the exit of the besieged and the entrance of provisions. It was decided that the defence of this circle of forts should be confided to a sufficient number of tried soldiers, and that the rest of the army should be dismissed. Accordingly, on the 7th September, all the labourers of the country round were engaged, under the direction of the engineer Wilkin von Stedingen, in raising the walls and digging the trenches. The work was carried on with vigour by relays of peasants; nevertheless, the undertaking was on so great a scale, that several months must elapse before it could be completed.[211] [211] Kerssenbroeck, p. 75 _et seq._; Heresbach, p. 132. The cost of this terrible siege had already risen to 600,000 florins, the treasury was empty, and the country could bear no further taxes. Francis of Waldeck appealed to the Elector Palatine, the Electors of Cologne, Mainz, and Trèves, to give help and subsidies; he had recourse also to the princes and nobles of the Upper and Lower Rhine; and it was decided that a diet should assemble on the 13th December, 1534, to make arrangements for the complete subjugation of the insurgent fanatics. All the princes, Catholic and Protestant, trembled for their crowns, for the Anabaptist sect ramified throughout the country, and if John of Leyden were successful in Münster, they might expect similar risings in their own principalities.[212] [212] _Ibid._ p. 75; Bussierre, p. 372; Hast, p. 366. Whilst the preparations for the blockade were in progress, John Bockelson, inflated with pride, placed no bounds to his prodigality, his display, and his despotism. He frequently pronounced sentences of death. Thus Elizabeth Holschers was decapitated for having refused her husband what he demanded of her; Catherine of Osnabrück underwent the same sentence for having told one of the preachers that he was building his doctrines upon the sand; Catherine Knockenbecher lost her head for having taken two husbands. Polygamy was permitted, but polyandry was regarded as an unpardonable offence.[213] [213] Kerssenbroeck, p. 75; Bussierre, p. 372. However, the people chafed at the tyranny they were subjected to, and murmurs, low and threatening, continued to make themselves heard; whereupon, by King John's order, Dusentscheuer announced from the pulpit, "that all those who should for the future have doubts in the verities taught them, and who should venture to blame the king whom the Father had given them, would be given over to the anointed of the Lord to be extirpated out of Israel, decapitated by the headsman, and condemned to eternal oblivion." Amongst those who viewed with envy the rise and splendour of the tailor-king was Knipperdolling. He had opened his home to the prophet, had patronised him, introduced him to the people of Münster, and now the draper was eclipsed by the glory of the tailor. Thinking that the time was come for him to assume the pre-eminence, he made an attempt to dethrone Bockelson. On the 12th of September he was seized with the spirit of prophecy, became as one possessed, rushed through the town howling, foaming at the mouth, making prodigious leaps and extravagant gestures, and crying in every street, "Repent! repent!" After having carried on these antics for some time, Knipperdolling dashed into the market-place, cast himself down on the ground, and fell into an ecstasy. The people clustered around him, wondering what new revelation was about to be made, and the king, who was then holding audience, looked on uneasily at the crowd drifting from his throne towards his lieutenant-general, whose object he was unable to divine, as this performance had not been concerted between them. He was not left long in uncertainty, for Knipperdolling, rising from the ground with livid face, scrambled up the back of a sturdy artisan standing near, and crawled on all fours "like a dog," says Sleidan, over the heads of the throng, breathing in their faces, and exclaiming, "The celestial Father has sanctified thee; receive the Holy Ghost." Then he anointed the eyes of some blind men with his spittle, saying, "Let sight be given you." Undiscomfited by the failure of this attempt to perform a miracle, he prophesied that he would die and rise again in three days; and he indicated a corner of the market-place where this was to occur. Then making his way towards the throne, he began to dance in the most grotesque and indecent manner before the king, shouting contemptuously, "Often have I danced thus before my mistresses, now the celestial Father has ordered me to perform these dances before my king."[214] [214] Kerssenbroeck, p. 81 _et seq._; Sleidan, p. 416. John was highly displeased at this performance; and he ran down the steps of his throne to interrupt him. But Knipperdolling nimbly leaped upon the dais, seated himself in the place of majesty, and cried out, "The Spirit of God impels me: John Bockelson is king according to the flesh, I am king according to the Spirit; the two Testaments must be abolished and extirpated. Man must cease from obeying terrestrial laws; henceforth he shall obey only the inspirations of the Spirit and the instincts of nature." John of Leyden sprang at him, dragged him from the throne, beat his head with his golden sceptre, and administering a kick to the rear of his lieutenant, sent him flying head over heels from the platform, and then calmly enthroning himself, he gave orders for the removal and imprisonment of the rebel. He was obeyed.[215] [215] Kerssenbroeck, Hast p. 366. Knipperdolling, left to cool in the dungeon, felt that his only chance of life was to submit. He therefore sent his humble apology to the king, and assured him that he had been possessed by an evil spirit, which had driven him, against his judgment and conscience, into revolt. "And," said he, "last night the Father revealed to me that one must venerate the royal majesty, and that John is destined to reign over the whole earth." He was at once released, for Bockelson needed him, and the failure of this attempt only secured the king's hold over him. He sent him a letter of pardon, concluding with the royal signature in this eccentric fashion:-- "In fide persiste salvus Carnis curam agit Deus. Johannes Leydanus. Potentia Dei, robur meum."[216] [216] Persist secure in Faith. God takes care of the Flesh. John of Leyden. The Power of God is my strength. Another event took place at Münster, which distracted the thoughts of the people from the events of the siege, and the attempt of Knipperdolling to dethrone the king. The prophet Dusentscheuer, on the same day, the 12th September, sought the King of Zion in his palace, and said to him with an inspired air, "This is the commandment of the Lord to me: Go and say unto the chief of Israel, that he shall prepare on the Mount Zion (that is, the cathedral square) a great supper for all Christian brethren and sisters, and after supper he shall commission the teachers of my Word to go forth to the four quarters of the world, that they may teach all men the way of my righteousness, and that they may be brought into my fold." The king accepted the message with respect, and gave orders for its immediate execution. On the 13th September, Dusentscheuer called together the elect, traversing the streets playing upon a flute. At noon 1700 men, capable of bearing arms, 400 old men and children, and 5000 women assembled on Mount Zion. Bockelson left his palace, habited in a scarlet tunic over which was cast a cloth of silver mantle, on his head was his crown, and his sceptre was in his right hand. Thirty-two knights, magnificently dressed, served as his bodyguard. Then came Queen Divara and the rest of the wives of the court. When the king had taken his place, the Grand Marshal Tilbeck made the people sit down. Tables had been arranged along the sides of the great square under the trees, with an open space in the centre. When all were seated, the king and his familiars distributed food to those invited. They were given first boiled beef and roots, then ham with other vegetables, and finally roast meat. When the plates had been removed, thin round cakes of fine wheat flour were brought in large baskets, and John, calling the faithful up before him, communicated them with the bread, saying, "Take and eat this, and show forth the Lord's death." Divara followed, holding the chalice in her jewelled hands; she made the communicants drink from it, repeating the words to each, "Drink this, and show forth the Lord's death." Then all sang the _Gloria in excelsis_ in German, and this fantastic parody of the communion was over. Bockelson now ordered all his subjects to arrange themselves in a circle, and he demanded if they would faithfully obey the Word of God. All having assented, Dusentscheuer mounted the pulpit and said, "The Father has revealed to me the names of twenty-seven apostles who are to be sent into every part of the world; they will spread everywhere the pure doctrine of the celestial kingdom, and the Lord will cover them with the shadow of His wings, so that not a hair of their head shall be injured. And when they shall arrive at a place where the authorities refuse to receive the Gospel, there they shall leave a florin in gold, they shall shake off the dust of their garments, and shall go to another place." Then the prophet designated the chosen apostles--he saw himself of the number--and he added, "Go ye into all the cities and preach the Word of God." The twenty-seven stepped forward, and the king, mounting the pulpit, exhorted the people to prepare for a grand sortie.[217] [217] Kerssenbroeck, p. 86; Montfort., p. 34; Dorpius, f. 397 b; Heresbach, p. 139, _et seq._; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 10; Sleidan, p. 417; this author sets the number of communicants at 5,000, the "Newe Zeitung" at 4,000, f. 329. This authority adds that the communicants distributed the sacrament they had received amongst themselves saying, "Brother and sister, take and eat thereof. As Christ gave Himself for me, so will I give myself for thee. And as the corn-wheat is baked into one, and the grape branches are pressed into one, so we being many are one." Also, "Letter of the Bishop to the Electors of Cologne," _ibid._ p. 390. The banquet was over for the people; but John, his wives and court, and those who had been on guard upon the walls, to the number of 500, now sat down. The second banquet was much more costly than the first. In the midst of the feast, Bockelson, rising, said that he had received an order from the Father to go round and inspect the guests. He accordingly examined those present, and recognising amongst them a soldier of the Episcopal army, who had been made prisoner, he confronted him sternly, and asked-- "Friend, what is thy faith?" "My faith," replied the soldier, who was half drunk, "is to drink and make love." "How didst thou dare to come in, not having on the wedding garment?" asked the king, in a voice of thunder. "I did not come of my own accord to this debauch,"[218] answered the prisoner; "I was brought here by main force." [218] The expression used was somewhat broad--Hurenhochzeit. At these words, the king, transported with rage, drew his sword and smote off the head of the unfortunate reveller. The night was spent in dancing.[219] [219] Kerssenbroeck, p. 88 _et seq._; Heresbach, p. 139; Dorp. f. 398. Whilst the king was eating and drinking, the twenty-seven apostles were taking a tender farewell of their 124 legitimate wives,[220] and making their preparations to depart. [220] Evidence of Heinrich Graess. Dorpius says that the number of apostles was twenty-eight, and gives their names and the places to which they were sent, f. 398. When all was ready, they returned to Mount Zion; Bockelson ascended the pulpit, and gave them their mission in the following terms:--"Go, prepare the way; we will follow. Cast your florin of gold at the feet of those who despise you, that it may serve as a testimony against them, and they shall be slain, all the sort of them, or shall bow their necks to our rule." Then the gates were thrown open, and the apostles went forth, north and south, and east and west. The blockade was not complete, and they succeeded in traversing the lines of the enemy. However, the prince-bishop notified to the governors of the towns in his principality to watch them and arrest them, should they attempt to disseminate their peculiar doctrines.[221] [221] Kerssenbroeck, p. 89 _et seq._; Heresbach, pp. 89, 101, 141; Montfort., p. 35; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 10; Sleidan, pp. 417-8; Hast, p. 368; "Historia v. d. Münst. Widerteuffer." p. 329 a. We shall have to follow these men, and see the results of their mission, before we continue the history of the siege of Münster. In fact, on their expedition and their success, as John Bockelson probably felt, everything depended. As soon as the city was completely enclosed no food could enter: already it was becoming scarce; therefore an attack on the Episcopal army from the flank was most essential to success; the palisades and ramparts recently erected sufficiently defending the enemy against surprises and sorties from the town. Seven of the apostles went to Osnabrück, six to Coesfeld, five to Warendorf, and eight, amongst whom was Dusentscheuer himself, betook themselves to Soest.[222] [222] For the acts of these apostles, Kerssenbroeck, p. 92 _et seq._; Menck. p. 1574; Montfort., p. 36 _et seq._; Sleidan, p. 418; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 10; Heresbach, p. 149. On entering Soest, Dusentscheuer and his fellow-apostles opened their mission by a public frenzied appeal to repentance. Then, hearing that the senate had assembled, they entered the hall and preached to the city councillors in so noisy a fashion that the magistrates were obliged to suspend their deliberations. The burgomaster having asked them who they were, and why they entered the town-hall unsummoned and unannounced, "We are sent by the king of the New Zion, and by order of God to preach the Gospel," was the reply of Dusentscheuer; "and to execute this mission we need neither passports nor permission. The kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by storm." "Very well," said the burgomaster collectedly. "Guards, remove the preachers and throw them into prison." A few days after several of them lost their heads on the block. John Clopris, at the head of four evangelists, entered Warendorf. They took up their abode in the house of an Anabaptist named Erpo, one of the magistrates of the town, and began to preach and prophesy in the streets. The first day they rebaptised fifty persons. Clopris preached with such fervour and persuasive eloquence, that the whole town followed him; the senate received the sign of the covenant in a body, and this was followed by a rebaptism of half the population. Alarmed at what was taking place, and afraid of a diversion in his rear, Francis of Waldeck wrote to the magistrates ordering them to give up the apostles of error. They refused, and the prince at once invested the town and bombarded it. The magistrates sent offers of capitulation, which the prince rejected; they asked to retain their arms and their franchises. Francis of Waldeck insisted on unconditional surrender, and they were constrained to yield. Some of the senators and citizens who had repented of their craze, or who had taken no part in the movement, seized the apostles and conducted them to the town-hall. Clopris and his fellows cast down their florins of gold and declared that they shook off the dust of their feet against the traitors, and that they would carry the pure Word of God and the living Gospel elsewhere; but escape was not permitted, and they were delivered over to the prince-bishop. Francis of Waldeck at once placed sentinels in the streets, ordered every citizen to deliver up his weapons, took the title-deeds of the city, withdrew its franchises, and executed four of the apostles and three of the ringleaders of the senators. Clopris was sent to Cologne, and was burnt there on the 1st February, 1535, by the Elector. The bishop then raised a fortress to command the town, and placed in it a garrison to keep the Warendorfians in order. Seventeen years after, the greater part of the franchises were restored, and all the rest in 1555. The apostles of the east, under Julius Frisius, were arrested at Coesfeld, and were executed.[223] [223] The "Newe Zeitung v. d. Widerteuffer. zu Münster," f. 329 b, 330 a, gives a summary of the confessions of these men, and their account of the condition of affairs in the city. They said that every man there had five, six, seven, or eight wives, and that every girl over the age of twelve was forced to marry; that if one wife showed resentment against another, or jealousy, or complained, she was sentenced by the king to death. Those of the north reached Osnabrück. Denis Vinnius was at their head. They entered the house of a certain Otto Spiecher, whom they believed to be of their persuasion, and they laid at his feet their gold florins bearing the title and superscription of King John, as tokens of their mission. Spiecher picked up the gold pieces, pocketed them, and then informed his visitors that he did not belong to their sect, and that the only salvation for their necks would be reticence on the subject of their mission. But this was advice Vinnius and his fellow-fanatics were by no means disposed to accept. They ran forth into the streets and market-place, yelling, dancing, foaming, and calling to repentance. Then Vinnius, having collected a crowd, preached to them the setting up of the Millennial kingdom at Münster. Thereupon the city-guard arrived with orders from the burgomaster, arrested the missionaries, and carried them off to the Goat-tower, where they shut them in, and barred fast the doors.[224] [224] Kerssenbroeck, p. 100 _et seq._ The rabble showed signs of violence, threatened, blustered, armed themselves with axes and hammers, and vowed they would batter open the prison-gates unless the true ministers of God's Word, pure from all human additions, were set at liberty. The magistrates replied with great firmness that the first man who attempted to force the doors should be shot, and no one caring to be the first man, though very urgent to his neighbours to lead the assault, the mob sang a psalm and dispersed, and the ministers were left to console themselves with the promises of Dusentscheuer that not a hair of their head should fall. A messenger was sent by the magistrates post haste to the prince-bishop, and before morning the evangelists were in his grasp at Iburg. As they were led past Francis of Waldeck, one of them, Heinrich Graess, exclaimed in Latin, "Has not the prince power to release the captive?" and the prince, disposed in his favour, sent for him. Graess then confessed that the whole affair was a mixture of fanaticism and imposture, the ingredients being mixed in pretty equal proportions, and promised, if his life were spared, to abandon Anabaptism, and, what was more to the point, to prove an Ahitophel to the Absalom in Zion. Graess was pardoned, Strahl died in prison, the other four were brought to the block. Graess was the sole surviving apostle of the seventy-seven, and the miserable failure of their mission had rudely shaken out of him all belief in its divine character, and he became as zealous in unmasking Anabaptism as he had been enthusiastic in its propagation. There is no reason to believe that the man was an unprincipled traitor. On the contrary, he appears to have been thoroughly in earnest as long as he believed in his mission, but his confidence had been shaken before he left the city, and the signal collapse of the mission sufficed to convince him of his previous error, and make him resolute to oppose it. Laden with chains, he was brought to the gates of Münster one dark night and there abandoned. In the morning he was recognised by the sentinels, and was brought into the city, and led in triumph before the king, by a vast concourse chanting German hymns.[225] [225] Kerssenbroeck, p. 103 _et seq._; Montfort., pp. 40-1; Hast p. 368. And thus he accounted for his presence:--"I was last night at Iburg in a dark dungeon, when suddenly a brilliant light filled my prison, and I saw before me an angel of God, who took me by the hand and led me forth, and delivered me from the death which has befallen all my companions, and which the ungodly determined to inflict on me upon the morrow. The angel transported me asleep to the gate of Münster, and that none may doubt my story, lo! the chains, wherewith I was laden by the enemies of Israel, still encumber me." Some of the courtiers doubted the miracle, but not so the people, and the king gave implicit credence to his word, or perhaps thought the event capable of a very simple explanation, which had been magnified and rendered supernatural by the heated fancy of the mystic. Graess became the idol of the people and the favourite of Bockelson. The king passed a ring upon his finger, and covered him with a robe of distinction, half grey, half green--the first the symbol of persistence, the other typical of gratitude to God.[226] Graess profited by his position to closely observe all that transpired of the royal schemes. [226] Montfort., p. 40. John Bockelson became more and more tyrannical and sanguinary. He hung a starving child, aged ten, for having stolen some turnips. A woman lost her head for having spit in the face of a preacher of the Gospel. An Episcopal soldier having been taken, the king exhorted him to embrace the pure Word of God, freed from the traditions of men. The prisoner having had the audacity to reply that the pure Gospel as practised in the city seemed to him to be adultery, fornication, and all uncleanness; the king, foaming with rage, hacked off his head with his own hand.[227] [227] Kerssenbroeck, p. 110. Provisions became scarce in Münster, and the inhabitants were driven to consume horse-flesh; and the powder ran short in the magazine. The Diet of Coblenz assembled on the 13th December. The envoys of the Elector Palatine, the prince-bishops of Maintz, Cologne, and of Trier, the princes and nobles of the Upper and Lower Rhine and of Westphalia appeared. Francis of Waldeck, unable to be present in person, sent deputies to represent him.[228] [228] _Ibid._ p. 114. These deputies having announced that the cost of the siege had already amounted to 700,000 florins, besought the assembled princes to combine to terminate this disastrous war. A long deliberation followed, and the principle was admitted that as the establishment of an Anabaptist kingdom in Münster would be a disaster affecting the whole empire, it was just that the bishop should not be obliged to bear the whole expenses of the reduction of Münster. The Elector John Frederick of Saxony, though not belonging to the three circles convoked, through his deputies sent to the Diet, promised to take part in the extirpation of the heretics.[229] It was finally agreed that the bishop should be supplied with 300 horse soldiers, 3000 infantry, and that an experienced General, Count Ulrich von Ueberstein, should command them and take the general conduct of the war.[230] [229] _Ibid._; Sleidan, p. 419; Heresbach, p. 132. [230] Sleidan, p. 419. The monthly subsidy of 15,000 florins was also promised to be contributed till the fall of Münster. It was also agreed that the prince-bishop should be guaranteed the integrity of his domains; that each prince, Catholic or Protestant, should use his utmost endeavours to extirpate Anabaptism from his estates; that the Bishop of Münster should request Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and the seven Electors, to meet on the 4th April, at Worms, to consult with those then assembled at Worms on measures to crush the rebellion, to divide the cost of the war, and to punish the leaders of the revolt at Münster. Lastly, the Diet addressed a letter to the guilty city, summoning it to surrender at discretion, unless it were prepared to resist the combined effort of all estates of the empire. But if the princes were combining against the Anabaptist New Jerusalem, the sectarians were in agitation, and were arming to march to its relief from all sides, from Leyden, Freisland, Amsterdam, Deventer, from Brabant and Strassburg. The Anabaptists of Deventer were on the point of rising and massacring the "unbelievers" in this city, and then marching on Münster, when the plot was discovered, and the four ringleaders were executed. The vigilance of the Regent of the Netherlands prevented the adherents of the mystic sect, who were then very numerous, from rolling in a wave upon Westphalia, and sweeping the undisciplined Episcopal army away and consolidating the power of their pontiff-king. It was towards the Low Countries that John of Leyden looked with impatience. When would the expected delivery come out of the west? Why were not the thousands and tens of thousands of the sons of Israel rising from their fens, joined by trained bands from the cities, marching by the light of blazing cities, singing the songs of Zion? Graess offered the king to hie to the Low Countries and rouse the faithful seed. "The Father," said he, "has ordered me to gather together the brethren dispersed at Wesel, at Deventer, at Amsterdam, and in Lower Germany; to form of them a mighty army that shall deliver this city and smite asunder the enemies of Israel. I will accomplish this mission with joy in the interest of the faithful. I fear no danger, since I go to fulfil the will of God, and I am sure that our brethren, when they know our extremity, and that it is the will of their king, will rise and hasten to the relief."[231] [231] Montfort., p. 40; Kerssenbroeck, p. 104 _et seq._; Hast, p. 368. John Bockelson was satisfied; he furnished Graess with letters of credit, sealed with the royal signet. The letters were couched in the following terms:--"We, John, King of Righteousness in the new Temple, and servant of the Most High, do you to wit by these presents, that the bearer of these letters, Heinrich Graess, prophet illumined by the celestial Father, is sent by us to assemble, for the increase of our realm, our brethren dispersed abroad throughout the German lands. He will make them to hear the words of life, and he will execute the commandments which he has received from God and from us. We therefore order and demand of all those who belong to our kingdom to confide in him as in ourselves. Given at Münster, city of God, and sealed with our signet, in the twenty-sixth year of our age and the second of our reign, the second day of the first month, in the year 1535 after the nativity of Jesus Christ, Son of God." Graess, furnished with this letter and with 300 florins from the treasury, left the city, and betook himself direct to Iburg, which he reached on the vigil of the Epiphany;[232] and appeared before the bishop, told him the whole project, the names of the principal members of the sect at Wesel, Amsterdam, Leyden, &c., the places where their arms were deposited, and their plan of a general rising and massacring their enemies on a preconcerted day. [232] Montfort., p. 40. The bishop sent dispatches at once to the Duke of Juliers and the Governors of the Low Countries to warn them to be on their guard. They replied, requesting his assistance in suppressing the insurrection; and as the most effectual aid he could render would be to send Graess, he commissioned him to visit Wesel, and arrest the execution of the project. Graess at once betook himself to Wesel, where he denounced the ringleaders and indicated the places where their arms and ammunition were secreted in enormous quantities. A tumult broke out; but the Duke of Juliers entered Wesel on the 5th April (1535), at the head of some squadrons of cavalry, seized the ringleaders, who were members of the principal houses in the place and of the senate, and on the 13th executed six of them. The rest were compelled to do penance in white sheets, were deprived of their arms, and put under close surveillance. Another division of the Anabaptists attempted to gain possession of Leyden, but were discomfited, fifteen of the principal men of the party were executed, and five of the women most distinguished for their fanaticism were drowned, amongst whom was the original wife of John Bockelson.[233] [233] Hast, p. 370; Bussierre, p. 403. In Gröningen, the partisans of the sect were numerous; orders reached them from the king to rise and massacre the magistrates, and march to the relief of the invested city. As the Anabaptists there were not all disposed to recognise the royalty of John of Leyden, an altercation broke out between them, and the attempt failed; but rising and marching under Peter Shomacker, their prophet, they were defeated on January 24th, by the Baron of Leutenburg, and the prophet was executed. We must now return to what took place in the town of Münster at the opening of the year 1535. Bockelson inaugurated that year by publishing, on January 2nd, an edict in twenty-eight Articles. It was addressed "To all lovers of the Truth and the Divine Righteousness, learned in and ignorant of the mysteries of God, to let them know how those Christians ought to live or act who are fighting under the banner of Justice, as true Israelites of the new Temple predestined for long ages, announced by the mouths of all the holy prophets, founded in the power of the Holy Ghost, by Christ and his Apostles, and finally established by John, the righteous King, seated on the throne of David." The Articles were to this effect:-- "1. In this new temple there was to be only one king to rule over the people of God. 2. This king was to be a minister of righteousness, and to bear the sword of justice. 3. None of the subjects were to desert their allotted places. 4. None were to interpret Holy Scripture wrongfully. 5. Should a prophet arise teaching anything contrary to the plain letter of Holy Scripture, he was to be avoided. 6. Drunkenness, avarice, fornication, and adultery were forbidden. 7. Rebellion to be punished with death. 8. Duels to be suppressed. 9. Calumny forbidden. 10. Egress from the camp forbidden without permission. 11. Any one absenting himself from his wife for three days, without leave from his officer, the wife to take another husband. 12. Approaching the enemy's sentinels without leave forbidden. 13. All violence forbidden among the elect. 14. Spoil taken from the enemy to go into a common fund. 15. No renegade to be re-admitted. 16. Caution to be observed in admitting a Christian into one society who leaves another. 17. Converts not to be repelled. 18. Any desiring to live at peace with the Christians, in trade, friendship, and by treaty, not to be rejected. 19. Permission given to dealers and traders to traffic with the elect. 20. No Christian to oppose and revolt against any Gentile magistrate, except the servants of the bishops and the monks. 21. A Gentile culprit not to be remitted the penalty of his crime by joining the Christian sect. 22. Directions about bonds. 23. Sentence to be pronounced against those who violate these laws and despise the Word of God, but not hastily, without the knowledge of the king. 24. No constraint to be used to force on marriages. 25. None afflicted with epilepsy, leprosy, and other diseases, to contract marriage without informing the other contracting party of their condition. 26. Nulla virginis specie, cum virgo non sit, fratrem defraudabit; alioquin serio punietur. 27. Every woman who has not a legitimate husband, to choose from among the community a man to be her guardian and protector. "Given by God and King John the Just, minister of the Most High God, and of the new Temple, in the 26th year of his age and the first of his reign, on the second day of the first month after the nativity of Jesus Christ, Son of God, 1535."[234] [234] Kerssenbroeck, p. 132 _et seq._ The object Bockelson had in view in issuing this edict was to produce a diversion in his favour among the Lutherans. He already felt the danger he was in, from a coalescence of Catholics and Protestants, and he hoped by temperate proclamations and protestations of his adhesion to the Bible, and the Bible only, as his authority, to dispose them, if not to make common cause with him, at least to withdraw their assistance from the common enemy, the Catholic bishop. For the same object he sent letters on the 13th January to the Landgrave of Hesse, and with them a book called "The Restitution" (Von der Wiederbringung), intended to place Anabaptism in a favourable light.[235] [235] Kerssenbroeck, p. 128; Sleidan, p. 420; Hast, p. 373 _et seq._; "Acta, Handlungen," &c., f. 365 b. The king's letter began "Leve Lips" ("Dear Phil"). The Landgrave replied at length, rebuking the fanatics for their rebellion, for their profligacy, and for their heresy in teaching that man had a free will.[236] [236] Sleidan, p. 421. This reply irritated the Anabaptists, and they wrote to him again, to prove that they clave to the pure Word of God, freed from all doctrines and traditions of men, and that they followed the direct inspiration of God through their prophet. They also retorted on Philip with some effect. The Landgrave, said they, had no right to censure them for attacking their bishop, for he had done precisely the same in his own dominions. He had expelled all the religious from their convents, and had appropriated their lands; he had re-established the Duke of Wurtemburg in opposition to the will of the Emperor; he had changed the religion of his subjects, and was unable to allege, as his authority for thus acting, the direct orders of Heaven, transmitted to him by the prophets of the living God. They might have retorted upon the Landgrave also, the charge of immorality, but they forbore; their object was to persuade the champion of the Protestant cause to favour them, not to exasperate him by driving the _tu quoque_ too deep home. With this letter was sent a treatise by Rottmann, entitled, "On the Secret Significance of Scripture." Philip of Hesse wavered. He wrote once more; and after having attempted to excuse himself for those things wherewith he had been reproached, he said, "If the thing depended on me only, you would not have to plead in vain your _just_ cause, and you would obtain all that you demand; but you ought ere this to have addressed the princes of the empire, instead of taking the law into your own hands; flying to arms, erecting a kingdom, electing a king, and sending prophets and apostles abroad to stir up the towns and the people. Nevertheless, it is possible that even now your demands may be favourably listened to, if you recall on equitable conditions those whom you have driven out of the town and despoiled of their goods, and restore your ancient constitutions and your former authorities."[237] [237] Kerssenbroeck, p. 129; Sleidan, p. 421. Luther now thundered out of Wittemberg. Sleidan epitomises this treatise. Five Hessian ministers also issued an answer to the doctrine of the Anabaptists of Münster, which was probably drawn up for them by Luther himself, or was at least submitted to him for his approval, for it is published among his German works.[238] It is full of invective and argument in about equal doses. A passage or two only can be quoted here:-- "Since you are led astray by the devil into such blasphemous error, drunk and utterly imprisoned you wish, as is Satan's way, to make yourselves into angels of light, and to paint in brightness and colour your devilish doings. For the devil will be no devil, but a holy angel, yea, even God himself, and his works, however bad they may be before God and all the world, he will have unrebuked, and himself be honoured and reverenced as the Most Holy. For that purpose he and you, his obedient disciples, use Holy Scripture as all heretics have ever done."[239] [238] Luth. "Sämmtliche Werke," Wittenb. 1545-51, ii. ff. 367-375; "Von der Teuffelischen Secte d. Widerteuffer. zu Münster." [239] _Ibid._ f. 367. "What shall I say? You let all the world see that you understand far less about the kingdom of Christ than did the Jews, who blame you for your want of understanding, and yet none spoke or believed more ignorantly of that same kingdom than they. For the Scripture and the prophets point to Messiah, through whom all was to be fulfilled, and this the Jews also believed. But you want to make it point to your Tailor-King, to the great disgrace and mockery of Christ, our only true King, Saviour, and Redeemer."[240] [240] _Ibid._ f. 369. But this was the grievous rub with the Reformer--that the Anabaptist had gone a step beyond himself. "You have cast away all that Dr. Martin Luther taught you, and yet it is from him that you have received, next to God, all sound learning out of the Scripture; you have given another definition of faith, after your new fashion, with various additional articles, so that you have not only darkened, but have utterly annihilated the value of saving faith."[241] [241] _Ibid._ f. 373. In a treatise of Justus Menius, published with Luther's approval, and with a preface by him, "On the Spirit of the Anabaptists," it is angrily complained, that these sectaries bring against the Lutheran Church the following charges:--"First, that our churches are idol-temples, since God dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Secondly, that we do not preach the truth, and have true Divine worship therein. Thirdly, that our preachers are sinners, and are therefore unfit to teach others. Fourthly, that the common people do not mend their morals by our preaching." All which charges Justus Menius answers as well as he can, sword in one hand against the Papists, trowel in the other patching up the walls of his Jerusalem.[242] [242] _Ibid._ ii. ff. 298-325. Melancthon also wrote against the Anabaptist book, combating all its propositions, and to do so falling back on the maxim, _Abusus non tollit substantiam_, a maxim completely ignored by the Reformers when they attacked the Catholics.[243] Thus the new sect fought Lutheranism with precisely the same weapons wherewith the Lutherans had fought the Church; and the Lutherans, to maintain their ground, were obliged to take refuge in the authority of the Church and tradition--positions they had assailed formerly, and to use arguments they had previously rejected. [243] _Ibid._ ii. ff. 334-363. Melancthon says that things had come to such a pass in Münster, that no child knew who was its father, brother, or sister. In the treatise of the five Hessian divines, drawn up by Philip of Hesse's orders, the errors of the Anabaptists are epitomised and condemned; they are as follows:-- "1. They do not believe that men are justified by faith only, but by faith and works conjointly. 2. They refer the redemption of Christ alone to the fall of Adam, and to its consequences on those born of him. 3. They hold community of goods. 4. They blame Martin Luther as having taught nothing about good works. 5. They proclaim the freedom of man's will. 6. They reject infant baptism. 7. They take the Bible alone, uninterpreted by any commentary. 8. They declare for plurality of wives. 9. They do not correctly teach the Incarnation of Christ."[244] [244] "Acta Handlung." &c. f. 366 a. This "Kurtze: und in der eile gestelte Antwort," is signed by John Campis, John Fontius, John Kymeus, John Lessing, and Anthony Corvinus. It was high time that the siege should come to an end, so every one said; but every one had said the same for the last twelve months, and Münster held out notwithstanding. An ultimatum was sent into the city by the general in command, offering the inhabitants liberal terms if they would surrender, and warning them that, in case of refusal, the city would be taken by storm, and would be delivered over to plunder.[245] No answer was made to the letter; nevertheless, it produced a profound impression on the citizens, who were already suffering from want of victuals. A party was formed which resolved to seize the person of the king, and to open the gates and make terms with the bishop.[246] Bockelson, hearing of the plot, assembled the whole of the population in the cathedral square, and solemnly announced to them by revelation from the Father that at Easter the siege would be raised, and the city experience a wonderful deliverance. He also divided the town into twelve portions, and placed at the head of each a duke of his own creation, charged with the suppression of treason and the protection of the gates. Each duke was provided with twenty-four guards for the defence of his person, and the infliction of punishment on those citizens who proved restive under the rule of the King of Zion.[247] These dukes were promised the government of the empire, when the kingdoms of Germany became the kingdom of John of Leyden. Denecker, a grocer, was Duke of Saxony; Moer, the tailor, Duke of Brunswick; the Kerkerings were appointed to reign over Westphalia; Redecker, the cobbler, to bear rule in Juliers and Cleves. John Palk was created Duke of Guelders and Utrecht; Edinck was to be supreme in Brabant and Holland; Faust, a coppersmith, in Mainz and Cologne; Henry Kock was to be Duke of Trier; Ratterberg to be Duke of Bremen, Werden, and Minden; Reininck took his title from Hildesheim and Magdeburg; and Nicolas Strip from Frisia and Gröningen. As these men were for the most part butchers, blacksmiths, tailors, and shoemakers, their titles, ducal coronets and mantles, and the prospect of governing, turned their heads, and made them zealous tools in the hands of Bockelson. [245] Kerssenbroeck, p. 130. [246] _Ibid._ p. 140. [247] Sleidan, p. 419; Bullinger, l. ii. c. 9; Heresbach, p. 156; Dorp. f. 498. The king made one more attempt to rouse the country. He issued letters offering the pillage of the whole world to all those who would join the standard. But the bishop was informed of the preparation of these missives by a Danish soldier in Münster; he was much alarmed, as his _lantzknechts_ were ready to sell their services to the highest bidder. He therefore pressed on the circumvallation of the city, kept a vigilant guard, and captured every emissary sent forth to distribute these tempting offers. On the 11th February, 1535, the moat, mound, and palisade around the city were complete; and it was thenceforth impossible for access to or egress from the city to be effected without the knowledge of the prince and his generals. The unfortunate people of Münster discovered attempting to escape were by the king's orders decapitated. Many men and women perished thus; amongst them was a mistress of Knipperdolling named Dreyer, who, weary of her life, fled, but was caught and delivered over to the executioner. When her turn came, the headsman hesitated. Knipperdolling, perceiving it, took from him the sword, and without changing colour smote off her head. "The Father," said he, "irresistibly inspired me to this, and I have thus become, without willing it or knowing it, an instrument of vengeance in the hands of the Lord."[248] [248] Kerssenbroeck, p. 148. The legitimate wife of Knipperdolling, for having disparaged polygamy, escaped death with difficulty; she was sentenced to do public penance, kneeling in the great square, in the midst of the people, with a naked sword in her hands.[249] [249] _Ibid._ p. 149. Easter came, the time of the promised delivery, and the armies of the faithful from Holland and Friesland and Brabant had not arrived. The position of Bockelson became embarrassing. He extricated himself from the dilemma with characteristic effrontery. During six days he remained in his own house, invisible to every one. At the expiration of the time he issued forth, assembled the people on Mount Zion, and informed them that the deliverance predicted of the Father _had_ taken place, but that it was a deliverance different in kind from what they had anticipated. "The Father," said he, "has laid on my shoulders the iniquities of the Israelites. I have been bowed down under their burden, and was well-nigh crushed beneath their weight. Now, by the grace of the Lord, health has been restored to me, and you have been all released from your sins. This spiritual deliverance is the most excellent of all, and must precede that which is purely exterior and temporal. Wait, therefore, patiently, it is promised and it will arrive, if you do not fall back into your sins, but maintain your confidence in God, who never deserts His chosen people, though He may subject them to trials and tribulations, to prove their constancy."[250] One would fain believe that John Bockelson was in earnest, and the subject of religious infatuation, like his subjects, but after this it is impossible to so regard him. [250] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 153, 154; Sleidan, p. 422; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 2; Heresbach, pp. 159, 160. The princes, when separating after the assembly of Coblenz, had agreed to reassemble on the 4th of April. Ferdinand, King of the Romans, convoked all the Estates of the empire to meet on that day at Worms. The deputies of several towns protested against the decisions taken at Coblenz without their participation, and the deliberations were at the outset very tumultuous. An understanding was at length arrived at, and a monthly subsidy of 20,000 florins for five months was agreed upon, to maintain the efficacy of the investment of Münster. But before separating, a final effort to obtain a pacific termination to the war was resolved upon, and the burgomasters of Frankfort and Nürnberg were sent as a deputation into the city. This attempt proved as sterile as all those previously essayed. "We have nothing in common with the Roman empire," answered the chiefs of Zion; "for that empire is the fourth beast whereof Daniel prophesied. We have set up again the kingdom of Israel, by the Father's command, and we engage you to abstain for the future from assailing this realm, as you fear the wrath of God and eternal damnation."[251] [251] Kerssenbroeck, p. 155; Hast, 394. The famine in Münster now became terrible. Cats, rats, dogs, and horses were eaten; the starving people attempted various expedients to satisfy their craving hunger. They ate leather, wood, even cow-dung dried in the sun, the bark of trees, and candles. Corpses lately buried were dug up during the night and secretly devoured. Mothers even ate their children. "Terrible maladies," says Kerssenbroeck, "the consequence of famine, aggravated the position of the inhabitants of the town; their flesh decomposed, they rotted living, their skin became livid, their lips retreated; their eyes, fixed and round, seemed ready to start out of their orbits; they wandered about, haggard, hideous, like mummies, and died by hundreds in the streets. The king, to prevent infection, had the bodies cast into large common ditches, whence the starving withdrew them furtively to devour them. Night and day the houses and streets re-echoed with tears, cries, and moans;--men, women, old men, and children sank into the darkest despair."[252] [252] Kerssenbroeck, p. 157 _et seq._; Heresbach, pp. 151, 152; Hast, p. 395; Montfort., p. 46. In the midst of the general famine, John of Leyden lived in abundance. His storehouses, into which the victuals found in every house had been collected, supplied his own table and that of his immediate followers. His revelry and pomp were unabated, whilst his deluded subjects died of want around him.[253] [253] _Ibid._ p. 157. When starvation was at its worst, a letter from Heinrich Graess circulated in the town, informing the people that his miraculous escape had been a fable, and that he had rejected the follies of Anabaptism, disgusted at the extravagance to which it had led its votaries, and assuring them that their king was an impostor, exploiting to his advantage the credulity of an infatuated mob.[254] [254] Montfort., p. 47. This letter produced an effect which made the king tremble. He summoned his disciples before him, reproached them for putting the hand to the plough and turning back, and gave leave to all those whose faith wavered to go out from the city. "As for me," said he, "I shall remain here, even if I remain alone with the angels which the Father will not fail to send to aid me to defend this place."[255] [255] Kerssenbroeck, p. 161. When the king had given permission to leave the city, numbers of every age and sex poured through the gates, leaving behind only the most fanatical who were resolved to conquer or die with John of Leyden. Outside the city walls extended a trampled and desolate tract to the fosse and earthworks of the besiegers, strewn with the ruins of houses and of farmsteads. The unfortunate creatures escaping from Zion, wasted and haggard like spectres, spread over this devastated region. The investing army drove them back towards the city, unwilling to allow the rebels to protract the siege by disembarrassing themselves of all the useless mouths in the place. They refused, however, to re-enter the walls, and remained in the Königreich, as this desert tract was called, to the number of 900, living on roots and grass, for four weeks, lying on the bare earth. Some were too feeble to walk, and crawled about on all fours; their hunger was so terrible that they filled their mouths with sand, earth, or leaves, and died choked, in terrible convulsions. Night and day their moans, howls, and cries ascended. The children presented a yet more deplorable spectacle; they implored their mothers to give them something to eat, and they, poor creatures, could only answer them with tears and sobs; often they approached the lines of the camp, and sought to excite the compassion of the soldiers. The General in command, Graff Ueberstein, sent information, on April 22nd, to the bishop, who was ill in his castle at Wollbeck, and asked what was to be done with these unfortunates who were perishing in the Königreich. The bishop shed tears, and protested his sorrow at the sufferings of the poor wretches, but did not venture to give orders for their removal, without consulting the Duke of Cleves and the Elector of Cologne. Thus much precious time was lost, and only on the 28th May, a month after, were the starving wretches permitted to leave the Königreich, upon the following terms: 1st. That they should be transported to the neighbouring town of Diekhausen, where they should be examined, and those who were guilty among them executed; 2nd. That the rest should be pardoned and dispersed in different places, after having undertaken to renounce Anabaptism, and to abstain from negotiations, open or secret, with their comrades in the beleagured city.[256] These conditions having been made, the refugees were transported on tumbrils and in carts to Diekhausen, at a foot's pace, their excessive exhaustion rendering them incapable of bearing more rapid motion. They numbered 200; 700 had perished of famine between the lines of the investing army and the walls of the besieged town. On the 30th May, those found guilty of prominent participation in the revolt were executed. [256] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 161-8. The prince-bishop might have spared his tears and sent loaves. His hesitation and want of genuine sympathy with the starving unfortunates serve to mark his character as not only weak, but selfish and cowardly. Whilst this was taking place outside the walls of Münster, John van Gheel, an emissary of Bockelson, was actively engaged in rousing the Anabaptists of Amsterdam. Having insinuated himself into the good graces of the Princess Mary, regent of the Netherlands, he persuaded her that he was desirous of restraining the sectaries waiting their call to march to the relief of Münster. She even furnished him with an authorisation to raise troops for this purpose. He profited by this order to arm his friends and lay a plot for obtaining the mastery of Amsterdam. His design was to make that city a place of rendezvous for all the Anabaptists of the Low Countries, who would flock into it as a city of refuge, when once it was in his power, and then he would be able to organise out of them an army sufficiently numerous and well appointed to raise the siege of Münster. On the 11th May he placed himself at the head of 600 friends, seized on the town, massacred half the guards, and one of the burgomasters. Amsterdam would inevitably have been in the power of the sectaries in another hour, had not one of the guard escaped up the tower and rung the alarm-bell. As the tocsin pealed over the city, the citizens armed and rushed to the market-place, fell upon the Anabaptists and retook the town-hall, notwithstanding a desperate resistance. Crowds of fanatics from the country, who had received secret intimation to assemble before the walls of Amsterdam, and wait till the gates were opened to admit them, finding that the plan had been defeated, threw away their arms and fled with precipitation.[257] [257] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 73, 74; Hast, p. 37; Montfort., p. 58 _et seq._ Van Gheel had fallen in the encounter. The prisoners were executed. Amongst these was Campé whom John of Leyden had created Anabaptist bishop of Amsterdam. His execution was performed with great barbarity; first his tongue, then his hand, and finally his head was cut off.[258] [258] Montfort., pp. 68, 69. We must look once more into the doomed city. In the midst of the general desolation John Bockelson and his court lived in splendour and luxury. Every one who murmured against his excesses was executed. Heads were struck off on the smallest charge, and scarcely a day passed in May and June without blood flowing on Mount Zion. One of the most remarkable of these executions was that of Elizabeth Wandtscherer, one of the queens. This woman had had three husbands; the first was dead, the second marriage had been annulled, and Bockelson had taken her to wife because she was pretty and well made. She was a great favourite with her royal husband, and for six months she seemed to be delighted with her position; but at length, disgusted with the unbridled licence of the royal harem, the hypocrisy and the mad revelry of the court, contrasted with the famine of the citizens, a prey to remorse, she tore off her jewels and her queenly robes, and asked John of Leyden permission to leave the city. This was on the 12th June. The king, furious at an apostacy in his own house, dragged her into the market-place, and there in the presence of his wives and the populace, smote off her head with his own hands, stamped on her body, and then chanting the "Gloria in excelsis" with his queens, danced round the corpse weltering in its blood.[259] [259] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 176-7; Dorpius, f. 498 b; Sleidan, p. 422, says she was executed for having observed to some of her companions that it could not be the will of God that they should live in abundance whilst the subjects perished from want of necessaries. Hast, p. 395; Heresbach, p. 145. However, the royal magazines were now nearly exhausted, and the king was informed that there remained provisions for only a few days. He resolved to carry on his joyous life of debauchery without thought of the morrow, and when all was expended, to fire the city in every quarter, and then to rush forth, arms in hand, and break through the investing girdle, or perish in the attempt.[260] This project was not executed, for the siege was abruptly ended before the moment had arrived for its accomplishment. [260] Kerssenbroeck, p. 177. Late in the preceding year, a soldier of the Episcopal army, John Eck, of Langenstraten, or, as he was called from his diminutive stature, Hansel Eck, having been punished as he deemed excessively or unjustly for some dereliction in his duty, deserted to the Anabaptists, and found an asylum in the city, where John Bockelson, perceiving his abilities and practical acquaintance with military operations, made him one of his captains. But Hansel soon repented bitterly this step he had taken. Little men are proverbially peppery and ready to stand on their dignity. His desertion had been the result of an outburst of wounded self-pride, and when his wrath cooled down, and his judgment obtained the upper hand, he was angry with himself for what he had done. Feeling confident that the city must eventually fall, and knowing that small mercies would be shown to a deserter caught in arms, however insignificant he might be in stature, Hansel took counsel with eight other discontented soldiers in his company, and they resolved to escape from Münster and ask pardon of the bishop. They effected the first part of their object on the night of the 17th June, and crossed the Königreich towards the lines of the investing force. The sentinels, observing a party of armed men advancing, with the moon flashing from their morions and breastplates, fired on them and killed seven. His diminutive stature stood Hansel in good stead, and he, with one other named Sobb, succeeded in escalading the ramparts unobserved, and in making their way to the nearest fort of Hamm, where the old officer, Meinhardt von Hamm, under whom he had formerly served, was in command. Hansel and Sobb were conducted into his presence, and offered to deliver the city into the hands of the prince-bishop if he would accord them a free pardon; but they added that no time must be lost, as it was but a question of hours rather than of days before the city was fired, and the final sortie was executed.[261] [261] Kerssenbroeck, p. 179 _et seq._; Sleidan, p. 427; Montfort., p. 71; Heresbach, p. 162 _et seq._; Hast, p. 395 _et seq._; Dorpius, f. 499. Meinhardt listened to his plan, approved of it, and wrote to Francis of Waldeck, asking a safe-conduct for Hansel, and urging the utmost secrecy, as on the preservation of the secret depended the success of the scheme. The safe-conduct was readily granted, and the deserter was brought to Willinghegen concealed amidst game in a cart covered with boughs of trees. Willinghegen is a small place one mile outside the circumvallation. The chiefs of the besieging army met here to consider the plan of Hansel Eck. The little man protested that with 300 men he could take the city. He knew the weak points, and he could escalade the walls where they were unguarded. Four hundred soldiers were, however, decided to be sent on the expedition, under the command of Wilkin Steding, "a terrible enemy but a devoted friend;" John of Twickel was to be standard-bearer, and Hansel was to act as guide; and the attempt was to be made on the eve of St. John the Baptist's day.[262] However, the bishop and Count Ueberstein, desirous of avoiding unnecessary effusion of blood, summoned the inhabitants to surrender, for the last time, on the 22nd June. [262] Kerssenbroeck, p. 169; and the authors before cited. Rottmann replied to the deputies that "the city should be surrendered only when they received the order to do so from the Father by a revelation." Midsummer eve was a hot, sultry day. Towards evening dark heavy clouds rolled up against the wind, and a violent storm of thunder, lightning, and hail burst over the doomed city. The sentinels of Münster, exhausted by hunger, and alarmed at the rage of the elements, quitted their posts and retreated under shelter. The darkness, the growl of the wind, and the boom of the thunder concealed the approach of the Episcopal troops. The 400, under Steding, guided by the deserter, marched into the Königreich between ten and eleven o'clock, and met with no obstacles till they reached the Holy-cross Gate. Here they filled the ditch with faggots, trees, and bundles of straw; a bridge was improvised, the curtain of palisades masking the bastion was surmounted, ladders were planted, and without meeting with the least resistance, the 400 reached the summit of the walls. The sentinels, whom they found asleep, were killed, with the exception of one who purchased his life by giving up the pass-word, "Die Erde." The soldiers then advanced along the paved road which lay between the double walls, captured and killed the sentinels at every watch tower, and then, entering the streets, crossed the cemetery of Ueberwasser, the River Aa by its bridge, and debouched on the cathedral square, where the faint flashes of the retreating lightning illumined at intervals the gaunt scaffolding of the throne and gallery and pulpit of the Anabaptist king, looking now not unlike the preparations for an execution. The cathedral had been converted into the arsenal. Hansel led the Episcopal soldiers to the western gates, gave the word "Die Erde," and the guards were killed before they could give the alarm. The artillery was now in the hands of the 400.[263] [263] Kerssenbroeck, p. 176 _et seq._; and the authors before cited. The Anabaptists had slept through the rumble of the thunder, but suddenly the rattle of the drum on their hill of Zion woke them with a start. They sprang from their beds, armed in haste, and rushed to the cathedral square, where their own cannons opened on them their mouths of fire, and poured an iron shower down the main thoroughfares which led from the Minster green. But they were not discouraged. Through backways, and under the shelter of the surrounding houses, they reached the Chapel of St. Michael, which commanded the position of the Episcopal soldiers, and thence fired upon them with deadly precision. Steding turned the guns against the chapel, but its massive walls could not be broken through, and the balls bounded from them without effecting more than a trivial damage. The Anabaptists pursued their advantage. Whilst Steding was occupied with those who held the Chapel of St. Michael, a large number assembled in the market-place and marched in close ranks upon the cathedral square. The 400, unable to withstand the numbers opposed to them, were driven from their positions, and retreated into the narrow Margaret Street, where they were unable to use their arms with advantage. Steding burst open the door of a house, and sent 200 of his men through it; they issued through the back door, filled up a narrow lane running parallel with the street, and attacked the Anabaptists in the rear, who, thinking that the city was in the hands of the enemy, and that they were being assailed by a reinforcement, fled precipitately. By an unpardonable oversight, Steding had forgotten to leave a guard at the postern by which he had entered the city. The Anabaptists discovered this mistake and profited by it, so that when the reinforcements sent to support Steding arrived, the gates were closed, and the walls were defended by the women, who cast stones and firebrands, and shot arrows amongst them, taunting them with the failure of the attempt to surprise the city; and they, uncertain whether to believe that the plot of Hansel Eck had failed or not, remained without till break of day, vainly attempting to escalade the walls. The Anabaptists, who had fled in the Margaret Street, soon rallied, and the 400 were again exposed to the fury of a multitude three times their number, who assailed them in front and in rear, and they were struck down by stones and furniture cast out of the windows upon them by the women in the houses. Nevertheless they bravely defended themselves for several hours, and their assailants began to lose courage, as news of the onslaught upon the walls reached them. It was now midnight. King John proposed a temporary cessation of hostilities, which Steding gladly accepted, and the messengers of Bockelson offered the 400 their life if they would lay down their arms, kneel before him, and ask his pardon.[264] [264] Kerssenbroeck, p. 385; Heresbach, pp. 162-6; Montfort., p. 72; Hast, p. 396 _et seq._ The soldiers indignantly rejected this offer, but proposed to quit the town with their arms and ensigns. A long discussion ensued, which Steding protracted till break of day. At the opening of the negotiations, Steding bade John von Twickel, the ensign, hasten to the ramparts with three men, as secretly as possible, and urge on the reinforcements. Twickel reached the bastions as day began to dawn, and he shouted to his comrades without to help Steding and his gallant band before all was lost. The Episcopalians, dreading a ruse of the besieged to draw them into an ambush, hesitated; but Twickel called the watchword, which was _Waldeck_, and announced the partial success of the 400. Having accomplished his mission, Twickel returned to his comrades within, cheering them at the top of his voice with the cry from afar, "Courage, friends, help is at hand!" At these words the remains of the gallant band of 400 recommenced the combat with irresistible energy. They fell on the Anabaptists with such vehemence that they drove them back on all sides; they gave no quarter, but breaking into divisions, swept the streets, meeting now with only a feeble resistance, for the soldiers without were battering at the gates. In vain did the sectarians offer to leave the town, their offer came too late, and the little band drove them from one rallying point to another.[265] [265] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 188, 189. Rottmann, feeling that all was lost, cast himself on their lances and fell. John of Leyden, instead of heading his party, attempted to fly, but was recognised as he was escaping through the gate of St. Giles, and was thrown into chains. In the meantime the reinforcement had mounted the walls, beaten in the gates, and was pouring up the streets, rolling back the waves of discomfited Anabaptists on the swords and spears of the decimated 400. Two hundred of the most determined among the fanatics entrenched themselves in a round tower commanding the market-place, and continued firing on the soldiers of the prince. The generals, seeing that the town was in their power, and that it would cost an expenditure of time and life to reduce those in the tower, offered them their life, and permission to march out of Münster unmolested if they would surrender. On these terms the Anabaptists in the bastion laid down their arms. The besiegers now spread throughout the city, hunting out and killing the rebels. Hermann Tilbeck, the former burgomaster, who had played into the hands of the Anabaptists till he declared himself, and who had been one of the twelve elders of Israel, was found concealed, half submerged, in a privy, near the gate of St. Giles, was killed, and his body left where he had hidden, "thus being buried," says Kerssenbroeck, "with worse than the burial of an ass." When the butchery was over, the bodies were brought together into the cathedral square and were examined. That of Knipperdolling was not amongst them. He was, in fact, hiding in the house of Catherine Hobbels, a zealous Anabaptist; she kept him in safety the whole of the 26th, but finding that every house was being searched, and fearing lest she should suffer for having sheltered him, she ordered him to leave and attempt an escape over the walls.[266] [266] Kerssenbroeck, p. 195. On the 27th all the women were collected in the market-square, and were ordered to leave the city and never to set foot in it again. But just as they were about to depart, Ueberstein announced that any one of them who could deliver up Knipperdolling should be allowed to remain and retain her possessions. The bait was tempting. Catherine Hobbels stepped forward, and offered to point out the hiding-place of the man they sought. She was given a renewed assurance that her house and goods would be respected, and she then delivered up Knipperdolling, who had not quitted his place of refuge. The promise made to her was rigorously observed; but her husband, not being included in the pardon, and being a ringleader of the fanatics, was executed.[267] The women were accompanied by the soldiers as far as the Lieb-Frau gate; they took with them their children, and were ordered to leave the diocese and principality forthwith. [267] _Ibid._ p. 196; Heresbach, p. 166. Divara, the head queen of John of Leyden, the wife of Knipperdolling, and three other women, were refused permission to leave. They were executed on the 7th July. Münster was then delivered over to pillage; but all those who had left the town during the government of the Anabaptists were given their furniture and houses and such of their goods as could be identified. All the property of the Anabaptists was confiscated and sold to pay the debts contracted by the prince for defraying the expenses of the war. The division of the booty occasioned several troubles, parties of soldiers mutinied, and attempted a second pillage, but the mutineers were put down rigorously. Several more executions took place during the following days, and men hidden away in cellars, garrets and sewers were discovered and killed or carried off to prison. Among these were Bernard Krechting and Kerkering.[268] [268] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 198-200. Dorpius says, "In the capture of the city, women and children were spared; and none were killed after the first fight, except the ringleaders."--f. 399. On the 28th June, Francis of Waldeck entered the city at the head of 800 men. The sword, crown, and spurs of John of Leyden, together with the keys of the city, were presented to him.[269] [269] Montfort., p. 73. The prince received, as had been stipulated, half the booty, and the articles and the treasure deposited in the town-hall and in the royal palace, which amounted to 100,000 gold florins.[270] [270] Kerssenbroeck, Heresbach, p. 168; Hast, p. 400. Francis remained in Münster only three days. Having named the new magistrates, and organised the civil government of the city, he departed for his castle of Iburg. On the 13th July he ordered a Te Deum to be sung in the churches throughout the diocese, in thanks to God for having restored tranquillity; and the Chapter inaugurated a yearly thanksgiving procession to take place on the 25th June.[271] [271] _Ibid._ p. 200. On the 15th July, the Elector of Cologne, the Duke of Juliers, and Francis of Waldeck, met at Neuss to concert measures for preventing a repetition of these disorders. The leading Protestant divines wrote, urging the extermination of the heretics, and reminding the princes that the sword had been given them for this purpose. On the same day, the diet of Worms agreed that the Anabaptists should be extirpated as a sect dangerous alike to morals and to the safety of the commonwealth, and that an assembly should be held in the month of November, to decide upon defraying the cost of the war, and on the form of government which was to be established in the city.[272] [272] _Ibid._ p. 201 The diet met on the 1st November, and decided,--That everything should be re-established in Münster on the old footing, and that the clergy should have their property and privileges restored to them. That all who had fled the city to escape the government of the Anabaptists should be reinstated in the possession of their offices, privileges, and houses. That all the goods of the rebels should remain confiscated to defray the expense of the war. That the princes of neighbouring states should send deputies to Münster to provide that the innocent should not suffer with the guilty. That the fortifications should be in part demolished, as an example; but that Münster should not be degraded from its rank as a city. That the bishop and chapter and nobles should demolish the bastions within the town as soon as the city walls had been razed. That the bishops, the nobles, and the citizens should solemnly engage, for themselves and for their successors, never to attempt to refortify the city. Finally, that the envoys of the King of the Romans and of the princes should visit the said town on the 5th March, 1536, to see that these articles of the convention had been executed. All these articles were not observed. The bishop did not demolish the fortifications, and the point was not insisted upon. As for the civil constitution of Münster, its privileges and franchises, they were not entirely restored till 1553. Francis of Waldeck now set to work repairing and purifying the churches, and restoring everything as it had been before. Catholic worship was everywhere restored without a single voice in the city rising in opposition. The people were sick of Protestantism, whether in its mitigated form as Lutheranism, or in its aggravated development as Anabaptism. But Lutherans of other states were by no means satisfied. The reconciliation of the great city with the Catholic Church, from which half its inhabitants had previously separated, was not pleasant news to the Reformers, and they protested loudly. "On the Friday after St. John's day," wrote Dorpius "in midsummer, God came and destroyed this hell and drove the devil out, but the devil's mother came in again.... The Anabaptists were on that day rooted out, and the Papists planted in again."[273] [273] "Hernach auff freitag S. Johanstag mitten in Sommer, kommet Gott und zerstöret die Helle, und jaget den Teuffel heraus, und komet sein Mutter wider hinein ... und sind die Widerteuffer an obgemeltem tag ausgerottet worden, die Papisten aber wider eingepflantzet."--Dorp. f. 399 (by misprint 499). It is time to look at John of Leyden and his fellow-prisoners: they were Knipperdolling and Bernard Krechting. There could be no doubt that their fate would be terrible. It was additional cruelty to delay it. But the bishop and the Lutheran divines were curious to see and argue with the captives, and they were taken from place to place to gratify their curiosity. When King John appeared before Francis of Waldeck, the bishop asked him angrily how he could protract the siege whilst his people were starving around him. "Francis of Waldeck," he answered, "they should all have died of hunger before I surrendered, had things gone as I desired."[274] He retained his spirits and affected to joke. At Dulmen the people crowded round him asking, "Is this the king who took to himself so many wives?" "I ask your pardon," answered Bockelson, "I took maidens and made them wives."[275] [274] Dorp. ff. 399 a, 400 a, b. [275] Dorp. f. 399 b. It has been often stated that the three unfortunates were carried round the country in iron cages. This is inaccurate. They were taken in chains on horseback, with two soldiers on either side; their bodies were placed in iron cages and hung to the steeple of the church of St. Lambert, after they were dead. At Bevergern the Lutheran divine, Anthony Corvinus, and other ministers "interviewed" the fallen king, and a long and very curious account of their discussion remains.[276] [276] Luther's "Sämmtliche Werke." Wittenb. 1545-51. Band, ii. ff. 376-386. "First, when the king was brought out of prison into the room, we greeted him in a friendly manner and bade him be seated before us four. Also, we asked in a friendly manner how he was getting on in the prison, and whether he was cold or sick? Answer of the king: Although he was obliged to endure the frost, and the sins weighing on his heart, yet he must, as such was God's will, bear patiently. And these and other similar conversations led us so far--for nothing can be got out of him by direct questions--that we were able right craftily to converse with him about his government." Then followed a lengthy controversy on all the heretical doctrines of the Anabaptist sect, in which the king exhibited no little skill. The preachers having brought the charge of novelty against Anabaptism, John of Leyden very promptly showed that those living in glass houses should not throw stones, by pointing out that Lutheranism was not much older than Anabaptism, that he had proved his mission by miracles, whereas Luther had nothing to show to demonstrate his call to establish a new creed. The discussion on Justification by Faith only was most affectionate, for both parties were quite agreed on this doctrine--surely a very satisfactory one and very full of comfort to John of Leyden. But on the doctrine of the Eucharist they could not agree, the king holding to Zwingli.[277] [277] "Denn wiewol ichs fur dieser zeit mit dem Zwingel gehalten," &c., f. 384. "That in this Sacrament the faithful, who are baptised, receive the Body and Blood of Christ believe I," said the king; "for though I hold for this time with Zwingli, nevertheless I find that the words of Christ (This is my Body, This is my Blood) must remain in their worth. But that unbelievers also receive the Body and Blood of Christ, that I cannot believe." _The Preachers_: "How that? Shall our unbelief avail more than the word, command and ordinance of God?" _The King_: "Unbelief is such a dreadful thing, that I cannot believe that the unbelievers can partake of the Body and Blood of Christ." _The Preachers_: "It is a perverse thing that you should ever try to set our faith, or want of faith, above the words and ordinance of God. But it is evident that our faith can add nothing to God's ordinance, nor can my unbelief detract anything therefrom. Faith must be there, that I may benefit by such eating and drinking; but yet in this matter must we repose more on God's command and word than on our faith or unbelief." _The King_: "If this your meaning hold, then all unbelievers must have partaken of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. But such I cannot believe." _The Preachers_: "You must understand that our unbelief cannot make the ordinance of God unavailing. Say now, for what end was the sun created?" _The King_: "Scripture teaches that it was made to rule the day and to shine." _The Preachers_: "Now if we or you were blind, would the sun fail to execute its office for which it was created?" _The King_: "I know well that my blindness or yours would not make the sun fail to shine." _The Preachers_: "So is it with all the works and ordinances of God, especially with the Sacraments. When I am baptised it is well if faith be there; but if it be not, baptism does not for all that fail to be a precious, noble, and holy Sacrament, yes, what St. Paul calls it, a regeneration and renewal of the Holy Ghost, because it is ordered by God's word and given His promise. So also with respect to the Lord's Supper; if those who partake shall have faith to grasp the promise of Christ, as it is written, _Oportet accedentem credere_, but none the less does God's word, ordinance, and command remain, even if my faith never more turned thereto. But of this we have said enough."[278] [278] _Ibid._ f. 384 b. The preachers next catechised John of Leyden on his heresy concerning the Incarnation. He did not deny that Jesus Christ was born of Mary, but he denied that He derived from her His flesh and blood, as he considered that Mary being sinful, out of sinful flesh sinful offspring must issue. The catechising on the subject of marriage follows. _The Preachers_: "How have you regarded marriage, and what is your belief thereupon?" _The King_: "We have ever held marriage to be God's work and ordinance, and we hold this now, that no higher or better estate exists in the world than the estate of matrimony." _The Preachers_: "Why have you so wildly treated this same estate, against God's word and common order, and taken one wife after another? How can you justify such a proceeding?" _The King_: "What was permitted to the patriarchs in the Old Testament, why should it be denied to us? What we have held is this: he who wished to have only one wife had not other wives forced upon him; but him who wished to have more wives than one, we left free to do so, according to God's command, Be fruitful and multiply." This the preachers combat by saying that the patriarchs were guiltless, because the law of the land (_die gemeine Policey_) did not then forbid concubinage, but that now that is forbidden by common law, it is sinful.[279] Then they asked the king what other texts he could quote to establish polygamy. [279] Wei zweiveln nicht wenn ein bestendig Policey und Regiment gewesen were, wie itzt est, es würden sich die Vetter freilich aug der selbigen gehalten haben. _The King_: "Paul says of the bishop, let him be the husband of one wife; now if a bishop is to have only one wife, surely, in the time of Paul, laymen must have been allowed two or three apiece, as pleased them. There you have your text." _The Preachers_: "As we said before, marriage is an affair of common police regulation, _res Politica_. And as now the law of the land is different from what it was in the time of Paul, so that many wives are forbidden and not tolerated, you will have to answer for your innovations before God and man." _The King_: "Well, I have the consolation that what was permitted to the fathers cannot damn us. I had rather be with the fathers than with you." _The Preachers_: "Well, we prefer obedience to the State."[280] [280] Predicanten: So wöllen wir in diesemfäll viel lieber der Oberkeit gehorsam sein, f. 386 b. Here we see Corvinus, Kymens, and the other ministers placing matrimony on exactly the same low footing as did Luther. Having "interviewed" the king, these crows settled on Knipperdolling and Krechting in Horstmar, and with these unfortunates they carried on a paper controversy. The captivity of the king and his two accomplices lasted six months. The Lutheran preachers had swarmed about him and buzzed in his ears, and the poor wretch believed that by yielding a few points he could save his life. He offered to labour along with Melchior Hoffmann, to bring the numerous Anabaptists in Friesland, Holland, Brabant, and Flanders into submission, if he were given his liberty; but finding that the preachers had been giving him false hopes and leading him into recantations, he refused to see them again, and awaited his execution in sullen despair. The pastors failing to convert the Anabaptists, and finding that the sectaries used against them scripture and private judgment with such efficacy that they were unable in argument to overcome them, called upon the princes to exterminate them by fire and sword. The gentle Melancthon wrote a tract or letter to urge the princes on; it was entitled, "Das weltliche Oberkeiten den Widerteuffern mit leiblicher straffe zu wehren schüldig sey. Etlicher bedenken zu Wittemberg gestellet durch Philip Melancthon, 1536. Ob Christliche Fürsten schüldig sind der Widerteuffer unchristlicher Sect mit leiblicher straffe und mit dem schwert zu wehren." He enumerates the doctrines of the unfortunate sectarians at Münster and elsewhere, and then he says that it is the duty of all princes and nobles to root out with the sword all heresy from their dominions; but then, with this proviso, they must first be instructed out of God's Word by the pure reformed Church what doctrines are heretical, that they may only exterminate those who differ from the Lutheran communion. He then quotes to the Protestant princes the example of the Jewish kings: "The kings in the Old Testament, not only the Jewish kings, but also the converted heathen kings, judged and killed the false prophets and unbelievers. Such examples show the office of princes. As Paul says, the law is good that blasphemers are to be punished. The government is not to rule men for their bodily welfare, so much as for God's honour, for they are God's ministers; let them remember that and value their office." But it is argued on the other side that it is written, "Let both grow together till the harvest. Now this is not spoken to the temporal power," says Melancthon, "but to the preachers, that they should not use physical power under the excuse of their office. From all this it is plain that the worldly government is bound to drive away blasphemy, false doctrine, heresies, and to punish in their persons those who hold to these things.... Let the judge know that this sect of Anabaptists is from the devil, and as a prudent preacher instructs different stations how they are to conduct themselves, as he teaches a wife that to breed children is to please God well, so he teaches the temporal authorities how they are to serve God's honour, and openly drive away heresy."[281] [281] "Das weltliche Oberkeit," &c., in Luth. "Sämt. Werke." 1545-51, ii. ff. 327-8. So also did Justus Menius write to urge on an exterminatory persecution of the sectaries; he also argues that "Let both grow together till the harvest," is not to be quoted by the princes as an excuse for sparing lives and properties.[282] [282] "Von dem Geist d. Widerteuffer." in Luth. "Samt. Werke." 1545-51, ii. f. 325 b. On the 12th January, 1536, John of Leyden, Knipperdolling, and Krechting were brought back to Münster to undergo sentence of death.[283] [283] Kerssenbroeck, p. 209; Kurtze Hist. f. 400. A platform was erected in the square before the townhall on the 21st, and on this platform was planted a large stake with iron collars attached to it. When John Bockelson was told, on the 21st, that he was to die on the morrow, he asked for the chaplain of the bishop, John von Siburg, who spent the night with him. With the fear of a terrible death before him, the confidence of the wretched man gave way, and he made his confession with every sign of true contrition. Knipperdolling and Krechting, who were also offered the assistance of a priest, rejected the offer with contempt. They declared that the presence of God sufficed them, that they were conscious of having committed no sin, and that all their actions had been done the sole glory of to God, that moreover they were freely justified by faith in Christ. On Monday the 22nd, at eight o'clock in the morning, the ex-king of Münster and his companions were led to execution. The gates of the city had been closed, and a large detachment of troops surrounded the scaffold. Outside this iron ring was a dense crowd of people, and the windows were filled with heads. Francis of Waldeck occupied a window immediately opposite the scaffold, and remained there throughout the hideous tragedy.[284] As an historian has well observed, "Francis of Waldeck, in default of other virtues, might at least have not forgotten what was due to his high rank and his Episcopal character; he regarded neither--but showed himself as ferocious as had been John Bockelson, by becoming a spectator of the long and horrible torture of the three criminals."[285] John and his accomplices having reached the townhall, received their sentence from Wesseling, the city judge. It was that they should be burned with red-hot pincers, and finally stabbed with daggers heated in the fire.[286] [284] Kerssenbroeck, p. 210; Kurtze Hist. f. 400. [285] Bussierre, p. 462. [286] Kerssenbroeck, p. 211; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 10; Montfort., p. 74; Heresbach, pp. 166-7; Hast, pp. 405-6; Kurtze Historia, f. 400. The king was the first to mount the scaffold and be tortured. "The king endured three grips with the pincers without speaking or crying, but then he burst forth into cries of, "Father, have mercy on me! God of mercy and loving kindness!" and he besought pardon of his sins and help. The bystanders were pierced to the heart by his shrieks of agony, the scent of the roast flesh filled the market-place; his body was one great wound. At length the sign was given, his tongue was torn out with the red pincers, and a dagger pierced his heart. Knipperdolling and Krechting were put to the torture directly after the agonies of the king had begun. Knipperdolling endeavoured to beat his brains out against the stake, and when prevented, he tried to strangle himself with his own collar. To prevent him accomplishing his design, a rope was put through his mouth and attached to the stake so as totally to incapacitate him from moving. When these unfortunates were dead, their bodies were placed in three iron cages, and were hung up on the tower of the church of St. Lambert, the king in the middle.[287] [287] Kerssenbroeck, p. 211; Kurtze Hist. f. 401. Thus ended this hideous drama, which produced an effect throughout Germany. The excess of the scandal inspired all the Catholic governments with horror, and warned them of the immensity of the danger they ran in allowing the spread of Protestant mysticism. Cities and principalities which wavered in their allegiance to the Church took a decided position at once. At Münster, Catholicism was re-established. As has been already mentioned, the debauched, cruel bishop was a Lutheran at heart, and his ambition was to convert Münster into an hereditary principality in his family, after the example of certain other princes. Accordingly, in 1543, he proposed to the States of the diocese to accept the Confession of Augsburg and abandon Catholicism. The proposition of the prince was unanimously rejected. Nevertheless the prince joined the Protestant union of Smalkald the following year, but having been complained of to the Pope and the Emperor, and fearing the fate of Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, he excused himself as best he could through his relative, Jost Hodefilter, bishop of Lübeck, and Franz von Dei, suffragan bishop of Osnabrück. Before the Smalkald war the prince-bishop had secretly engaged the help of the Union against his old enemy, the "wild" Duke Henry of Brunswick. After the war, the Duke of Oldenburg revenged himself on the principality severely, with fire and sword, and only spared Münster itself for 100,000 guilders. The bishop died of grief. He left three natural sons by Anna Polmann. They bore as their arms a half star, a whole star being the arms of Waldeck. Authorities: Hermann von Kerssenbroeck; Geschichte der Wiederthaüffer zu Münster in Westphalen. Münster, 1771. There is an abbreviated edition in Latin in Menckenii Scriptores Rerum Germanicaum, Leipsig, 1728-30. T. iii. pp. 1503-1618. Wie das Evangelium zu Münster erstlich angefangen, und die Widerteuffer verstöret widerauffgehöret hat. Darnach was die teufflische Secte der Widerteuffer fur grewliche Gotteslesterung und unsagliche grawsamkeit ... in der Stad geübt und getrieben; beschrieben durch Henrichum Dorpium Monasteriensem; in Luther's Sammtliche Werke. Wittemb. 1545-51. Band ii. ff. 391-401. Historia von den Münsterischen Widerteuffern. _Ibid._ ff. 328-363. Acta, Handlungen, Legationen und Schriften, &c., d. Munsterischen sachen geschehen. _Ibid._, ff. 363-391. Kurtze Historia wie endlich der König sampt zweien gerichted, &c. _Ibid._ ff. 400-9. D. Lambertus Hortensius Monfortius, Tumultuum Anabaptistarum Liber unus. Amsterdam, 1636. Histoire de la Réformation, ou Mémoires de Jean Sleidan. Trad. de Courrayer. La Haye, 1667. Vol. ii. lib. x. 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The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Page 60: "On Jaspis remarking to him in April, 1820, that there were circumstances"--The "2" in 1820 was unclear in the book but has been inserted by the transcriber. Page 106: "ordering the umiiatcirdne Jews to be discharged"--The transcriber has inserted "incarcerated" for "umiiatcirdne". Page 221: "No envoys from the capital attended the reunion of the chambers at Wollbeck on the 20th December.--The word "of" is unclear. Page 262: The transcriber has supplied an anchor for footnote 147. "Kerssenbroeck, p. 405 _et seq._ Montfort., "Tumult. Anabap.," p. 15 _et seq._; Bullinger, lib. ii. c. 8."