YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

AT ONE
WITH THE INVISIBLE
Studies in Mvsticism

EDITED BV
E. HERSHEY SNEATH, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Religious
Education, Yale University

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
A.U rights reserved

COPTBIOHT, 1921,
Bt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, January, 1921

EDITOR'S PREFACE
This book is the outgrowth of a seminar in Mysticism
recently conducted by the writer in Yale University. There
is, as Professor James suggests, an element of mysticism in
all religion, and the aim of the seminar was to study its
various aspects in the religious experience and teachings of
those in whom it was conspicuous. All of the contributors
to this volume, save one, took part in the seminar, and the
writer desires to acknowledge again their kindness in render
ing such valuable service and in permitting further use of
their material in this way. It seemed advisable that a
larger audience should share in the benefits of it — hence
this publication. Besides serving as an introduction to the
study of Mysticism, the papers will prove especially service
able to students of the Psychology of Religion.
E. Hershey Sneath.
Yale University,
June 26, 1920.

CONTENTS PAGE
The Mysticism of the Hebrew Prophets ... i
Frank Chamberlin Porter, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Bib
lical Theology, Yale University.
Mysticism in India  37
E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of San
skrit and Comparative Philology, Yale University.
The Mysticism of Jesus  60
George Aaron Barton, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Bib
lical Literature and Semitic Languages, Bryn Mawr
College.
The Mystical Experience of St. Paul ... 81
Benjamin Wisner Bacon, D.D., Litt.D., LL.D., Professor
of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, Yale
University.
The Mysticism of Augustine  133
Williston Walker, Ph.D., D.D., L.H.D., Professor of
Ecclesiastical History and Provost of Yale University.
Mysticism in Islam  142
Charles Cutler Torrey, Ph.D., D.D,, Professor of the
Semitic Languages, Yale University.
The Mysticism of Dante  180
Charles Allen Dinsmore, D.D., Lecturer on the Bible as
Literature, Yale University.

CONTENTS PAGE
The Mysticism of Meister Eckhart .... 199
Rufus M. Jones, Litt.D., Professor of Philosophy, Haver-
ford College.
The Mysticism of St. Theresa  213
George Warren Richards, D.D., Professor of Church His
tory, Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in
the U. S.
The Mysticism of George Fox  240
Rufus M. Jones, Litt.D., Professor of Philosophy, Haver-
ford College.
The Mysticism of Wordsworth  260
E. Hershey Sneath, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of the Phi
losophy of Religion and Religious Education, Yale Uni
versity.

AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE

AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE

THE MYSTICISM OF THE HEBREW
PROPHETS
Frank Chamberlin Porter
The Old Testament Prophets have been understood by
Christian people generally as foretellers of Jesus Christ and
of various details of his earthly life, death and resurrection.
This use and understanding of them has caused neglect of
their message for their own age and people, of their close
relation to the events and conditions of their time, and of
their real significance as discovering, or one may say, creative,
minds in the history of the religious progress and achieve
ment of mankind. ' It has also prevented the effort to under
stand the inner experiences of the prophets; since if the
prophets really wrote of a person or of events centuries in
the future, it could only be assumed that they themselves
did not know the real meaning of their writing, but were
passive human instruments through whom God spoke and
wrote. This way of regarding them may, no doubt, at
first seem to exalt and honor them, forbidding their classifi
cation with other men. The idea that we can understand
the human nature of their experience is excluded by the
theory; still more absolutely forbidden is all thought of our
learning from their example the real nature of religion, and
following them in their inner life with God. In this sense
we are not and cannot be prophets. This conception of
prophecy was, in fact, a Christian inheritance from Jewish
and more especially from Hellenistic Jewish interpretations.

2 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
The theory of the passiveness of the prophets as the voice
or the pen of the Spirit of God was, in fact, more Greek
than Hebrew.
Two movements of thought in modern times have changed
all this and made such an understanding of the prophets
unnatural to us: first, the historical method and spirit of
research ; and then, more recently, the psychological analysis
of religious experience.
Historical science has changed the prophets from what
Coleridge called " Super-human Ventriloquists " to most liv
ing personalities, who have a greatness of their own, and
each his own quality of greatness, and who stand almost
highest among the path-makers in the history of the religious
and ethical advance of man. It has had this effect by
concentrating our attention first upon the work of the
prophets in and for their own times; and yet their abiding
significance and the permanent factors in their teaching have
come into clearer light by this emphasis on their relation to
these long past situations and events.
The comparative study of religions, the last path of his
torical study to be opened up, tends still further to lessen
the isolation and peculiarity of the religion of Israel. It is
true that the prophets remain the fact most without parallel
in other religions. But comparative studies have tended
toward denying uniqueness where it seemed greatest, in
ecstasy and vision and in prediction, and bringing uniqueness
to light in what seems to us natural, the ethical interpreta
tion of the character and demands of God. It is also true
that the significance of the prophets as those who really
opened the path toward Christ and Christianity is increased,
not lessened, by an historical interpretation which gives
them a real place and a great part in the developing life of
the human spirit. We now see that the prophets actually
achieved, all together, yet each in lines of his own, the
truths about God and the experiences of the life of man

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 3
with God and toward man which were brought to their
unity and culmination in the teachings and life of Christ.
Historical studies have thus re-discovered the prophets, re
leased them from the obscurity and isolation in which the
old theory necessarily held them, and revealed them as great
struggling and achieving human beings.
But now comes a new method of scientific study that
claims its rights in the sphere of religion, past as well as
present; and it is not at first so evident that this also will
prove a gain, rather than a loss, to religious faith and life.
Psychology undertakes to explain the nature of the religious
experiences of great as well as average people ; and there are
many who fear that its tendency is toward reducing the
great to the level of the lowly, if not reducing religious
experience in general to inward processes which do not
require the assumption of the reality of another world than
the natural, or another person than the human. Our pres
ent study of the mysticism of the prophets must take its
start from the findings of history, but must then attempt to
understand the nature of their inner life and their special
experience of God in the spirit of this newer science.
Prophecy in Israel is of three kinds, or presents three
distinct aspects, which are also three successive stages of
development, though there is over-lapping and some move
ment back and forth between them.
Prophets first meet us as bands of dancing dervishes, in
ducing ecstatic conditions by music and dancing, and creat
ing a contagious atmosphere of excitement, which draws such
outsiders as Saul under its spell (I Sam. 10:5-13, 19:20-
24). Their emotions very likely found expression in unin
telligible outcries of the sort that Paul describes in I Corin
thians 12 and 14 as " speaking with tongues." We get the
impression that the ecstatic condition itself was the thing
cultivated and valued. The revelation was the fact that
men could thus become possessed by a divine spirit. Their

4 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
appearance and actions were evidence of the reality of the
unseen world. The loud cries and dances and knife-cuttings
ascribed in I Kings 1 8 to the prophets of Baal are of the
same sort ; and it is not unlikely that the " nebiim " came
into Israel from the Canaanitish religion. They are dis
tinguished from the seers, whom we infer unveiled future or
hidden things through a magic science or art, by the use of
some ritual, by the observation of the starry heavens, or by
some other means. The prophets became recognized and
honored in Israel, but all sorts of magic and divination were
denounced by the prophets themselves and prohibited by the
law. They were no doubt thought to involve the recognition
of other divine powers besides Yahweh. The nebiim seem
never to have used physical means, but to have depended
upon the ecstatic frenzy which they cultivated, and to have
acted and spoken as impelled by this sacred madness. Their
utterances did not remain always unintelligible. Balaam
is a type of the prophet whose inspiration is of the ecstatic
type (Num. 24:2-4, 15), a heathen prophet, who utters
against his will oracles dictated by Israel's God, and con
taining the praises of Israel and promises of its coming great
ness. He is a passive instrument through which God an
nounces his great historic plan. The four hundred prophets
who advised Ahab to engage in the battle in which he fell
(I Kings 22), and the prediction by Hananiah of an early
return within two years of the exiles of 597 b. c. (Jeremiah
28), indicate that the majority of the prophets were patriots
in their inspiration, and were inclined to foretell what the
king and the people desired. Ahab's prophets were really in
spired by Yahweh, but were inspired to prophesy falsely; a
secret which only one prophet, Micaiah, knew.
He was an early forerunner of the second and greatest
class of Israel's prophets, whom it is the special task of this
discussion to understand. Their message contradicted the
popular desires, and was opposed by the great majority of

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 5
prophets, as well as by the priests and kings, but was vindi
cated by the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 b. c, and
of Judah and Jerusalem in 586 b. c. Their message and the
nature of their inspiration stand in striking contrast to those
who preceded them ; but we shall do better to return to them
after looking briefly at their successors, with whom their
contrast is almost as striking.
The third sort of prophecy belongs after the Exile and
comes out in its true character only in the apocalypses; but
the transition to them is made through Ezekiel, Zechariah,
Joel, and other late parts of the prophetic canon. The first
apocalypse in the full sense, and the only one in the canon,
is Daniel. Others follow during a period of two centuries
or more, from Daniel's time, that of the persecution of the
Jews by Antiochus IV (about 165 B.C.), to the fall of
Jerusalem (70 a.d.) and the final end of the Jewish state
(135 A. D.). Here we have writers who are writers only,
not speakers nor actors, not at all in the public eye, their
personalities wholly concealed behind the assumed names of
ancient men of God. This third stage and type of prophecy
in Israel has something in common with the first; for the
apocalyptists also value and cultivate ecstatic experiences,
though rather as a condition of vision than as a physical
excitement which has its value in itself. Vision is the uni
form method in which apocalyptic revelations are given.
The method corresponds to the contents, for the apocalypse
is a " revelation " of mysteries of the unseen world and of
the future. The language in which such themes are treated
is almost of necessity that of mysterious imagery. The
pseudepigraphic form is usual in all apocalyptic writing.
In regard to the nature of the experiences that underlie
such writings there can hardly be much more doubt or diffi
culty than in the case of the frenzied ecstasies of the earlier
period. We have no need to assume any but physiological
and psychic causes of the transports of the early prophets,

6 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
whether of Baal or of Yahweh. Parallels are at hand
among all nations and in all ages, even down to the present.
Such phenomena are to us so far from being proofs of the
reality of God and spiritual things, that they sometimes
tempt one to wonder whether all other supposed evidences
of contact with the Other-than-ourselves may not like them
be self-induced delusions. The apocalypses certainly do not
help us to lay such ghosts of doubt. Many reasons combine
to warn us that the visions of these seers are not real sights
of the unseen universe, nor real liftings of the veil that hides
the future. The element of falsity in the assumption of
the character of a great man of the past puts us on our
guard; and the character and varied contents of the visions
themselves make the assumption of their objectivity impos
sible. This does not mean that the earliest bands of prophets
were not often really beside themselves, nor that the
apocalyptic seers may not sometimes really have experienced
the trance conditions which they coveted and sought to in
duce by fastings and by mental concentration and eager ex
pectation. We get the impression, however, that vision has
become a literary form among writers of this sort, and it
is seldom that we are led to assume that the vision is real
in this psychological sense. Perhaps the most convincing in
stances are such as Daniel 10: 1-9, and II Esdras 5: 14-22,
9 : 23-28, etc.
In part corresponding to these three stages and kinds of
prophets are three sorts of records which we have of them.
About prophets of the first kind we have only popular tradi
tions, stories embodied in the historical books, which en
able us to understand what other people thought about the
prophets rather than what the prophets thought about them
selves. The tendency in these stories is toward an exag
geration of the peculiarity of the prophet and of his
miraculous powers. Even so strong and great a character as
Elijah is lowered in the very effort of story to exalt him,

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 7
and tends to become a mere miracle-worker. Fortunately
the memory of his personality restrains this effort in some
measure; yet it is quite impossible to unravel the strands of
the narrative and recover the original facts of his prophetic
experiences, and his own understanding of the nature of his
relations with God. Of course the ordinary prophets would
have shared the popular view of their calling, and some
times sincerely, sometimes in pretense, would have cultivated
ecstatic conditions and undertaken miracle and prediction.
The records we have give the distinct impression that most
of them were physically and psychically different from other
men, but ethically and intellectually quite on the average
level. And this judgment, as we shall see, is confirmed
by the criticism passed upon them by the great prophets who
follow. These great prophets are often called writing prophets,
although they speak first and only write afterwards, or are
written about by their disciples. We cannot accept the
books that now bear their names as directly the work of
their pens. The analysis of these books and the recovery
of the original oracles of these men is so difficult that the
doubt is not unnatural whether even in their cases we can
get into immediate contact with their minds. But the re
sults of historical and literary study are most reassuring.
In spite of differences in detail, agreement in all essentials
has been reached, and the personalities of Amos and Hosea,
Isaiah and Jeremiah, now stand out with wonderful dis
tinctness and impressiveness. It is most instructive to com
pare the Isaiah of II Kings with the Isaiah of the un
doubtedly original oracles contained in the book that has his
name. We should know some of the great events of Isaiah's
life if we had only the stories of Kings, but Isaiah himself,
all that was most characteristic in his religious experience
and faith, and that which he contributed to the spiritual
progress of the race, would be wholly unknown. It is not

8 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
always the writers by profession whom we know best. We
know Isaiah, although his book is composite and analysis
is difficult, far better than we know the author of Isaiah
40-66, even if we accept these chapters as a unity and as
directly from their author's hand. We know Paul so well
because he is more than a writer, in fact, only incidentally
a writer, his letters being part of his missionary activity.
We know Jesus himself as a living personality far better
than we know the writer of Hebrews or even the author
of the Johannine literature, although we have Jesus' words
only in translation, and in varying forms in the different
gospels. The prophets of the third sort were writers only. We
have their books on the whole as they put them forth. And
yet, there is almost as thick a veil between the records and
the facts in their cases as in those of the first order of
prophets who did not write at all, but were written about
in popular legend. We need almost as much caution in the
use of the book of Enoch or the apocalypses of Ezra or
Baruch as in the stories of Samuel and Kings when we are
seeking the actual facts of prophetic experience. Vision
has become for the writers of the apocalypses a conven
tion, a literary device shaped in form and determined in con
tents by traditions, written or oral. It happens, therefore,
not by accident that we know the prophets of the second
kind better even than those of the last period. They stand
out distinctly because they spoke in public and on public
matters, because they were great actors in great crises of the
nation's life, because their words even when written have
the character of spoken words, the immediateness and sin
cerity and self-revealing quality which words artfully put to
gether in the study, and especially words written in an as
sumed character and in a professional spirit, could not
have. Of course our better knowledge of the prophets of the

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 9
second kind is really due to the fact that they were far
greater men than those who preceded and those who fol
lowed them in Israel. This is the reason why they occupy
a greater place in the history of their nation and why the
account of their religious experiences is truer to fact and
fuller in meaning. The work they did, the purposes they
had, the truths they saw and spoke, have an importance
that itself guards the genuineness of the utterance and of its
record. It is no mere accident, even though it does not
always happen, that we have in these cases the best records
of the greatest men, the best knowledge of the experiences
that are best worth knowing.
It is already evident how different will be the problems
and the results of the psychological study of the mystical
experiences of prophets of these three kinds. In the crude
prophecy of Saul's time and of the period of the early kings
we have men acting in ways that seem to others super
human, and no doubt meant in most cases to themselves
their actual possession by superhuman spirits. But this sort
of religious frenzy or madness gives the least difficulty to
the psychologist and is most easily accounted for. It is
the operation of factors in our mental and emotional experi
ence with which we are familiar, abnormal but not super
normal functionings of the mind, below rather than above
the common levels of human experience. In these cases
to explain is to explain away, to understand is to be free
from the desire and therefore to lose the capacity to have
such experiences. When men are convinced that these ex
periences are manifestations of weaknesses of the human,
rather than powers of the divine, and that they have no
validity as proof of the reality of the higher realm of being,
and are of no effect in opening avenues for the incoming of
higher powers into human life, then they are no longer ex
perienced. The miracle stories that are told in these early
prophets fall away of themselves when science removes the

IO

AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE

mystery and disproves the magic which ignorant hopes and
fears created. In all this inevitable and welcome process of
liberation from superstition we recognize already a very close
relationship between the question of cause and the question
of value. What these fanatics did and said in their frenzies,
and what their later and even present ignorant imitators
do and say, is without value; it calls forth no wonder in us
and reveals nothing about the nature of that unseen world
toward which our spirits aspire, to know and to experience
which is the aim of religion.
But the third type of prophecy has a curious likeness to
the first in this matter of value and truth. The apocalyptic
writers uniformly claim to tell of things beyond human
sight, things seen and heard and imparted only by the excep
tional seer to whom such transports are granted. The
modern student does not question first the genuineness of
the transports, but first the truth and value of the things
seen and heard. The value is, no doubt, greater than that
of the physical excitement of early bands of raving dervishes,
but it is not so great as it claims to be. What these visions
actually contain is not information of a sort that convinces
us, or that is difficult to account for as a wholly human
product. The imagery used in descriptions of heaven, the
throne of God, angels, the coming day of the Lord, the end
cf the world, and the world to come, we can in part trace
to its sources in ancient literature, in primitive myth, in
natural phenomena, especially those of the visible heavens,
in catastrophies and disasters, wars and exiles, the doings of
cruel and ambitious tyrants, and the shiftings of world-em
pire. Some great ideas, especially such as may deserve to be
called a philosophy of history, or rather, the doctrine of an
all-determining plan of God, we may find in these books,
and some worthy discussions of the great problems of sin and
evil; but of an actual seeing of realms and beings beyond
our sense we find nothing, nor any justification of the claim

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS ii
to cast a ray of light into the darkness of the future. And
by this lack of value in the contents of such prophecy our im
pression is confirmed that the experiences by which it comes
are not other than human.
What now of the prophets of the second period, and
especially what can we know as to the nature of their mysti
cal experiences? In their cases also we must necessarily
judge of the experience by its results, of the inspiration by
the things revealed and achieved. Let us then ask two ques
tions in regard to these great men. First, what do we find
their real message to be? what truth from God do they de
clare? what work of God do they accomplish? The answer
to such questions will be fundamental in our decision as to
the nature of their experience. And in the second place,
what do the prophets themselves say of their experiences or
reveal indirectly concerning them?
The very fact that these prophets put their spoken oracles
into writing indicates that they put emphasis upon the con
tents of their preaching and not chiefly on the mysterious-
ness of its form. These are, above all things, prophets who
have something to say, and something to accomplish by
what they say; and we shall understand their mental life
best if we understand the meaning and purpose of their
mission. Tolstoy gives a striking definition of the char
acteristics of prophecy when he writes that, " First, it runs
counter to the general disposition of the people among whom
it makes itself heard; secondly, those who hear it feel its
truth, they know not why; thirdly, and chiefly, it moves
men to the realization of what it foretells." These char
acteristics do, in fact, describe the prophets before us ac
curately. Their message was new, in the sense that it was
against current opinion and practice in matters of religion.^
Yet it was convincing because it made its appeal to some
thing deeper in men's consciousness than the popular and
superficial currents of thought and conduct, and even to some-

12 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
thing older and more fundamental in the religious traditions
of Israel. And their words had effect, not only in demon
strating, but in bringing to realization, that which they de
clared to be the will and purpose of God.
The teaching of these prophets is closely bound up with
the critical and stirring events of the period between 760
and 586 b. c, the period of the aggressions of the Assyrian
empire and of its decline and fall, and the succession of
Babylon to dominance over the world. Put in concrete form
what the prophets of this period had to say was first, that
a crisis was at hand which would prove to be disaster and
destruction to Israel itself, and that at the hand of Israel's
own God. The Day of Yahweh was at hand and would
prove to be not the day of Israel's success and power, but
of its overthrow, a day, not of light, but of darkness, not
of escape from danger, but of the coming of greater and un-
escapable dangers (Amos 5: 18-20). In the second place,
the popular religion, as it was practiced at the various shrines
throughout the land and as it was ordered and conducted
by the priesthood, was declared by the prophets to be
idolatrous and heathenish, not commanded by Yahweh but
displeasing to him, a contradiction of that sole worship
which he demanded of his people. In place of this, the
religion which Yahweh required was, in Micah's great
phrases, only " to do justly, and to love kindness, and to
walk humbly with thy God." In the third place, politics
and war were not the means by which Israel was to further
its fortunes, to escape evil, or to fulfill its calling as the'
people of Yahweh. The kingdom itself seems to have been
regarded, certainly by Hosea, as apostasy from God. Isaiah
opposes the alliance with Egypt, which was the nation's
best hope of resistance against Assyria, and demands a waitr
ing upon God in humility and trust, and a sense that he
only is to be feared, and that the nation's security rests
solely on its attitude toward him.

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 13
Behind these concrete and definite declarations were cer
tain underlying principles: above all, that Yahweh is
righteous and that this righteous God orders the history
of the world in accordance with his will, not only inter
preting events as they happen, but himself determining events
in accordance with righteousness and for its ends. Matthew
Arnold rightly interprets the spirit of prophecy when he
makes the central message of the Old Testament the faith
that the power not ourselves makes for righteousness, and
that to righteousness belongs blessedness. To this it should
be added that the righteousness of God now required him
to intervene in the course of history; that this intervention
must be against and not for his own people, Israel ; and that
this something which God is about to do, this strange and
incredible turning of his wrath from Israel's enemies against
Israel itself, is known to his prophets, though it should be
known to all men by the course of events and by the ill desert
and chiding conscience of the people. Another underlying
principle of the prophets' teaching is involved in this. The
God of righteousness is the God of all nations, the orderer
of human history; and this means in effect that there is
no other God. An implicit even though not at first unmis
takably expressed monotheism underlies the religion of the
prophets. Indeed, it is not too much to say that we owe
our monotheistic faith to them. That the one God in whom
we believe is an ethical personality, is Israel's great gift to
the world, and the prophets' great and at first most unwel
come gift to Israel. One other fundamental principle of
prophecy is the blending of morals and religion, the sub
stitution of righteousness and judgment, the knowledge of
God and kindness, humility and faith, inwardness and the
communion of the soul with God, for sacrifices and festivals.
This is another way of putting that achievement of prophecy
for which the debt of the world to the prophets is great
beyond reckoning.

14 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
In all this nothing has been said of a prediction by these
prophets of a "Messianic future for Israel, or of a happy
consummation of the history of the world. As a matter of
fact that which these prophets are at one in foretelling is
judgment, not deliverance. That good must prevail in the
end is of course involved in their belief that Yahweh is
the God of righteousness, and that he is the God of human
history. But the hopes that Israel had set on his coming
intervention, hopes of national greatness and even primacy
among the nations of the world, were denied, not affirmed,
by these prophets, who were therefore, in this sense critics,
not creators, of the Messianic hope. Of this something
more will be said later on.
From the summary we have thus far made it will pot
seem strange that different definitions have been possible
of what constitutes the most distinctive message of the
prophets. Some still say prediction, but the prediction of
disaster. Some say that a belief in an all inclusive plan of
God and in his revelation of this to the prophets, God's fore
telling through them of the things which he is about to do,
constitutes their distinctive teaching. Again it is possible to
say that the righteousness of Yahweh is their characteristic
doctrine, upon which everything turns; and that this moral
conception of the character of God explains their criticism
of national and ceremonial religion alike, and involves as
its inevitable outcome that peculiar type of ethical monothe
ism which it is Israel's glory to have achieved. After all,
these various definitions are not inconsistent. The important
thing for our present purpose is to have it clearly in mind
that ethical and spiritual religion was the concern of these
prophets, and that to this all details as to the manner of
their inspiration and everything external, whether in their
experience or in their forecasts, were subjected.
It must already be evident that the sort of truth which
a prophet has to impart will necessarily affect the manner

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 15
in which he receives it and in which he expresses it. We
should not expect vision to have an important place in con
veying the conviction that Yahweh is righteous and that he
demands righteousness of men. These are not things that
can be seen with the eye. God himself is the fact that the
prophets know, and they know him not as a thing, but as
a person, so that the question as to the nature of their in
spiration becomes a question of the sort of experience by
which men become assured of the reality of this divine moral
personality and have a vivid sense of his glory and power
and a deep enthusiasm and courageous loyalty toward him.
It has been said that the poetic monologues of Jeremiah
are the highest point in the development of prophecy, its
" most exalted literary creation." But the monologues of
Jeremiah reveal a great personality in intimate conversation
with the supreme personality; and their effect is to help us
to know God through our knowing the prophet himself. In
fact the best final summary of the message of the prophets
would be to say that they are themselves their message.
They are great, distinctive, living persons, in whose spirit,
even more than in their words, we see and feel the presence
of God. ,
Let us turn, now, from the message of the prophets to
their own account of their prophetic experiences. They are
still prophets, nebiim, and no one thinks of calling them by
any other name, in spite of the difference that separates
them from others before and about and after them. There
is, indeed, in their accounts of their call and of other crises
in their lives, and sometimes in their manner and actions,
enough that reminds us of the prophets of popular story
and of the later apocalyptic seers. So that there are two
quite different ways in which modern writers characterize
them, some emphasizing their likeness to others of their
order, and some setting them apart, as ethical teachers and

16 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
the founders of spiritual religion. It would be a mistake
to suppose that they are not men of their times, and that
they anticipate modern science in its interpretation of trance
and vision, and in its rationalizing of man's experience
of the Divine. Nevertheless it is evident that these men
were fully conscious of the contrast between them and other
prophets. Amos refuses to class himself with the profes
sional prophets of his time, although he has no other word
to substitute when he describes his own office and function
(7:14-15, 3:8). The difference is evident enough, both
as to their message and as to the nature of their experience.
The popular prophets preach peace and prosperity for their
nation, while these prophets announce woes. The ethical
condition upon which alone the great prophets rest their hope
of good was lacking in the case of the others; and with
this difference belongs naturally the consequence that while
ecstasy, vision, and miracle are primary marks of the profes
sional prophet, these are altogether in the background, and
in some cases entirely lacking, in the case of the men we are
considering. Let us see, briefly, how this is in the case of the individual
prophets of this higher order. Amos says nothing about his
calling except that God took him from his flock and said
to him, " Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." The visions
narrated in chapters 7 and 8 do not suggest trance or any
thing abnormal, but are interpretations, as if in parable, of
things actually happening before the prophet's eye. A plague
of locusts, a drought, a builder's plumbline, a basket of
summer fruit, are enough as points of contact for the
prophet's thought and for its effective utterance. The ap
peal of Amos throughout is to the common conscience of
man; and in one striking though difficult passage he seems
to say that when conditions and events are what they then
were, every one ought to hear the word of Yahweh and to
prophesy (3:8). That which seems most extraordinary in

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 17
the message of Amos is his confident announcement that it
is Yahweh's purpose to bring a destructive and final judg
ment upon his own people. Such a possibility had never
been imagined before ; and the incalculable importance of the
prophet's foresight of the coming fall of the nation, and
his interpretation of it as Yahweh's own deed, for the whole
future development of religion, makes even the most modern
and scientific student of the prophets wonder whether some
thing more than observation and inference lies behind it.
Amos gives us no help in answering the question whence
this assurance came to him. We can see that it was in part
a statesman's insight into the inevitable results of Assyria's
encroachments and of the resistance of small nations. We
can see, also, that the prophet's soul was filled with indigna
tion at the religious practices and ideas of the people, and
at their contradiction in conduct of everything that was de
manded by the righteousness of God. Whether the unshaken
certainty that disaster was at hand came upon him as a
mysterious foreboding or presentment in some sudden
moment of intense emotional experience, or grew more
gradually within him, we have no means of deciding. What
we know is that in inseparable connection with his convic
tion that the Day of Yahweh would be a day of darkness
to Israel stand his two great denials of the religious faith
of his people: his denial that sacrifice and festival are pleas-/
ing to God, and his denial that Yahweh cares for Israel
more than for Israel's enemies, or will deal with them on
any different terms (5:21-25, 9:7). Here, then, is one
of the greatest of the prophets, the first to take the most
radical positions in reversal of the popular religion, whose
experiences involve nothing mystical in the sense that ecstatic
or visionary crises have a place in. them, and who impresses
one much more as a man whose ethical and rational judg
ments are expressions of his own nature, and are to him
only what every man should recognize for himself as true.

18 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
The professional prophets were claiming supernatural gifts,
but Amos makes his appeal to common sense, to reason, to
conscience, and in and with these to the character of Yahweh,
as all his people ought to know it.
Hosea, the younger contemporary of Amos, is like him in
his message, though as different from him in his nature as
two men could well be. Behind the obscure allusions of
his first chapters we seem to have an account of Hosea's call
to be a prophet and of the source of what was new in his
message. If we can truly recover his experience it would
seem that vision had even less place in it than in that of
Amos, perhaps, indeed, no place at all, and that it was in
a thoroughly human experience that he learned that love
in God as in man can persist in spite of unworthiness, and
will prove itself, even though severe in discipline, in the
end redeeming in its effect. To Hosea Yahweh's purpose
to destroy Israel is not the denial but the expression of his
love, and is meant to result, and must in the end result,
in the recovery of the nation to worthiness and fidelity in
a new marriage covenant with him. Here everything lies
in the region of the human, and God is discovered and under
stood in the light of what is deepest and highest in human
nature. Passion does belong to Hosea in abundant measure.
Indeed, without passion no one would be called a prophet.
But of exceptional sights and hearings we read nothing.
The prophet seems to be always himself; and when most
himself, nearest to God. This, of course, means that the
word of Yahweh to Hosea in regard to his marriage ( 1 : 2,
3:1), is the prophet's later interpretation of his painful and
yet revealing experiences as being from the first the purpose
of God. This is far more likely than that the prophet in
an ecstatic condition actually heard these strange and cruel
demands. The case of Isaiah is different. His account of his call,
in chapter 6, is beyond doubt an account of a real vision

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 19
experience, and it is very much to our present purpose to
understand its nature. The prophet was no doubt in the
temple when he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high
and lifted up. In the details of the vision which follow one
recognizes in the background the phenomena of storm, but
also the influence of imagery derived from some ancient
mythological tradition. The seraphim may have been per
sonifications of lightning, though hardly so in Isaiah's
thought. They are here for the sake of what they say,
" Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of Hosts : the whole earth
is full of his glory " ; and for what they do, since it is one
of them who touches the prophet's lips with a coal from
the altar and takes away his iniquity. The vision is re
markable for its contents of thought and feeling, father
than for its outward details. It is a vision of the holiness
of God. Holiness, especially in connection with the temple
and its cultus, meant to the people not sinlessness, but un-
approachableness, transcendence, or, one might say, divinity,
in contrast to everything human and earthly. Isaiah seems
to have been the first clearly to realize that the holiness of
God meant not merely his contrast to man's weakness and
mortality, but especially his separateness from man's sin;
for it is unclean lips of which the prophet is immediately
conscious, wrong thoughts and words, and that not only in
Israel, but in himself. He is the first prophet whose call
comes with the consciousness of his own sin and the experi
ence of forgiveness. The right response of man to the holi
ness of God is humility. "Woe is me! for I am undone."
Amos says in effect, " Ye shall be righteous, for Yahweh
is righteous " ; Hosea, " Ye shall be loving, for Yahweh is
loving." Isaiah does not make Yahweh say, " Ye shall be
holy, for I am holy"; and when this is finally said (Lev.
19:2) it does not mean the imitation of God. Holiness
was never the quality in God which man could imitate,
but precisely that which distinguished God from man. So

2o AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
even although Isaiah sees that the holiness of God is a
spiritual rather than a physical transcendence, it still means
transcendence and not likeness to man. To the holiness of
God man's natural response is fear. So it was at first with
Isaiah. But what followed was the truly epoch-making
discovery that the holiness of God is itself purifying and re
demptive, not destructive, toward the man who responds
to it with humility and the confession of sin. It is one of
the seraphim who voiced the holiness of God, that touches
the prophet's lips; and it is the fire itself, emblem of the
holiness of God, which purges his sin. Then follows, —
not as a hard duty, but as an eager, grateful response to the
voice, " Whom shall I send ? " — obedience. " Here am I ;
send me." The order of this religious experience is not that
of later Jewish legalism ; it is exactly that of the Christianity
of Paul. We have, then, here a vision which seems beyond
doubt to have come in a highly wrought crisis of emo
tional experience, and may well have involved the actual
loss of the consciousness of what stood before the physical
senses, but of which the significance lies not at all in its
objectivity as vision, but in the most inward and exalted
regions of the spiritual life. From this time on Isaiah is
wholly dominated by the sense of God, the certainty that
the holy and spiritual One, unseen by the eye, his presence
unfelt because of the dullness of men's minds, is the only
reality with which man has to reckon, the only one to be
feared, the only one to be trusted. Another word, not used
in the account of the vision, but involved in it, expresses
the essential nature of Isaiah's religion, the word " faith "
(7:9, 28: 16). The pride that belongs to men who have
no sense of God, the self-trust and confidence in the human
and the material that belongs to this dullness and insen
sibility, are the sins that are to bring disaster upon Israel;
and these disasters which humble man will only exalt
Yahweh and manifest his holiness.

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 21
It is no doubt quite natural that a prophet who has this
conception of God and this experience of religion should
have psychic experiences of an unusual kind. Both Amos
and Hosea derive their conception of God from their own
human character and experience. Their conception of God
is ethical and personal. No vision need disclose these quali
ties. The man who has them by nature, or who gains them
through experience, needs only to look inward, to under
stand himself, in order to know God. Isaiah accepts the
ethical God of Amos and Hosea. " Yahweh of Hosts is
exalted in judgment, and God the Holy One is sanctified
in righteousness" (5:16). But it is God's exaltation, his
holiness, his contrast to man, that dominates Isaiah's re
ligion. He may almost be said to have rescued from the
temple cultus, which Amos and Hosea denounced, the
spiritual truth which underlay it; yet his denunciation of
ritual religion as the people practiced it was quite as
vehement and absolute as theirs (1: 10-17).
There are some other evidences that Isaiah was a prophet
of the ecstatic type, very much in the same sense in which
that can be said of the apostle Paul. He is compelled by a
pressure which he cannot resist to take a position in national
crises contrary to that which others took, and which events
seemed to demand. " Yahweh spake thus to me, with a
strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in
the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A conspiracy,
concerning all whereof this people shall say, A conspiracy;
neither fear ye their fear nor be in dread. Yahweh of Hosts
... let him be your fear, and let him be your dread " (8:
11-13). It may not be necessary to assume actual trance in
order to account for this, yet there is certainly here de
scribed an experience of supernatural power to which the
prophet submits in spite of himself. The hand of Yahweh
did not rob him of consciousness, but did take away his
freedom. A strange passage, 28:9-13, seems to mean that

22 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Isaiah was taunted by his opponents as one who utters sense
less baby-talk. His answer is the threat that they will soon
hear words that they cannot understand, namely the words
of the Assyrian invader. We may well suppose that as
Paul declared that he spoke with tongues more than they all,
so Isaiah's intense emotions may sometimes have led him to
unintelligible utterances; although it is as true of him as
of Paul that reason and conscience dominated and almost
always made emotion their powerful servant. This im
pression is strengthened by such strange actions as are
ascribed to him in chapter 20. That which Isaiah saw in his
vision he wished all men to see and believed that all men
should see. The dullness of men to the reality of God was
their sin, and the safety and strength that belonged to quiet
ness and trust are offered freely to every one.
The question of prediction in Isaiah's preaching is in
volved in difficulties such as must prevent any proper discus
sion of it here. What we know is that Isaiah foretold
the Day of Yahweh as a day of judgment upon Israel, and
the coming of the Assyrians as the means by which this judg
ment would be executed. If he foretold the escape of Jeru
salem when it was besieged by Sennacherib's army, then we
should have here a striking instance of foresight or premoni
tion as to a concrete event. There are many reasons for
doubting whether tradition is correct at this point. It is,
on the whole, more probable that the event produced the
prediction. There are many and deep-lying difficulties in
the way of supposing that Isaiah is responsible for the later
dogma of the inviolable safety of Jerusalem, which it was
Jeremiah's chief task to deny.
Jeremiah is the prophet about whose inner life we kriow
most, and we may also fairly claim that he is the greatest of
all. He is certainly the most human, and his prophetic
experiences are most emphatically experiences of the inner
life. His calling is told in the first chapter, and gives us

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 23
the impression of an absolute assurance that God has made
him what he is, put his words in his mouth, made him an iron
pillar and brazen wall against the land and people, but
that this calling and equipment came neither at a given
moment nor by any outward experience, but belonged to his
underlying self-consciousness, and seemed to have belonged
to him from birth. Even before birth Yahweh knew him
and appointed him a prophet. The visions that are given in
this chapter did not make him a prophet. They are, in^>
fact, like the visions of Amos, mere points of connection
in objects that happen to come before his eyes, with which,
by a play on words or a simple symbolism, he connects his
expectation of judgment. It has been truly remarked that
in Jeremiah prayer takes the place of vision as the means
and manner of his contact with God. Of these prayers,
the poetic monologues already alluded to, one is especially
enlightening in regard to his religious and prophetic con
sciousness. In chapter 15, verses 15-21, the prophet re
fers to his first finding of the words of Yahweh, to his joy
in them, and then the loneliness and perpetual pain which
their utterance brought him. He complains of this to God,
and even expresses his fear lest Yahweh has deceived and
deserted him. To these doubts Yahweh replies, demanding
that he take back the unworthy things he has said, and
promises that he will then again make him a brazen wall
against which the people will fight but not prevail. That
the experience of his prophetic call is repeated a second
time in an inner conversation and debate with God is very
significant as to the original nature of that experience. It
is true that Jeremiah's sense of being under the pressure of a
divine compulsion is not less strong than that of Isaiah.
There is a striking and powerful expression of this in 20 : 7-
11. " Yahweh, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived:
thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am become
a laughing-stock all the day, every one mocketh me. For

24 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
as often as I speak, I cry out; I cry, Violence and spoil:
because the word of Yahweh is made a reproach unto me,
and a derision, all the day. And if I say, I will not make
mention of him, nor speak any more in his name, then
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in
my bones, and I am weary with forebearing, and I cannot
contain." This is a first hand outpouring of a great
prophetic consciousness which needs no comment. The
humanity and the divine impulsion and authority of the
true prophet are here completely and inseparably blended.
The mysticism of Jeremiah stands in a peculiarly il
luminating relation to the legalism of Josiah's reformation,
that is, to the law book of Deuteronomy. The relation of
Jeremiah to this book, discovered and put into effect only a
few years after the beginning of his prophesying, is another
problem too complicated for us to enter upon. It seems
probable that the hopes with which Jeremiah may first have
greeted the appearance of this prophetic reformation of the
popular religion were disappointed in the outcome. Cer
tainly the religion he taught and the hopes he cherished
were of different and even opposite nature and tendency.
Against the exaltation of the temple at Jerusalem Jeremiah
declared that it was God's purpose to destroy it, even as
he had the sanctuary in Shiloh. Those who were proclaim
ing " The temple of Yahweh " as a ground of trust and as
a shield of sin, were uttering lying words. The popular
proverb, " We are wise, and the law of Yahweh is with us,"
is met by the assertion that " the false pen of the scribes
hath wrought falsely. The wise men . . . have rejected
the word of Yahweh." The sacrificial system, he affirms,
does not go back to Moses and the wilderness. In general,
the reformation seems to be condemned as undertaken feign-
edly, and not with the whole heart. The prophet's own idea
of religion is given in his great description of the new
covenant, when the law of Yahweh will be written in the

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 25
heart and every man will have his own knowledge of Yahweh,
from the least to the greatest, needing no teacher, nor any
priest, since sin will be remembered no more. To Jeremiah,
also, therefore, the experience of the prophet should be the
experience of every man. If it is now exceptional, it is,
nevertheless, in its nature not unhuman but normal and
destined to universality. On the contrary, the religion of a
written canonical law, which claims finality, as Deuteronomy
did (12:32), and unqualified and perpetual obedience,
necessarily fears and must undertake to repress or control
the words of prophets. So, in fact, the Book of Deutero
nomy does. Prophets may do miracles and their predic
tions may prove true, yet if their teaching goes contrary to
the doctrine or precepts of the law they must be rejected,
and even put to death. (13:1-5). Prophets are, indeed,
to arise to whom the people must listen, but they are to be
prophets like Moses, prophets who speak the things com
manded. In fact, under a religion of the law, there can
be no prophet like Moses, " whom Yahweh knew, face to
face" (34:10). It is evident how effectually such prin
ciples as these would discourage and quench the spirit of
prophecy. It was, indeed, precisely the currency of such
principles that made Jeremiah feared and hated, and his
life one perpetual martyrdom.
Jeremiah discusses in some detail the character of the
prophets whom he judges false. Among them Hananiah
stands out conspicuously, who predicted that the exiles of
597 would return within two years (chapter 28). This
prophecy of peace is the very essence of false prophecy, as
Jeremiah views it (28: 7-9). He does not judge that these
prophets have been misled by a deceiving spirit from Yahweh,
as Micaiah judged concerning the four hundred prophets
of Ahab; he declares, on the contrary, that they are con
scious deceivers, speaking a vision of their own heart, and
not out of the mouth of Yahweh; saying, I have dreamed,

26 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
and prophesying lies; but the word of Yahweh which is
like fire, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces,
they do not possess (23 : 9 ff.).
As to prediction, we are sure only that Jeremiah fore
told the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Baby
lonians (chapters 7 and 26). From the Scythian invasion,
which perhaps occasioned Jeremiah's first appearance as a
prophet, on to the end of his life, he is sure that judgment
against Judah is the purpose of God, and that neither Jeru
salem nor the temple is to escape. In 4 : 23-27 the coming
desolation and chaos are described as if actually seen in
vivid anticipation. But it is not vision, but rather insight
and moral judgment, on which Jeremiah rests the most in
credible of his forecasts, that of Jerusalem's overthrow (7:1-
15). Ezekiel stands between the prophets of the second sort and
those of the third, the apocalyptic type. In part, his mes
sage is identical with Jeremiah's. He affirms, with him, that
Jerusalem is about to fall. But his nature, his religious
experience, his teaching and outlook, differ radically from
those of the prophets before him. We are concerned here
only to notice that in Ezekiel vision and ecstasy are revived,
while prophecy in its more ethical and spiritual qualities
begins that decline from which it did not recover until the
coming of Christ. The vision of Ezekiel, told in the first
chapter, is naturally to be compared with that of Isaiah.
The physical details are far more elaborated, but the intel
lectual content is far poorer, and of ethical or spiritual
significance one can hardly speak. This theophany is seen
in trance, and conveys to the prophet the visible assurance
that Yahweh is free from the temple of Jerusalem ; that the
temple can fall without violating his transcendence, since his
throne is a chariot that moves freely where- it will ; and that
the exiles in Babylonia are not shut off from the worship of
him, since he can come to them there. The departure of

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 27
Yahweh from the temple before its fall and his final return
to the new temple of the Messianic times form, in fact,
a central thought in Ezekiel's revelation. And because God's
presence in Jerusalem was physically conceived, so his de
parture and return must be physically experienced. It is
for this reason that vision, in the proper sense, is a natural
form in which his revelation is received and expressed.
Over against the inwardness of Jeremiah's experience of God,
we feel the prevailing externality that separates God from
man in Ezekiel. The spirit of God lifts him up and carries
him away bodily. The hand of Yahweh is strong upon him
and forces him to come and go against his will. He is
translated from Babylonia to Jerusalem, where he sees
the abominations that are defiling the temple, and beholds
the departure of Yahweh through the east gate. And then
the spirit lifts him up and brings him " in the vision by the
spirit of God into Chaldea," where he tells the captives the
things Yahweh had shown him (8-11). Later on, long
after the destruction of the city, he .is once more carried
to Palestine " in the visions of God," and is shown God's
plans for a new Jerusalem, a new land of Israel, a new
temple; measurements and details being imparted to him by
an angelic interpreter. So that even his law, his contribu
tion to the coming priestly law of the new Judaism, comes
to him in the form of a vision, and is experienced and im
parted as things seen and heard (40-48).
In spite of all this, Ezekiel often announces like the others
" the words of Yahweh," with no evidence expressed or im
plied, of visionary accompaniments; and at certain points,
especially in his exposition of the rights of the individual
before God, in his description of God's shepherding of his
scattered people, and most of all in his conception of the
renewal of human nature by the incoming of the divine
spirit, his message is worthy of following theirs (18, 34,
36 : 25-27 ) . Nevertheless his conception of God and hence

28 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
his idea of worship and his experience of inspiration are
rather revivals of earlier views and anticipations of later and
lower levels than those reached by the men we have been
studying. His vision is meant to impress us with the dis
tance of God rather than his nearness. The approach to
him is long and distracting; and when we reach him in the
end, even though he has " a likeness as the appearance of a
man," yet we see scarcely more than a blaze of light before
which man falls on his face and cannot rise until summoned
and empowered by God himself.
What, now, shall be our judgment in regard to the experi
ences characteristic of these greater prophets, who are also
best known and have so great and creative an influence upon
the spiritual history of the world?
Among the four whom we have principally considered only
one, Isaiah, can be said to be characterized by visionary
experiences, and even in his case vision proper seems limited
to the one crisis which made him a prophet. Moreover, the
contents of this vision is such that vision is not necessary
for its discovery or confirmation. We know, of course, that
what Isaiah saw is not the objective reality of what stands
about the throne of God. We can even see that a certain
danger belonged to the experience of these truths in vision
form. Other men might easily suppose either that such
knowledge was beyond their powers, or that all that could
be expected of them was the obedient acceptance of the
word of the prophet. There was even some danger that the
great thoughts themselves might be obscured by this form of
utterance. The initiative belongs entirely to God, and the
attitude of man seems to be so entirely that of receptiveness
that a weakening of moral effort might result, and one might
expect salvation from God on the sole condition of passive-
ness and assent. These very dangers re-appear in connec
tion with Paul, whose experience, as we have seen, was not

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 29
unlike that of Isaiah. These tendencies were not in accord
ance with the purpose either of Isaiah or of Paul. Both men
assumed that all others could and should see for themselves
the truths which came to them through this opening of their
eyes to things unseen. They both assumed also that faith in
a God who saves the humble and believing will stimulate,
rather than displace, moral endeavor. What is important
is to recognize that the truth and the importance of a
prophet's message do not depend on the psychological con
dition in which it is received. We have in every case to
judge value and truth and importance in human history in
dependently and by our own tests. Men in a sober state of
mind may utter great and epoch-making truths, or common
places, without power and effect, and men in an ecstasy or
under the impulse of great emotional exaltation may do
great things or little, may utter new truths or familiar
truisms or things untrue. So that the bare question whether
a prophet's self-consciousness is natural or supernatural,
normal or abnormal, carries us but a little way toward a
proper estimation of his significance. In any case, it is that
which is within that counts. No seeing or hearing can give
man a knowledge of God. However vividly a prophet
imagines and objectifies, what he gives us is always an event
or a reality of his soul.
Perhaps the question which a psychologist would most
like to ask of an Amos or a Jeremiah is, just what they
meant when they said, " Thus saith Yahweh," or " The
word of Yahweh." This is the almost uniform introduc
tion to the oracles of the great prophets. It is difficult to
suppose that it describes in any sense an objective hearing.
It is a strange manner, and no doubt expresses a high self-
consciousness, for a man to speak and write in the char
acter of Yahweh, speaking in the first person. Yet it is
difficult to avoid the impression that it is a manner, a con
vention, and means nothing more, though this, indeed, is

30 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
much, than that the prophet is fully convinced that what he
says is the truth of God. This strange consciousness is
well expressed by that lesser contemporary of Isaiah, the
prophet Micah, when he says, in contrast to the prophets
who preached because they were bribed to do so, and there
fore shall have no vision and no answer of God, " But I,
truly, am full of power, even the spirit of Yahweh-, and of
judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his trans
gression, and to Israel his sin."
In regard both to the seeing of visions and the hearing
of the word of God three possible explanations seem to
present themselves: first, that of pure objectivity and super
naturalism, a voice really heard, heavenly or future things
really seen; .second, a mental experience capable of psy
chological explanation; as either where a given object calls
forth a corresponding idea, or where an idea, after much
pondering, comes at last to receive a plastic representation;
here a condition more or less ecstatic or dream-like can be
assumed; third, some experience seen as one looks back
upon it to have been the means by which truth was gained
or virtue attained, and hence interpreted as an act of God,
or as having come about at the divine command. Only the
second and third of these explanations are open to the modern
mind. The convictions and decisions of these prophets went
against current opinion and they concerned matters of vital
significance to the people and to their rulers. Orte can
not stand thus alone against prevailing sentiment and the
authority of those in power unless he has the conviction
that his truth is the word of God. Ordinarily and normally
our moral convictions come to us from tradition and train
ing. When one turns against his traditions and his en
vironment, and chooses a way of his own, he must con
sciously ask himself why he is sure he is right. What power
in distinction from that of the community and in contrast

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 31
to it forces him into positions where he is exposed to hatred
and persecution? It is worth remembering, also, that the
primitive prophet, whose equipment was nothing but his
capacity to become religiously insane, could be tolerated
by the rulers and the priests of a community, and even wel
comed as proof effective with the multitude of the reality
of divine beings and the necessity of religion. But when
the prophet is manifestly sane and speaks to reason and
conscience, uttering truths radical and subversive of tradi
tional customs in morals and religion, he becomes dangerous
to those whose interests are in the maintenance of the exist
ing order. One whose convictions force him to stand as
a fortified wall against the assaults of the people, requires
to know that God is with him, and that his convictions are
God's words.
What has been said should not be understood to mean
that the examples of these prophets justify the psychologists
in saying that all religious experience is subjective and does
not involve the reality of God. This is not in any way in
volved in the effort to understand the religious experiences
of these prophets in the light of our own, and as experiences
which we may hope to share. Nothing can be more certain
than that these prophets, to whom vision and ecstasy were
things of slight importance, believed themselves to be in the
presence, not indeed, of mysterious powers, but of a supreme
personality who knew them and whom they knew. This
personality had a proper name, Yahweh. He was Israel's
God ; but the prophets experienced him each as his own God,
and prophecy reaches its height in the realization of this re
lationship as that of friend with friend. The prophets of
the first type were hardly individual. Their prophetic in
spiration was the experience of a group. And the prophets
of the third order again lost their individuality, hiding it be
hind the veil of an assumed authorship. Prophecy in both
of these forms is an exceptional endowment, and must re-

32 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
main exceptional if it is to have effect. If all men were
seized with frenzy, society would be the chaos of a mad
house. If the heavens above and the course of future events
were spread out before the eye of every man, the calling
of the apocalyptical seers would come to an end. In fact,
the powers they claimed are so high and divine that they
feared to be disbelieved if they claimed them for themselves.
Such powers could be credibly affirmed only of those men
of the remote past who Were already put by common con
sent in a place apart f rom ordinary men, and or,Hthe side of
God. Only Enoch, who. walked with God, or "Noah, who
alone was righteous and perfect in his generations and alone
with his house escaped the divine judgment, or Abraham,
God's friend, or Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,
or Elijah, who. ascended bodily to heaven, or some other
prophet to whom heaven was^ opened, or scribe to whom the
law of God was shown, could be supposed to have powers
so above those of man. That such men saw the future
could be demonstrated by long centuries of the fulfillment of
their words, down to the writer's present. Prophets of
the early and late period, then, claimed unique powers, but
actually lost all individual distinctness and personality. Now
the great prophets are conscious that they are different from
average men, but they do not desire to remain different.
Their knowledge of God is that inner knowledge which is
possible to all men, and is the greatness and joy of human
nature. Yet each one of them stands distinct as a great
personality whose character and life spoke his message more
clearly than his words. And the message they spoke and
embodied was also personal, for their message was God.
They knew themselves to be under bondage to God and
subject to his compelling will. But in this bondage they
found freedom; mastered as they were by God, they were
yet more than other men masters of themselves. This ex
perience is essentially emotional in its character; it is not an

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 33
idea, but an attitude of the whole man, and toward the
whole world. A passionate love for God, an enthusiastic
championship of his cause, masters them and burns in them
as a flame. They do not see how it can be otherwise with
any man, God being what he is. And as they do not need
to look to the heavens above or to the world to come for
God, but only into their own hearts, so, also, they see
him in things immediately about them and in the events
of the day. To find great and deep meanings in the actu
alities of t" e present, to see the hand and feel the power
of God ia every common thing, is as characteristic of the
prophet as it is of the artist and poet. The prophet sees
all things, and especially the things nearest at hand, in the
light of the eternal.
The word " spirit " was one that helped some prophets
to express their sense of the nearness of the divine power
and of its essential oneness in nature with man; though
some, like Jeremiah, seemed to fear its use lest it suggest
mere ecstasy and supernaturalism. It was a word that
needed redemption from some of its early antecedents in
order to serve the purposes of ethical religion.
Our first impression when we approach the psychological
study of the deeper religious experiences of the prophets is
that such study may prove unfruitful and even unwhole
some, partly because we are not prophets ourselves, and
seem to assume too much when we undertake to measure
their experience by our own, partly because they were so
far from being psychologists, and did not reflect, as modern
scientists do, on the sources or nature of their experience;
in fact, if they had done so, we instinctively feel that they
could have been prophets no longer, and that the world
would have suffered an irreparable loss. Can we, then, who
cannot help being psychologists, still hope to make our own
in any real sense the experience of these mighty men of
God? If ecstasy or vision were the distinctive^mafk^bTf

34 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE . f
prophecy, then we should have to say that the scientific un
derstanding of such experiences brought with it incapacity
to reproduce them. But we have found, on the contrary,
that psychological studies, in fact, have this effect only upon
prophecy of the crude and primitive type, and upon that
later development of it which claims to give knowledge of
times and worlds out of the reach of the mind of man,
claims disproved by the mere passage of time, and still more
by the mind's growing mastery of the mysteries of the
physical universe. The study of the religious experiences
of the great prophets, if conducted with sympathy and rev
erence, has quite the opposite and an altogether favorable
effect upon the religious life. We cannot, indeed, put our
selves back into their ways of thinking, any more than into
the actual experiences of Israel with which they had to
do. But our modern studies re-discover the prophets as men
great in those qualities of character and spirit which do not
change from age to age. We need, and sha'l always need,
as Arnold says, the inspiration of their enthusiasm for the
power that makes for righteousness. We need, also, as
Arnold could not say, the inspiration of their intimacy with
the personal God, the assurance of their friendship with the
great Friend.
These prophets were great personalities. It is because
their truth was true in themselves, truly incarnated in their
spirits, that it had freshness and vitality, and was new
however often it might have been said before. It is for
the same reason that others could not but feel and know
the truth of their words, however radical and counter to their
wishes and interests and habits they were. Arid again the
same fact, that they were themselves their message, was the
secret of its power to work out its realization in events.
Newness, persuasiveness, and creative power, belong to truth
that is embodied in persons.
But the prophets did not set out to be grea" personalities,

MYSTICISM OF HEBREW PROPHETS 35
and never thought of viewing their prophetic calling as a
way to personal influence and power. On the contrary
they became great only by the renunciation of greatness.
It is of them that the truth is preeminently true that one
who loses himself shall find himself. No prophet can choose
or achieve the prophet's calling by himself ; nor can he exer
cise prophetic gifts for himself. He is chosen and called
by God, and he is sent to his fellow men. He is God's mes
senger and agent, and does not even speak in his own name.
His " Thus saith the Lord " is not self-assertion or a high
self -consciousness, it is self-denial in complete subjection to
the thought and will of the Eternal. ,And if his self-con
sciousness is lost in God-consciousness on the one side, it
passes over on the other into national consciousness. The
prophets do and sacrifice, they pray and hope, for their
nation; and at times assume even in action the very charac
ter and personality of the nation (comp. Hos. 1-3, Isa. 20,
Jer. 27-28, Ezek. 4, 24: 15-27). Yet in spite of this loss
of self in God and for him, and in and for their nation,
or rather, precisely because of this loss, and in and through
it, they find so large and great a self that we can scarcely
look at them as human, and doubt our right to understand
their experience or to look for any parallel to it in our own.
We are not, indeed, understanding nor in any measure
sharing the religious experience of the prophets unless we
know what it means to lose ourselves in God, and to lose
ourselves in our fellow men, and by this double loss of
self to find our true selves and to realize our higher selves.
Something of this we do no doubt experience whenever in
our search for truth or in our response to beauty or to high
ideals of virtue we are conscious of a higher and divine
realm of worth and of reality, from which we come, to
which we belong, which we too rarely perceive or possess,
or in any vivid sense feel to be ourselves. And, on the
other hand, none of us can be without some experience of

36 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
that other larger self, the society of our fellow men, revealed
to us by the instincts of self-denial in service and of disin
terestedness in loyalty and devotion.
It is such experiences that teach us the true nature of
the mysticism of the prophets. It is such experiences to
which we are helped and in them confirmed and strengthened
more than by any other means by those holy souls into whom
has entered more abundantly and in whom has remained in
more abiding power that Holy Spirit which loves to make
of men friends of God and prophets.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA
Edward Washburn Hopkins
If mysticism included all that is mysterious, it were possi
ble to find it in almost every Hindu cult and to trace it
back to the earliest literature. There is, for example, the
Vedic wild Muni, who probably reflects a mystic rapproche
ment with divinity, analogous to that of the dancing dervish ;
there is the mystic communion established by the Vedic sac
rifices (especially to the Manes), in which the worshipper
receives divine power through a commensal meal; there is
the (epic) hypnotic trance, in which the operator compels
the obedience of the subject by what is regarded as a mystic
power; and finally there is the Brahmanic apocalyptic
mysticism, which begins with a vision of the world to come
and culminates in the visit of Naciketas to the realm of
death. This last form is of some historical interest because
it may have led eventually to the vision of Arda Viraf , which
in turn has been supposed to be the (Sassanid) model of the
Divina Commedia.1
But these forms of " mysticism " must here be passed over
allusively ; nor need we linger to explain the " pantheistic
mystic speculation " of the Rig Veda poets, who in x. 29
have derived Being from Not-Being through the agency of
heat and desire, which is the " primal seed of mind," and in
x. 90 describe the world as caused by the sacrifice of the
Divine Man, whose body in part is the world itself. Of
JIn regard to the curious case of epic hypnotism see the writer's
article on Yoga technique in the Jour. Am. Orient. Soc. XXII
(1901). After RV. x. 135, the Taittiriya Brahmana iii. n, 8, gives
a vision of the next world, later elaborated in the Katha
Upanishad. 37

38 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
such naive (not profound) speculation there is a plenty in
the Vedic age, early and late. For our purpose they are
negligible, since the mysticism we are examining is of another
sort, namely that which is exhibited in the ineffable but
transient state of the soul at one with the divine (or with its
supranormal equivalent), the soul being either intellectually
or emotionally intuitive of, or identified with, the world-
power. Five divisions of the subject appear as the phenomena show
themselves in history: First, in the mystics of the
Upanishads. Second, in the early Buddhistic mystics.
Third, in the scientific Yoga. Fourth, in a blending of
Brahmanic and later Buddhistic mysticism. Fifth, in the
mediaeval emotional mystics.
In the first four of these divisions we have to do not so
much with individuals as with schools, forms of religious
faith, general, not, as in the isolated cases of mysticism known
to us by the names Plotinus, Francis, etc., special abnormal
phenomena, but systematically induced and perfectly con
trolled states. Even in the Theragathas of the early Bud
dhists, although they antedate our known systems, the indi
vidual appears to be working under a system, and the name
attached to the special anna or gnosis, is without historical
value. The object of all Brahmanic and Buddhist mysticism is to
escape from life as it is into a state mystically conceived as
larger and better, to escape from the bonds of individuality
into the unbound, from the limitation of time into the eternal,
albeit that escape may bring with it the renunciation of per
sonality. Theistically expressed, man seeks union with God
not by going to him but by realizing him, the realization itself
being identical with the attainment. He who knows Brahma
becomes Brahma. This is perhaps no more than the logical
extension of early Vedic identification of the microcosm with
the macrocosm, but it expresses itself otherwise and indeed in

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 39
various ways. To reach God by immediacy often leads either
to metaphysics or to magic. But the true mystic is neither
a metaphysician nor a magician ; he knows by an illumination,
by intuition.
To begin with our first division. Early philosophical
treatises from about the seventh century b. c. and known as
Seances (Upanishads) with a connotation of the mysterious,
show that their authors sought the changeless One and found
him beyond reason, " not to be attained with the mind," a
One of which can be posited only negation of attributes; he
is within the heart smaller than a grain of mustard seed, yet
he is without, greater than all the worlds ; he is man, woman,
fire ; yet he is definable only with the words " not, not."
Philosophically this Being is at first purely idealistic; noth
ing exists save as it exists in the individual. This pure
idealism, confronted with the cold facts of life, material
phenomena, was subsequently modified to the extent that
phenomena were regarded not as unreal but as a form of the
real. In either case the individual soul can by intuition
based on knowledge but surpassing it, realize the immutable
One, and in this intuition, which to the later writers is a
special grace of God, man attains to oneness with the One.
So far this is a noetic application of a reasoned philosophy;
but the philosophers are poets (writing largely in verse) and
as poets they become emotional mystics. The vision of the
eternal is one that causes not only immortality, that is, con
joins them with the immutable immortal, but is the well-
spring of ineffable joy. They feel the mystic rapture.
Thus: He who has realized th' immortal Brahm
As One without beginning, middle, end,
He enters into pure serenity
And everlasting peace (Mandukya Karika).
As God of all, All-god, maker of all things;
As he that in the heart of man abideth,

40 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
By the heart alone conceived, by mind and fancy —
Who thus know God, they have become immortal.
Within his light, nor night nor day existeth,
Being, Not-being; all is he, the blessed;
He is the treasure sought by Vedic poets;
From him was born all knowledge and all wisdom.
Above, below, across, or in the middle,
None hath grasped God ; nor is there any image
Of him whose only name is this, Great Glory.
His form invisible is and always will be ;
For he in mind and heart abides. Who know him
As their own soul, they have become immortal.
And again: The soul of all things is the one controller
Who makes his one form manifold in many.
The wise that him as their own soul acknowledge,
They have eternal joy, but not so, others.
Among the transient he is the everlasting,
The only wise one he among the unwise, *
The One mid many. Him perceive the sages
In their own souls and feel a peace eternal.
The sun shines not, nor moon nor stars nor lightning,
Nor earthly fire, within the All-soul's heaven;
For he alone is the light that all shines after,
And by his light is all the world illumined.2
The individual soul is here not imagined to be in a state
of longing to merge itself with the All-Soul ; it does not long
for communion with God. It strives to realize that it is
God ; that there is no duality. Destroy the illusion of dual
ity and you are immediately filled with the consciousness of
oneness with the Absolute Power, Brahma, the World Soul,
Atman. The so-called New Testament of India, the
Bhagavad Gita, is really only a theistic continuation of the
Upanishads. It too lays stress upon the principle of non-
duality; but it introduces a new element in stressing still
more the grace of God as a God of love. Hence the devotee
2 India, Old and New, p. 85. From the Kathaka Upanishad.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 41
is said to " come to the Lord." Thus : " He who works
for me, he who is intent on me, he who is free from attach
ments, without emnity toward any creature, he comes to
me " (xi. 55) ; and again: " They who in me renounce all ef
fort, who are bent on me, mtditate on me, draw near to me,
of them am I the savior from the round of births and deaths.
Therefore set thy heart on me, enter into me with thy soul,
and thou shalt dwell with me in my home above. But if
thou canst not concentrate thy mind upon me, then seek to
reach me by union through assiduous practice " {ib. xii. 6-9).
Here devotion comes first and Yoga discipline last, which,
as we shall see, inverts the order of schematic mysticism.
The disciple here seeks union with God, becomes the Eternal,
and with infinite rapture feels that he is " united with the
Eternal," for he sees his soul as one with all and all with him ;
he cannot lose God for he dwells in God {ib. vi. 27 f).
Turning now to early Buddhistic mysticism, we are met at
once with the question, What scope for mysticism in a re
ligion which admits no soul and denies God ? We may per
haps get the answer most easily if we pause to glance at the
mysticism which arose in China as the result of Taoism, a
digression perhaps pardonable here inasmuch as no pro
vision has been made in this course for Chinese mysticism.
Tao is not a personal God ; it is the way of the gods or the
right order of the universe, than which Lao Tzu admitted
nothing more divine. Yet his follower, Chuang Tzu, priv
ileged interpreter of Lao Tzu, held Tao to be the universal
principle of good and a manifestation of the divine first prin
ciple or Absolute. Chuang Tzu regards it as a sort of world-
spirit with which he feels himself blessed in being one,
though it is the unknowable ultimate, manifest in nature;
and inspired by this thought the later Po Chii says that they
are happy who delight in Tao's laws:
Within my breast no sorrow can abide,
I feel the great world's spirit through me thrill,

42 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
And as a cloud I drift before the wind.
Since life and death in circles come and go,
Of little moment are the days to spare.
Thus strong in faith I wait and long to be
One with the pulsings of eternity.3
" Pass into the infinite," said Chuang Tzii, " your final rest
is there." And again : " By becoming oblivious of self peo
ple become the people of God. But only those are capable of
this who have entered into the eternal harmony of God."
With this example of Chinese mysticism in mind we may
better appreciate what the early Buddhist sought. He too
sought to bring himself into harmony with the pulsings of
eternity ; above all he sought by so doing to escape from the
" bog of birth and death," that endless revolution of the
wheel on which every one was bound and like Ixion was in
hell. His means was the conventional accepted means. He
retired into a lonely place and began a regular course of
illuminative meditations with concentrated auto-hypnotic
effort, gaining a tranced condition out of which he came with
clarified mind at harmony with the world-order and already
advanced into that state in which he was transported beyond
all fear of rebirth. The rapture is expressed in terms of
salvation or Nibbana. The so-called Psalms of the early
Buddhists are collections of confessions attributed to this
or that primitive Brother or Sister of the Order. One of
these Sisters gives as her anna or confession of faith:
" Buddha's daughter I, born of his word, his blessed word,
who stand transported with Nibbana's bliss alway " (Theri,
xxxi). It is often a serenity rather than a rapture: "Cool
and serene I see Nibbana's bliss " (Sister Sakula, xlix). But
in these cases of sudden insight, the Heavenly Eye often
appears. So Sona says, " Even as I grappled with the cause
of things, clear shone for, me the Eye . Celestial " (xiv),
3 Musings of a Chinese Mystic, by Lionel Giles, in Wisdom of
the East series, London, 1906.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 43
which immediately leads her to " win the ecstasy of eman
cipation." " Delight in truth is supreme delight " and " to know . . .
is Nibbana, supreme happiness" (Dhammap. 203, 354).
The mystic attains by way of apprehension to the knowledge,
as he attains to the pure being and immortality desired, just
as by the same means he attains to moral excellence (uni
versal friendliness). This conjunction of immortality, truth,
and love reminds one forcibly of the striking expression of
Augustine, who in his Confessions explains, " Truth, love,
eternity, thou art my God." Again, like Wordsworth, the
Buddhist might say, I not believed but saw all nature one.
He sees immortality. Synonymous with the dibba or heav
enly eye is the epithet " purified " applied to the eye and the
explanation that it is " super-human." It may give a vision
of past births or of future bliss but above all it sees truth
and, as in the case of the Upanishadist, knowledge is eman
cipation. In such a state the mystic may be illuminated with
a call to teach, preach, or compose verses, and then these
verses become his anna, gnosis, acknowledgment, confession.
The chief point here is that, though it is long before we have
the scheme of scientific illumination, yet the operations in the
case of the saints contemporary with Buddha or up to the
third century b. c, to which date they may be provisionally
assigned, show the same discipline.
The stages of joy in the mystic contemplation are described
in the Yogavacara's manual as introduced by a phrase, " I
beg (or pray) for the bliss " of this or that sort. The mystic
then seeks to verify or realize, sacchi karoti, the real sources
of experience, and these with the impermanence of all things,
and then, through this realization, to master the process of
change and free himself from it, by means of devices,
kasinas which are like'Boehme's gazing at pewter, whereby
he " beheld the real properties of all things." The Buddhist
induces abnormal consciousness by the methodical process

44 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
called Samadhi, first by focussing his thought, cittass'
ekaggata, and thus attaining i ) a little thrill khuddata piti;
2) a momentary joy, khanika piti ("momentary flash");
3) a flood of emotion, okkantika piti, in which he is sub
merged as with a wave; 4) an elated rapture, ubbega piti, in
which he is transported, not only mentally but physically,
so that he can rise and float off ; and 5 ) an " all pervading
ecstasy, -pharana piti*
According to later views, " the unintelligent has no trance
and the unintranced has no intelligence " (Dhammap. 372).
But the intuitive flash of knowledge, or suffusion of insight
in the early period may be the result of a personal expe
rience rather than of a system of concentrated meditation.
Thus in the Theri (xlvii), one of the Sisters has a vision
of the Buddha and of Truth through visual observation of
what happens to water when it flows out and what happens
to a lamp when it is extinguished, and this is her gnosis
(knowledge and confession) :
" Unto my cell I go and take my lamp,
And seated on my couch I watch the name;
Then grasp the pin and push the wick right down
Into the oil — Nibbana of my lamp !
So to my mind comes freedom."
The Manual of a Mystic seems to refer to this exercise:
" Meditating on the wax-taper I aspire to attain bliss" (p.
63). But it is interesting to notice how often the early
Buddhists are helped to their gnosis by this vision of the
Buddha. Harita, shocked into moral consciousness by the
sudden death of his beloved wife, has a vision of the Buddha,
who appears and, admonishing him, leads him to " develop
his insight " (Thera xxix). Tissa is asleep and sees a vision
*See the account in Mrs. Rhys Davids' Buddhist Psychology,
London, 1914, ^187 f., and the (Yogavacara) Manual of a Mystic,
1916, pp. xi, xiii, and notes, p. 7f.; examples, e.g. p. 23.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 45
of the Buddha shedding glory upon him and admonishing
him and therewith he became emancipated (xxxix). Eman
cipation is here freedom from existence bound to Karma, ex
tinction of spatial life as well as extinction of desires, one
being dependent on the other. Thus Uttara (cxli) says:
nibbayiss'am andsavo, as explained by the commentator, " by
the expiry of the last moment of consciousness I shall utterly
pass away like a fire without fuel." So Buddha himself said,
as did others after him {ib cliii), " stayed is the further rise
of consciousness; blown even here to nothingness."
Buddha himself attained to enlightenment through the rec
ognized series of trances. With him who was himself the
Supreme Lord, there could be" no vision save of the Truth,
which led him finally to that jhana-ecstasy which reappears
in the gnosis of his disciples, e. g. Theri (cxii).
The completed system of the Hina school is given by
Buddhaghosha in the fifth century a.'d. as the" Way of
Purity, Visuddhi Magga. Here forty subjects of medita
tion are enlisted, ten pleasing, ten gruesome, ten- being re
flections on Buddha, morality, etc., and ten being exalted
states, joy, compassion, love, etc. The novice- is given cer
tain subjects to meditate upon, which brings him to. one
trance after another. Hundreds of times he must repeat
formulas connected with each subject, sitting retired, his
eyes fixed on a red disk, till he sees it as well with his eyes
closed as open. Then he retires to his hut and " develops
the reflex," abandoning investigation and consideration, till
he attains to the ecstasy of the third and to the supernatural
calm of the fourth trance. Then he receives the clarified
" divine eye " of purified intuition.5
6 An account of these trances will be found in Warren's Bud
dhism in Translations, and in Mr. E. W. Burlingame's Legends,
from the Dhammapada Commentary, in HOS. vol. xxviii. See also
Mrs. Rhys David's Buddhist Psychology, the Quest Series, London,
1 9 14. As a result of his mystic vision the Buddhist may attain
to the miraculous powers acquired by all Yogins.

46 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Almost synchronous with this exposition of Buddhistic
Yoga is the Brahmanic Yoga of Patafijali, our third division.
Here, however, the end sought is the isolation of the soul
from the bonds of the sense through sloughing off the aspects
common to matter, till the soul reaches a pure condition in
which it can establish a relation of immediate perception or
intuition of truth, of things as they are. Patafijali lived
between three and five hundred a. d. He refutes idealism ,
and his system is an extension of dualistic teaching; it gives
the means of attaining to the Yoga-state of full self-expres
sion. The mind by concentration learns how to resist
fluctuations vrtti, till it attains dispassionateness. This
concentration, samadhi, is obtained by certain exercises, such
as breathings and postures, and gives insight or intuition.
Quite as important in the method are the sentiments to be
cultivated, friendliness, happiness, compassion, etc. The
balanced state of mind finally attained then brightens with
conscious knowledge. Positive aids to Yoga are (a) absten
tion from injury, from falsehood, theft, incontinence and
rapacity (acceptance of gifts), five in all; (b) five ob
servances, cleanliness, contentment, self-castigation, study,
and devotion to the Isvara or Lord-soul; (c) postures,
described at length; (d) regulation of breath; (e) with
drawal of the senses, which leads to mastery of the organs
of sense; and (f) fixed attention.
The result of the late state of samadhi is that one attains
to objectless meditation or pure ecstasy, which frees the spirit
from ignorance, especially from the delusion that spirit has
any identity with matter. Now three things are noticeable
here. First that the Yoga is a sober psychological study
which, however, immediately resolves itself into magic (mas
tery of matter) ; second, that it admits devotion to the time
less Lord-soul (not divinity), as equally valid with its own
system; and, third, that it makes isolation or separation of
soul from matter depend on ecstatic trance-induced intuition.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 47
As to the first point, abstention from theft makes all jewels
come to one; by binding the mind to one object, one fuses
the knower with the known and obtains intuitive knowledge
of times (past births, etc.) ; and concentrated insight controls
as well as understands objects (language of birds, course of
stars). So the BrahnYanic Yogin (like the Buddhist) can
become invisible" and perform tricks of pure magic. Such
is the content of the Vibhuti-pada (third book). As to the
second point, what is elsewhere of prime importance, the favor
of the Lord-soul is here negligently admitted as one of the
five observances but is" in itself productive of the rapturous
intuition gained by the formal system. The third point
alone makes it possible or rather imperative that the Yoga
should be explained as a mystic system, according to which
the whole life is oriented with reference to one idea until
there is an emotional transformation corresponding to this
focussed state, a transformation equivalent to absolute dis
passionateness. This state of Kaivalya (isolation) is the
culmination of the' system ; in it the self as energy of intellect
rests grounded upon itself (without relation to the aspects of
matter), eternally freed from the effects of Karma. But this
mysticism is in no sense an intuition, of God (there is no
God), only of truth in regard to the soul.
The Mahayana, in distinction from the Hina, was a com
bination of early Buddhistic and late Brahmanic philosophy.
It makes a fourth form- of mysticism- in our list because,
though based on Yoga, it has a different goal from that of
Yoga and of the Hinayana. It appears well set forth in
Asanga's Mahayana Sutrdlamkdfa,6 which explains the
Mahayana not in nihilistic terms, as in the Madhyamika
School of Nagarjuna but according to the Yogacara School.
It was about the time of the Christian era, when religion
turned from solitude to the world that Buddhism expanded
6 Edited by Sylvain Levi, Paris, text, 190.7; introduction and
translation, 19 n.

48 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
into that greater philosophy which may have been affected by
the Manichaean and gnostic influence then stealing eastward,
that Asanga taught. He lived in Ghandhara, in the West.
The idea of the trinity which as Levi (p. 18) says, "semble
aussi trahir des influences etrangeres," arises suddenly at this
time. Early Buddhism no longer satisfied a church which
had outgrown the cloister. Iran, near where Asanga was
born, was agitated by a religious revolution (the restoration
of Zoroastrianism) affected by Jewish and Christian thought,
so that it is not impossible that the ideas of Asanga were
affected by these and by the Logoi to which his Dharmas
correspopd. Be that as it may, his work in its vision,
ecstasy, and magic is essentially Indie.7
In this system the discipline is based on a mystic union
like that of love. To the six organs (sense-organs and
manas) Asanga adds Alaya-vijhana, the fundamental affirma
tion of existence as the base of thought : sum ergo cogito.
Pure being can rid itself of the latent effect of actions by
attaining to cessation of difference when the universal con
sciousness takes the place of self-consciousness (the Ego no
longer being "other" than the whole). Truth realized in
the intellect (Bodhi, as agent) leads to communion with the
Buddha. Buddha here is the real, neither being nor not-be
ing. Containing all, the real does not reveal itself; it ex
cludes duality; it gives greater bliss than Nirvana (as cessa
tion). To reach Bodhi is to become a Bodhisat and this is
accomplished by the passage through ten bhumis or stages
from Faith to Buddha as preliminary and final experiences.
With the first stage one acquires the knowledge of the ideas
or ideal phenomena; in the second, one becomes spotless and
7 Compare Senart, Rev. Hist. Relig. 1900, Nov. Dec, on the
relation with the Yoga; also his Origines Bouddhiques Musee
Guimet, 1907, and for the bhumis his Mahavastu (1882), vol. i,
Introduction, p. xxvii f. The Mahavastu Bhumis (possibly seven
at first, ib. xxxv) are rather ethical stages, lacking the illumination
found in Asanga's list.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 49
is in perpetual ecstatic thought, dhydna, solely occupied with
samadhi (as mystic union) ; in the third, the mystic may
reenter the world without danger (of losing what he has
gained) ; in the fourth, he exercises the Wings of Illumina
tion (Bodhipaksha), virtues and powers; thus in the fifth
stage he appears supernaturally wise, conceives the ideal as
the universal, etc., and in the sixth comes face to face with
reality (Nirvana as the sum of existence) ; then in the seventh
stage he starts on the way to becoming a Bodhisat, having
only the latent impressions left from Karma. In the eighth,
freed from personality, he loses even these latent effects and
becomes illuminated without his own thought. In the ninth
and tenth stages, respectively, he achieves the stage of the
Good Spirit and that of the absolutely illumined Buddha.
The Mahayana (Madhyamika) is found as a mystic phil
osophy also in Japan. Kobo Daishi there taught that man
is essentially one with the Supreme (as Buddha) and even in
this life may attain to the Buddha-state. This belief is
based on the theory of Kongokai or Diamond World (of
ideas) existing in universal thought, to which the world of
phenomena is parallel. In the world of ideas the Great
Sun, Dainichi, is Vairocana, the All, from whom emanate
Bodhisattvas, from whom again emanate lesser beings, lead
ing to phenomena. Shakyamuni, Amitabha, Akshobhya, and
Ratnasambhava stand round the central Vairocana like
planets, each with its satellites; or as the center of an eight-
petal lotus, Amitabha, Mitteya, Manjusri, Avalokiteshvara,
etc. Man, as an emanation from him, is one with the sun
of life and of truth, Vairocana. Ideas are the source of
things; so if one has the correct idea, one can control the
thing. Hence Shingon, True Word, as name of this sect of
the ninth century, which is a mixture of idealism and
thaumaturgy, for the True soon becomes the Magic Word,
which may even ease the sufferings of the dead. In the
Zen sect, truth is communicated by spiritual telepathy rather

50 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
than by book-learning; its chief characteristic is meditative
abstraction, not a new idea but made the special mark of
the sect by Eisai (twelfth century), though the .sect was
introduced into China by the first Patriarch, Bodhidharma,
in the sixth century. Its aim is not so much to escape from
rebirth as to escape the limitation of the empirical self by
means of union with the Greater Self. As in Yoga, the
practice is auto-hypnotic; one remains fixed and staring till
one becomes conscious of oneness with all reality, losing all
consciousness of self, an ecstatic state in which one passes be
yond distinctions of good and evil, wise and foolish, and
attains insight through quietism. The minute directions as
to the means of attainment, postures, etc., are those of the
Yoga; one sits with crossed legs, the right hand on the left
foot, palm up, etc.
In the thirteenth century Nichiren converted the relapsed
Buddhism of his day into what he regarded as primitive Bud
dhism. With his missionary efforts we are not here con
cerned. He himself w/as a thorough mystic, who taught that
the kingdom of God and God are within. One should strive
for the realization of the kingdom of the Lord, who is the
soul of every man. The three-fold mystery consists in the
Supreme Being, Honzon, the Holy See, Kaidan, and the
Sacred Title, Daimoku. This last is enlightenment,
Sambhogo-kaya, in distinction from the Dharma-kaya or
Mandala (Supreme Being), and from the actual manifes
tation, Nirmana-kaya, the realization of Buddha's mercy
organized in the place of the church universal or Holy See,
as Buddha in reality is another name for the orderly cosmos.
Nichiren believed himself to be the reincarnation of an an
cient saint and his method also was that of the Yogin : " I
sit on the mat of meditation and in vision I see every truth."
The final aim, however, is complete realization of the
Supreme Being in man's own soul.
Thus these Mahayanists, both Hindu and Japanese, seek

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 51
through visionary experience and the ecstatic trance to real
ize truth or God, through the identification of self with real
being, sometimes as the world-soul.
Finally we come to that form of mysticism in which de
votion plays a larger part than intellect. In the Upanishad
era the merging of the self with the world-self is likened in
its swooning-like state, but only thus, to the submerged
consciousness in conjugal embrace. Emphasis on this leads
to an erotic interpretation of intuition from which the cold
ethics of early Buddhism preserved its devotees, the more
easily as Buddha himself was no subject for romantic love.
But with Buddhism rose the feeling of intense devotion which
may easily express itself as love. In the early stage this de
votion is rather a form of faith than of emotion. Even in
Shankara, bhakti, the technical name of this attitude, still
means contemplative concentration. And in the Bhagavad
Gita, though the connotation is that of affection, bhakti is
still without any erotic tinge. As has already been observed,
the Gita has rather the content of an Upanishad based upon
a belief in a man-god form of the All-god. " The sun shines
not, nor moon nor fire, whither they go who return not to
earth but to my supreme home" (Gita, xv. 6f). "Seek
wisdom (the man-god declares), whose eye sees truth; see
self in the All-self, the light of the world. I am that light,
as I am the essence of the sap of all life. If one knows me
as the Supreme S,oul, knowing me as the All, with all his
being he devotes himself to me" (ib. 19, bhajati mam sar-
vabhdvena) . Again, as to the means : " Seek solitude ; eat
little; control the speech, the body and the mind; be intent
on union through vision {dhydnayoga) ; avoid vanity, pride,
lust, wrath, avarice ; so the Yogin fits himself for the eternal
Brahma-being." The devotee, " serene of soul, without grief
or desire, equable toward all beings, attains to highest devo
tion to me" {madbhaktim labhate pardm) ; through bhakti
he learns my greatness and my being; then, taking refuge in

52 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
me, he enters the supreme; through my grace, matprasaidt,
he obtains the eternal place. Think ever of me, be devoted
to me, through my grace thou shalt cross over all difficulties "
(ib xviii. 52f.). Here maccittah statam bhava is the key to
the following (64-67), isto' si me, manmand bhava mad-
bhaktah . . . mam evaisyasi . . . priyo 'si me, aharn tvd
sarvapdpehhyo moksayisyami, ma sucah, " be devoted in
thought to me, to whom thou art dear, and thou shalt come
to me and I will release thee from all evil." This is not
the language of passionate love but of religious devotion and
it is this line which the sober saints of the Marathas fol
lowed, who rejected metaphysical for personal religion and
worshipped Krishna, yet not as a lover, but as a loving god.
Thus Jiianesvara, who in the thirteenth century wrote a com
mentary on the Gita, " to save the world," preserves the
pantheistic appeal; while the more emotional religion of
Tukaram and Namdev is still not erotic, though full of sen
timental yearning for the divine. Thus Tuka speaks:
" With milk of love Oh suckle me,
At thy abounding breast,
O mother, haste, in thee, in thee,
My sad heart findeth rest.
And again: How poor am I ; thy children we,
Mother of loving ways, «
Within the shadow of thy grace
Ah, guide us, Tuka says.
The love of man is like that of a child for its mother, or
like that of a faithful wife for the husband :
How the lotus all the night,
Dreameth ever of the light,
As the stream to fishes thou,
As is to the calf the cow;

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 53
To the faithful wife how dear
Tidings of her lord to hear.8
The close parallel here is rather with Christian feeling, as
in this plaintive hymn:
New hope to Tuka dost thou send,
And new world bringest in ;
Now know I every man a friend
And all I meet are kin.
So like a happy child I play
In thy dear world, O God,
Where all around and every day
God's bliss is spread abroad.
He still shall rule my life, for he
Is all compassionate;
His is the sole authority,
And on his will I wait.
But it was inevitable that the love proclaimed in the
Gita should be rather more warmly felt in certain quarters.
Thus in the twelfth century, following other mystics,
Jayadeva wrote a mystical poem, the Gita Govinda, in which
the attachment between the soul and God is conceived alle-
gorically in terms of a human mistress Radha, and her
lover Krishna. So sensuous is the perfervid description that
it has been doubted whether the poem was intended as an
allegory at all. But like Solomon's Song it is religious to the
very religious-minded. Parts of it, however, cannot be
translated properly, but an English rhyme may give a gen
eral impression:
Say that I Radha in my bower languish
Widowed till Krishna finds his way to me;
My eyes are dim with longing, all is anguish
Until, with modest gentle shame, I see my lover come to me.
So ch. ii; later on (vii) Radha grows less modestly
shameful :
8 Tukaram died in r649- The translations are from Nicol Mac-
nicol in Hibbert Journal, October 1917.

54 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Now those who were parted grow one for ever,
One and whole-hearted; the old endeavor
To be blended is gained at last;.
Glad tears are raining;
No dread now, no plaining,
Now doubt has passed
Out of each face, in the close embrace.
No fear that hereafter embracing is over,
No sorrow that causes torturing pauses.
No grief to be felt but fades and will melt
In certainty strong of a joyance immortal,
The rapture of meeting, the swift and sweet greeting
Of life that unites beyond Time's dreary portal.
This version of Edwin Arnold is not a close translation.
It merely adumbrates in a chaste Victorian way the lurking
appeal of the original. This appeal became the note struck
by the earliest extant venacular Bengali poet Chandi Das of
the fourteenth century, who belonged to the Sahajiya cult
which originated in Vamacari Buddhism,9 that Left-hand cult
which exalts adultery and incest as hand-maidens, so to speak,
of pure religion. To appreciate Chandi Das and a number of
later Bengali poets of this sort a Westerner must adopt some
thing of the combination of faith and sensuous thrill shown
at those Camp Meetings when delirium is caused by a morbid
religious eroticism and then add indecencies happily unknown
to Western cults.10 This rank growth is of course modified
when the spirituality of these Bengali poets is exploited by
natives for the benefit of foreigners. Thus Mr. Romesh G.
Dutt discreetly presents Chandi Das to the West as a
nerveless sentimentalist singing this ode to Krishna:
9 Compare for the survival of Buddhism in Bengal, The Modern
Buddhism and its Followers in Ovissa, by N. N. Vasu, Calcutta,
1911. 10 Chandi Das made his specialty the cultivation of the Parakiya
Rasa, " intercourse with another's wife," as a religious exercise ; but
he also urged the common use of women, as " the greatest illu
sion " will be of spiritual edification.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 55
Oh how can words my thoughts portray,
Their longing and their inward strife?
In life, in death, in life to be,
Be thou the master of my life.
For to thy feet my heart is tied;
Thy mercy and thy love I crave;
I offer all, my love, my soul,
To be thy worshipper and slave.
But the speaker is that abandoned female, Radha,
Krishna's mistress, and the Left-hand cult portrays the union
of soul and God in terms appropriate to one whose highest
religious activity is adultery. On much the same lines the
Tantra sums up religious exaltation in terms of mystical sex-
union. Yet to the native Oriental consciousness all this ap
parent lubricity is an example of "to the pure all things are
pure." A congregation of devout, spiritually minded Hindus
will listen enraptured to the images of the Vaishnava poets
without (it is said) a thought of evil, even as the Christian
Fathers wrote of their love to God in language tinged with
eroticism, and it is at least fair to compare, though some
what remotely, with the Tantra Mother-cult and its sensual
excesses some phases of Gnostic phallicism" in connection with
the Mother and Savior. But Christianity has for the most
part sloughed off what the Bengali devotee still keeps as a
precious religious possession.
But it would be a pity to leave Hindu mysticism in the
hands of those thus purely devoted to sex-imagery. Nor is
it necessary. Mr. Macnicol distinguishes between the sen
sual school of Vallabha and his followers and the " hysteri
cal " school of Caitanya, the mystic of the fifteenth century,
whose love for God is expressed in terms of filial devotion and
whose followers are represented by the great saints of the
nineteenth century. Their attitude is that of helpless childish
devotion; they cling to the Mother-idea of God and lose
themselves in fervid love which indeed sometimes expresses

56 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
itself sexually, if the expression may be allowed ; but it is by
predilection filial and results in ecstasis, in trance, and in
mystic " illumination." Vivekananda has made us ac
quainted with the striking personality of one of these,
Ramakrishna (who influenced Keshub Chandra Sen).
Ramakrishna (1833-1886) was proficient in Yoga, but he
held to the teaching of the Advaita Vedanta or pure monism,
though perhaps not very strictly. He was a Bhakta rather
than a Jfianin, that is a devotee rather than a philosopher.
" Knowing God and loving God are identical," he said, but
again " knowledge enters only the outer court ; into the
inner room of God only a lover can enter." But more im
portant still in his teaching is this: " One does not attain
to divine illumination till one becomes like a child." His
life was wholly devoted to his Mother Kali (the goddess),
whom he saw in visions. Such visions came to him in trance9
in which he identified himself with the divine. Even awake,
as priest of Kali, he so far identified himself with divinity
as to put upon his own head the flowers for her shrine and
take her offerings; till his world regarded him as really
divine. His. spiritual agonies are those of a mediaeval saint.
Sleepless and without food he sought God till " a torrent ot
spiritual light deluged his mind " and a divine voice reassured
him. He had the same experiences as had Caitanya, four
hundred years earlier. His Mother (God) he explained aa
the omniscient universal consciousness, with whom he re
mained " in perfect union " for six months unconscious, or
only partly conscious. He identified himself at one time
with Radha, at another with Rama and other forms of
divinity. He saw Jesus in a vision and for three days could
speak of nothing but Jesus and his love. These visions he
saw outside of himself, but " when they vanished they seemed
to have entered into him." Fits of God-consciousness came
upon him and at such times he became a different person. He
would speak of himself as knowing everything, able to do

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 57
anything, and proclaimed himself the soul of Krishna, of
Buddha, of Jesus, an incarnation of the divine. During his
trances he suffered severe bodily injuries, once by fire and
once breaking his wrist, without becoming aware of his hurt.
There is a real but rather intangible difference between
the Caitanya and Ramakrishna school of mystic devotion and
that of the erotic mystics, such as Vallabha. The latter, like
the Buddhist Theras who boast that they have " vomited
forth all love and things of beauty " and whose work is
wholly for themselves, are self-centered ; they seek their own
good or enjoyment. Miss Underhill distinguishes mysticism,
as that which gives, from magic, as that which gets. The
distinction is well known in India and the better mystics
renounce the getting of gold and glory. Hence they refuse
to perform miracles, though their supernatural powers may
make easy such feats as standing in the air, foretelling events,
etc. The mystic of the type of Ramakrishna seeks no gain,
though it is seldom that the emotional mystic of this sort de
votes himself, as did Ramakrishna, to a life of service. The
sensualist, on the other hand, religious or irreligious, is con
cerned only with self-satisfaction. No absolute school-dif
ference is admitted or to be expected in this regard, but
speaking generally we may say that there are these two types,
the one full of devotion with a sensuous or even a sensual
tinge, the other full of eroticism tinged with devotion of a
mystic sort. But whether devoted and self-sacrificing or
sensual and self-seeking, the emotional mystic of India in one
fundamental respect remains always the same: he believes
himself to be, through trance and vision, in possession of a
special gnosis whereby he intuitively beholds and in beholding
becomes one with God.11
11 Compare Vivekananda's history of Ramakrishna in Max Miil-
ler's Ramakrishna, His Life and Works, New York, 1899; and for a
general survey of the subject, N. Macnicol, Indian Theism from
the Vedic to the Muhammedan Period, Religious Quest pf India,

58 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Resume: Let us in conclusion glance back at the kinds
of mysticism we have been examining, and see how they
differ. In the oldest period the Upanishad-philosopher
reaches through a preliminary course of study a state in which
he, whose general moral excellence is taken for granted, and
this is true of all, becomes aware by a final process of dhyana,
beyond reason, of his own identity with God, the All-
Soul, and this knowledge is bliss, as the knower thereby be
comes immortal; he is, he is incarnate intelligence, one with
the cosmic being-intelligence-bliss, sac-chit-dnanda, that des
cribes the otherwise indescribable Soul of the Universe.
In the second class of mystics, the early Buddhists, the sub
ject attains insight into truth, the right relation of things,
through a series of trances, at the end of which he obtains,
with illumination or with the heavenly eye, a vision, some
times aided or prompted by a vision of Buddha, whereby in
a state of rapt contemplation he visualizes, usually with
ecstasy, by intuition and enters into a state of pure lucidity,
indescribable. He feels himself changed, purged from all
hindrances, living a god-like life. To this state he returns as
often as he will ; it is a methodical, self-induced hypnotic state.
There is no merging into a world-soul, no sense of union with
any Divine Power. It is not a perfectly passive state ; intel
lect and will bring it about ; he becomes conscious of infinite
space, of infinite consciousness, and passes into a state where
he appears to lose all consciousness, as he goes on into further
trance-experiences called ariipajhana. In this stage he attains
to a condition where he can ignore gravitation and opacity
London, 1915; L. D. Barnett, The Heart of India, Wisdom of the
East, London, 1908 ; R. S. Dineschandra, Literature of Modern Ben
gal, Calcutta, 1917; and for a modern believer's point of view,
Ananda Acharya's Brahmadarsanam or Intuition of the Absolute,
New York, 1911. For Christian parallels, see W. R. Inge, Chris
tian Mysticism, Oxford, 1913. In Mysticism and Logic, New York,
1918, Bertrand Russell has shown the logical weakness underlying
the mystic's position.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA 59
and can create a double of himself ; but these iddhis belong to
all Yoga experience.
Third. In the scientific Yoga, apart from similar magic,
the mystic becomes illumined by freeing himself as spirit
from matter. Here also there is no union ; on the contrary,
isolation is sought; and it is found by devotion or mainly
by certain exercises, both giving intuition surpassing reason.
In the fourth sort of mysticism, the mystic obtains in
tuition of the world-consciousness and of himself as a part
of it.
Finally, the fifth or emotional mystic discards philosophy
for an emotional thrill of union with the divine imaged as a
specific form of divinity.

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS
George Aaron Barton
To some it may seem irreverent to speak of the mysticism
of Jesus at all. Such may naturally say : " Jesus is one with
the Father. Mysticism is a form of human religion. How
can he have part or lot in it?" A little reflection should
convince any in whose minds this thought arises that the
objection that they feel is not valid. If there was in Jesus
an incarnation of God, Jesus possessed nevertheless a real
humanity. His was a human psychology; he shared our
human experiences. If this were not so, the incarnation
would be unreal. ' We may then without irreverence, even
from the most orthodox point of view, proceed to investigate
the life of Jesus with a view of discovering the mystical
elements in it. i
What, however, do we mean by mysticism? Previous
speakers in this course have doubtless defined it, but, as
I have not had the privilege of hearing their definitions, I
cannot be guided by them. In the interest of clearness,
therefore, I must tell you how I shall use the term. The
word " mysticism " has been employed to denote all sorts
of abnormal states and abnormal experiences. It accordingly
suggests to many the irrational and grotesque in religion.
If this were mysticism, then it would be necessary to say at
the start that Jesus was no mystic, for, in spite of the
efforts of such writers as De Loosten,1 Hirsch,2 and Binet-
1 Jesus Christus mom Standpunkt des Psychiaters, Bamberg, 1905.
2 Religion und Utilisation mom Standpunkt des Psychiaters,
Munich, 1908. 6b

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 61
Sangle s to make out Jesus a paranoiac, no more sane person
ality than his appears in the annals of mankind.
" Mysticism," says Granger, " is that attitude of mind
which divines and moves toward the spiritual in the common
things of life, not a partial and occasional operation of the
mind under the guidance of far-fetched analogies." Mysti
cism has also been defined as a " type of religion which is
characterized by an immediate consciousness of personal
relationship with the Divine." Again mystics are said to have
a vivid consciousness of the " Beyond " — one of the vague
impersonal terms by which philosophers like to avoid say
ing "God." Once more mysticism is said to consist of a
consciousness that " more than ourselves is impinging on the
skirts of our being." If these definitions of mysticism are
true, we should expect to find in Jesus the supreme mystic,
for it would be difficult to find another whose mind moved
as unswervingly as his " toward the spiritual in the common
things of life," not partially and occasionally, but as con
tinually and steadily as the needle points to the pole. Jesus
called the " Beyond " — " the more than ourselves that im
pinges on the skirts of our being " — " Father," and it is a
truth concerning him, though it has become a commonplace
to say it, that his consciousness of immediate communion
with the Father surpassed that of other men. It was the
atmosphere of his life; the inspiration of all his efforts; his
refreshment when weary. These, however, are statements
proof of which will be submitted below.
Before taking up that proof, it is necessary to say a word
concerning the sources of our knowledge of Jesus. In speak
ing to a group of well-trained theological students, it is unnec
essary to take time to explain why one does not employ the
Gospel of John as a source. It is a later interpretation of
the nature of Jesus, not an authentic biography of him. As
3 La folie de Jesus, Paris, 1910, 1911. Per contra, see, A.
Schweitzer, Expositor, Ser. 8, vol. vi, 328 ff., 439 ff., 554 ff.

62 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
one of the first great theological interpretations of him, it
is magnificent, but the Jesus depicted here moves across the
pages, not as one who shares the pains and mystical inspira
tions of our humanity, but as a heavenly Being from another
sphere. This is true, even if we recognize, as the writer
does, that in some respects the Fourth Gospel reflects the
mind and spirit of Jesus better than the Synoptics. Its
author's exalted conception of the deity of Christ blinded
his eyes to the mystical experiences which the Master shared
with humanity. The sources of information for our subject
are, accordingly, the Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptic Gos
pels, however, themselves rest upon sources, and concerning
these sources there are contending theories. According to
the most widely accepted theory two main sources underlie
Matthew and Luke. They are Mark (or an Ur-Marcus)
and Q. According to Professor Burton's theory, which ap
peals more to me, there are five sources, Mark, the Logia of
Matthew, a Galilean document, and two Peraean docu
ments. The question of analysis, however, will not seriously
affect our discussion. Whichever of the two views of the
sources one holds, most of the passages that come into con
sideration in estimating the mysticism of Jesus can be
traced back to a very early date. This is especially true,
if one admits, as I am compelled to do, that the arguments
of Harnack and Torrey by which the date of the Book
of Acts is pushed back to 63 A. d. are valid. In that case
the Gospel of Luke cannot have been written later than
60-61 a. d., and the Gospel of Mark and the other sources
would be still earlier.4
Bearing these remarks in mind, let us see what our sources
have to say of the mysticism of Jesus. The earliest indica
tion of a mystical tendency in Jesus comes to us from the
"infancy" narrative of Luke — a source outside all the
*This early date of the Synoptic Gospels has not yet been gen
erally accepted by New Testament scholars.

THE MYSTICISM OF JES|JS 63
main documents enumerated above. If the Gospel was writ
ten not later than the early part of 61 A. d., the document
must have been composed not more than thirty years from
the crucifixion. The event narrated is said, however, to
have occurred when Jesus was twelve years old. The evi
dence for it cannot, therefore, be called contemporary.
There is about the narrative, nevertheless, a verisimilitude,
an appropriateness, a consonance with the later habits and
character of Jesus, that lead one to accord it a high degree
of credibility. I refer, of course, to the words of Jesus
uttered when his parents, finding him in the Temple, re
proved him for having stayed behind alone in Jerusalem,
when they set out for home. " Did you not know," said
Jesus, " that I must be in the things of my Father ? " You
do not need to be reminded that interpreters differ as to
the meaning of his words. Some take " in the things of my
Father " to refer to the Temple, and so understand the boy
to say in substance: " It is strange that you should be at
a loss where to look for me! Did you not know that I
would be in my Father's house? " According to this inter
pretation, the mystical feeling of the youthful Jesus is very
manifest. Not many boys of twelve have been so conscious
of the Fatherhood of God as to linger joyfully in temple or
church after the family have gone home from sheer glad
ness to be in the Father's house! The more familiar inter
pretation of the phrase is, however, conveyed in the rendering
of the Authorized Version : " Wist ye not that I must be
about my Father's business?" If this be the meaning, the
words are still witness to a unique mysticism on the part
of the youthful Jesus, for his words betray an " attitude of
mind which divines and moves towards the spiritual." The
joy of the spiritual fascinated him, and so absorbed his
thought that he remained behind in the Temple with
strangers. If any doubt attaches to the historicity of the narrative

64 AT. ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
just considered, none whatever attaches to the account of
the baptism of Jesus. It forms a part of the Gospel of
Mark, one of our earliest sources, and was regarded as so
important that each of the other Gospels repeated it. It
forms a part of what Professor Bacon twenty years ago hap
pily denominated the autobiography of Jesus.5 I am not
sure but that Bacon has since changed his mind about the
matter, but, even if he has, in my judgment his cogent argu
ment stands. At the time that Jesus drew forth from Peter,
in the retirement at Caesarea Philippi, the confession " Thou
art the Christ," Jesus himself drew aside for a little the
veil of his inner life and recounted enough of his experience
at the Baptism and Temptation, so that they could under
stand on what, in his own soul, the Messianic claim rested.
The account of the Baptism and Temptation is then autobi
ographical material. According to the earliest form of this
narrative :
"Straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens >
rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him: and a
voice came out of the heavens, ' Thou art my beloved Son, in thee
I am well pleased.' "
These words clearly record an experience of Jesus.6 It
was Jesus who saw the Spirit descending; it was Jesus who
heard the voice saying: " Thou art my beloved Son." Af
ter the manner of Oriental speech, the language clearly de
scribes in objective terms an experience in the soul of Jesus.
This experience, was, however, so intense that Jesus heard
the voice speaking. Writers on mysticism tell us that, " In
many instances, especially with persons of peculiar psychical
5 "The Autobiography of Jesus," in the American Journal of
Theology, II, 1898, pp. 527-560.
6 The labored argument of writers like Nathaniel Schmidt,
Prophet of Nazareth, New York, 1905, p. 262 ff., by which it is at
tempted to show that all this material is invention, is peculiarly
unconvincing.

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 65
disposition, the mystical experience is attended with unusual
phenomena, such as automatic voices or visions, profound
body changes, swoons, or ecstasies. These physical phenom
ena are, however, only the more intense and excessive res
onances and reverberations which in milder degree accompany
all psychical processes." 7
From the point of view of healthy-minded experts on
mysticism this passage in Mark records a great mystical
experience of Jesus. It marked the point when his earlier
profound but not fully developed consciousness of intimate
relations with that Great Beyond that we call God reached
an epoch-making point in its development, and he realized
that he was in a unique sense the Son of God, and that,
whatever the real content of the Messianic expectations of
the seers of his race might be, it was his mission to fulfill them.
When one pictures to himself what such Messianic expecta
tions as those set forth iri the Enoch Parables (Enoch, chap
ters 46 and 48) meant to the devout Jew, what visions of
exalted destiny, of preexistence, and of future mission they
must have evoked — when, also, one considers what the fine
and sensitive psychical organization of Jesus must have been,
one realizes a little the intensity of the experience that was
his at the moment of his baptism. No wonder that his eye
seemed to see a vision, and his ear to hear a voice!
For the events which followed, we still have the authority
of the autobiography, for the account of the Temptation is
a part of the autobiography. The narrative of the Tempta>-
tion formed, according to one school of critics, a part of
the document Q ; according to another, a part of G, or the
Galilean document. In either case it was a part of an
evangel which was composed but little, if any, later than che
Gospel of Mark, and its historical value is as good.
It has been assumed above that the unique sonship of God
of which Jesus became conscious at the Baptism carried with
* Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, 1917, p. 84.

66 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
it a realization that he was the Messiah. This is conceded
by most writers on the subject,8 for it was in accord with
Old Testament usage. In the Old Testament the king was
the Messiah, the Anointed one, and the king is several times
called " son of God " ; cf. 2 Sam. 7:14; Ps. 82 : 6. While
the statement of Sanday is no doubt true, that for Jesus the
term is far from being exhausted by the holding of a certain
office, or the fulfilling of certain functions, such as those of
the Messiah — that it means for him the perfection of
sonship in relation to God — it doubtless included the
Messiahship, and at the moment of the experience the func
tions of the Messiahship appear to have been uppermost in
the thought of Jesus. It was necessary for him to ad
just himself to these hoary expectations, of the Jewish people
before he could center his thought upon the other far-reaching
implications of the term.
For this purpose he withdrew alone into the wilderness to
think. At first his thoughts were so absorbing that he forgot
entirely the demands of the body. From this intense reverie
he was at last awakened by the rude pangs of hunger. At
first the fact that he could still hunger startled him. Apoc-
alyptists had pictured the Messianic age as a time of unimag
inable material plenty. It was to be inaugurated by a great
feast. Could he who, alone in a barren wilderness, was
famishing without even a scrap of food really be the Messiah?
Such was the meaning of the first temptation. Then came
the suggestion, " Command this stone that it become bread."
Every wilderness in Palestine is full of stones. The Messiah
was a heavenly being. The age in which Jesus lived believed
that every real prophet, even, could work miracles. Natural
laws were hardly known; men lived in an Arabian-Nights
8 Cf. N. Schmidt, "Son of God," Encyclopedia Biblica; W. San
day, " Son of God in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible; J. Stalker,
" Son of God " in Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels;
B. W. Bacon, Jesus The Son of God, New Haven, 1911, p. 29 ff.

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 67
world. The suggestion was most natural. With this in
sight into the heart of things that characterizes Jesus always,
he repelled this suggestion. His mind reverted to the state
ment of Deut. 8:3: " Man does not live by bread alone,
but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of
Yahweh." In other words Jesus centered his thought in
this initial meditation upon his Messianic mission, not on
material things — bread, feasts, material miracles — but upon
the fact that real sonship consists in doing the will of God.
The Messiahship, as he viewed it, consisted, not in mirac
ulously escaping the common lot, but in doing the will of
God. The Messianic mission was not to enable men to
escape the common lot by living in a world where " on one
vine would be a thousand branches, and each branch would
produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster would produce
a thousand grapes, and each grape would produce a cor of
wine," 9 but to enable them to do the will of God in the
world of perplexity, difficulty, and struggle in which they
now live.
When these thoughts had passed through the mind of
Jesus, there was presented to him, according to the Gospel
of Luke (I believe the order of the Temptations in Luke
is the true psychological order) , a further prohlem as to the
kind of Messiah he would be. According to the Messianic
expectations of his race, the Messiah was to rule a world
wide domain. Before the mind's eye of Jesus the kingdoms
of the world passed in review. The graphic language of
the Gospel represents the devil as saying to him : " To thee
will I give all this authority and the glory of them: for it
hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I
give it. If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall
be thine." What does this language mean ? We shall not, I
believe, go far astray, if we understand it to mean that the
temptation was presented to Jesus to proclaim himself the
9 Apocalypse of Baruch, 29 : 5.

68 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
kind of Messiah the Jews were expecting, and to seek world-
dominion by force of arms. The ancient world had been for
centuries a scene of slaughter and plunder. There were no
international ethics. However much some Babylonian and
Egyptian kings may have sought to establish justice within
their own borders, the invasion and plunder, the subjugation
and pillage of other countries had been a praiseworthy pro
cedure for every monarch whose energy demanded an outlet.
To some, such pillage had been a regular trade. The cruel
ties practiced on such raids were limited only by the fertility
of the imaginations of the conquerors and the scientific knowl
edge at their disposal. Force had ruled. Might made right.
All the great empires had been built up on this basis. What
that means for mankind, the Germans have, in these past
year.,, made us vividly to realize. For his Messianic king
dom, the Jew had conceived no other basis than force.
Such justice as it would mete out was probably in his
thought usually limited to members of his own race. Was
this the kind of kingdom for Jesus to establish? He knew
that thousands of Jews would gladly rally to his standard,
if he would but unfurl the banner of the Messiah, and that
they would shed their last drop of blood to win world-em
pire. This was the natural, the easy way. Along this path
lay popularity, glory, and revenge upon century-old enemies.
The vision tempted even Jesus for one brief moment, then
he put it aside. Such unethical employment of force would
be serving Satan. It could establish no kingdom of God.
At the best it would but gain the mastery over the bodies
of men, while every soul worthy of the name would seethe
with hatred and rebellion. " Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God and him only thou shalt serve," was the thought that
prevailed in his mind. That is, Thou shalt love and rever
ence justice, kindness, unselfishness, or rather the One who
embodies all these. Thou shalt give thy life to establish
kindness, fairness, unselfishness, and love in the hearts of

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 69
men. Thou shalt be a Messiah to establish a spiritual king
dom, in which the souls of men shall be attached to their
sovereign by the adamantine chains of affection, not by force
of arms. It shall be a little heaven of peace; not a hell of
hatred and intrigue.
This choice on the part of Jesus banished the possibility of
a career of outward glory, and imposed upon him the humbler
role of an ethical teacher. We can now see that ultimately
it involved the choice of the cross, though there is some reason
to think that the cross was not then consciously present to
the mind of Jesus.
The last of the temptations of Jesus — the temptation to
cast himself down from a pinnacle or wing of the Temple —
has been considered by some scholars as too fantastic to be
historical. Grant if you please, that the form in which it is
stated seems fantastic to us, the temptation was, if we are
not mistaken, a very natural one, and the most subtle of all.
Half of the pleasure of holding a prominent position is, to
most men, the fact that their fellows know it and honor one
for it. Closely interwoven with the Messianic expectations
was the conception that men would honor the Messiah and
stand in awe of him. He was to come on the clouds
of heaven; every eye was to see him. The choice that
Jesus had just made put all that behind him, but, if we
may believe the record, Jesus was human enough so that
for one brief moment human admiration and applause
made an appeal even to him. Might he not, after all, do
something spectacular, that would give God an opportunity
publicly to show in a miraculous way that Jesus was his
Son, so that men might marvel, stand in awe, and do rever
ence? This is what the temptation really means. Jesus,
however, repelled the thought with another, again taken
from Deuteronomy, " Thou shalt not tempt (or make trial
of) the Lord thy God." The appropriateness of this Deu
teronomic quotation may not at first be obvious to every

70 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
reader. Its aptness lies in the fact that to go into unneces
sary danger that God might deliver him was really to create
an artificial situation to put God to the test. Some of. us
have known people who were always putting our friendship
to the test by such means. For example, in walking with
us they may drop behind to see whether we care enough for
them to stop and wait. They are always creating artificial
situations in order to put our friendship or love to the test.
They are constantly putting us to trial, or, in the good old
English meaning of the word, " tempting " us. The main
spring of all such conduct lies in part in an exaggerated
self-consciousness, and in part in lurking doubts of one's
friends. When for one brief moment the desire for spectac
ular fame and applause tempted Jesus, he repelled the thought
by a recognition of its real character. He did not doubt
God; he would not put God to the test. He would take
the prosaic, even the tragic path of humble duty, and leave
God to vindicate his choice to men in his own time and way.
Thus his mystic insight into the nature of God and his com
munion with him led him to an appreciation of values that
would make uniquely appropriate to him the words of Alex
ander Smith: I've learned to prize the quiet lightning-deed,
Not the applauding thunder at its heels,
Which men call Fame.
I have dwelt thus long on the experience of Jesus at his
Baptism and Temptation, because it illustrates most clearly
the reality of his mystic experience, and also the fundamental
way in which inrushes of conscious correspondence with the
" Beyond " shaped the course of his choices, his ministry, and
his teaching.
Such an interpretation of these narratives is, for our time,
analogous to that which, for his time, St. Paul made. In
Phil. 2 : 5-1 1 he makes a running comparison between the

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 71
temptation of Adam and the Temptation of Christ. Adam,
made in the image of God, was tempted to become like God,
yielded to the temptation, and lost his Eden. Jesus, being
in the form of God, says St. Paul, " counted not the being on
an equality with God a thing to be grasped," but . . .
" humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death." . . .
" Wherefore also God highly exalted him and gave unto him
the name that is above every name." This last statement is
more bold than a modern theologian would dare to make.
If implies, when the Jewish language of Paul is put into
modern phrase, that Jesus, in consequence of the choices made
at the time of the Temptation, under the illumination of his
mystic experience, won his deity. It is well known that in
Jewish thought the name summed up the attributes of deity.10
In telling his disciples of his experiences at the Baptism
and during the Temptation Jesus drew aside the veil from
his inner life to an unusual degree. Ordinarily during his
ministry he was too intent on making the Father known to
men to speak of himself. Nevertheless there are two or three
occasions on record during his later ministry when we can
detect the evidences of mystic experience.
Before speaking of these, we should pause to note Jesus'
habit of prayer. On two occasions after days of exhausting
work with multitudes — one in Capernaum, when Simon's
mother-in-law was healed; the other after the five thousand
were fed — we find Jesus withdrawing to a solitude to pray.
(Cf. Mark 1:35; 6:46; Matt. 14:23; Luke 5: 16; 6: 12.)
During the labor of ministry he had apparently depleted,
so he felt, his spiritual resources, and consequently sought
opportunity to be alone with the Father, that, by mystic
communion, the fountains of energy might be replenished.
Another definite occasion, in the account of which we can
detect the marks of mystical experience on the part of Jesus,
10 See Lev. 24:11 and the Talmud passim.

72 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
was the Transfiguration. The accounts of the Transfigura
tion are, as we have them, a mixture of what Jesus expe
rienced, what the disciples saw, and the inferences which
they made from what they saw. Probably those inferences
led them to heighten in some respects what they actually be
held, as memory placed their vision in new perspective.
The occasion was a crisis in the ministry of Jesus. After
months of association with his disciples as a great Teacher,
during which he had called himself the Son of Man, a term
which concealed his Messianic claim, while it had in it
also the potentialities of revealing it, he retired with the
disciples to Caesarea Philippi in order that, withdrawn from
the crowds, he might prepare them for the future. There
he drew from Peter the confession : " Thou art the Mes
siah," commended Peter for his insight, and later rebuked
him for his stupidity and presumption. It was after this, as
he contemplated going to Jerusalem to certain death, that
he took Peter, James, and John and went up into a mountain
to pray. As the disciples gazed and as he was praying " the
fashion of his countenance was altered," says Luke.
Matthew heightens the statement declaring: " His face did
shine as the sun." This has the marks of a mystical expe
rience. " Prayer of illumination, altered face, changed
form, glorified figure, radiation of light, have marked many
mystics." xl For the Master himself we may infer, then,
that the prayer involved a mystic experience. The outward
manifestation of this experience was visible to the disciples.
But what of the other features of the narrative — the ap
pearance of Moses and Elijah? It has long seemed to the
writer that this part of the account represents a psychologi
cal experience on the pait of the disciples. They had but
recently recognized his Messiahship, and they are now led
in their thought to associate him with Moses and Elijah,
the two great heroes of their national history. Perhaps their
11 Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, 89 b.

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 73
thought was helped to this by the transfigured appearance
of his face, which suggested the shining of the face of Moses
as he came down from the mountain (cf. Ex. 34:29-35).
Thus they put Jesus as the Messiah, in thinking of him,
in proper perspective. It seems probable that in thinking
of him in this new perspective they gradually extended the
shining of his face till they thought of his garments as
shining also. Even if it be true that the narrative now con
tains in part a psychological experience of the disciples, it
also contains a historical mystical experience of Jesus.
Another saying of Jesus, that in Matt. 1 1 : 25-27, points
to a mystical experience. As the text stands it indicates that
at a definite point of time Jesus realized the functions of a
revealer of God to men which his sonship imposed upon him.
This point of time apparently lay between the Temptation
and the Transfiguration. The passage runs:
"At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things
from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes :
yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things
have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth
the Son save the Father; neither doth any man know the Father,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him."
You will remember that following these words is Jesus'
invitation " Come unto me all ye that labor. . . . Take my
yoke upon you."
This passage has been a sort of storm-center of discussion
in recent years. It is the only passage in the Synoptic nar
ratives in which the Father and Son are contrasted in a
manner somewhat like that of the Fourth Gospel. Of
course to writers of the point of view of Nathaniel Schmidt
the passage is unhistorical.12 They cannot conceive Jesus as
entertaining a conception of God's Fatherhood or of his
12 Cf. Prophet of N attar eth, New York, p. 151 ff.

74 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
own Sonship that was at all unique. Notwithstanding the
doubts of such writers, the attestation of the passage proves
it to have been a part of one of the early pre-synoptic sources.
At least that is true of verses 25-27. According to Burton's
school of criticism 13 this passage formed a part of the first
Perean Document; according to the prevailing school, it
was a logion from Q, a source as old as or older than the
substratum of Mark. Harnack has subjected the text to a
searching analysis,14 and recognizes that it was a genuine
part of Q except the words which place the Son and Father
in a unique relation to each other. These were, he thinks,
due to the compiler of our first Gospel, — an opinion the
arguments for which do not seem convincing. Since the
Logion occurs in Luke 10:21, 22, and there includes these
words, it is but fair to assume that they were a part of Q or
of P', or of the early document, by whatever name we call
it. Any doubt as to this is purely subjective and not sup
ported by external evidence.
But even if the saying occurred in Q (or P') this, in the
minds of many, does not prove that these words come from
Jesus. Allen in the International Critical Commentary
claims that there is an undoubted dependence of the words
in Matt. 11 : 25-30 on Ecclus. 51, and gives a list of phrases
that occur in both texts that is very striking.15 He was not
the first to note this, and others have made much more of it
than he. Loisy and Montefiore erect upon this basis, forti
fied by some other parallels from the Synoptics, the theory
that these are not words of Jesus at all, but a sort of early
Christian hymn, in which Jesus is exalted by identifying him
with the eternal Wisdom, who alone knows God fully.16
13 Cf. D. R. Wickes, The Sources of Luke's Perean Section, Chi
cago, 1912, p. 67 f.
^Spriiche und Reden Jesu, Leipsig, 1907, p. 18 f., 200-216.
" Commentary on Matthew, New York, 1907, p. 124.
16 Cf. A. Loisy, Les evangiles synoptiques, Paris, 1907, p. 91, n. 3,

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 75
It must be said, however, that possible as this view appears, it
does not impress one who puts Matt. 1 1 : 25-30 and Ecclus.
51 side by side and reads them in connection. Sirach's
thanksgiving and praise to God are in a vein so different from
the words of Jesus under consideration, that it can only be
said that, if the logion in Matthew consciously quotes his
words, the quotation was made by a genius so much greater
than Sirach that he created a new and much more beautiful
whole. To the question of the identification of Jesus with
the Divine Wisdom we shall return in a moment.
It is not so certain, however, that Ben Sirach furnished the
intellectual ancestry of the passage. Pfleiderer had regarded
it as an adumbration of Paulineism, believing it to have been
suggested by I Cor. 15 : 25-27.17 Bacon, on the other hand,
finds the literary ancestry of the passage in Isaiah 29 : 9—
24.18 These opinions indicate that there are many possi
bilities, if literary ancestry is to be traced.
If, however, the passage is from Q (or P') the ques
tion remains to be determined whether it represents the
words of Jesus or is a free composition of the author of the
document. Wellhausen holds the words " no man knoweth
the Father but the Son " to be an interpolation 19 — ap
parently made by the author of the document. It must be
said, however, that if the words are a part of Q (or P')
and if we are compelled to push back the date of the Synoptic
Gospels to the time indicated above, the document must have
been composed within a decade or two of the Crucifixion.
If there is any relation between this logion and Paul, Paul
might more easily be dependent on the document than the
document on him. Suppose one were to grant that in the
logion the Son is conceived somewhat after the manner of
and The Gospel and the Church, New York, 1909, pp. 93-96, and
Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels, London, 1909, p. 606.
17 Unchristentum, Berlin, 1888, p. 445.
13 Jesus the Son of God, New Haven, 1911, pp. 7, 8.
10 Das Evangelium Matthaei, Berlin, 1904, p. 57 f.

76 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
the Divine Wisdom in later pre-Christian Judaism, there
is abundant evidence that these conceptions were as accessi
ble in the third and fourth decades of the first century as in
the seventh or the ninth.20 If the writer of Q (or P')
sought to bring Jesus into relation with Wisdom as early
as the third or fourth decade of the iirst century, one has
a right to ask, what led him to do this? Would he be likely
to do it, if there had been no authority for it in the reported
sayings of Jesus himself? Is it not more probable, if Jesus
claimed to be the Messiah, that his own consciousness was
brought into relief against the background of the Wisdom
speculations just as it was against the background of the
Messianic speculations than that it should have occurred so
early to a Christian disciple to consider Jesus as Wisdom
incarnate? Surely later Christian belief that the hypostases
of Wisdom and Word were incarnate in Jesus must have
had some starting point, and, if we can trace it back to with
in a decade of Jesus, it appears to be more fitting to con
sider the logion as genuine, to find that starting point in
Jesus' own consciousness, and to take this passage as reflect
ing a genuine experience of his.
To this conclusion J. Rendel Harris has apparently re
cently come.21 In thus treating the passage as a genuine
word of Jesus, we follow in the footsteps of so thorough and
untheological a writer as Oscar Holtzmann.22 If the words
are words of Jesus they represent an enlargement of his con
sciousness of his mission due, apparently, to that intensify
ing of the powers which mystic communion with that Father,
whom psychologists delight to call the " Beyond " gives.
" At that time " — some definite moment of experience the
20 For a statement of the pre-Christian Jewish conception of the
DivineWisdom see Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums in neutest-
amentlichen Zeitalter, Berlin, 1903, pp. 336-350.
21 See his Origin of the Prologue to St. John's Gospel, Cambridge,
I9'7i PP- 57-6?-
22 See his Life of Jesus, London, 1904, p. 284.

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 77
date of which is unknown to us — Jesus experienced such
union with the Father and became conscious of such unique
knowledge of him, that he realized in a new way that his
person was the instrument of the revelation of the Father to
men. One other experience in the life of Jesus remains to be
considered, his agony in Gethsemane ( Matt. 26 : 36 ff. ;
Mark 14:32ft.; Lu. 22:39ff.). In the shadow of the
shameful death that was impending he prated ; " and being
in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became
as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
This agony of sweat is declared to be psychologically true
to nature and to bear the genuine marks of the mystic ex
perience.23 The agony was great, but communion with the
Father in prayer brought the needed relief. Into the soul
of Jesus came peace and his spirit was flooded with calm
strength. Thus through communion with the " Beyond " he
gained strength for the supreme act of devotion, and went
with quiet power to face the cross which sums up in itself
the tragedy of the ages. One other experience of Jesus —
that upon the cross — should, perhaps, be brought into con
nection with that in Gethsamane. In Mark and Matthew
we are told that Jesus cried with a loud voice : " My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34;
Matt. 27: 46). Apparently this was an agony of prayer like
that in Gethsemane, only still more intense. In mortal
agony, as the moment of dissolution approached, he missed
for a moment that mystic sense of the environing Father
that had so often sustained him in moments of lesser trial.
The agonizing cry seems to have reestablished the mystic
communion which made him once more master of himself.
Mark and Matthew tell us (Mark 15:37; Matt. 27:50),
that a little later Jesus cried with a loud voice again, and
yielded up his spirit, though they do not tell us what he
23 Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, p. 89.

78 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
said. Luke tells us (Luke 23:46) that his words on this
occasion were: "Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit." The Fourth evangelist transforms them (John
19:30) into: " It is finished." Since Luke is the earlier
Gospel and is not pervaded by the theological presupposi
tions of John, we may here follow Luke. It would seem,
then, that the agonized cry, " Why hast thou forsaken me? "
may well be understood as a cry for the reestablishment of
a sense of God's mystic presence at the moment of supreme
need, and that the calm commending of his spirit to the
Father bears witness that that God in whom he, much more
than we do, lived and moved and had his being, became
once more to his consciousness the vitalizing atmosphere of
his soul.
In conclusion let us remind ourselves that Jesus speaks
little of himself, and that the occasions when we can detect
in his life experiences that may be studied as " mystic," if
we take the word to mean some remarkable inrush of vitaliz
ing power from the Beyond, are few indeed. It is only on
four or five occasions that the veil is for a moment drawn
aside from his inner life. These glimpses, however, reveal
to us the secret of his strength.
The depth of his moral insight, his certainty of God, the
clearness with which he read human motives and human
needs, his sympathy with nature and his understanding
of it, and above all his own inner purity, strength, and un
selfish love — qualities which make him unique among men
— all indicate that many such mystic experiences were his
and that from that great " Beyond " that the theologian calls
God he constantly drew the nurture that made these quali
ties possible.
It would be more correct to say that experiences which, in
the great mystics are occasional only, constituted the normal
state of Jesus' consciousness. What in the best of his
disciples have been rare moments to be cherished in memory

THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS 79
appear to have been in him the warp and woof of daily life.
He saw truth and God. These he knew, apparently, not by
processes of reasoning and logic, but by vision. He illus
trated his own beatitude concerning the pure in heart — he
saw God. This is a quality, possessed in lesser degree, to be
sure, but still possessed by the greatest mystics. For them,
too, truth is a matter, not of reasoning, but of vision. If
one cannot perceive truth in a like immediate way, the mystic
has no adequate argument with which to persuade him —
nothing but the authority of his own insight. How char
acteristic this was of Jesus his hearers noted early. in his
ministry. " He taught them as one having authority and
not as the scribes" (Matt. 7:29).
This note of immediacy and authority is found on nearly
every page of the Synoptic Gospels. Two or three examples
are: " Even so there shall be joy in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth " (Luke 15: 17) ; "The Kingdom of
heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed " (Matt. 13:31);
" Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one
of them is forgotten in the sight of God?" (Luke 12:6).
These are but examples. Many more will readily occur to
every reader.
Whatever the topic, the discourse of Jesus moved in this
realm of immediate vision, which only the mystic approaches.
It would appear, then, that, although we can trace certain
moments of crises in the mystic experiences of Jesus, the
great characteristic of his mysticism was his continual living
in the atmosphere of the " Beyond."
In other words, in Jesus the mystic experience was not un
usual, but constant and normal. Jesus was the master-mystic
of the ages. No personality known to us has drawn from
the Infinite so much of all that is lovely, inspiring, and
creative as he. To view Jesus as a mystic is to gain a view
of his personality through some of the favorite concepts of
our age, — a view which interprets to us afresh those quali-

80 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
ties in him that made the men who had the privilege of con
tact with him realize that, as never before, they had come
near to God.

THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL
Benjamin Wisner Bacon
§ I. The Previous Question
Preliminary to the question of the psychologist: What
were the experiences of the author considered? lies the ques
tion of the critic: What are our sources of information?
Even in the case of contemporaries it makes a difference
whether the record which serves as our basis of judgment
be derived at first or second hand ; and if we are so fortunate
as to possess the mystic's own account of his experience it
still is a matter of greatest moment whether the record was
prepared for the purpose to which the scientific investigator
puts it. It may be, conceivably, a dispassionate report of
calm self-scrutiny, or again it may be an indignant polemic,
a protest again slander, a rhapsody of ecstatic feeling. If
the author be writing for scientific purposes we may treat
his utterances accordingly. We must use a different kind
of interpretation if he writes as a religious enthusiast, pas
sionately conscious of the inadequacy of language, and eagerly
availing himself of more or less conventionalized forms and
symbols of devout imagination.
When in addition the attempt is made to overleap the
gap of well-nigh two millenniums in time, and the culture
and civilization of a non-Aryan race, the need of historical
criticism, and of historical interpretation, becomes ten-fold
more apparent, as a preliminary to any judgment worth
having concerning the mystical " experiences " of an author.
Si

82 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
If anything were lacking to prove the necessity of such
preliminary enquiry it would be supplied by a recent
example1 of uncritical procedure, in which what is called
" psychological criticism " is applied to the character and
teaching of Jesus in much the same way that one might
apply it to that of Moses from the Pentateuch, David from
the Psalms, or Isaiah from the composite literature covering
several centuries that has attached itself to the prophet's
name. Not that a real and genuine " psychological criticism "
might not be serviceable if ultimately applied even to these
dim, majestic figures of the past. Not that it is inapplicable
even in the case of Jesus, difficult as it is for the historical
and literary critic to determine the precise nature of his
teaching and outline of his career. But the preliminary
studies are not wanting. We have a whole literature de
voted to the " Messianic Consciousness of Jesus." And in
this valuable literature the specific problem of the " Es
chatology " of Jesus, or his conception of his relation to the
Coming Age of world-renewal, takes the fore-front of the
discussion. Such " psychological criticism " is both inevit
able, and (if conducted competently, in a spirit of reverence
and devotion to the truth) is even ardently to be desired.
For what do we mean by " knowing " and " appreciating "
the spirit of Jesus, if not bringing it into nearest practicable
relation to the spirit of men of his own times, such as
John the Baptist and Paul, of the great leaders of Israel's
religious past, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and so (by this
same road of comparison) into relation with men of our own
times and ultimately with our own consciousness. Such
" psychological criticism " we admit to be both inevitable
and necessary. But those who have made real contributions
in this field, the Schenkels, Baldenspergers, Wredes,
1 G. Stanley Hall, Jesus Christ in the Light of Psychology, vols.
I and II, New York, 1917.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 83
Schweitzers, Sandays, Winstanleys and others, did not begin
to build at the top of the chimney. They sought first of all
as competent critics and philologians to know the nature
and relative value of the documents on which they relied
for their data, and the meaning of the language employed,
and thus laid a foundation.
In the case of St. Paul there is more immediate reason
for the application of a modest and methodical " psychologi
cal criticism " than in the case of his great Master. For
whereas the very fact of any mystical experience of Jesus is
widely open to question, Paul explicitly and emphatically
proclaims it in his own case. At the same time there is also
greater hope of useful results. For psychological analysis
is obviously more practicable where the basis of study is a
body of admittedly authentic writings by the character to
be studied, rather than a body of anonymous, undated nar
ratives, extremely diverse in character and notoriously diffi
cult to harmonize, as to which we can be sure of almost
nothing beyond the fact that not one word was written by
the subject himself, and that their very language is only his
in translation.
As it is, the psychologist, expert or inexpert, has not waited
to ask whether in the case of Paul his enquiry was prac
ticable and promising or not. The very necessity of the case
demands it. Every apologist for the Christian faith, since
the Apostle himself answered to Festus for his own rational
ity, finds it necessary to treat of Paul's mystical experiences.
We have no other direct and well authenticated attestation
of the central facts of our religion, no other first-hand wit
ness to the resurrection faith. No wonder then that we
have scores, if not hundreds, of attempts, more or less satis
factory according as they are based on a wider or narrower
foundation of kindred observed phenomena, to classify, in
terpret, explain, make intelligible, that religious experience
of Paul which centers upon his conversion. Historically the

84 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
rock foundation of the Church was the new birth of Peter's
faith, when the gates of Sheol were found to have yielded
to the Prince of life. But Peter has left us no record of his
experience. For Christian apologetic the starting-point
must be that vision of the glorified Jesus which gave to Paul
his apostleship and his gospel in one.
The reason for this central importance of the, mystical
experience of Paul is not far to seek; but it is so commonly
forgotten or ignored that I may venture to remind you of
the facts. Not only are the Pauline Epistles by much the
oldest New Testament writings, antedating by half a genera
tion the most ancient of extant Gospels, they are actually
the only admittedly apostolic record that we possess. Only
one of the writings attributed by church tradition to the
Apostle John contains the name of the reputed author, and
that is Revelation, the most violently disputed of all from
the very beginning. Matthew is admittedly not apostolic
in its present form. Of the many writings purporting to be
the work of Peter, only one, the so-called First Epistle, has
claims to authenticity which are generally deemed worthy of
serious consideration; and what First Peter contains that is
not borrowed from Paul is a quantity so minute as to be
almost imperceptible. Outside Paul, then, there are no
writings of admitted apostolicity, and Paul himself was not
an Apostle in that sense of the word which most appeals
to the secular historian. But he is our only first-hand wit
ness for the ultimate facts of gospel story.
I do not by any means wish to be understood as implying
that without Paul we should know nothing about the char
acter, teaching and career of Jesus, and of the origins of the
Church. Quite the contrary. By far the larger part of our
knowledge comes from sources independent of Paul. But
all this independent knowledge would lose its most indis
pensable support and guarantee, were it not for the datable,
signed, and superbly authenticated Pauline Epistles. When,

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 85
therefore, it becomes a question of establishing so vital a
fact of our religion as the appearances of the risen Christ
to his disciples, it would be hopeless to try to establish any
thing without the testimony of First Corinthians, the best
authenticated of all the writings of the New Testament,
a writing (I think it safe to say) as well authenticated as
any of classical antiquity.
As we know, Paul correlates his own experience with
that of all the other witnesses of the resurrection in I Cor.
15:1-11, a survey of the testimony quite adequate for the
purpose, but completely different from the story told in any
one of the Gospels, and having scarcely a point of contact
with theirs. As between Paul's record and that of Synoptic
story no historian could hesitate for a moment. We are
all familiar with the often quoted declaration that the testi
mony of the Gospels to the data of the resurrection story
would suffice to establish the fact in any court of law. The
statement is made by one among other writers who counts
the training of a lawyer among his many qualifications.
And yet even a child should perceive its harmful exaggera
tion. It might perhaps be true if the Gospels were the
signed and sealed deposition of competent first-hand wit
nesses. As it is, they are unsigned, undated reports gathered
forty or more years after the event, dependent on unknown
sources at several, perhaps many, removes from the eye-wit
nesses. What would such documents be worth without the
corroborative evidence of at least one eye-witness? The
authenticated record of Paul is not only by far the oldest
testimony, not only is he the only witness who comes for
ward with the definite statement " I saw " ; it is his state
ment which supports and authenticates all the rest. It is
his statement, therefore, by reference to which the concur
rent tradition must also be weighed, valued and understood.
Because there can be neither rational defense of the
fundamental truths of Christianity, nor historically adequate

86 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
explanation of its origin, without consideration (as scientific
as the conditions allow) of the religious experience of Paul,
there is no lack in number of such treatises. The whole
history of apologetics teems with them, from the Book of
Acts, with its thrice-repeated narrative of Paul's conversion,
down to the present day. The great majority of these ac
counts are as innocent of scientific criticism as they are of
scientific psychology. They have the fault which is no less
conspicuous in the traditional apologist than in the self-ap
pointed champion of " psychological criticism." They do not
verify their data. Now the modern apologist is quite awake
to the uselessness of invoking the ghost of canonical in
fallibility. No appeal to inerrant inspiration will excuse him
from the task of authentication of his sources. Nor can
the " psychological critic " be excused. He too must face the
question whether the data on which he bases his inferences
with regard to Paul are drawn from an anonymous writer
of unknown date, repeating for apologetic or homiletic pur
poses, with variations far from easy to reconcile, a story
which has come to him from no one knows what sources,
and by what channels ; or whether, on the contrary, they are
drawn from the very words of Paul himself in his best
authenticated epistles.
For reasons already sufficiently set forth, psychological
criticism in this field is indispensable. Shall we, then, have
a William James, superadding his knowledge of con
temporary religious psychology to the knowledge of the his
torians and philological experts familiar with the literature
of Hellenistic religious mysticism, building upon the work of
historical and literary critics competent to decide most points
of documentary testimony? Or shall we continue the type
of architecture which begins building at the top, ignoring the
whole work of biblical scholarship? For in recent years
there have been many able attempts to bring Acts and the
Pauline Epistles into right relations with one another and

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 87
with their environment, important developments of philology
and literary criticism, which have shed new floods of light
on the meaning of Paul's own mystical language by com
paring it with that of contemporary religious mysticism.
§ 2. Letters vs. Tradition
In several instances the biblical writings furnish instruc
tive contrasts between the religious author and leader, living
before us in the beacon light of his own impassioned message,
and the same individual as depicted in later tradition and
legend. From the account of Isaiah's life work in the Book
of Kings we should obtain almost no inkling of the true
grandeur of the prophet as revealed in the sublime ideals
to which his writings are dedicated; just as conversely the
Isaian poems exhibit no trace whatever of the externals
of wonder-tale related in Kings. The contrast between the
Pauline Epistles and the Book of Acts is a closely parallel
case. In the Epistles we see the life of Paul from the inside.
The mystical experience which made him an Apostle of the
faith he had persecuted, and which inspired him with a divine
gospel for the world, here shines through on almost every
page, although there is nowhere a detailed account of the
occurrence. Whenever Paul is defending either his apostle-
ship or his gospel this mystical experience is presupposed.
It is the gold background against which any adequate por
trait of the missionary and martyr must be painted.
But defense of his apostleship and gospel is the prime
motive of the principal writings of Paul. The four " major
epistles" (so-called), Galatians, First and Second Cor
inthians, Romans, the famous four which Baur justly laid
down as the unassailable foundation for a constructive
criticism of all New Testament literature, are chiefly occu
pied with precisely this. In Galatians the first two chapters
are a defense of Paul's apostleship, beginning with a refer
ence to his conversion (1: 10-17; 2:7-8). The following

88 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
three chapters are a defense of the gospel he had on that oc
casion received from God.
In Corinthians and Romans the two streams divide. The
Corinthian correspondence is largely concerned with the de
fense of Paul's apostolic authority. In the First Epistle we
obtain at intervals glimpses of the opposition which denied
it, and repeated references to the vision of the glorified Lord
on which it rested (I Cor. 9: i; 15:8-9). A much more
active and aggressive defense is carried on in the painful
"four chapter letter" II Cor. 10: 1-13: io,2 while in
the latest portion, which seems to include II Cor. 1 : 1-9: 15
with exception of the early fragment 6: 14-7: i,s the central
theme is a panegyric of the " ministry of the new covenant "
(II Cor. 3: 1-6: 10) in which the victorious Apostle looks
back over the hard-fought conflict for his divine authority,
glorifying the office of " ambassador for God " ; he does this,
however, not as a matter of concern to himself alone, but
on behalf of all conscious like himself of the same divine
commission. l
As a whole, then, the Corinthian correspondence is oc
cupied with a continuation of the defense of Paul's apostle
ship begun in Galatians. True his mystical gospel is also
vindicated against the gnosis of the Apollos party in I Cor.
1:18-2:16. It appears again in support of his resurrec
tion doctrine in I Cor. 15: 1-58; II Cor. 4:7-5: 10. But
in the Corinthians Paul's mystical experience appears mainly
in defense of his apostleship; the defense of his gospel is
incidental. If, then, Gal. 1 : n-17; 2: 7-8 is justly empha
sized as giving us in connection with the references already
specified in First Corinthians (9: 1 ; 15: 7-8) our authorita-
2 Probably taken from the letter referred to as a letter of self-
commendation written " with many tears " in II Cor. 2: 3-4; 7:8-12.
Several Corinthian fragments appear to have been combined in
" Second " Corinthians.
3 Perhaps a remnant of the letter urging the church to better
discipline in matters of the sex relation referred to in I Cor. 5 : 9-13.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 89
tive, first-hand, indisputably authentic corroboration of the
story of Paul's conversion related in Acts, the supplementa
tion or corroboration from the. Epistles should never be per
mitted to stop here. The most vital element of all is
neglected if (as is usually the case) we fail to associate with
the data of Acts, Galatians and First Corinthians the great
defense of the " ministry of the new covenant " in II Cor.
3 : 18-4:6; 5 : 16-21. For this is Paul's fuller setting forth
of what the experience of Apostolic vocation meant to him,
and should mean to others. It tells us how and why he felt
himself to be " an ambassador for God."
Finally Romans, as has been recognized since the close
of, the second century,4 is a systematic exposition of Paul's
gospel. Naturally it leaves the now settled question of
apostolic authority in the background while interpreting
Paul's gospel at greater length than Galatians. But in Rom.
7 : 7-8 : 1 1 we find the same application as in Second
Corinthians of Paul's personal mystical experience as the
norm and standard. His gospel of life in the Spirit which
makes conquest of sin and death is the avowed reflection
of his own soul-crisis, and for this reason he employs the
first person singular.
Later epistles such as Philippians, Colossians and Ephe
sians (among which only Ephesians is any longer seriously
attacked on the score of authenticity) add elements of value
to our understanding of Paul's mystical experience;5 but
even without them we should be adequately informed as to
all its essential factors, and the significance which the Apostle
himself found in them. For our present purpose, which
does not extend beyond the single all-important incident of
the vision on the road to Damascus and its implications,
4 So the Muratorian Fragment (ca. 185 a.d), "setting forth at
length (prolixius) Christ as primary to all that the scriptures
direct." 5 See e. g. Phil. 3:1-14, 20-21; 7:5-11, and Eph. 3:1-12.

go AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
it would suffice if only the four " major epistles " were re
garded as authentic, and Ephesians — yes, and even Colos
sians and Philippians — were treated as deutero-Pauline,
subordinated to the rank of secondary reflections of the
Apostle's experience and teaching.
The wealth of this first-hand, direct testimony of Paul
himself to the inward nature of his mystical experience in
the event which gave him both his apostolic calling and
his God-taught gospel, is as yet far from adequate apprecia
tion. On the other hand we only tend to obscure it if we
over-value the secondary, hearsay accounts of an unknown,
anonymous apologist in the Book of Acts. Even were the
three more or less conflicting accounts of this later narrative
traceable to an eyewitness they could not tell us the really
important things. Their portrait would no more nearly
correspond to the real Paul than Xenophon's Socrates to the
Socrates of Plato. Indeed every thoughtful man must
realize upon a mental survey of the book that the author
of Acts has no idea of describing the religious experience of
Paul, and could not if he would. He tells the story of the
transformation of the arch-persecutor of the Church into
its most efficient evangelist, and tells it mainly as an evidence
of divine intervention to save the brotherhood of the faith.
"Luke" (if we adopt the traditional name for this un
known Autor ad Theophilum) takes no pains to har
monize discordant details, and leaves discrepancies of the
most flagrant character between his story of Paul's earlier
ministry and that given by Paul himself. There has indeed
been organized of late years under the leadership of Harnack
a somewhat romantic attempt to carry back the Book of
Acts to what still appears to me (and certainly not long ago
to the great majority of critics) an absurdly early date.
Advocates of a high doctrine of Scripture inerrancy have
welcomed this dangerous German ally, and our own Pro
fessor Torrey, on quite independent, almost purely lin-

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 91
guistic grounds has committed himself to a dating even
earlier still. But Professor Torrey himself will not main
tain that the author of Acts is a good witness to the re
ligious experience of Paul, or that we should do well to
rely on his accounts of the Apostle's conversion and early
career for anything more than the outline story as it would
naturally be reported in the churches through the uncritical
medium of pulpit anecdote. The speeches of Acts are such
as are composed by the authors of contemporary writings
of similar type to fit the occasion described. The speeches
placed in Paul's mouth in Acts 17 : 22-31 ; 20: 18-35 >' 22 : 1-
21 and 26: 1—29 are remarkably fine examples of this Thucy-
didean art, by a sincere and devout admirer of Paul, but
they cannot justly be quoted as on the same level with the
letters which they sometimes contradict.8 They fit their oc
casions remarkably well, far better, for example, than that
of Acts 13: 16-41; but if they fitted ten times better than
they do, their value for the " psychological criticism " of
Paul would still be limited to externalities. They would
give us little more than the material framework, the arrest of
the persecutor near Damascus by a sudden mental and phy
sical collapse, from which he rose as it were a new man,
convinced that the crucified Messiah whose followers he
had been persecuting had interposed on their behalf.? God
6 Compare the statement of Acts 24:17 with Rom. 15:25-28, or
Acts 22:17-21 and 26:20 with Gal. 1:16-24.
7 Such is the bearing even of the (Greek) proverb Paul is repre
sented in Acts 26 : 14 as hearing uttered by Jesus in his vision.
Entirely unwarranted inferences have been drawn from this, con
trary to explicit statements of the letters as to Paul's condition of
mind and conscience, by modern interpreters of the Apostle's psy
chology. In reality the Lukan author has no more idea than
Paul himself that the persecutor was harassed by doubts and
scruples (see Acts 22:13; 23: 1; 26:9). "It is hard for thee to
kick against the goad," is not a proverb coined in the interest of
prevention of cruelty to animals. It merely uses the figure of the
headstrong ox who has met his master, and discovers it as he vainly
lashes out against the sharp-pointed goad.

92 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
had manifested him glorified. All these data could have
been inferred from the Epistles alone without Acts, and
after all they furnish no more than the framework. The
content and significance of the experience could be told, and
are told, by none save Paul himself.
So far, then, as our subject involves some reference to re
cent studies of the authorship, date, sources, character and
purpose of Acts, such as Harnack's two Beitrdge, Norden's
Agnostos Theos, Preuschen's Commentary and Torrey's
Composition and Date, we may confine ourselves to the gen
eral caveat that Acts is not Paul, and if used at all in the
attempt to interpret his religious experience it cannot safely
be used for more than a record of the external phenomena
as they would be subsequently related in common tradi
tional report. Acts confirms certain inferences we might
otherwise not feel it safe to make from the statements of
Paul, and rounds out our knowledge of external conditions
and circumstances. The letters must be the primary source,
and the norm of authenticity. § 3. The Externalities
If the habitual method of treatment were here to be fol
lowed we should immediately address ourselves to the task
of relating the circumstances of Paul's career up to the inci
dent at Damascus as narrated in Acts, adduce a reference
to his sickness, the " visions and revelations " and the " stake
in the flesh" of II Cor. 12:1-10, and proceed thereupon
to draw psychological inferences. We might perhaps even
deduce a " physiological psychology " of the phenomenon.
From the point of view here taken, however, such a pro
ceeding would be premature, even were the present writer
qualified (as is not the case) to discuss problems of phy
siological psychology.
We must allow the psychologists their own judgment re
garding the relative importance of the externalities referred

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 93
to, as compared with the more abiding results permanently
registered in the convictions and character of the Apostle.
But it must also be admitted that the general run of Lives
of Paul and other apologetic literature show a correspond
ingly disproportionate interest in mere external circumstance.
The story of Acts cannot, indeed, and should not, be ne
glected. It furnishes the objective data in concrete form,
and it is not only interesting but important to observe how
largely its story is borne out by the Epistles. This aspect
of the matter, however, need detain us but briefly. Data
already so many times threshed over are chiefly in need of
winnowing. Of what sort, then, are these data? How
stands the narrative of Acts when compared with the letters ?
If the story of Paul's vision on the road to Damascus
stood in Acts alone, without corroboration from Paul, it
would probably have been treated by a considerable body of
critics as largely legendary, perhaps as fundamentally a mere
literary device. For in reality in similar literature, particu
larly in contemporary Jewish religious narrative, vision and
the bath qol or " voice from heaven " is a stereotyped literary
form, so completely a convention that when we read of
Rabbi Eleazar or Rabbi Akiba, or whoever else, that he
had a vision, or bath qol, saying so and so, every reader
recognizes that this is a mere modus loquendi. The symbol
of " vision," or angelic utterance, sets forth the real inner
truth, as it were, from the divine side. It is not seriously
intended to convey the idea that all the individuals of whom
it is related were " psychics," and passed into a condition
of ecstasy, or catalepsy, but only that their inner experi
ences may be thus symbolized or interpreted. The later
Jewish narrative literature teems with examples. Angels,
visions and voices from heaven are the regular stage prop
erties of its drama, as indispensable as the deus ex machina
to the denouement of the classic tragedy. Our Book of
Acts belongs to this same type of religious narrative.

94 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
In several cases it proves its use of the current modus
loquendi, by relating visions contained within visions.
Cornelius in Caesarea not only has a vision coincidently
with Peter's vision at Joppa; but in it the separate parties
are introduced to one another. In Acts 9: 12 Ananias in
Damascus has a vision in which he is told of Paul's experi
ence, and not only so, but that even now Paul is having
a second vision in which " he hath seen a man named Ananias
coming in and laying his hands on him that he might receive
his sight." One way to understand this intricate apparatus
of visions and visions of visions is, of course, to suppose
that everybody in those days was a " psychic," Galilean fish
ermen, Roman centurions, Jewish householders in Damascus,
and all the rest. A little more familiarity with Jewish and
Christian religious narrative from Tobit to the Clementine
Recognitions and El Zohar leads to a much simpler solution.
As we have just observed, vision in literature of this type
is often little more than a conventional form, adapted to
minds unaccustomed to philosophic abstractions, a means
(so to speak) of taking the reader (or hearer) behind the
scenes. It is the preacher's substitute for the philosopher's
terminology of abstractions. To illustrate this mode of
thought and expression we have the entire multitudinous
class of compositions known as " apocalypses," or " revela
tions," which consist of nothing else save elaborations of
this device. Now it is perfectly apparent in a large pro
portion of cases that the " vision " of the apocalyptist is
as purely a literary fiction as John Bunyan's; since the com
positions are often conspicuously the product of scissors and
paste, ink-pots, manuscripts and midnight oil. Not only so,
but we can even appreciate why this method of presenting
the secrets of the invisible world had such authority and
vogue. For in many cases the stories of vision are quite
frankly built upon the ancient theory that gives the
phenomenon its name of re-vela-tion, a.iroKa.Km}iK, or draw-

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 95
ing away of the veil. The idea is (and this is the gen
erally accepted ancient theory of "vision") that the
phenomena observed are real, though the normal man lacks
faculty or capacity to perceive them. The seer only needs
the opening of an inward or " spiritual " eye, whereupon he
sees what is actually taking place in the realm of spirit though
unperceived by ordinary mortals. Thus at Elisha's prayer
his servants' " eyes are opened " to see the supernatural pro
tection which really surrounds the prophet though unseen
by fleshly eyes. Thus Balaam falls to the ground like Paul
but has his (spiritual) eyes opened (Num. 24:4, 16). Thus
Paul himself prays that his readers may have " the eyes of
their heart enlightened " and mourns that the god of this
world has " blinded the minds of the unbelieving." On this
theory of vision of course it is perfectly simple for three
men, or for the. matter of that 500 men (I Cor. 15:6), to
have simultaneously the same vision. It would be surprising
if undergoing the same ecstatic experience at the same time
the objects of their vision did not also coincide. It is also
perfectly feasible on this conception of the matter for
strangers to be introduced to one another in vision before
they meet. I believe modern psychology no longer accepts
the theory. How it proposes to deal with ancient vision nar
ratives of simultaneous and interconnected visions which are
built upon it I do not know.
It was worth while to dwell at some length upon the dif
ference between the ancient and modern idea of " vision,"
if only for the sake of illustrating how needful it is before
you introduce into court an ancient document as a deposi
tion of hard and fast data, to take some account of its real
meaning and modus loquendi, the language, the habits of
expression, the order of ideas, through which it conveys its
thought. However, my object in calling attention to the
phenomena of that class of literature to which our book
of Acts belongs, and to the change in meaning undergone

96 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
by the very word " vision " between ancient and modern
times, was in this case to confirm and not to discredit the
ordinary interpretation of the narrative. The type of litera
ture represented, if not in Acts itself then certainly in its
oral and written sources, is that narrative of religious edifi
cation which the Synagogue designates midrash, whose near
est modern analogue is pulpit anecdote. Unfortunately we
have abundant reason from the known habits and methods
of the teller of midrash to discount considerably from cer
tain aspects of his story. From what has already been said
it will be obvious that among these aspects must be such
traits as appearances of angels, voices from heaven, visions,
and other conventionalized methods of visualizing the
abstract. The student of midrash will not derive from his
reading of Acts the impression so liable to be made on the
ordinary reader that pretty much every leading character
in it was a " psychic." He may rather be disposed on similar
ground to enter a serious caveat against the theory which is
just now rejoicing in a very marked though perhaps un
deserved popularity, that Jesus also was a " psychic " or
" mystic." The so-called " Eschatological " school, who dis
cover the primary key to his career and teaching in a temper
ament to which ecstasy and apocalyptic vision are the supreme
guide and impulse, depict him as what Josephus or Celsus
would have called a false prophet (yoijT^s) and the modern
Syrian a derwish. They are satisfied with portraiture which
like Munkacsy's, depicts him with " the face of a fanatic";
though Schweitzer, the leading exponent of the school, de
murs, I believe, to terms which attribute a morbid or patho
logical character to the imputed paroxysms of his religious
imagination. May it not be hoped that when the attempt is
seriously made to treat of Jesus among the mystics some at
tention may be paid, in this case if not in Paul's, to the
known characteristics of Jewish midrash? We have not, it
is true, the products of Jesus' own pen to compare with the

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 97
pulpit anecdotes from which our evangelists have built the
story of his career. But we do possess a fairly reliable com-
pend of his precepts and parables; and these best authenti
cated utterances of Jesus contrast markedly in just this
respect with the narrative source, that they subordinate the
so-called " eschatological " to the " ethical " element. They
furnish our justification for certain epithets which Professor
Burkitt finds reprehensible in my book on Mark : " the sane
and well-poised mind of the plain mechanic of Nazareth." 8
Apropos of this question of the interpretation of the litera
ture of vision I remember as one of the wise remarks of a
colleague 9 whose authority stands very high among its inter
preters that it is one of the chief difficulties with this litera
ture that one cannot tell to what extent its symbolism was
meant to be taken, literally, and to what extent it was con
ventional. I am quite sure he will agree with me in saying
that those apocalyptists or vision-writers who make the
loudest claims to supernatural sources of knowledge are as a
rule far from showing the greatest real originality. The
apocalyptic literature cannot compare in creative power with
true prophecy. It borrows and reiterates both ideas and
imagery. It is with this literature as with the mental process
of mysticism in general. The more completely the powers of
reasoning and discriminative judgment are suppressed, the
more does the utterance tend to become imitative and stere
otyped. Put the subconscious in control and the imitative
instinct familiar to us in mass psychology will seize the
reins; for the jaiconscious is not really the higher realm of
mind. Apocalyptic literature embodies some of the larger
conceptions of Pan-Hellenistic civilization. These and the
Persian angelology and demonology belonged to its environ-
8 Beginnings, p. 108.
9 Prof. F. C. Porter, author of Messages of the Apocalyptic
Writers, New York, 1905, and of the article " Revelation of John "
in Hastings' Bible Dictionary.

98 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
ment. To this extent therefore it enlarges and universalizes;
but its great ideas are adapted from prophecy.
If the psychological studies which have been devoted of
late to the phenomena of " tongues " 10 in their modern mani
festations can be trusted, these utterances of religious ecstasy
are singularly illustrative of the imitative tendency of this
mystical condition. Observers note frequently how a second
ecstatic takes up the cry of the first and carries it on. The
mere inarticulate sounds, or the disconnected ejaculations, of
one will set the key and furnish the theme for another, till
something intelligible is ultimately made out. The greater
the numbers, and the higher the pitch of enthusiasm, the
stronger of course will be the sympathetic or mass influence.
Paul is no exception to the rule that the mystical mind is
not in itself creative. He is indeed himself original and
creative in high degree. But Paul acted on the principle
that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets,
and that their ecstatic utterances must be weighed and tested;
and this not only by their own moral judgment, but by that
of the brotherhood also. He maintained, indeed, that one
should not quench the Spirit; but also that one must " prove
all things " in the utterances of ecstasy, and that only that
which was good must be held fast. He spoke with the mystic
"tongues" more than all his converts at Corinth; but he
was in favor of suppressing these manifestations of the Spirit
if unamenable to "order"; and the first requisite for that
" edification " which was to be the condition of admissibility
was that some should be present to " interpret " the utter
ances in a rational and moral sense. The exception, then,
is of the kind which shows the true meaning and application
of the rule. Deductive logic is not the only " barren vir
gin." The ecstatic imagination itself may pour forth mere
devastating floods.
19 See e. g. the excursus on Glossolalia in Lake's Earlier Epistles
of St. Paul, London, 1911, pp. 241-252 and authorities cited.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 99
Pardon the digression, since it is not without bearing on
the subject ; but let me now return to the matter of the tra
dition as reported in Acts of Paul's mystical experience. For
the reason that " psychic " experiences in Acts come so near
in many cases to the mere conventional " vision " of Jewish
midrash, we might well be inclined to discount its three narra
tives of Paul's conversion, which are not wholly reconcilable
one with another. Fortunately so much is confirmed by
Paul's own statements that there can be no doubt that the
great Apostle was not only " psychic " but in the strictest
medical sense even psychopathic. Unlike the author of Acts
and the Synoptic writers Paul never mentions the subject of
demon-possession or exorcism. Like the fourth evangelist he
speaks only of a world-order, not of individual human beings,
as under control of evil spirits. But in a much higher sense
he did regard himself as a Spirit-controlled man. In fact he
made this the supreme object and meaning of his religion.
He unquestionably believed in spirits {Bal/ioves) and prob
ably could, if he chose, point to the record of more than one
exorcism among his " signs of an apostle." But his belief
in the Spirit so far transcended and eclipsed his inherent
belief in " spirits," as to lift all his thought and expression to
a higher plane.
It thus appears that while Paul's own nature was strongly
affected by the scenes and atmosphere of religious enthusiasm
in which he lived, and his language (as we shall presently
see) is strongly colored by its imagery, phraseology, and mode
of thought, nevertheless his attitude toward it is strongly
critical. He holds its manifestations under rigid check, and
brings them to the bar of an inexorable moral and religious
judgment. In retrospect from this peak of decision his
thought is seen to be truly creative, though its elements are
drawn from his environment.
In Acts Paul's experience is one of a more or less stere
otyped class. It is one of the visions and revelations of the

100 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Lord which are a regularly assumed factor in that type of
Christianized midrash on which the author of the narrative
depends. For this reason it scarcely emerges from the crowd
save as a signal instance of the Lord's deliverance of his peo
ple from the persecutor. In Paul's letters we also find refer
ence to similar mystical experiences by others, that of Peter
in particular marking the beginning of the series of manifes
tations which as a group was regarded as the promised Gift
of the Spirit, and which in the form of " prophecy," or
Christianized apocalypse, continued down to the close of the
second century. In Paul's own case the initial " revelation "
was followed by others in which he was in a more or less
cataleptic physical condition, hearing unutterable things in
ecstasy (whether in the body or out of the body he could
not tell). He seemed to be caught away into Paradise;
indeed he thinks it at least possible that his spirit (though
not his " body ") really was there. But as a sequel to the
ecstasy there was given him a painful physical reaction " that
he might not be exalted overmuch." He felt as if he had
been pounded black and blue by " a messenger of Satan," and
as if he had suffered impalement (o-koAoi^ rfj o-apni) . These
factors of Paul's mystical experience might all be classified
among the externalities. But the most vital factor of all
came after. It consisted in the application of a calmly crit
ical and constructive mind and an inexorably moral con
science to the suggestions of the kindled imagination. Paul's
greatness lies in his sobriety.
As regards the initial experience the situation as described
in Acts receives general confirmation from the Epistles. For
it is clear from the references just quoted from II Cor. 12
that the " visions and revelations " belonged to his Christian
experience only; they were " of the Lord," also that he had
the optical impression, on at least the first occasion, of a
glorified Being whom he knew to be the same " Jesus " to
whom the victims of his persecution looked as their " Lord."

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 101
(" Am I not an apostle; have I not seen Jesus our Lord? "
I Cor. 9:1. The use of the personal name " Jesus " is highly
significant). Paul's certainty that Jesus is "at the right
hand of God " where he " maketh intercession for us," with
out which " raising for our justification " we should be " yet
in our sins" (Rom. 4:25; I Cor 15: 12-17) is manifestly
based upon this mystical experience. But equally so his resur
rection doctrine, his argument for the metamorphosis of the
" body of our humiliation " into a " body of glory " derived
from heaven as a permanent habitation of the soul. The evi
dence of his own eyes (inwardly "enlightened," Eph. 1:
18) convinced him that the risen Christ had such a "glori
ous body." Nor did this experience stand alone. In Gal.
2:7,8 Paul explicitly sets the experience by which God " en
ergized in " him for an apostleship to the Gentiles in paral
lelism and comparison with the corresponding experience
of Peter, which in I Cor. 15:5 opens the series of
resurrection appearances. Equally significant is the fact
that the line between this series, and subsequent visions
and revelations not entitled to the same authoritative and
apostolic character, is drawn not between this series and his
own experiences, but after himself. His experience stands
on a par with that of Peter, the twelve, the 500, James, and
" all the Apostles " and is undivided from the rest. But it
was " last of all."
These facts and statements of Paul corroborate the story of
Acts as to the great occurrence on the road to Damascus.
They do more. They furnish the key to the mystical expe
rience of all who shared with Paul the apostleship whose in
dispensable condition was ability to bear first-hand witness
to the resurrection of " Jesus our Lord."
As already noted,11 the inference sometimes drawn from
the proverb quoted in Acts 26: 14 that Paul had misgivings
as to the Tightness of his persecuting career is a misinterpre-
11 Above, p. 91, note 7.

102

AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE

tation of the meaning of the narrative as well as an injustice
to Paul. The tradition itself has no idea of suggesting the
occurrence of scruples to his mind. Paul himself is even
more emphatic on this point. The arrest of his persecuting
career came to him as a complete surprise. It was not man's
work, but God's. Acquaintance he must have had with the
beliefs of his victims, with their ritual of baptism and of the
supper which betokened forgiveness through the blood of
Jesus. These practices and beliefs of his victims he must
have been familiar with, if only to testify against them and
cause them to blaspheme. Indelible upon his mental retina
must have been the vision caught from martyrs such as
Stephen of their glorified Lord, standing to plead for them 12
at the right hand of God. But Paul was not conscious of
misgivings on this score even when he persecuted the Church
of God beyond measure and made havoc of it. His mind
was indeed ill at ease. The testimony of that despairing cry
in his outline of experience of the convert from legalism:
" O wretched man, who shall deliver me from this dead body
of sinful flesh," is of itself enough to show that beneath the
surface of fanatic zeal for the religion of Pharisaism great
deeps were being broken up. But Paul's testimony is ex
plicit, emphatic, undeniable, that he was utterly unconscious
12 The primary conception of the function of the risen and exalted
Christ was certainly that of the advocate or intercessor with God,
who " stands " to plead the cause of his client. This was the
promise of Jesus at the first prediction of his martyr-fate (Mt.
10:32-33; Lk. 12:8-9; cf. the "faithful saying," II Tim. 2:11-13).
According to the current doctrine of Jewish martyrology (IV. Mace.
18:7), those who had voluntarily dedicated their lives for the King
dom had opportunity in an immediate resurrection (" even now
before the throne of God") to plead the offering of their blood as a
" propitiation " for the sin of Israel. With this promise of Jesus
to act as heavenly Intercessor for his disciples, especially such
as should be called to " suffer with him," is also coupled the prom
ise to " sit with him " at his royal banquet table. The attitude of
" standing " is the natural one for the Intercessor, that of " sitting
at the right hand of God " of the victorious Leader.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 103
that the message of the cross and resurrection was to prove
the way out. If the inevitable trend of his hopeless quest for
" a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law "
was toward a gospel of the grace of God in Christ, it was
subconscious reasoning on Paul's part. The solution came
as unexpectedly as when the tides of the sea sweep away in
one sudden, overwhelming rush the futile dikes long silently
and unknowingly undermined. It came like the lightning
stroke, or better, to use his own sublime figure of the new
creation, it was as though He who commanded the light to
shine out of the primeval darkness had shined in his heart to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the forgiving
God, " in the face of Jesus Christ."
Even on the score of externalities we can learn but little
more from the story of Acts concerning Paul's mystical expe
rience. Let the romancers make what they will of the au
thor's reference to the " noonday " whose brightness was
exceeded by the glory seen by the inward eye. The pathol
ogy of sunstroke seems to me as much beside the mark as
diagnoses based on the figure of speech Acts 9: 18 (drawn
from Tobit 11 : 12), " the scales fell from his eyes." Paul
undoubtedly came "out of -darkness into marvellous light";
but whether in addition to the symptoms already described
he also experienced a temporary blindness I should think it
as difficult to establish on critical grounds, as it surely is
indifferent on religious and (I imagine) on psychological
grounds as well. Temporary blindness, I presume, is noth
ing unusual after similar experiences of religious ecstasy.
On the other hand this feature of the story could also easily
take its origin in the almost stereotyped metaphor of Eph.
1:18. Acts 13:11 describes the temporary blindness in
flicted on Elymas the sorcerer in almost identical terms.
Nor can we lay much weight upon the descriptions in Acts
of Paul's subsequent " visions and revelations of the Lord."
The fact is attested in II Cor. 12: 1-4; the particular narra-

104 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
tives are not to be trusted in detail. Thus Acts 22: 17-21
relates a vision of Paul in the temple, by which he is directed
to leave the work he had begun among the Greek-speaking
Jews of Jerusalem. But this is quite irreconcilable, not
only with the explicit and emphatic statements of Gal. 1 :
1 7-24, but even with Acts 9 : 26-30. Take even the parlous
step of rejecting Paul's own emphatic testimony to his avoid
ance during this period of all work among Jews and especially
among those of Jerusalem, keeping apart from the mother
community, and still you cannot reconcile Acts with itself.
Acts 9 : 26-30 relates that he joined the company of the
apostolic brotherhood in Jerusalem as the first step after his
conversion, Barnabas acting as his sponsor, and that " he was
with them going in and going out at Jerusalem," making it
his special work to evangelize " the Hellenistic Jews " of the
city. The same narrative relates further that the Jews of
Jerusalem " went about to kill him," so that his escape had to
be effected by the brethren, who " brought him down to
Caesarea " and so ultimately " sent him to Tarsus," whence
Barnabas later brought him to Antioch in time for the First
Missionary Journey. If we hold to this account of the
violent breaking off of a promising work among the Hellenists
of Jerusalem, then what becomes of the story of Acts 22:
17-21 of the vision in the temple commanding Paul to
"Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles?"
Was Paul this time disobedient unto the heavenly vision "
until he learned wisdom from the mob ? Did he take up his
work among the Hellenistic Jews of Jerusalem in spite of
the divine mandate? Or have we here one of those literary
" visions " which have only the function of the chorus in
Greek tragedy, to acquaint the reader with the inner signifi
cance of the drama?
The case stands somewhat better with Acts 27 : 23-26,
which, even if it be one of the " literary " type of visions,

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 105
has a certain element of historical value. For we can
authenticate the ideas expressed in this vision in the night of
shipwreck from the Epistles, even though no epistle belongs
exactly to this date or mentions the part here played by
Paul. The diary of Paul's companion which in expanded
form constitutes the basis of these chapters of Acts, tells how
.the whole ship's company of 276 persons, including not only
the pilot-captain, but the officer in charge of the prisoners, of
whom Paul was one, put themselves under his direction.
So extraordinary was the impression made by his serene cour
age that one and all owed their escape to him, and practically
acknowledged the fact by submitting to his temporary control.
Whatever allowance we may be disposed to make for the
enthusiasm of Paul's admirer, the story stands too near the
fact, is too well substantiated in its main data, to permit any
doubt on the commanding influence exerted by Paul's extraor
dinary personality. There is mutual corroboration between
Epistles and narrative in this. But we may go a little further
still. According to Acts 27: 23-26 Paul took this com
mand of the ship's company in the name of a vision granted
to him in the very night of their utter despair. The narra
tor is not concerned to tell us how Paul's mind could under
these circumstances be turned in upon itself; whether he
suddenly lapsed into oblivion of the roaring tempest, the crash
of the rigging and the cries of the frightened, half-mutinous
crew, or perhaps slept after tumult had given place to leth
argy. " This night," said Paul to the company, " there stood
by me an angel of the God whose I am, saying Fear not,
Paul, thou must stand before Caesar: and lo, God hath
granted thee all that sail with thee." Whether we regard
the vision as real or " literary," let us at least take home its
sense and meaning. Paul's confidence is based on a convic
tion that he is an ambassador for God, and that as such he
is guaranteed safe-conduot. Not only so, but in answer

106 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
to his intercession this safe-conduct has been extended to
cover " all that sail with him." Now there is no reference
to the incidents of this voyage in any of the later letters of
Paul. But there are two things which recall the tone and
conception of this " vision " in the earlier letters which im
mediately precede the journey and in which he speaks of
Rome as the long-desired goal of his missionary ambition.
These two are worth noting for their bearing on the char
acter and personality of Paul, as well as on the reliability
of Acts. One is the tone of sublime confidence and mastery
of circumstance, the tone of a man convinced that the very
life that he lives is not his, but God through Christ working
in him. To this kind of man gravitates the mastery and
leadership in times of crisis, almost in spite of himself.
The other point of coincidence is the declaration of Paul in
II Cor. 5:20-6:10, uttered in behalf of himself and his
fellow " ministers of God," that in all their afflictions,
necessities, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, . . .
dying, yet behold we live, nevertheless " we are ambassadors
on behalf of God." In a later epistle (Philemon 9) the
figure recurs. Paul is now an " ambassador in a chain."
What we may probably regard as the very latest authentic
fragment from his pen (II Tim. 4: 17) reflects the same
tone, and in part the same language, as the story of Acts,
with its unterrified, masterful personality. It describes How
the ambassador delivered his message before the unrighteous
imperial judge in words that recall those of Acts: "The
Lord stood by me and gave me power and I was delivered
out of the lion's mouth." Fact, or figure of speech, the
scene of Paul's rallying the courage of that shipwrecked crew
with the declaration of his vision depicts his true personality.
He faced the rage of elements, of beasts, of men, thrones of
princes, or of demonic powers, as a conscious " ambassador
for God."

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 107
§ 4. The Inward Experience
From the secondary source in the Book of Acts, serviceable
when controlled by the primary of Paul's own words, and
with due regard to the true nature of the book and the pur
pose, point of view and degree of reliability of its sources,
let us turn next to the great Epistles, which have come
through the fire of criticism13 not only unscathed but vin
dicated, as I believe no other writings ever have been, in their
henceforth established authenticity.
Psychological criticism may utilize at least the great
Epistles to the Galatians, the Romans and the Corinthians
with perfect confidence that they reflect the real Paul, and in
an intimate self-portraiture. Whatever other epistles are
added is hardly a matter of serious concern to such an en
quiry as ours, because the student of religious mysticism is
interested in the defense of Paul's apostleship by depiction of
his religious experiences, and with this the four major
Epistles are largely concerned.
As we have seen, this defense was made against those
who opposed Paul's authority in Galatia, mainly by a retro
spect over his conversion, calling, and early ministry in
Gal. 1: 11-2:21. We have as the finale to this defense a
summing up of his own case and that of his fellow " min
isters of God " against a similar onslaught at Corinth in
II Cor. 3: 1-4: 10, a more instrospective interpretation of
the same vocational experience. Besides this direct defense
of the Apostle's call from God there are very important
side-lights upon it in First Corinthians, such as the com
parison of his own unproclaimed mystical insight, or gnosis,
with the " wisdom " so highly rated at Corinth apparently by
the followers of Apollos. This defense of Paul's gnosis, or
mystical insight covers I Cor. 1 : 18-3: 9, and there are fur
ther references to the attacks upon his apostleship in 9:1,
13 Gloel, Die Pauiinischen Brief e im Feuer der Kritik, 1890.

108 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
which furnish the indispensable historical occasion and per
spective. This Corinthian correspondence furnishes also
most serviceable practical illustrations of Paul's sense of
superhuman authority in the directions laid down for church
discipline in 4:18-5:5 and elsewhere. We have already
availed ourselves of the references to his endowment with
" tongues " and other " spiritual gifts " in I Cor. 12-14 an<l
of the section in II Cor. 12: 1-9 concerning his " visions and
revelations of the Lord " and his " stake (ovcoAo^) in the
flesh," and have noted the bearing of I Cor. 15: 1-11 (where
Paul links on his own experience to that of those who were
Apostles before him) on the psychology of the resurrection
appearances in general.
Romans also has its contribution to this spiritual auto
biography. Thus Rom. 7 : 7-8 : 1 1 describes the deliverance
of the slave of sin, who finds the law only the strength of
sin, an ally to his enemy rather than to himself, because of
the inherent propensities of sinful flesh ; but is raised to a new,
triumphant and eternally expansive life by the infusion of the
Spirit of Adoption. This description is of course intended
to be typical ; but we should not have the personal " I " and
" me " were it not also a true reflection of Paul's own reli
gious experiences. With this might be connected Phil. 3:
4-14, both testimonies of great value were it our intention
to extend our survey over Paul's entire religious experience.
But it is needful to fix reasonable limits, and the study
of Paul's mystical experience will be best subserved if we
here confine ourselves to its one supreme example, the occa
sion to which he is obliged by the opposition of his detractors
to revert again and again, the vision of the risen Christ at
his conversion ; for this experience furnished the ground and
warrant of his apostleship, and was the source of his gospel
as well.
The comparison already made between the current report
of Acts and the implications of the Epistles will in the main

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 109
suffice as a survey of the preceding course of events both out
ward and inward. The statement of Gal. 1 : 21-22 that
when Paul " came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia "
after his stay in Arabia and his first visit to Jerusalem, three
years after his conversion, he " was still unknown by face
unto the churches in Judaea " is manifestly irreconcilable
with Acts 9: 26—30; but it will hardly bear the strain which
W. Heitmiiller puts upon it in maintaining that Paul's entire
career up to this point had been confined to regions outside of
Palestine.14 It is true that no great weight can be attached
to the connection so easy to make between Paul's name and
that of the eminent Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder, which appears
in Acts 22: 3. It is also true that there is a mental gap in
the statement of Gal. 1:17 "I returned to Damascus,"
which it would be simplest to fill out as Heitmiiller demands
by the words " where, as you know, I was resident," or some
thing to that effect. But in view of the explicit reference
in Gal. 1:13 to the familiarity of the readers with the story
of Paul's persecutions it is certainly also possible to supply
the lack by words such as these : " whither, as you know, I
was bent in my career of persecution." To set aside as un-
historical the entire tradition of PauFs rabbinic training in
Jerusalem on no better grounds than these is hardly war
ranted. The difficulty we have in explaining his lack of
earlier contact with the movement of John the Baptist and
of Jesus is more serious, but a temporary absence from Jeru
salem might account for it.
'On the other hand the absence of any reference, direct or
indirect, in any of the Epistles to Stephen, the lack of any
trace of the story of the early Hellenistic propaganda in
Jerusalem and southward to Philistia and Egypt, as well as
of anything attributed to its influence, has a certain signifi
cance. It tends to corroborate the general verdict of the
critics of Acts 6-8 that the figure of Saul of Tarsus in
14:ZNW. XIII. 4, 1912, s. i>. Zum Problem Paulus und Jesus.

no AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
7:58; 8:1 and 3 is brought in too late, too haltingly, and
with too great disruption of the context to be original.15
At all events nothing in the Pauline Epistles suggests the
slightest influence from this quarter. If Paul heard such
utterances as the preaching and defense of Stephen in Acts 7
they must have been simply typical of many. Yet even
this implies much. It implies at least familiarity with the
two central observances of " the faith " of which the perse
cutor " made havock " (Gal. 1 : 23), and the religious value
attached to them. Especially is it certain that Paul would
not have persecuted this " Way " unto the death had not the
doctrine so clearly declared in I Cor. 15:3 to have been,
traditionally " received " by him {irap£\a/3ov) , and in I Cor.
11:23—25 even as "received (irape'Aa/Soj') from {avo) the
the Lord," been clearly present to his mind as " a Way of
justification " 16 incompatible with " that which is of the
law." The mutual exclusiveness of the two Ways of justi
fication is merely reiterated from the opposite standpoint in
dispute with Peter, Gal. 2: 15-21. On the fundamental
point of his "gospel of reconciliation " (II Cor. 5: 18, 19),
therefore, it was not instruction as to the contents and mean
ing of the Christian " Way " that was required by the per
secutor. Indeed he would seem to have had much clearer
insight than the very chief Apostle into the full sweep of
its implication's. What was required to transform the enemy
of the faith into its most ardent and effective missionary was
merely the reversal of his point of view. He now saw it
as a " way of life."
The very form of Paul's vision is as certainly part of the
15 With these references must of course be classed that in 22:20.
On the episode of Stephen and the Seven and its relation to the other
sources of Acts, see Bacon s. v. " Stephen's Speech " in Yale Bicen
tennial Contributions to Semitic and Biblical Studies, N. Y., 1901.
16 On the significance of the phrase in Mt. 21 : 32, see Bacon in
Expositor, VIII, 93 (Sept., 1918), s. v. "John the Baptist as Preacher
of Justification by Faith."

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL in
real (though violently rejected) furniture of his mind, as
the implied substance of his gospel. Were we to take as
authentic fact the participation of Paul in the trial scene of
Stephen he must have been eye and ear witness of that apos
trophe of the martyr to his heavenly Advocate : " Behold, I
see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on
the right hand of God." We need not take this participa
tion as literal fact, any more than we take the transfigured
face of the martyr " as it were the face of an angel," or the
statement that he " saw the glory of God," as literal fact,
but we cannot help taking this as a typical description, and a
correct and characteristic one, of scenes which the persecutor
Saul actually did witness. Doubtless when he went up to
Jerusalem " to hear the story of Peter " {io-ropijo-ai Herpov,
Gal. 1 : 18) his first enquiry was as to that epoch-making
first appearance of this risen Lord. But the general nature
of the reply, and the outline features of the vision of the
Lord " glorified " " at the right hand of God " cannot pos
sibly have been unknown to Paul from long before his con
version. He knew them from his victims. Moreover, as
we have seen, it belongs to the very theory of vision, as then
understood, that the manifestations should have the same
general appearance. Even apart from the inherent tendency
of ecstatic vision to repeat the known experience of others,
the testimony would have been viewed with suspicion had it
not described " the same Lord " in substantially the same
conditions of " glory." It is the very object of the vision "
(opa/ia) of the Transfiguration to convey some idea of this
condition of the " glorified," and for this reason it is con
tinually so employed, as in II Peter 1 : 16-18, the Apoc. Petri
(beginning), and " the Elders " in Irenaeus, Haer. V. v. I.
All this belongs among the things of which we should need
only to be reminded. The data of Paul's mystical experi
ence were all present to his consciousness, however unwel
come, just as the cold elements of an amalgam may lie to-

112 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
gether side by side within the crucible, and give no sign of
what is to be, until the sudden lightning-flame of the voltaic
arc fuses them into a new creation. What we need most
to know is the source and nature of this lightning-flame,
so far as it is given to human eye to look upon it unblinded.
And of this too the Apostle does not leave us wholly in
ignorance. Paul was indeed without conscious misgivings as to his per
secuting course. Whatever it must have cost that nature of
marvellous tenderness to dip his hands day after day in the
blood of men like Stephen, he verily thought he did God
service,17 and in that conviction he steeled himself to the
hideous task. But while his unconsciousness of prepara
tion is so complete that he cannot too strongly emphasize the
fact that the overturn was not his doing but the utterly un
foreseeable act of God (Gal. i: 15), he also lays before us
without reserve the evidence that his mind was continually
advancing toward a condition of unstable equilibrium from
which the overturn would be as inevitable as return would
be unthinkable. He was seeking " a justification of mine
own, even that which is of the law."
How long would the crisis be postponed? No answer to
this question can be so eloquent as the Pauline letters them
selves. The overturn would be inevitable from the moment
the struggling soul became inwardly conscious that the de
mand of " the law " had passed the limit set by the inherited
" weakness " of human flesh. And were we to choose a
moment when this impasse would be reached in Paul's
case, what other could be compared with that when he ap
proached Damascus, where the bloody work of persecution
was to begin afresh.
17 The expression is from the speech in Acts 26:9; but it is con
firmed by a deutero-Pauline hand in I Tim. 1:13, and (more re
liably) by the absence from the authentic letters of any trace of
self-condemnation for more than unintended wrong on this score.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 113
It lies outside our purpose to consider the references in
II Cor. 11 : 23-33 to Paul's experiences as a missionary dur
ing the unrecorded decade of his work " in Syria and
Cilicia," and even to take extensive note of the ecstatic ex
periences described in II Cor 12: 1—4, which from its date
(" fourteen years ago ") must have fallen within this period.
Next to his initial experience it must have been Paul's great
est, else he would not go so far back to recall it. Needless
to point out that if such experiences could be used as proofs
of superhuman direction and authority, occasions of " glo
rying," they must surely have been sought with utmost de
sire, and with the application of such approved methods as
fasting, vigil and prayer. In Paul's own case we can well
believe that another " revelation of the Lord," and in a more
favoring attitude, would be ardently desired by the Apostle
to the Gentiles, especially amid the perils and difficulties
which are described in the preceding paragraph (n : 24-33)
as surrounding his early course. If Paul prayed for the
experience, and was in measure heard (though he says
nothing in this case of an envisagement of the Lord, but
only of having been " caught up into the third heaven," the
abode of angels and of the spirits of just men made perfect),
the boon was not without painful physical reactions. The
trance, during which he seemed to be " out of the body," was
followed by a " weakness " interpreted by the Apostle as an
angel of Satan sent to beat him with his fists " lest I should
be exalted overmuch." Against this " stake in the flesh " he
also thrice besought the Lord (i. e., the glorified Jesus), but
with no more than the answer (an audition?) " My favor
sufficeth thee; for the power (Swa/«s) that comes from me is
made perfect in weakness."
It is probable from Paul's use of the plural ("I will come
to visions and revelations of the Lord," ver. 1 ; "by reason
of the greatness of the revelations," ver. 7.) that other expe
riences of trance and ecstasy followed at intervals, though

ii4 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
perhaps in a diminishing scale. But we are more concerned
with that of which these were mere echoes and after-glows.
It is time that we turned to a reexamination of the letters in
the hope that we may recognize reflections of this first great
mystical experience. We shall also bear in mind, however,
that the letters themselves, as well as Acts, require interpre
tation by methods of historical and literary criticism; since
even Paul himself, to make plain to his readers the true
bearing and significance of his " mystery," must needs em
ploy the modes of thought and modes of expression current
in his religious environment and theirs.
§ 5. The Subject's own Interpretation.
It may seem strange if I maintain that of all fields of
New Testament study it is this most ancient and hackneyed
ground of Pauline phraseology and mode of thought that has
been made most fruitful to the historical exegete by the
course of modern discovery. Leave superlatives aside.
There can at least be no question of the immense importance
of the history and literature of contemporary Hellenistic
religions, the religions of personal redemption called
" mysteries " from their dealing in and claim to be based upon
mystical revelations, the reXerai (as they are also called) of
Isis, Serapis, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, Asklepios and
the rest. The propaganda of these Forerunners and Rivals
of Christianity18 was sweeping over the Graeco-Roman
world in Paul's time, and coloring both its religious phrase
ology and modes of thought. Reitzenstein, Dieterich, Hep-
ding, Cumont, Rohde, Anrich, and in English Frazer and
Kennedy, have poured a flood of light upon the language and
conceptions of the Pauline Epistles from the literature and
18 Such is the title of a recent voluminous compend of the mate
rial by Legge.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 115
monuments of this comparatively obscure and popular type
of religious life, and make it impossible any longer to view
the mysticism of Paul in the light of a generation ago.
But rather than go back to these too little known authori
ties let me refer to a very recent and admirable summary
in the chapter headed " Faith and Mystical Union " in Dr.
W. Morgan's Religion and Theology of Paul (1917). I
must indeed demur at the outset to one of Dr. Morgan's
declarations which seems likely to produce a false impression,
if indeed it does not wholly overstate the case. It is his
statement (p. 123) that the mystical strain in the religion
of Paul " formed no part of his Jewish heritage." True the
statement is doubly qualified. Dr. Morgan first limits his
definition of Pauline mysticism to " the idea of a divine in
dwelling, or of a relation of God that transcends all personal
relations," so that Paul's conception might be said to differ
so widely from the Old Testament idea of the Spirit-filled
prophet, or other agent of Jehovah, as to be "altogether for
eign to it." In the second place he recognizes that " in the
later Jewish writings, when, as in Philo, there has been in
fluence from the side of Oriental religion," we do find true
mysticism. But this hardly disposes of the case. For, to
begin with, Paul is himself as truly a Hellenistic Jew as
Philo, and quite as much exposed at Tarsus, one of the
earliest seats of the Mithraic mysteries, and a stronghold of
Platonized Stoicism, as Philo at Alexandria, to " influence
from the side of Oriental religion." Moreover Paul is just
as fully persuaded as " Jewish Apocalyptic" (to which Dr.
Morgan declares mysticism to be no less " foreign " than to
the Old Testament) that religious knowledge directly and
supernaturally conveyed from God (gnosis) is the prerogative
of Israel. The Jew rests upon torah (revelation) ; he glories
in (knowing) God and (having) the knowledge of His
will, possessing in the Torah the standard of knowledge

116 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
{ttjv iwp<ba>mv rrj's yvwaems) and of the truth (Rom. 2:
17-20). Paul's feeling likewise, with regard to his " knowl
edge of all mysteries " is the precise analogue of that of the
apocalyptic writers, who hold that they alone are mystically
empowered to solve the riddles of man's duty and destiny in
the mysterious universe in which he finds himself. In this
age " prophecy " is understood as an " unveiling "
{airoKaXvif/is, revelatio) of the invisible world. It is the
typical endowment of the gift of prophecy, to which Paul
certainly laid claim, to " know all mysteries and all knowl
edge. " (I Cor. 13:2; Eph. 1 : 8-9 ; 3 : 3-6) . This " anoint
ing " gives the " Son " who is known of God, the key to all
knowledge, and a superiority to all teachers (I Jn. 2:27);
for to him are known the real nature, wishes and purpose of
the Creator, while Gentile philosophy toils in vain over the
problem. Hence the apocalyptic writers never tire of in
sisting that these things are matters of revelation (/uuo-n/pui)
and as such only to be " spiritually " known. They are
secrets " hidm from the foundation of the world," not merely
from men but from angels, attainable only by the men to
whom the Creator talked as he talked with Moses " face to
face " ; men who, like Enoch, Elias and ( according to con
temporary tradition) Moses, were "taken up" into His
presence, or, like Esdras, after ascetic preparation were super
naturally inspired to " renew " the Torah.
Israel's claim, accordingly, to be the chosen instrument of
divine revelation to the world is exactly expressed by the
title " mystagogue " (/Mjoraywyos). It is this gnosis to which
he was elected by the Lord of heaven and earth that both
proves him the chosen " son " and commissions him with his
missionary task. The world groping in darkness after God
waits for the people elected to be " a light to lighten the
Gentiles," and Jewish " Wisdom " gives devout thanks
to the Creator of all that it was His inscrutable decree
(efiSoKi'a) to hide these things from the wise and deep-think-

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 117
ing, and to " reveal " them to " babes." 19 For it is not
originally a Christian, but a pre-Christian conception of
Jewish lyric Wisdom, a conception that is reflected both in
thought and language in Paul's defense of his gnosis in I
Cor. 1 : 8-3 : 9, that no man can " know the Father " save
the chosen Son (Israel), and that humble proselyte to
whomsoever the Son (as mystagogue) willeth to reveal
Him.20 As we see, Paul's sympathies are entirely on the Jewish
side in this conflict between the claims of Gentile
philosophy and Jewish revelation. For the conflict is at its
acme in the apocalyptic literature of Paul's period, though
its roots go back at least to the Deuteronomic writer who
declares to Israel in Moses' name as regards the Torah :
This is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the
Gentiles which shall hear all these ordinances and say, Surely
this great nation is a wise and understanding people ; for what great
nation hath a god so nigh unto them as Jehovah our God is when
soever we call upon him.
Paul not only endorses th'- claim of Mosaic gnosis, but
expresses himself in the very language of contemporary
Jewish Apocalypse. Take for example the boast of Moses
in the contemporary or slightly earlier Assumptio Mosis
1 : 12-14, concerning the hidden mystery of the purpose of
the Creator. For in Gen. 1 : 26-30 this purpose is declared
to be the cosmic lordship of man, but the current Jewish
interpretation {Ap. Bar. xiv 18; II Esdr. vi. 55, etc.) rep
resents it as the universal lordship of the seed of Abraham,
whom God made "heir of the world" (Rom. 4: 13).
19 A characteristic term in Hellenistic religion for the neophyte ;
cf. I Cor. 3:1.
20 On the true meaning of this characteristic Jewish Wisdom
hymn placed in the mouth of Jesus in Mt. 11:25-30; Lk. 10:21-22,
see Bacon, Harv. Theol. Rev. IX (Oct., 1916), s. v. "The Son as
Organ of Revelation," with authorities cited.

118 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
God hath created the world (says Moses in the apocalypse) on
behalf of His people. But He was not pleased to make known this
purpose from the foundation of the world, in order that the Gen
tiles might thereby be convicted, yea, to their own humiliation might
(by their vain and contradictory speculations) convict one another.
Accordingly He designed and devised me (Moses) and prepared
me before the foundation of the world, that I should be the mediator
of His covenant.
Not only is this purpose of the Creator a mystery hid since
the foundation of the world from all save the people of the
revelation. It is a secret even from the angels, who vainly
seek to peer into these things. The (demonic) " rulers of
this world " prove their ignorance by their death-dealing
hostility to "the Lord of glory" (I Cor. 2:6-9). Their
confusion and ruin will come when the groaning creation
is delivered from their evil sway, and committed to its right
ful heirs in the "manifestation of the sons of God " (Rom.
8: 19-21). Paul is not less convinced of the hiding of this
mystery from the angels than is the apocalyptic writer of
the Secrets of Enoch (xxiv. 3; xl. 3, etc.), who repeatedly
vaunts the knowledge of this favorite agent of cosmological
revelation as exceeding that of the angels, and depicts
Enoch's interview with the Creator in person as beginning
with the assurance:
Enoch, the things which thou seest at rest and in motion were
created by me. I will tell thee now, even from the first, what
things I created from the non-existent, and what visible things from
the invisible. Not even to my angels have I told my secrets, nor
have I informed them of their origin, nor have they understood
my infinite creation which I tell thee of to-day.
It may not be correct to speak of this Jewish doctrine
of the hidden " mystery " of God conveyed through revela
tion, and only to be "spiritually" known, as "mysticism";
and it would be manifestly improper, as we ourselves have
been at pains to show, to treat these alleged " visions " of
the apocalyptic writers as actual ecstasy. The vision form,

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 119
in the Enoch apocalypses at least, is purely conventional.
Still, when we find the Apostle Paul adopting an obviously
analogous standpoint, contrasting in I Cor. 1: 18-2: 16 the
spiritual wisdom and knowledge of God's purpose in the
creation which is his through possession of the Spirit of
Christ,21 with the foolishness of the wisdom of the world
and the ignorance of even the angelic powers, we must at
all events either subtract this element from the content
of his mystical experience, or else demur to Dr. Morgan's
statement that mysticism of the Pauline type is " foreign
to Jewish Apocalyptic."
In distinction from the Alexandrian Apollos, Paul had
reserved his gnosis from the Corinthians in favor of a
simpler gospel. But he certainly claimed the full endow
ment of the Christian mystagogue. In I Cor. 2: 6-16 he sets
forth a gnosis concerning the things unrevealed to outward
eye or ear pertaining to the purpose of God in preparing
the creation as a "free gift" to those who love, Him; a
gnosis only to be had by revelation of the Spirit, and which
belongs to those who " have the mind of Christ." For it
is conveyed in the same way that " the spirit of a man teaches
him " the purpose with which he frames his human construc
tions. Repeatedly in later epistles ( Col. 1:9; 2:3; Eph.
1:9-10; 3:3-5) he appeals to his endowment with that
" spiritual gift " of " prophecy " whose ideal was to sound
" all mysteries and all gnosis."
But it is also unquestionably true that Paul interprets this
Jewish doctrine of revelation from the standpoint of his
21 According to Pauline Christology it was the divine decree
(eiSoKTiaev) that the whole completeness (irX^pu^a) of the " powers "
should take up their permanent abode (KaroiKriaai) in Jesus (Col.
1:19). It could thus be said of the Christ who was glorified in and
by His Spirit that he was " the image of the invisible God, the first
born of all creation, in whom and through whom all things were
created" (Col. i:i5-T7; I Cor. 8:6). For'in the Wisdom litera
ture, which Paul freely employs, the Spirit is God's agent in crea
tion.

120 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
own and his readers' environment, and that when he places
his own revelation " through the Spirit " of the mystery
" which God foreordained before the world unto our
glory " in detailed comparison with that of Moses, making
of* it a vision of God productive of immortality by confor
mation to the divine " image " exhibited in the glorified
Christ, he is interpreting both the Mosaic vision of God
on Sinai (Ex. 33:12-34:35), and his own mystical ex
perience in terms of mystery religion. It is time then that
we heard from Dr. Morgan as to the influence of these upon
Paul's language and mode of thought.
Time and again (says Dr. Morgan) we have had occasion to re
fer to Hellenistic religion as affecting at vital points the structure of
the Apostle's thought. To this source we have traced the dualism
he establishes between the flesh and the Spirit, his conception of
Christ as Kyrios and as the Logos, and his concentration of the
significance of Christ's historical life in the two cardinal events of
the death and the resurrection. And in succeeding chapters, when
we come to speak of his doctrine of regeneration, of pneumatic gifts,
and of the sacraments, it will be necessary to recur to it.
Dr. Morgan proceeds in fact at this point to describe the
essential features of " Hellenistic religion " with its protean
drama of the dying and resurrected Redeemer-god (Attis,
Adonis, Serapis, Mithras, Dionysus, or however named),
and its boon to the worshipper of a blessed immortality
beyond the grave, attained by mystical assimilation to and
participation in the life of the glorified divinity. The con
tribution of the East to the new religious era was " a type
of religion individualistic, otherworldly, orgiastic, dualistic,
ascetic, redemptive, mystical." That of the West was a
Platonized Stoicism " as represented by Posidonius and
Cornutus," a religious philosophy, or gnosis, of which the
classical example is the Alexandrine Jew Philo. " To the
same stream belong the Hermetic writings, the many Gnostic
sects and the Neo-Platonic philosophy."

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 121
We are more particularly concerned, however, with the
actual language and symbolism of the cults; for the devout
expression of the mystae, who describe the inner experience
by which they are " in a sense born again " {quodam modo
renatos) and " placed in the course of a new life in salva
tion," bring us into living contact with contemporary re
ligious mysticism in mode of thought and phraseology as well.
The initiation of Lucius into the mysteries of Isis as re
lated by Apuleius 22 is a comparatively well known instance
from classical literature. It is solemnized as the symbol
of a voluntary death {ad instar voluntariae mortis). Lucius
is forbidden to disclose the precise nature of his experiences,
but gives a symbolical description.
I penetrated the boundaries of death; I trod the threshold of
Proserpine, and after being borne through all the elements I re
turned to earth ; at midnight I beheld the sun radiating white light ;
I came into the presence of the gods below and the gods above, and
did them reverence close at hand.
Lucius not only participated in the death and resurrection
of the god thrpugh the symbolism of his initiation and his
own mystical experience, but is greeted by the worshippers
as now of one substance with the divine being. Arrayed in
the robe of Olympus, a flaming torch in his hand, a crown
of spotless palm upon his head, he is " set up like the image
of a god," and in this guise receives from them religious
homage. It is no longer he that lives, but the divinity
whose glory he has seen in dazzling light that now lives
in him.
Archaeological discovery adds its confirmation to the testi
mony of classical literature regarding the goal and method
of Hellenistic religion. Thus the Papyrus Mimaut describes
the experience of the neophyte in the mysteries of Asklepios
in the thanksgiving:
22 Metamorphosis, XI.

122 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
"We rejoice that while we are still in our bodies thou didst
make us divine by the vision of thyself."
The so-called Mithras Liturgy gives expression to the same
fundamental conception of a mystical dying and rising again,
the neophyte entering into the life of the divinity through
ecstatic contemplation, or beatific vision.
Gaze upon the god (so he is instructed), and greet him thus.
Hail, Lord (Kiipie), ruler of the waters, . . . potentate of the spirit,
born again I depart life (srdXiu yevofievos airoytyvo/it.ai) , being the
while exalted ; and having been exalted I die ; born of the birth .
which is the parent of life, dissolved in death I go the way as
thou hast appointed it for a law, and didst create the (initiatory)
sacrament. We are not, of course, to see any direct literary relation
between this language of Hellenistic mystery religions and
Paul's "exclamation to Roman Christians in whose evangeli
zation he had borne no part:
Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him
through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from
the dead through (Sia) the glory of the Father, so we also might
walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him
by the likeness of his death we shall be also by the likeness of
his resurrection.
The coincidence of language and ideas between the New
Testament doctrine of new birth by water and the Spirit
and that of the mystic who is instructed to " gaze upon "
the divinity of the mystery cult, saluting him as " Lord
of the water and the spirit," entreating that in his .(sym
bolical) departure from life he may be " born again " of the
birth which is the parent of life, is not a coincidence of
23 Quoted by E. F. Scott in American Journal of Theology for
July, 1916, from Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterien-Reli-
gionen, Leipzig and Berlin, 1910.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 123
literary dependence on one side or the other, but a reflection
in both of religious ideas and phraseology which in the period
of Paul were disseminated throughout the Empire.
Let us not delay with Mithraic (?) conceptions and
phraseology, which in these regions can be carried back to
the time of Paul only when, like the phrase " born again
to eternity" (renatus in aeternum), they express ideas com
mon to all the mystery cults. We must hasten to our more
immediate goal, the interpretation of Paul's fullest exposi
tion of his fundamental mystical experience, as it appears
in his comparison of the vocation of the Christian Apostle
with the revelation to Moses. We must read again the de
fense of the Ministry of the New Covenant in II Cor. 3 : 1-
6: 10 in the light of contemporary conceptions of mystical
participation in the immortal life of the divinity, " trans
figuration " {p.era(wp<f>uicn<s) and " glorification " through
ecstatic vision and " illumination " (<£umo-p,os), " apotheosis "
by reflection on the human retina of the image (etxtov) of
the god (OeOTrji Sia 0eas).
For this purpose we may venture to transcribe a single
paragraph from Dr. Morgan's summary of recent discovery
as to the meaning in Paul's time of religious gnosis.
The supreme importance thus attached to gnosis is one of the
most outstanding features of Hellenistic religion. A passage in
the Hermetic writings defines piety as " the knowledge of God,"
and another declares that in this alone is salvation for man. If
we ask how precisely gnosis is effective for salvation it would no
doubt be a partial answer to say that it is " a way of life." It in
structs a man with respect to the true nature of the soul, its origin,
its bondage, its destiny; it points him to God as the goal of his
being, and shows him how by mortification of the flesh and a life of
virtue he may tread the upward path. All this, however, conducts
only to the threshold of the inner shrine. What works the regen
erative change is not instruction, and not self-mortification and
virtue — these are only preparatory — it is immediate contact or
mystical union with the ineffable God. Gnosis culminates in the

124 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
ecstatic vision (0e'a) in which the soul, touching the divine, re
ceives the " powers " of God and is itself divinized. " That which
is beheld illumines ((parl^ei) the whole inner life, drawing the
soul out from the body and transforming it into otiaia (the divine
supersensible substance). The place given to gnosis in Hellenistic
religion can be understood only when we keep in view its con
nection with the mystic vision; and it is in the light of this con
nection that we must interpret the statement in the Hermetic writ
ings : " This is the blessed issue for those who have attained
gnosis that they are transformed into the divine (Seueijvai) ." From
Dr. Kennedy 24 we quote the account of a dialogue between
Hermes and his son Tat on the subject of regeneration and the
manner in which it is effected. Tat reminds his father that he
had told him that no one could be saved without regeneration.25
Regeneration was only possible to one who had cut himself loose
from the world.28 Tat has renounced the world and entreats
his father, who has himself been regenerated, to communicate the
secret. Hermes replies that this must be a revelation to the heart
by the divine will. By the mercy of God he had seen an im
material vison inwardly, and had passed out through his body into
an immortal body. He is no longer what he was. While Hermes
speaks Tat becomes conscious of a transformation. He is set free
from the twelve evil propensities, which are replaced by the ten
powers of God. He can now declare : " My spirit is illumined.
... To thee, O God, author of my new creation, I, Tat, offer
spiritual sacrifices. O God and Father, thou art the Lord, thou
art the Spirit, accept from me the spiritual sacrifices which thou
desirest." 27
Paul, we perceive, is making the comparison between his
24 St. Paul and the Mystery Religions.
«.C/. Jn. 3:3.
20 Cf. Oxyrh. Log. II.
27 Religion and Theology of Paul, pp. 138-139. The references
are to the Corpus Hermet, X., 4 and 15, and to Kennedy's St. Paul
and the Mystery Religions, p. 107. The "spiritual sacrifices"
which Tat proposes to offer in thanksgiving for his "new crea
tion " are, of course, a self-dedication corresponding to the " inward
worship" (\oyiKi, yarpela) to which Paul exhorts in Rom. 12:1.
The effect upon (he worshipper of this worship is that he is " meta
morphosed " (fiera/iop^ova-ee) from the fashion (Vx^a) of this
world by a renewing of the mind, and thus attains to the beneficent
divine purpose.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 125
own. apostolic vocation on the one side, when he was given
the " illumination " of the " gnosis " of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ, and on the other the revelation
to Moses at Sinai. Must we hold, then, that he conceived
of Moses' request to " see the face " of God and its answer
as an experience parallel to the ecstatic vision of the adept
in the mysteries? Did he conceive of the Mosaic gnosis
and its message to the world as resting upon that experi
ence from which Moses returned to the people only after
he had put a veil upon his face?
I should hesitate to make any such assertion. It is by
no means certain that Paul saw any direct parallelism be
tween the divine revelation to Moses at Horeb and the re
vealing vision of God of Hellenistic religion. Indirectly,
however, the parallelism is almost certainly intended, if only
for the reason that it leads over in the next paragraph (II
Cor. 4:7-5: 10) to the doctrine of life in death and the
immortality which is achieved by the " clothing upon " of
the spirit with the indestructible heavenly " house " in place
of the " tabernacle " of clay. Whether it were true of
Moses or not, Paul feels it to be deeply, sublimely, true in
his own case, that God has given him this gnosis and im
mortality in an " illumination " (<p(OTto-p.os) of the inward
man by His glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ (II
Cor. 4:6). In that primary mystical experience he had
felt in deep reality all that inward new creation, " trans
figuration " {p.erapj6pdx>><Tvs) , and endowment with the divine
" powers " of the Spirit, which the mystic claimed. There
fore, in defending " the ministry of the new covenant " as
surpassing in glory that of Moses, he purposely employs all
the mystical imagery of Hellenistic religion as applying to
his own case and that of his fellow-ambassadors for God.
Realizing this unmistakable intention of Paul to use the
religious conceptions familiar to his hearers as the vehicle
of his own teaching we cannot do better in our attempt to

126 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
appreciate the content of his mystical experience than to
note what features he makes salient in the Pentateuchal
story of Moses' vision of God, aiming thus to interpret his
retrospect over his defense of the divine vocation of the
" minister of the new covenant." For here, as elsewhere,
we are given his own mystical experience in typical form.
In the opening paragraph (3: 1-11) Paul contrasts the
" ministry " {SiaKovia) of the new covenant with the Mosaic,
whose covenant was " written and engraven on stones."
The new is a ministry of spirit and life, guaranteed by the
covenant in the blood of Jesus. The old, with its curse
upon " every one that abideth not in all things that are
written in the law to do them " is a " ministry of death."
Nevertheless even the Mosaic " came with glory, so that
the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the
face of Moses, for the glory of his face." This transitory
glory, irradiating for the time being the face of Moses when
he descended from his vision of God carrying the renewed
tables of the law (Ex. 34: 1-6, 39-34), thereupon becomes
the Apostle's text for an exalted exposition of the unfading
glory of the " ministry of justification " {SiaKovia rijs
SiKaioovvrjs) .28 To do full justice to this we must turn back
for a moment to the Pentateuchal story of the renewal of the
covenant of the law of the Ten Words after the people's
apostasy. It begins in Ex. 33: 12-23 with Moses' request
to see the face of God in order that he may " know " Him.
In verses 17-23 the entreaty takes the form: " Show me,
1 pray thee, thy glory." Moses' petition is granted on the
ground that he has found grace in Jehovah's sight, and
that Jehovah " knows him by name " ; 29 but with the proviso,
28 " Righteousness " (A. V. and R. V.) is here, as in the majority
of cases an altogether inadequate rendering of the Pauline SiKaio-
trvvri. As the contrasted " ministry of condemnation " (SiaKovia rijs
icoraKpiffews, ver. 9) makes plain, acquittal at the judgment seat of
God is the object hoped for.
29 Cf. Gal. 4:9; I Cor. 13:12, Sec.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 127
" Thou canst not see my face ; for man, shall not see me
and live." In order, however, that Moses may have the
gnosis indispensable to the teacher of Jehovah's " ways "
(ver. 13), he is placed in a cleft of the rock and covered
with the divine hand while Jehovah passes by. As he thus
gazes upon the " afterglow " {eth-ahorai) of the dazzling
light a voice proclaims: "Jehovah, Jehovah, a God full
of compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous
in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin."
Paul is fully appreciative of the mingled sublimity and
beauty of this culminating Old Testament expression of the
revelation of the knowledge of Jehovah as the All-Merciful,
the God of Forgiveness. The fact is proved by his adoption
of parallel language to describe his own religious experience.
He too had been granted an " illumination (<£amo-p,os) with
the light of the gnosis of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ " ; and the gospel thus conveyed was a gospel
of peace and forgiveness, a " ministry of reconciliation
(SiaKona ttjs KaTaWayijs) " whereby the All-merciful again
proclaimed Himself to the world as propitiated. Its sub
stance was, in Paul's own words, " that God in Christ was
reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto men
their trespasses," and that he had committed unto the
ministry of the new covenant as His ambassadors " the procla
mation of this atonement."
But Paul does not stop with this comparison of the two
" ministries." While he attests by his very use of the
symbolism his profound appreciation of this gnosis of Moses,
he does not hesitate to place it on a lower level than his own
revelation. And in particular he dwells upon the fact that
his own is a ministration of life — life by " illumination "
(^Kono-juos) and " metamorphosis " through reflection
{KaTOTTTpit,6p.evoi) of the divine image. In Paul's view the
fading of the glory from the face of Moses was a token of the

128 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
inferiority of his " ministry." For whereas Moses put a veil
upon his face to conceal from Israel its transitoriness (such
is the curious interpretation put upon Ex. 34 : 33-35 in II
Cor. 3: 13) the glory of the vision of God that is given to
the ministry of the new covenant increases from glory to
glory, " transfiguring " the very flesh into the likeness of the
glorified Lord whose image is reflected upon the " mirror "
of the spiritual retina (ver. 18). As with the adept in the
mysteries who rejoices that while still in the body he is
made partaker of the divine nature by vision of the divinity,
so Paul feels that the transfiguring brightness reflected from
the image of his glorified Lord, who is " the Spirit'" (3: 18),
changes him into the same likeness.
The superiority of the ministry of the new covenant lies,
then, in its conveyance of life. For whereas by common con
sent it was only the law that was given by Moses, life and
immortality were brought to light through the gospel. The
new gnosis is a coming to know God, or rather to be known
of him, a knowledge which " is eternal life." For no man,
not even Moses, had seen God at any time, but the only-
begotten Son, ascended to the bosom of the Father had
now revealed Him, being himself " the image of the in
visible God" (Col. 1: 15), so that whoever has seen him
has seen the Father. It is in this " Johannine " sense that
Paul develops in II Cor. 4:1-5:10 his doctrine of the
" transfiguring " vision of Christ which not only guarantees
but effects immortality. For it is an essential part of his
doctrine of resurrection, in fact its very ground, that " this
body of our humiliation must be changed and made like unto
the glory-body of Christ" (Phil. 3: 10-11, 21). And the
method of working is that " if the Spirit of Him that raised
up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you He that raised
up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal
bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom.
8:11). It is a new creation for humanity; such a new

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 129
" dawn " as when God said, Let the light shine out of dark
ness; though Satan is able to blind the minds of the un
believing so that the " illumination " of the glory of Christ,
the second Adam made " in the image of God," does not
dawn upon them.
The very nature of the glory-body is made plain by the
nature of Christ's body as it had been beheld in ecstatic vision
by Paul together with all the rest of the witnesses (I Cor.
15:1-58). For this vision in the Christian's experience
becomes the means of moral transformation. Herein lies
in fact the supreme distinction between the Christian mysti
cism of Paul and the magic of the mystery cults. In so far,
then, as this vision of the crucified and risen Lord becomes
the means of transformation into his m<oral likeness, a " put
ting on of the new man which is created after God in
righteousness and holiness of truth" (Eph. 4:23-24; Col.
3: 10; Rom. 12:2), it is itself the effective means of the
new creation. We are raised from the dead with Christ
" by means of " {Sui) this glory of the Father to walk in
newness of life (Rom. 6:4), so that in thus becoming con
formed to the likeness of the heavenly Man by the renewing
of our minds (I Cor. 15:45-49; Rom. 12:2) we accom
plish the good and acceptable and perfect will of the Creator.
For to this end He sent this Second Adam as " lifegiving
Spirit " to become the First-born of a new race of redeemed
immortals (Rom. 8:29).
It cannot and will not be denied that Paul's doctrine of
immortality was not derived from Moses. The doctrine be
longs to the Greek period of Judaism and comes in as the
distinctive tenet of Pharisaism. But while Paul as " a
Pharisee of Pharisees" (Phil. 3:5) undoubtedly took over
in large part the form of Pharisean belief, the positive basis
of his resurrection faith and gospel was his own mystical
experience, his vision of the risen and glorified Jesus. Those
who remember the exalted paean of victorious spiritual life,

130 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
triumphant over the law of sin and death in Rom. 8 : 1-39
will not need to be told of the moral value attached by Paul
to his religio-mystical experience. To countless millions
through fifty generations that experience has been the supreme
expression of the victory of the higher nature in man, that
nature which " thinks it was not born to die," over the
lower. It would be waste of words to enlarge upon the
" value to the life of others " of what Paul refers to, now
as his " new creation," now as his being " raised from the
dead," now as being transformed, or " metamorphosed " into
the image of Christ, by the " renewing of his mind." This
value is as undisputed as it is independent of the particular
mode or form under which Paul conceived the psychological
process of " regeneration " and " transfiguration " or " con
formation to the image of the Son of God" (Rom. 8:29).
We have already recalled the saving and distinctively
Christian element of the Pauline mysticism to be its unquali
fied subjection to the acid test of the intellectual and moral
judgment. If our survey of Paul's own interpretation of
his experiences has value, to the psychological critic it will
not chiefly lie in renewed emphasis laid upon this conceded
religious and practical value, indestructible as long as man's
inward struggle toward the higher ideals of his spiritual and
moral nature endures, even were its whole conceptual form
and mode of apprehension in Paul's mind illusive. It will
lie rather in the interpretative connection we have sought to
establish between these Pauline modes of apprehension, and
those of current Hellenistic or " mystery " religion.
In particular we must look at Paul's application of his
doctrine of life in the Spirit to the death in life of the
true " minister of the new covenant " in II Cor. 4: 7-6: 10,
bringing it into line with earlier and later expressions of
his doctrine of " transfiguration " into the image of the glori
fied Son, such as Rom. 6 : 4-5 ; 8 : 1 1, 23, 29 ; I Cor. 15: 35-
54; Phil. 3:20-21. We must appreciate how here in II

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL 131
Cor. 4:7-15 Paul's description of his " constant bearing
about in the body the putting to death of Jesus, that the life
also of Jesus may be manifested in his mortal flesh " (II Cor.
4: 10; cf. Rom. 8:11) fits on to his reference in the preced
ing paragraph (II Cor. 3: 18-4: 6) to the inward " illumin
ation " and " transfiguration " into the " likeness of the Son
of God," whose glory was " mirrored " in the eye of his
soul. Especially must we note the allusion at its close to
the " new creation " for the world as well as for his own
soul, which had " dawned " in his mystical vision of " the
face of Jesus Christ." For this conception of the eternal
life of " things invisible " triumphing through a " voluntary
death " is continued in verses 16-18. Moreover in the open
ing paragraph of the next chapter (5 : 1-10) it develops
into a discussion of the " heavenly house," an indestructible
" building of God " with which we are to be " clothed
upon " when our " earthly tabernacles " decay. Finally this
immortality, guaranteed by the gift of the Spirit, an "im
mortality in the image of God's own being," is declared to
be the divine purpose in the creation. For a predecessor of
Paul in the adaptation of the Hellenistic doctrine of im
mortality through vision of the divine image had also de
clared that
God created man for incorruption
And made him an image (tfnoiv) of his own proper being.80
In all this defense of the " ministry," therefore, Paul is
simply interpreting his vision of the glorified Lord and its
retroactive effect in terms of Hellenistic religion.
It is the task of the psychological rather than the historical
and literary critic to draw the boundary line between sub
jective and objective in this mystical experience of Paul.
For our present undertaking let it suffice to have made clearer
(if our effort has not been in vain), how Paul applied these
30 Sap. 2:23; cf. II Cor. 3:18; 5:5.

132 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
current conceptions to a spiritual experience which he was
one of many to share with Peter and the other companions
of Jesus; and that he and they together secured the triumph
of Jesus' cause, the transfer to humanity of that ideal of the
Kingdom of God for which Jesus suffered his martyrdom,
because they endowed their vision of the exalted and glori
fied " Lord " with the moral qualities of the Servant of
Jehovah who had " humbled himself and become obedient
unto death, yea, even the death of the cross."

THE MYSTICISM OF AUGUSTINE
Williston Walker
So preeminent were Augustine's services in the development
of Christian doctrine that our first thought of him is as
a theologian. His controversies with Donatists and Pela
gians, his explications of the Trinity, of grace, of predesti
nation and of the sacraments were so formative for later
Christian thought that they naturally stand in the forefront
in our recollection of him. To those who immediately suc
ceeded him Augustine appeared no less distinguished as a
propagator of monasticism. But with all his other claims to
distinction Augustine must remain always one of the greatest
of Christian mystics, and no small part of his permanent
influence has been the fruit of the mystical spirit which in
spired and animated his writings generally, but was nowhere
more evident than in his Confessions.
Augustine's Confessions are the most remarkable spiritual
autobiography that the ancient world produced, and have
never been surpassed in any period of Christian history.
They are far from a complete story of his life. They end
with the death of his mother, in this thirty-third year. He
was to live till nearly seventy-six. They omit many details
of employment and relationships in the years that they cover
that the reader would gladly have had preserved. The main
facts of spiritual and intellectual development stand forth,
however, in transparent clearness. The Confessions exhibit
with utmost fidelity his moral defeats, his philosophical and
religious wanderings, his intellectual and spiritual struggles,
and his transforming experience. No leader of the ancient
133

134 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Church is known to us, in the deeper recesses of his soul,
with anything of comparable completeness.
Augustine's convictions were determined in large measure
by his experience. In him two natures were conjoined, of
diverse tendencies. He was marked, from earliest manhood,
by a hot-blooded impetuosity, inherited perhaps from his easy
going, long heathen father, which manifested itself in sen
suality. When little more than sixteen he contracted a con-
cubinous relation to which he was to hold for years. At the
same time his deeply spiritual and intellectual nature could
find no abiding satisfaction in the gratifications of the flesh,
and Cicero's Hortensius, which came into his hands in his
nineteenth year, convinced him that in the search for truth
the only permanent satisfactions are to be found. It was, it
may well have been, an inheritance from his spiritual-minded
mother. Thenceforth the two natures were in constant
struggles within him, and victory came long to neither. His
better self loathed his lower appetites, but he was unable to
shake off their control. He was wretched in heart. " I,
miserable young man, supremely miserable even in the very
outset of my youth, had entreated chastity of Thee, and.
said : ' Grant me chasity and continency, but not yet.' " l
In these torments he turned to the Scriptures for help, but
the barbarous Latinity of the old versions then current re
pelled him. " They appeared to me unworthy to be com
pared with the dignity of Cicero ; " 2 and his pride of will was
not as yet to be bent to their characteristic virtue of humility.
" I scorned to be a little one, and, swollen with pride, I
looked upon myself as a great one." 3
No wonder that in this divided and wretched state he was
attracted by the then widely prevalent Manichaeism. The
system of Mani, though always frowned upon by the Roman
1 Confessions, 8 : 7.
2 Confessions, 3 : 5.
3 Confessions, 3 : 5.

THE MYSTICISM OF AUGUSTINE 135
authorities, had the force that always inheres, for earnest
minds, impressed with the depth of actual or potential
human depravity, in a dualistic explanation of the universe.
To Manichaean thought, good and evil are eternal realities,
both positive existences, and in unending conflict, with man
a creature in both camps, and his everlasting control a prize
of victory. While evil is spiritual, its chief domain is that
of matter. " I believed evil to be a sort of substance, and to
be possessed of its own foul and misshapen mass, — whether
dense, which they denominated earth, or thin and subtle, as
is the body of the air, which they fancy some malignant spirit
crawling through the earth. And because a piety, such as it
was, compelled me to believe that the good God never created
any evil nature, I conceived two masses, the one opposed to
the other, both infinite, but the evil the more contracted, the
good the more expansive." 4 Such a view tends to place evil
not in a responsible wrongfulness of disposition, but to regard
it as something inevitably bound up in the dual constitution
of men, — body and spirit, — to be fought indeed, but rather
hopelessly as long as man is in the bondage of the flesh.
While man must struggle against evil, he is hardly respon
sible for its existence in his own nature. For some nine
years Augustine remained satisfied with this explanation of his
moral perplexities. Yet Manichaeanism did not hold him.
He came to question its adequacy, and fell into a state of
skepticism, " doubting of everything and fluctuating between
all."5 Meanwhile Augustine was succeeding in his profession of
teacher of rhetoric, and had secured an excellent post in
Milan. Here two new forces came into his life. It is dif
ficult to say which was the more influential. One was the
preaching of Ambrose, the great bishop of Milan, a man
about fifteen years older than Augustine, and now in the full
* Confessions, $ : ro.
5 Confessions, 5 : 14.

136 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
tide of his remarkable ministry. To his sermons Augustine
went, at first, as an eager taster of pulpit eloquence ; but Am
brose soon won his intellectual respect for the message, and
under his impress the authority of the Church and the mean
ing of Scripture came to have new significance. He began to
commit Ambrose's sayings to heart ; but he would not yet yield
himself to the guidance of the preacher. " All this time I
restrained my heart from assenting to anything ... for my
desire was to be as well assured of these things that I saw
not, as I was that seven and three are ten." 6
Augustine might have continued in this state of skeptical
indecision had it not been for a second influence that now
came into his life — that of Neoplatonism. It is doubtless
true, that in Neoplatonism the ancient world reached its high
est ethical idealism. It was eminently mystical in its view.
Above all, the source of all reality, is the simple, infinite
Being, the source of all good, and that from which all is
derived. From it all the multiform existence that constitutes
this complex universe descends in gradations of diminishing
completeness, but each deriving whatever of reality it pos
sesses from the great Being which is the source of all. All
derived being, if it fulfills the law of its nature, tends to as-
spire to communion and union with that Being which is the
ultimate reality. As Augustine expressed it : "I looked
back on other things, and I perceived that it was to Thee they
owed their being, and that they were all bounded in Thee." 7
" I viewed the other things below Thee, and perceived that
they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. They
are, indeed, because they are from Thee ; but are not, because
they are not what Thou art. For that truly is which remains
immutably. It is good, then, for me to cleave unto God, for
if I remain not in Him, neither shall I in myself, but He,
remaining in Himself, reneweth all things." 8
6 Confessions, 6 : 4.
7 Confessions, 7:15.
8 Confessions, 7:11

THE MYSTICISM OF AUGUSTINE 137
Here was a view of the nature of God and of the universe
that was well fitted to wean Augustine from his skepticism
and remaining Manichaeism, To him God was now the
source of all reality anywhere. All as it came from God is
good. Evil is nothing self-existent and positive, as in Mani
chaeism. It is a privation, a defect, a lack of goodness. It
is a frustration of the normal desire to find the highest good
in God, to turn towards- Him. "I inquired what iniquity
was, and ascertained it not to be a substance, but a perversion
of the will, bent aside from Thee, O God, the Supreme
Substance, toward these lower things." 9 Neoplatonism
thenceforth largely determined Augustine's philosophic inter
pretation of God, sin, and the highest good. The philosophic
basis of his mysticism was laid.
Augustine, however, saw the limitations of Neoplatonism
no less clearly. It had not the definiteness that comes from
allegiance to a person. Its supreme reality and highest good
remained- remote and indefinite until revealed in a person, as
in Christianity. " I sought a way of acquiring strength
sufficient to enjoy Thee ; but I found it not until I embraced
that ' Mediator between God and man, the man Christ
Jesus.' " 10
Yet Augustine's sensual nature still held him in bondage.
Though now intellectually convinced of the truth of Chris
tianity, by Ambrose's preaching, by Neoplatonism and by
the reading especially of Paul, his will did not yet follow.
" I did not grasp my Lord Jesus, — I, though humbled,
grasped not' the humble One " " He dismissed his faithful
concubine. He entered an engagement that promised an ad
vantageous marriage; but as the union must be delayed on
account of the youth of his betrothed, he took another mis
tress. He loathed his weakness, but felt no strength in
9 Confessions, 7: 16.
10 Confessions, 7: 18.
11 Confessions, 7: 18.

138 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
himself to overcome it. He was distracted, ashamed and
wretched. In his perplexities Augustine how sought Simplicianus, a
Christian to whom Ambrose had been deeply indebted
spiritually. Simplicianus sympathized with his studies in
Neoplatonism, and told him of the Christian profession, in
old age, of Victorinus, whose Latin translation of Neoplatonic
works had been Augustine's introduction to a knowledge of
that philosophy. It was the sacrifice of scholastic pride in
volved in Victorinus's Christian profession that most im
pressed the scholarly inquirer. " When that man of Thine,
Simplicianus, related this to me about Victorinus I burned
to imitate him." 12 " Thus came I to understand, from my
own experience, what I had read, how that ' the flesh lusteth
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.' " 13
Augustine's release was not yet come. A traveled fellow-
African Christian, in high government office, Pontitianus,
now called on Augustine and his friend Alypius. He found
Augustine, to his surprise, reading Paul. The talk turned
toward monasticism, then in its early vigor in Egypt and
spreading thence to other parts of the empire. Pontitianus
had many interesting things to tell, as they sat together in
the garden; but what impressed and humiliated Augustine
was that these unlettered monks could overcome temptations
which, he, a man of learning, found himself unable to resist.
" I seized upon Alypius and exclaimed : What is wrong with
us? What is this? What heardest thou? The unlearned
start up and take heaven, and we, with our learning, but
wanting heart, see where we wallow in flesh and blood." 14
The inward struggle intensified. Augustine longed to be
freed from the chains of habit, yet the old life still had some
thing of its spell. It whispered, as he thought of its old sat-
12 Confessions, 8 : 5.
13 Confessions, 8 : 5.
l* Confessions, 8 : 8.

THE MYSTICISM OF AUGUSTINE 139
isf actions : " Dost thou think that thou canst live without
them?" But the longing for spiritual freedom was the
stronger. He prayed, flinging himself beneath a fig-tree ih
the garden. " Not indeed in these words, yet to this effect,
spake I much unto Thee : ' But Thou, O Lord, how long ?
. . . How long? To-morrow and to-morrow? Why not
now? Why is there not this hour an end of my uncleanli-
ness?"15 Augustine's nature was convulsed by a crisis of utmost vio-"
lence of emotion. What followed may best be told in his
own words : 16
" I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter con
trition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or
girl, I know not which, coming from a neighboring house, chant
ing and oft repeating: 'Take up and read; take up and read.'
Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most
earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any
kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to
have heard the like. So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I
rose up, interpreting it in no other way than as a command to
me from heaven to open the book, and to read the first chapter
I should light upon. ... So quickly I returned to the place where
Alypius was sitting; for there I had put down the volume of
the Apostles when I rose thence. I grasped, opened, and in silence
read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell : ' Not in riot
ing and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in
strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof '
(Romans 13:13, 14). No further would I read, nor did I need,
for instantly, as the sentence ended, — by a light, as it were, of
security infused into my heart, — all the gloom of doubt vanished
away." To Augustine it was an abiding and life-long transfor
mation. It involved the forgiveness of his sins ; but it was a
boon far greater than that. It freed his will from its pre-
15 Confessions, 8:12.
16 Confessions, 8 : 12.

i4o AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
vious bondage,- and infused power now to turn from all lower
aims to God. God had wrought, by almighty power, a trans
formation in him which no strength of his own could have
effected. From this standpoint of a divinely effected renewal
of will, — a rescue from bondage, — Augustine henceforth
viewed salvation. His nature was set free for that delight in
God for which he had been made.
The student of mystical experiences has noted Augustine's
conviction that the voice like that of a child heard by him
was divinely sent. It was an " audition." Yet he must
have been impressed also with the simple and unadorned way
in which Augustine narrates the incident. Augustine was
not incredulous of the miraculous. He believed that mira
cles, even the cure of blindness 1T and raising from the dead,18
had taken place, not infrequently, in his own days. In
the account of his own crucial experience he speaks with a
brevity and directness that carry conviction that the event
was absolutely real to him and has been fully told. What
ever weight may be laid upon the intensity of the emotional
struggle through which Augustine was passing as explain
ing his experience, there can be no doubt that he believed
that he heard the command, " Take up and read " ; and
was convinced that the admonition was of divine origin.
That the voice was that of a child in ordinary play, and the
experience that of a coincidence, was a thought that occurred
to Augustine himself, only to be rejected by him because
he knew of no game in which such words were used.
Whether or no the modern investigator will think coin
cidence the true explanation will probably depend on his
temperament and prepossessions.
Thenceforth, for Augustine, God is not only the basis
of all reality; He is the center of all true life. In com
parison with Him all is emptiness and shadow. "Thou
17 Confessions, 9:7.
18 City of God, 22 : 8.

THE MYSTICISM OF AUGUSTINE 141
hast formed us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till
they find rest in Thee," 19 is a phrase in which Augustine
summed up his mystic view of man's true relation to God.
It is Neoplatonism in an interpretation of Christian experi
ence. " The' happy life is this, — to rejoice unto Thee, in
Thee, and for Thee; this it, is, and there is no other."20
This mystical sense of God, not divined from logical demon
stration, but from an immediate consciousness of His rela
tion to the human soul, was Augustine's most abiding con
tribution to the interpretation of religion. It is one that
makes religion in its last analysis not a belief, not an intel
lectual conviction, not a rule of life, though all these flow
from religion, but a personal relationship. From this new
relationship between the soul and God, right conduct neces
sarily ensues. " This was the result, that I willed not to
do what I willed, but willed to do what Thou willedst." 21
Augustine came to his goal through many wanderings and
much anguish of spirit; but that goal, when reached, was
nothing less than a knowledge of God, an enjoyment of God,
and an over-ruling of his will by that of God, which were
to him abiding joy, contentment and rest. This experi
ence he mediated to those who came after him, and therefore
Augustine has never ceased to be a power in the Christian
church- far beyond the acceptance of his theological interpre
tations. This experience was fundamentally mystical, and
Augustine therefore deserves to rank among the greatest of
the Christian mystics.
19 Confessions, i : i.
20 Confessions, 10:21.
21 Confessions, 9:1.

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM
Charles Cutler Torrey

Students of Islam have expressed widely different views
as to the extent to which mysticism enters into it as a char
acteristic element. Some have asserted that it is of all
the great religions of the world the one in which mysticism
holds the smallest place, and that the so-called Moham
medan mystics — who are many — really stand, and have
always stood, outside the circle of genuine Moham
medanism. Others, coming from a study of the practice
of the religion rather than of its theory, have said that
every devout Muslim is a true mystic. Each of these two
extreme statements has its justification, but the latter comes
much nearer the truth than the former.
Orthodox Mohammedanism does rest, formally, on a single
^trange__hook and the personal example of the peculiar man
who was its author, that is, on the Koran and the Sunna;
and it is certain that neither of the two seems well fitted
to call forth that variety of religious experience in which
the worshipper draws very near to God, whether in con
templation or in emotion. On the other hand, no great
religion can be limited to the pattern of its beginnings, nor
to the content of its formal orthodoxy.
Several factors have combined, in varying measure, to
produce this type of religious experience in Islam. First,
there is the faith as it has developed along its main tradi
tional lines, from century to century, presenting a more or
less homogeneous body of belief and experience shared in
by the typical Muslim. Islam had its own mystics even in
142

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 143
its least promising days, when it was still the crude faith
of Arab tribes. Moreover, it can be shown that the Koran
and the life of the Prophet, even in the light of critical
study, provide more than a germ of mysticism, though gen
erally far enough removed from this attitude of mind and
heart. Other factors needing to be taken into account are local
or racial tendencies and customs, for Islam has spread far
and taken on many shades of color. The various eastern
lands possess their distinct types of thought and emotion,
which no superimposed religion can greatly affect. The
Greek is religious in a Greek way, whatever the nature
of his creed. A native of China thinks and feels as a China
man, whether he is a Buddhist, a Methodist, or a Muslim.
As for the Arab, if his theology sometimes looks like ele
mentary mathematics, his religion often seems like wildfire.
Persia and India, as will appear, made their characteristic
contributions to that side of Mohammedan thought and life
with which we are here concerned. Another factor from
the outside is the influence of other religions. Christianity,
in particular, has been potent in encouraging and shaping
Mohammedan mysticism, both through its philosophy and
still more through the example of its hermits and saints.
Lastly, there is the universal tendency of the human soul
in its devout moods. This factor, the need of human nature
everywhere, has played a more important part in this re
ligious development than we often realize. It can produce,
and has in fact produced, a true mysticism of some sort on
every kind of Mohammedan soil, in the natural develop
ment of the faith with its important by-products. We look
for what might be expected as the fruit of Islam, and gen
erally find it; but along with it we often see the religion
of a deep inner experience, with all its warmth and excite
ment. It is interesting to see how this was sometimes
brought forward in mediaeval Islam, as in mediaeval

144 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Christianity, by the reaction against extreme scholasticism.
As for Mohammed himself, his habitual attitude of mind
was not at all that of a mystic ; and he is ordinarily included
in discussions of this particular subject chiefly by reason of
certain remarkable psychic phenomena which are character
istic of that elusive being Mohammed the Prophet rather
than of Mohammed the Muslim. The story of his visions
and dreams certainly belongs to the literature of mysticism,
and is a highly interesting example of its kind. It can
hardly be omitted here, though it is not possible to do more
than touch upon the subject very briefly.
Mohammed, like not a few other of the foremost religious
leaders of history, was gifted with a nervous disorder of
some sort, the effect of which appeared in various ways.
We know that during his public career, that is, from the
year 611 or 612 a.d., when he was about forty years old,
to the year of his death, 632, he was subject to peculiar
seizures, which have sometimes ' been regarded as epileptic
but probably were of a less serious nature. These fits, in
regard to which we have the abundant but exaggerated and
often plainly untrustworthy testimony of his contemporaries,
originally played an important part in the experiences which
convinced him that he was given a divine message to his
people, and in subsequent times seem regularly to have been
connected in some way with the successive utterances which
make up the Koran. Whether he had experienced any such
seizures in his earlier years we are not informed; but if
not actually produced for the first time they must at least
have been given a new power by the intense nervous ex
citement under which he labored for some time previous to
his first " revelation."
Mohammed's mind was filled with certain ideas which he
had obtained directly or indirectly from Jews and Christians:
One God, the creator of man and of all things; sin, divine
wrath, and the judgment day; heaven and hell; a written

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 145
revelation sent from God to man for his guidance; a suc
cession of prophets, through whom the messages are sent.
Over these ideas he brooded, while his agitation was increased
by the fasting and vigils which the well-known habit of
Christian ascetics had recommended to him. It was then
that there came upon him such attacks as were ordinarily
attributed, among the Arabs of his time, to possession by
jinns, but which he soon felt certain were manifestations
of the power of God working in him, and the means of in
spiring him to utter divine messages. The Jews and
Christians had been favored in the past; the time had now
come for the Arabs to be given their own revelation, and
he, Mohammed, was the chosen instrument. The fits were
a heaven-sent gift, and it seems quite plain that at this time
they came upon him unawares, as the result of his nervous
condition; the nature of their continuance in after years —
how far they were involuntary and how far encouraged or
reproduced by his own excited volition — must remain a
matter of conjecture. It is not difficult to suppose that such
a physical aptitude, once established, could eventually be
come a habit, to be called upon whenever the circumstances
required. This hypothesis agrees best with the mass of testi
mony which has come down to us, and especially with what
we find in every part of the Koran. We can hardly doubt
that a certain apparatus of revelation was very soon recog
nized by Mohammed, and that it continued to be employed
throughout his career, the only variation being presumably
in the degree of intensity which the nervous excitement
reached. It is sufficiently obvious that the vast majority of Moham
med's outgivings in the Koran were neither produced nor
fostered by any trance-like condition. On the other hand,
every reader must recognize that their author was not one
to whom composition was easy ; even the most commonplace
and matter-of-fact of his utterances were the fruit of tra-

146 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
vail. The effort which produced them always had in it
something abnormal. To the day of his death he seems
never to have doubted for a moment that he was a prophet,
gifted with a prophet's special privileges; his mental pro
cesses, when he was speaking as God's mouthpiece, were not
like those of other men, but were divinely directed. After
the emotional paroxysm, through which he believed himself
to receive illumination from above, followed a struggle
with the ideas and phrases of the message, until at last it
was worked into shape. Whatever form of words Moham
med thus decided upon was the one to which he was guided
by the angel of revelation; of this he was fully persuaded.
Every single verse of his book was a " heavenly sign " {aya).
To the earliest period of Mohammed's self-consciousness
as a prophet belong certain visions in regard to which we
are so fortunate as to have the testimony of his own words,
in the Koran. The experiences to which he alludes appear
to have been genuine hallucinations, in which he believed
himself to see clearly with the bodily eye " things not law
ful to be uttered " (as St. Paul says of his own experi
ence). Certainly he entertained no doubt that the heavenly
visitor (Gabriel) actually came to him in some visible form.
The first of the passages of this nature is Sura (Chapter)
81 : 19-24. Verily, this (i. e., the teaching here given forth)
is the word of a noble Messenger; * one who has power and
influence with the Lord of the Throne (ie., God himself).
* . . . Your companion (i. e., Mohammed) is not de
mented; * nay, he indeed saw him there, in full view, on
the horizon.
The second passage, which mentions two different visions,
is a little more circumstantial and characterized by a truly
dramatic vividness, in spite of its obscurity. Sura 53: 1-18:
By the star when it fell! * Your companion was not mis
taken nor in error, * nor is he speaking out of his own
fancy. * Nay, this was naught else than a revelation, * given

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 147
him by a mighty one, * one endued with power; who bal
anced himself, * there, just above the horizon; * then he
drew near, and nearer, * until he was distant only two bows'-
lengths, or less. * Then he revealed to his servant that which
he revealed. * The mind was not deceived in what it saw; *
will ye dispute with him regarding that which his eyes be
held? * Yea, he saw him come down on another occasion, *
by the sidra tree, at the boundary, * near the garden of re
sort; * when there covered the tree that which covered it.
* The eye did not wander, nor was it deceived; * nay, he
saw some of the great signs of his Lord.
Mohammed's first meeting with the angel of revelation
had come in the form of a dream. For the account of
this happening we are dependent on the Prophet's reported
words, but the corroborating evidence is strong and has gen
erally been so regarded. Mohammed knew very well what
utterance in the Koran was the oldest and formed its begin
ning; this was a thing that he could never have forgotten.
The members of his family, his first disciples, the increasing
company of his devoted adherents through a period of twenty
years, must have felt an intense interest in this very ques
tion, and we have only the one oft-repeated tradition. More
over the account, when compared with the corresponding
passage in the Koran, bears internal marks of truth as far
as the main facts are concerned; doubtless some of the de
tails are the result of later embellishment.
Like some other earnest Arabs of his own time and many
of a later day, Mohammed had occasionally gone out alone
into the neighboring wilderness for several days at a time,
in imitation of the Christian monks, who were known to re
ceive supernatural power through this mode of life. There
was a cave in the rugged mountain above Mekka, and in
this he took refuge. One night, when he was sleeping there,
the angel Gabriel suddenly stood before him, bearing a strip
of silk on which some words were written. " Read ! " com-

148 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
manded the angel. But Mohammed, to whom reading and
writing were probably laborious processes at best, and who
was badly frightened into the bargain, declined. " I can
not," he said. Thereupon his visitor laid hold of him and
wound the silk about his face and throat so tightly that he
could hardly breathe. Then, releasing him, he said again,
"Read!" Mohammed answered as before, and again the
angel choked him with the cloth until he was almost suf
focated. Letting him go at last, he said for the third time,
" Read ! " Then poor Mohammed, with the one thought
of postponing the choking process as long as possible, stam
mered out, " What shall I read ? " The answer was the
first Arabic revelation, that which was to be the beginning
of the Koran (96: 1-5) : Read! In the name of thy Lord,
who created; * created man from a blood-clot. * Read! for
thy Lord is the most gracious one; * who taught man to
write with the pen; * taught him what he had not known.
Mohammed repeated these words, whereupon Gabriel
vanished. " Then," Mohammed is reported to have said, " I
awoke, and it seemed as though the words had been written
on my heart with an iron pen."
The Prophet and his followers of course looked upon this
as a supernatural occurrence, a real visit of the angel Gabriel;
we, however, may see in it the tolerably accurate record of
an ordinary nightmare. The sudden apparition, the physi
cal distress like suffocation, the words which cling to the
memory, the awaking at the climax of the dream, are all
very familiar. As for the few sentences which Gabriel
recited, they are as commonplace, and as imperfectly con
nected, as such oracles by dream are apt to be. They con
cern matters with which Mohammed's soul was then tor
mented, particularly the idea of a written teaching inspired
from heaven. It is also significant that the five successive
phrases are couched in the rhymed prose in which the native
soothsayers, or kahins — something like the tribal " medi-

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 149
cine men " of the American Indians — had been accustomed
to give forth their charms and other oracular utterances.
Mohammed must often have thought of this form of dis
course as the traditionally Arabian garb of prophecy. From
this time on he employed it, and Gabriel (whose ear for
rhyme, it would seem, was not quite perfect) always gave
him the needed assistance.
Subsequent dreams and apparitions said to have been ex
perienced by Mohammed are of minor consequence, and have
no such authentication as those above described. It is to
be noted that there was no vision of Allah, but only of
Allah's messenger, with whom the Prophet throughout the
remainder of his life continued to feel himself in close ¦ touch.
As has already been said, these experiences of the nascent
Prophet of the Arabs are merely a part of his peculiar per
sonal history, and have little or no bearing on the religious
life of the ordinary Muslim. When our inquiry concerns
mysticism in the ordinary connotation, that introspective,
self-devoting, emotional variety of religion in which the
worshipper strives after, and feels that he achieves, a close
personal relation with the Divine Spirit, we certainly do not
expect to find it prominent in this crude Arabian system of
belief and practice. Mohammed's mind was of a meditative,
brooding type, but not introspective nor capable of philos-
ophizing. His formulation of Islam is typically objective
and concrete, practical and with little of the emotional ele
ment; the idea of communion with God seems hardly present
in it. The Allah of the Koran generally makes on the reader
the impression of a magnified Mekkan merchant removed
to an infinite distance from mankind. The first person
singular, used either of God or of his worshipper, hardly
occurs in the Koran at all; the only direct and unmediated
address to God by the worshipper (in the first person
plural) is in the brief opening chapter. The attitude of
mind in which the devotee speaks out of a personal intimacy

150 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
with the deity is generally quite foreign to the book. We
see no emphasis laid on the " spiritual life " or the " care
of the soul." So far as would appear from the Koran,
the spiritual life is a matter of small concern. The Muslim
is not required tp^care for his soul. In embracing the new
faith he may need td"change his mind, but not his heart.
There is no c^techuminatejjn the Islam of the Koran. If
we look for something to correspond to the passionate quest
of the personified Wisdom, in the Hebrew scriptures, the
dearest companion, to whom the lover clings, when he has
found her; or to such mystical figures in the New Testa
ment as the bread and water of life, or the vine and the
branches; we shall search in vain. These things are all re
mote from Mohammed's teaching. Some striking utterances
of the sort appear in the orthodox Tradition, to be sure —
thanks to the Sufi traditionists who put them there.
But we shall certainly go astray if we try to measure
Mohammed's own " Islam " by the Koran. From the fact
that he says very little about religious emotion, whether his
own or that of others, it is indeed a fair inference that this
played a minor part in his conception of the faith; but we
are not warranted in assuming that what we have before
us in the singular book is anything like a sufficient record of
his personal religious experience. Neither he nor his earliest
zealous adherents — (¦ hot-blooded orientals] always easily
moved and desiring to be moved — could have been satisfied
with a service which had in it no passionate devotion. They
found in fact in Islam what they desired and needed to find ;
that, moreover, which truly had formed a part of it from
the beginning.
Mohammed was not a man of many words; we receive
everywhere the impression that he was one who was wont to
listen and think while others talked. It is not his habit to
reveal himself in the Koran, though he very often does so
involuntarily, where we can read between the lines. He

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 151
does not present to view, save by occasional hints, the strug
gles, aspirations, and exultation of the Muslim; partly, no
doubt, because of the difficulty of expressing himself, but
partly also because by disposition he was reserved and spar
ing in his utterances. He was more at home in dealing with
facts than with feelings. It does not appear that he ever
encouraged his followers to unbosom themselves to the public
in confessions or homilies, beyond the simple repetition of
what was provided for them in his revealed book. Long-
winded helpers he could dispense with. The saying at
tributed to him : " the length of a man's prayer and the short
ness of his sermon are the signs of his understanding," gives
at least a true impression of both his preference and his own
practice. In view of this habitual reticence it is all the more
noteworthy that we do find in the Koran occasional passages
which have in them something like the lyrical depth and
pathos of the Hebrew Psalmists when they say: ."Thou
hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and
my feet from falling," or even this: "As the hart pants
for the running brooks, so my soul thirsts for Thee." Thus
the soliloquy in 93 : 5 ff. : Verily thy Lord will grant
thee favor, and show thee mercy. * Did He not find thee
an orphan, and give thee a home? * Did He not find thee
wandering, and guide thee? * Yea, He found thee poor, and
made thee prosperous. * Deal not harshly, then, with the
orphan, * and turn not away him who comes enquiring. *
And as for the kindness of thy Lord, proclaim it! * And
again, a very similar passage, 94 : 1 ff. : " Did we not open
thy heart? * and take from thy back the galling load? * and
give thee a better name? * Verily, along with trouble comes
relief; * yea, along with trouble comes relief! * Then when
thou art at liberty, be zealous, * and eagerly desire thy
Lord. *
Obviously, this is no far distant God. It must not be
forgotten, moreover, that in not a few passages the Prophet,

152 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
contradicting the plain impression given by his ordinary ut
terances, asserts emphatically that God is near at hand, close
to the worshipper, closer even than any human being can be.
58:8: There is no secret conference of three in which He
is not the fourth, nor of five in which He is not the sixth.
Be the number less or more, He is with them wherever they
are. 50: 15: We created man. We know what his soul
whispers to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular
vein. 2: 109: Whichever way ye turn, there is God's face.
The Prophet is fond of the phrase: " eager desire for the
face of God," using the same verb-root that is employed in
the exhortation " eagerly desire thy Lord," quoted above.
In the strength supplied by this motive the Muslim gives
his alms liberally, endures persecution for the faith, and offers
all that he has, including his life, for the cause of Allah
(2:274; 13:22; 92:20). Whatever the scholastic theo
logians .might make of this " face," it is certain that to the
ordinary believer it signified the veritable and visible person
of God. I have no doubt that this is what the phrase
meant to Mohammed himself, as he repeated it. We may
also compare such a passage as 55 : 26 f . : Every one on earth
must pass away, but the majestic, glorious face of thy Lord
shall endure. Here was material for mysticism. Degrees
of approach to the divine presence in the next life are hinted
at in more than one passage, especially in the phrase " those
who are brought near (to God)," the word being the same
which is used elsewhere in speaking of the angels, and of
Jesus the son of Mary. Thus in 83 : 18, 21 there is mention
of the Book of the righteous . . . those nigh to God shall
witness it. Here was food for the popular conception of
sainthood, sure to develop very soon.
The assembling of these passages and others of the same
character makes it plain that the Koran, though a text-book
of all that is external, rigid, and rudely manufactured in
theology, has yet its portions in which genuine religious

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 153
fervor comes to the surface. Primitive Islam is " child
like " not only in its crude ignorance, but also in its frequent
manifestation of a simple, warm faith. The Arab who was
inclined to be religious — and there were many such, the
first two caliphs, Abu Bekr and Omar, among them — would
surely be moved as he listened to the passages quoted above,
carried them away in his memory, and said them over and
over to himself. The fervent mood would be encouraged by
the ever-recurring formula, " the merciful Compassionate
One," and by the earnest, intimate petitions of the Muslim's
" Lord's Prayer " : Thee we serve, and Thee we ask for
help; * lead us in the right way, * the way of those to whom
Thou art gracious. * In the face of such words as these,
no dogma could persuade that Allah was far away or hard
to reach.
It must be remembered also that there is an important
source of excitement, of a kind that can contribute to re
ligious emotion, in the literary form of the Koran, with its
musical rhythm and its rhymed verse-endings. The Arabs
had a remarkably acute sense of rhythm, and were easily
moved by the sound of poetry. In the tales of the Aghani
or the Thousand and One Nights, or still other collections,
it is a commonplace that the hero or heroine, or perhaps a
mere bystander, falls to the ground in a swoon on hearing a
fine poem recited. From the testimony of native writers
and the experience of modern times we know that there was
no great exaggeration in this. Mohammed had the Arab's
feeling for the sound of words and the cadence of the phrase ;
in general, his rhetorical instinct was strong. The early
suras (chapters) of the Koran are all made up of short and
vigorous sentences, often truly thrilling in their eloquence.
They were to be recited aloud, not read silently, and every
where the sound plays its important part; many passages
which in translation are merely futile or almost ridiculous
have in the original Arabic a splendid resonance. These

154 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
were utterances not easily forgotten when heard, and they
were remembered all the more readily because of the
rhyme. Some striking verses are many times repeated in
different places, and in two or three of the suras a single
phrase is carried through as a regular refrain. There is
varied strong emotion in all this earlier part of the book:
conviction of sin, terror, hope, joy, burning zeal and fierce
indignation, aspiration, and an affectionate trust in the Merci
ful Helper which needed little added stimulus in order to
become truly passionate. Through the act of reciting or
chanting these divinely given verses, the Muslim of the most
devout type was sure to be powerfully stirred.
An incident which may be taken as typical is narrated in
a tradition of which Abu Bekr is the principal figure. The
time was shortly before the hijra, when some of Moham
med's followers were driven out of Mekka by determined
persecution. Abu Bekr, who was a mild, conciliatory man
and a good citizen, was allowed to remain unmolested under
the condition that he should enjoy his new religion indoors,
and not make it a public nuisance. But he soon found it
convenient to make a praying-place in his back yard (as we
should say), and there at length he appeared daily, reciting
the Koran and repeating its prayers, while his voice broke
and the tears streamed down his cheeks ; observed all the time
with breathless interest by an audience of Mekkan women
and children, who stood as near as they dared. Whether
the story is true or not (it comes from his daughter
Ayesha, whose imagination sometimes outstrips her memory),
it at least shows how the reading of the Koran was sup
posed to affect a pious and susceptible man. Many other
traditions and anecdotes describe similarly the devotions of
other prominent Muslims of the earliest time:
Again and again, and with marked emphasis, Moham
med urges his followers to pray; to pray often, and con
tinuously, and with fervor. These injunctions of the Koran

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 155
have been most influential in promoting a mystical type of
religion; they also show us something of the inner side of
the Prophet's own life, a phase of his personal religious
experience of which we can say with certainty that it meant
much both to him and to his adherents, and yet in regard
to which our only satisfactory testimony is indirect. He
was just the man to be carried away by religious emotion,
quite apart from the prophetic paroxysms in which he sought
and found the impulse to his inspired utterances. Prayer
is solitude, and in the still hours of the night, he especially
recommends it to those who are looking for " the guidance."
Thus for example the Koran, 50:39: Through the night
celebrate his praise; and again, 5 1 : 1 7 f . : The pious . . .
little of the night they slept, and at the dawn they prayed
for forgiveness. In general, his own private devotions were
noted both for their length and for their uninterrupted in
tensity. A saying attributed to him : " The best worship is
the most secret," which may be seen inscribed in decorative
characters on the gloriously colored tiles of many a mosque,
is certainly in accord with numerous passages in the Koran.
No one familiar with the evidence of Mohammed's per
sonal influence and with the spirit of his earliest followers
— the " Companions " — could doubt that there were those
who obeyed these divine injunctions to the limit of their
physical endurance. The oldest tales of the Muslim com
munity show us not a few men seeking long and earnestly
after a religious experience, in the same way that the de
votees of other faiths have sought. It was not merely that
they wanted to be better men ; they were persuaded that they
needed, and could have, some sort of communion with Allah,
and they were wont to spend some part of every twenty-four
hours alone with him. The most primitive traditions, sup
ported by the Koran, put this fact quite beyond doubt. Of
course such men were exceptional; yet they were a fruit of
Islam. There are many characteristic anecdotes of public

156 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
men, such as Said ibn Amir, the governor of Emesa under
the caliph Omar, who attended faithfully to his official duties
all day long and was equally faithful to his private devo
tions while other men slept; or Sulaim ibn Itr, one of the
first to hold the office of kadi (judge) in Egypt, who set
apart three periods of each night for reciting the Koran. Of
Sulaim it is also narrated that after undergoing a certain
sea voyage in rough weather he stayed in a cave seven days
thanking God for deliverance (the Arabs were not sea-faring
men). Whatever our opinion of the trustworthiness of these
anecdotes, they unquestionably show us the ideal of Muslim
sainthood in the earliest period, before, the Sufi fraternity
had made its appearance.
Even the public worship, for all its unedifying stiffness,
could provide some food for the mystic. There is a power
ful appeal in the human voice, for those who are ready to
be moved, and Islam has been fortunate in the manner and
extent of its use of this instrument. It was probably ac
cident, or stress of circumstances, rather than instinct, that
led Mohammed, in arranging for the call to prayer, to
eschew the bells, resounding suspended rods, and other gong
like devices of the Christians, and employ instead a huge
negro with a throat of brass. Bilal had been tortured for
the faith before the flight from Mekka, and when the
tremendous but melodious voice was heard in Medina call
ing to prayer, the listeners were stirred not only by the mere
sound and by the solemn words of the call, but also by a
personal reminder of what the faith meant. A peculiar
spiritual asset of Islam, all through its long history, in many
lands and peoples, has been the thrill produced by the chant
of the muezzin, especially in the early morning. It has set
many a soul to pondering the deeper meaning of the cry:
" Prayer is better than sleep! "

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 157
II
At some time in the latter part of the second century
after Mohammed arose the Siifis, mystics throughout their
history. As we first hear of them they are simply Muslim
ascetics living a life very much like that of the monks and
mendicant friars of the Christian faith. They were called
Sufis because of the robe of coarse wool {suf) which they
wore. Just when and where the name was first given, and
how the consciousness of a distinct brotherhood came into
being, is uncertain. Eventually the designation included
numerous differing tendencies, and the fraternity in its
various branches spread over the 'whole Mohammedan world,
from the East Indian archipelago to the Atlantic Ocean.
To do it even scant justice would require a volume.
The movement which produced the Sufis of the earliest
type arose naturally within the Muslim ranks as a further
development of the religious tendency described in the pre
ceding pages. Two factors, especially, combined to bring
this about. One was the reaction of piety against increas
ing worldhness, and the other was the influence of the
Christian religion. Christianity from the first left its dis
tinct traces on Sufism, and even more in its somewhat later
stages than at the very beginning. The manner of life
of those Christians who had a wide reputation for holiness
and for the special powers and prerogatives of sainthood
made its impression on the more devout minded of the
Mohammedans. More potent, however, was the impulse
from within Islam. The contrast between this best of all
religions and the daily life of those who professed it was a
startling one for thinking men. They knew something of
the fruit which other religions could produce, for Jews,
Christians, and Zoroastrians were within easy reach. The
Koran warns, a hundred times over, that every man will be
called to account for what he has done or left undone. It

158 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
declares, moreover, with emphasis that at the judgment day
and in the life to come the status of those who deny them
selves and give their lives to the service of Allah will be
very different from that of the careless multitude. 45:20:
" Do those who commit evil deeds supose that we will make
them equal in their life and their death to those who believe
and work righteous deeds? " 46: 12: " Verily, those who
say, ' Our Lord is God,' and then live uprightly, there is no
fear for them." 3: 136: " Do ye think that ye can enter
Paradise and God not know which of you have striven,
and have remained steadfast? " 3: 146: "Among you are
those who love this world, and among you are those who
love the world to come." 3: 139: "He who desires the
reward of this world shall receive it from us, and he who de
sires the reward of the world to come shall likewise receive
it." Even the professed Muslim had need to fear the " day
of reckoning." The reported last words of Amr ibn al-Asi,
the conqueror of Egypt, afford a good illustration. His son
Abdallah, standing at his bedside and seeing his evident
distress, asked: " Is this fear of death, my father ? " "Not
so," replied the old warrior, " but of what is to come after
death." Abdallah tried to reassure him by reminding him of
his companionship with the Prophet and of the many battles
he had fought for the faith. But Amr would not be com
forted. " Islam has had three stages for me," he said. " At
first, I fought against the Prophet and did him all the harm
I could. If I had died then, there could have been no doubt.
' Hell-fire for Amr,' men would have said. Then came the
day when Mohammed took my hand, and I swore al
legiance to him. If I had died then, men would have said:
' Amr has turned Muslim ; we believe that Allah has good
in store for him.' I thought that Islam would keep me
from sinning. But soon came military command, and high
office, and great temptations. I have fear for this last
stage."

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 159
When foreign lands were conquered, and the Moham
medan state became a great world power, the simple, up
right life of Abu Bekr and Omar, the first successors of
Mohammed, was soon left far behind. The caliphate be
came a scandal, the lesser officials were too often tyrants
and profligates, and the common people, as usual, followed
the example of their rulers to the best of their ability. The
devout minority felt that the faith once delivered to the
saints was going to the dogs. Wherever they turned they
saw greed, the pursuit of luxury, loose morals, and neglect
of religious duties. The Koran, the Word of God, though
nominally reverenced was really made a mockery. They had
thought of Islam as a unit, but were now horrified to see
it breaking up into rival camps warring fiercely with one
another. No wonder that spontaneously in various Moham
medan lands there arose companies or fraternities pledged
to an ascetic life, in strong reaction against the prevailing
worldhness. " Back to Allah ! " was their watchword, and
they found the true meaning of islam in such maxims as
these: This life is of no account in comparison with the
life to come ; Take no thought what you shall eat or drink ;
Cast yourself wholly upon God, if you will serve him. Just
as these ideas appealed to the first Christian ascetics, or to
the followers of Peter Waldus or Ignatius Loyola, so they
appealed to many Mohammedans. From such beginnings
arose the Sufi community, which eventually built its
monasteries and formulated its monastic rules, after the
manner of its Christian predecessors.
It is true that Mohammed had looked with little favor on
the monkish scheme of things, and did not wish to see his
followers live celibate or conspicuously ascetic lives. But
the Koran abounds in exhortations to despise the present
world with its pride and luxury, and the Sufi had the best
of authority for his tenets. The strict devotees, not only
shunned the temptations of wealth and comfort, but also

160 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
gave up their trades and professions. How could a man
really trust in God who relied on his day's wages? More
and more they gave themselves over to religious contem
plation. The Koran, as we have seen, gives little atten
tion to cultivating a state of mind, but this they made their
chief concern. In the matter of religious exercises also the
Sufis had a real contribution to make. The worship as
they found it was primarily a prescribed duty rather than
the satisfaction of a need. Of its spontaneous side, as a
means of coming personally near to God, Mohammed had
had very little to say; though, as we have seen, something
of the sort was present in Islam from the first. Here, then,
the mystics had their opportunity. They made it their busi
ness to devise exercises designed to kindle a true religious
fervor, putting into them all the oriental warmth which the
matter-of-fact Mekkan had left out; working themselves up
to the desired pitch by various means, such as long continued
and intense contemplation, the reiteration of certain chanted
formulae, and especially dwelling on the ideas of self-renun
ciation and complete devotion. Where the Koran and the
customary Muslim formulas mention the fear of God, the
Sufi speaks of the love of God, and his usual designation
of the divine being is " The Beloved." In the early period,
music as a means of inducing religious emotion was looked
upon with a disfavor amounting to horror, for the line be
tween religious ecstasy and an unholy excitement of the senses
was seen to be often a vanishing one, and the latter re
sult was more to be depended on than the former. So for
a time the performer on the lute and the singer of songs
were branded as impious by the stricter Mohammedans, and
we frequently hear of a convert " repenting of music." as he
might repent of perjury or highway robbery. At a later
day this rigidity was relaxed, however, and the Sufis made
regular use of music in their exercises. As for the language
needed to express the mystic's passionate devotion, it could

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 161
only be taken from the language of worldly passion, whence
it comes about that some of the characteristic Sufi literature
has a decidedly erotic sound.
As far as Muslim doctrine is concerned, the Sufis at first
exercised no considerable influence, except negatively.
Their chief aims and interests were not intellectual, but emo
tional. Religion was for them an experience, and systems
of belief were of minor consequence. The goal which they
set before them was complete devotion to God and ultimately
complete union with him. This they sought to reach through
a more or less definitely prescribed mode of life termed " the
way," in which repentance, abstinence, self-renunciation, con
stancy in religious exercises, and patient trust in " The Be
loved " were the principal stages. Seclusion, abject poverty,
and long fasting were practiced by the most zealous. As
might be expected, the rigidly consistent devotees pronounced
flatly against calling in physicians, or employing medicine,
in case of illness. " The power of God," they said, " is the
only thing that can heal. What the patient needs to do
is to bring his soul into the true harmony; then he will find
that he is healed." One of the leaders of the new school
is quoted as giving the following advice to a sick man of his
acquaintance: " Put under your pillow my book " (a proto
type of " Science and Health "), " and trust in God." Of
course the extreme views regarding poverty and illness were
opposed by the adherents of the traditional orthodoxy, for the
simple reason that Mohammed and Ali and the primitive
saints and heroes were men whose life and habits were well
known. They had held property, labored like other men,
and taken medicine when they were ill. The Tradition was
quite clear on these points. But the Sufi teaching, enforced'
by the holy life of its exponents, made a strong impression,
and the controversy was quite lively in -the tenth century of
our era.
A chief source of recruits to the mystics was reaction

16a AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
against the prevailing tendencies in Islam. As at first the
groups of ascetics had arisen in protest against the' wide-i
spread impiety, so a little later, and thenceforward, the fol
lowers of " the way " received large and constant re-
enforcement because of the spread of rationalism and
skepticism among the more learned Muslims and their pupils.
To unbelief the Sufis opposed intuitive knowledge assured
by experience, and to those who would demonstrate that
the traditional dogmas of Islam were outgrown they showed
a faith and zeal that were positively burning. As has been
the case in other religions, this type of faith gained more
and more the sympathy and participation of the multitude.
The reaction against an exaggerated scholasticism also played
its important part. The Mohammedan doctors were as
great adepts at hair-splitting as their Christian contem
poraries, and the systems of doctrine evolved by the
numerous rival schools, while worthy of admiration as intel
lectual achievements, left the mystics cold and the common
people far behind. There were long and bitter controver
sies over definitions and various shibboleths, while prosecu
tions for heresy were frequent. The Allah of the orthodox
theologians was a deity who might satisfy a philosophical
system, but could satisfy nothing else. Between him and
human beings there could be no communion of any sort.
The philosophy and natural science of the Greeks, becom
ing accessible through Arabic translations made from Syriac
versions of Greek treatises, exerted a profound influence and
added to the complication. The task of harmonizing
Plotinus and his fellows with the Koran was one that might
well have given pause to Gabriel himself, but the Muslim
scholars undertook it with joy and no misgivings. Those
earnest Mohammedans who wished not only to be orthodox
but also to have a religion that meant something to them
felt that they were getting more stones than bread. One of
them, after reading a certain neo-theological pamphlet, ex-

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 163
pressed himself as follows; and his words, which have a
very modern sound, doubtless voiced the feelings of a great
many : " These men fill their writings with religious
phrases, and with incidental bits of the divine book. They
also put in any number of words which may mean two or
more different things. As for the material contents, they
are made up from every known science, but they do not satisfy
the reader's hunger, nor show him the way to what he needs
to know." As the reaction against a similar over-developed
scholasticism in the Christian church brought forward Eck-
hart, Tauler, and their fellow mystics, so in mediaeval Islam
one effect of the exaggerated emphasis on doctrinal formulae
was greatly to swell the ranks of the Sufis. Also, as in the
history of Christianity the ascetics and mystics and their
adherents generally occupied a dominating place, so in the
history of Mohammedanism the Sufis — using the term in
the broad sense — soon came to be a most influential body.
As has already been said, Sufism is not a system of philosophy,
nor has it a creed. It is a way of life, and a practical
theology; footing originally in Islam, but so independent of
either tradition or reason that it could not be held within
the strict limits of any one faith. As a rule, Sufis have pre
ferred to regard themselves as orthodox Mohammedans, and
a large proportion of them could make this claim with some
good reason. They have their own characteristic exegesis
of the Koran, interpreting it allegorically in much the same
way as the Bible has been interpreted from time to time
by Jewish and Christian scholars. Sufis of every type ob
serve the formal requirements of the Muslim faith, though
generally without acknowledging to them any especial value.
Here, again, they have their own allegorical interpretation,
and regard the state of mind of the participant and his ap
preciation of the spiritual meaning of the ceremonies as the
only thing of importance. The nearer the follower of " the
way " approaches to his divine goal, the less it matters what

164 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
religion he formally professes. To the saint, no one re
ligion can contribute more than any other, he is superior to
them all; to the novice, each and every religion can be use
ful. So some of the most enlightened of their spokesmen
have said. Between Sufis and Christians, of the ascetic and
quietistic type there was always strong affinity. The Sufi
literature contains many apocryphal sayings of Jesus, as well
as correct citations from the Gospels, and many anecdotes
concerning Jesus or John the Baptist (especially revered be
cause of his ascetic mode of life). What is more important,
the modes of thought developed through centuries of Christian
mysticism were taken over liberally by these like-minded
Mohammedans. It was also through Christian hands that
they received the Neo-Platonic philosophy which was ap
propriated and adapted by certain schools. Greek mystical
ideas had been familiar in the East for a long time, and
their value was recognized by Sufis of the more speculative,
philosophical type which soon arose. In like manner other
forms of oriental philosophy and theosophy were laid under
contribution. The fundamental ideas of all these various
types of the later Sufism are practically the same, and mark
a considerable advance over the simply ascetic and devotional
type with which the whole great movement in Islam began.
The essentials of Sufi doctrine in its most characteristically
developed form may be summed up as follows. God is the
one absolute reality. He is everywhere present, pervades all
things. The universe is the external, visible expression of
him. His best and highest manifestation is in man, whose
higher nature is a direct emanation from the divine. The
human mind is a bit of the universal Reason. In like
manner human love is a divine gift, the smaller fire kindled
from the greater. Man's knowledge of God is an illumina
tion from above. He sees and knows Him with increasing
distinctness and certainty as he perseveres in the faith; not
through any mental development of his own or by means of

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 165
any variety of human wisdom, but because his mind becom
ing increasingly purified can receive more and more of the
light which God wills to give to his elect in varying
measure. This purification also is the work of God, but
man has his important part in it. He must repent of his
sins, cast them off, and resolutely turn his back on them,
trusting in God to keep him firm. He must mortify his
evil self, with its pride and its passions, in every possible
way, surrender his will to God, and avoid evil thoughts by
keeping his mind constantly fixed on divine things. Every
impurity is a barrier to the light, and to be thus " veiled "
from God is the severest of afflictions.
Side by side with the divine illumination stands the love
of God. Some Sufi writers have claimed that Islam, more
than other religions, is the religion of love — a claim which
it is quite safe to say would never be suggested to any one
by the Koran, nor by the orthodox Mohammedarf teach
ing. Love, like knowledge, is bestowed by divine grace.
God's love precedes; those whom he has chosen find it
kindled in their hearts, burning more and more brightly
as the way is cleared for it by contemplation, prayer, and
intense desire. Every object of attachment and wish other
than God must be removed from the heart. The Sufis of
the earlier type loved God as a transcendent personality
(the true Mohammedan doctrine), and in following this
idea to its ultimate consequences found it easy to put aside
all human affections. But those of the later type, conceiv
ing God as an immanent spirit, practiced a sympathy and air
fection extending not only to human beings but also to all
other living creatures. The story of the saint who traveled
several hundred miles in order to carry back a few ants
to their home from which he had unwittingly transported
them is an extreme instance. One of the early Persian
teachers of this school, quoted in Nicholson's Mystics of
Islam, p. in, says that "when God loves a man he en-

166 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
dows him with three qualities in token thereof: a bounty
like that of the sea, a sympathy like that of the sun, and a
humility like that of the earth."
It is when in the condition of an ecstatic trance that the
human soul can have unhindered communion with the divine.
The more completely the devotee can lose himself, the more
completely he can see and know .his Beloved and feel at
one with him. The state of ecstasy is accordingly char
acteristic of those who are far advanced in " the way." It
comes upon a man when God wills, nevertheless the man
can in various ways help to bring about the experience.
When he has prepared himself, by removing every obstacle
and raising his own susceptibility to its highest degree, he
can only wait to see whether it is the divine purpose to in
spire and possess him, or not. Intense concentration of the
mind, and absorption in prayer, were the all-important aids
to reaching the ecstatic condition. Many also sought the
help of music, singing, and dancing. The novice would often.
find it necessary to beat or otherwise torture himself in order
to keep his attention from wavering. The saint has no
longer need of such discipline, but has reached the point
where zikr (dwelling upon the thought of God) and con
templation are second nature. The divine attributes are re
vealed in their true meaning to the chosen worshipper, and
it is upon these that his contemplation is concentrated.
All other thoughts and feelings, all objects of knowledge, J
desire, or will, are banished, until only the consciousness of
God remains in the mind. The state of ecstasy means to
him who attains it not only divine illumination but also divine
love. In it the worshipper himself is effaced, the seeker
becoming completely merged in the Sought ; a foretaste of
the condition which is to be unending.
This esoteric doctrine has picturesque illustration in the
allegory so often quoted from the celebrated Persian mystic
Jalal ad-Din Rumi, describing the experience of human love

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 167
seeking admission into the sanctuary of the Divine. " One
knocked at the door of the Beloved, and a voice from within
inquired, 'Who is there?' He answered, 'It is I.' But
the voice said, ' This house will not hold me and thee.'
So the door remained shut. Then the lover withdrew into
the wilderness, and fasted and prayed in solitude. After
a year he returned, and knocked again at the door. Again
the voice demanded, ' Who is there ? ' And the lover re
plied, 'It is Thou!' Then the door was opened."
The whole long process through which the Sufi mystic
seeks to attain his end may be summed up in one phrase,
the extinction of self. The meaning of this to the individual
differs according to the stage which he has reached. At
first, it is the elimination of all passions and desires ; later, it
consists in clearing the mind of everything that is not God;
ultimately, it is the passing away of consciousness itself.
Not until this final stage Of the process has been accomplished
can the devotee reach his goal, absorption in the divine All.
This last feature of the Sufi scheme sounds distinctly
Aryan, and such indeed it is in its origin. The Arabic term
fana, " passing away," which plays such an important part
in the scheme, very closely corresponds, in its use. to mean
the extinction of the individual self, to the Buddhistic
nirvana. As Nicholson especially has made clear, however,
the agreement with Buddhism is only partial, inasmuch as
nirvana is merely negative, while the fana of the Sufis,
meaning the " passing away " of the phenomenal existence,
involves baga, " continuance," of the real existence. On
the other hand, the Sufi conception of absorption of the in
dividual self in Universal Being seems to have been derived
from Indian pantheism. It is indeed evident that the most
characteristic development of Sufism was strongly influenced
by Indo-Persian religious ideas. It was in Persian thought
especially that it was elaborated, and even more than else?
where it flourished on Persian soil. But the claim, often

168 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
made, that the Aryan mind produced Sufism, is far from
the truth, as the preceding sketch of the rise and growth
of Mohammedan mysticism may suffice to show. One of the
most fervid and eloquent of all the mystic poets of Islam,
Omar ibn al-Farid, born in Cairo in the year 1181, was
of pure Arab stock. Springing up in Islam, and striking
its roots deep in the soil of many lands before any strong
influence from Persia was felt, Sufism was as hospitable at
the outset to Christian and Greek mystical and philosophical
ideas as it was later to certain features of Buddhism and
the Vedanta. The drift into pantheism or monism was in
evitable in any case.
The distinctive doctrines of Islam were of course brushed
aside, or re-interpreted, to a greater or less extent. The
Sufi conception of . the " unity " of Allah is far removed
from that of the Mohammedan theologians. As for the
Prophet and the Sacred Book, the thoroughgoing mystic can
ultimately dispense with them, since he is vouchsafed a reve
lation of his own which will suffice for him. To the more
extreme Sufis the teaching of the Koran amounts to
polytheism. The contrast between evil and good, right and
wrong, means less and less to the true devotee, as he ad
vances toward perfection. The idea of the rewards and
punishments of the future life contains nothing for him. " I
do not say," says a famous Sufi teacher, " that Paradise
and Hell are non-existent, but I say that they are nothing
to me, because God created them both, and there is no
room for any created object in the place where I am"
(Nicholson, Mystics, p. 87).
Nevertheless, this is all properly called " Mohammedan "
mysticism. Sufi authorities of every school recognize Islam
as their home, however far they may seem to us to have
strayed from it. More than this, the endeavor on both sides
to make the most of the common ground between the Sufi
and the traditionally orthodox Muslim has been constant

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 169
and fruitful. One of the greatest of all Mohammedan
theologians, Ghazali, was a Sufi as well as a philosopher,
and he made it his aim to put new life into Mohammedan
doctrine, especially by dealing more adequately than others
had dealt with the religion of experience. Ever since his day
the mystical interpretation of Islam has held its prominent
place in the orthodox faith. Ill
The " saint " was as important a figure in Islam, after
the first century or two, as in the contemporary Christian
community. On the basis of the Koran, the saint might
be defined as one who prays diligently, supports the cause
of Allah with his property and his life, does his duty to his
family, helps the poor, and pays his bills promptly. These
characteristics were very soon reenforced, and then sup
planted, by those of religious devotion and the ascetic mode
of life. It is hardly necessary to say that the conception
of sainthood which was developed among the Sufis became
at length the dominating one. Not all followers of the
" way " were on the same footing. Some had been elected,
by divine grace, as the recipients of special favor. The fact
of the election was ordinarily made known to the com
munity by the mode of life and the marvelous powers of
the person thus distinguished; in some cases, however, it re
mained hidden even from himself. Those recognized as
saints were commonly described as " possessed " by God, or
as " near to " God (whence the designation wait, often
written wely). It was their peculiar privilege to have from
time to time the revelation of things hidden from ordinary
human beings, the veil being lifted for them while they con
tinued in the condition of a trance. This conception of
the saint was common to all the Mohammedan or quasi-
Mohammedan sects.
As time went on, both the popular idea and the recognized

170 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
formal doctrine of the powers of the wall became more ex
travagant. They were believed to have the gift of second
sight not only when in the trance condition, but at all times.
The miracles which they were permitted to perform in
cluded every imaginable wonder, and the voluminous legends
of the Muslim saints swarm with accounts of mind-read
ing, telepathy, hypnotism, faith-heailng, levitation, and the
like, as well as far more marvelous things. Many of these
accounts are not without value to the modern investigator,
as they can be controlled to some extent by more recent
parallels. From the descriptions of trances and visions little
can be learned with certainty, at least at present, and it
would be fruitless to spend time on them here, highly in
teresting though they sometimes are.
To what extent the saint was subject to the moral law,
was always a matter of some controversy. It is easy to
believe that the favorite of God, gifted with divine insight,
can do no wrong; and history shows that every doctrine
of the divinely chosen and inspired few has had its by-product
of antinomianism. Thus it was with the Christian
" Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," in the thirteenth
century a. d., and so it has been with many others since.
The record of Muslim sainthood furnishes no exception in
this regard. Walis, imams, and their like were generally
believed to be preserved from error, and not subject to criti
cism when they did what would be unlawful for the ordinary
mortal. But might not the fact of a flagrant offence against
the standards of morality or decency show that the trans
gressor was not a saint, after all? There are on record
cases where the decision of some revered authority, or of
the Muslim community, declared the sinning superman un
worthy of his halo. An example interesting because of its
historical importance is the story of the difference of opinion
which split the Shi'a sect in two, in the ninth century A. d.
In this sect the spiritual headship was vested in an imam,

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 171
who embodied for his generation the divine Light which
was handed on by a sort of heaven-directed ordination, each
imam nominating his successor. The sixth imam in the
series named, in due time, his son Isma'il to succeed him.
All went well until, one day, the holy appointee was found
in a state of exaltation which obviously had not been pro
duced by religious exercises. And this in Islam, with its
strict prohibition! His father was very angry, and at once
transferred the nomination from Isma'il to his brother Musa.
But this action raised a great commotion in the party, as
might have been expected. There were many who refused
to accept the substitution of Musa for his elder brother.
" God," they insisted, " does not change his mind ; the first
nomination was the only valid one." They defended Isma'il
against the charge of impiety. " It is true," they said,
" that the Koran forbids wine. But every such regulation
has both an external, obvious meaning and a deeper, hidden,
spiritual meaning. The fact that the chosen imam acted
as he did merely shows his greater spirituality. He has
passed beyond the coarse husk and has found the kernel in
side." So the sect divided; and from that time on the
" Ismailians " or " seveners " were separated from the main
body of " twelvers " (whose line of imams, continued through
Musa, ultimately reached the number twelve). It is only
fair to say that the number of those saints who manifested
their greater spirituality in this easy way seems to have been
comparatively small.
It is an interesting fact that among the celebrated mystics
of Islam are certain holy women, who have stood in the very
foremost rank of saints. As in the case of the sainted women
of other great religions, this was due not only to the exalted
character and the actual words and deeds of the few thus
supremely honored, but also in some measure to the position
of woman in the popular imagination. It is natural that in
this emotional, passionate type of religion should have been

172 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
seen possibilities of adoration which the woman's nature might
realize more fully than the man's. Moreover, chivalry is
native to the Arabs, and the greatest of these heroines of the
Muslim faith were of Arab stock and lived in an Arab en
vironment. At the very beginning of the Sufi movement in
Islam stands a woman saint to whom the Muslim doctors of
the next generation and thereafter all point, saying in effect:
" If you would see the true Sufi religion, the best product of
Mohammedanism, look at her I " This was Rabia, poetess
of unusual gifts as well as theologian, who flourished in the
first half of the eighth century a. d., and whose tomb at
Jerusalem is still eagerly visited by pilgrims. The claim of
the Sufis, that she was one of their number, presumably had
its foundation only in their wish ; but she was a forerunner of
the best Sufism, and seems to have shown, more clearly than
any other of her time, the way which So many were trying
to find. Much that is said of her reminds the reader of St.
Catharine of Siena. " Do you see God when you adore
him? " some one asked. " Certainly," she replied, " if I did
not see him I could not adore him." To a friend who wished
for her a husband she said : " I have long been married ; for
years past my existence has been absorbed in Him." She
narrates of herself: " I saw the Prophet in a dream. He
said to me, ' Rabia, dost thou love me ? ' I answered, ' 0
Apostle of God, who does not love thee? — 'but love of
God has so absorbed me that neither love nor hate of aught
else remains in my heart.' " Among other oft-quoted sayings
are the following. "O God! whatever share of this world
thou hast allotted to me, bestow it on thine enemies; and
whatever share of the next world thou hast allotted to me, be
stow it on thy friends. Thou art enough for me." "0
God ! if I worship thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell ; and
if I worship thee in hope of heaven, exclude me from heaven ;
but if I worship thee for thine own sake, withhold not thine
everlasting beauty! "

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 173
A successor of Rabia, hardly less noted, was Naffsa, to
whose shrine at Cairo the pious Muslims flock. Hers was
an equally warm and pure type of religion ; and she was also
celebrated for her learning, in which she was said to stand
on equal footing with the foremost sages of the day. Her
wealth, which was considerable, she devoted to good works
of every sort, while the poor and the distressed thronged to
her for help.
Of course Mohammedan mysticism had its martyrs. The
Sufis and their kind generally avoided religious controversy,
as I have said ; but some of their characteristic ' doctrines
passed over imperceptibly into rank heresies which could
not easily be tolerated when once they were formulated in
an obnoxious way and dwelt upon. Pantheism, theories of
incarnation, the " passing away " of the individual (which
in the teaching of not a few meant pure annihilation) ; these
were among the chief points of danger. The extravagant
claims and arrogant attitude of some of these " perfected
ones " would be likely to increase any already existing irri
tation, it may be added. It is probably fruitless to pursue
the inquiry, which some have instituted, whether there was
not a saner attitude of tolerance toward pantheistic mysti
cism in medieval Islam than in medieval Christianity. Cer
tainly the champions of strict orthodoxy in both communi
ties took their responsibility seriously; and certainly when
the extreme penalty of heresy. was exacted, by either Chris
tians or Muslims, it was generally the case that other motives
— personal, public, and especially political — were com
bined with the religious motive.
A typical and noted instance is that of the pantheistic
philosopher Suhrawardi, who was strangled and impaled be
fore the great castle in Aleppo in January, 1192, in the
thirty-eighth year of his age. In spite of his comparative
youth, he was one of the most learned men of his time. His
attainments in natural science, in particular, had helped to

174 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
give him the popular reputation of practicing the black art.
During his lifetime he was revered as a saint, and had a
numerous following. After his death he was thought of by
the common people as a worker of miracles, and even at the
present day there is a superstitious veneration of the spot
where he met his end. The execution was by order of
Saladin's son, acting under the advice of his usually tolerant
father. The few sayings and verses which have been handed
down from Suhrawardi contain nothing different from what
we read in the writings of many noted Sufi teachers. Here
is one of his maxims : " Set your thought on such an image
of holiness as can satisfy him who is seeking delight." The
following is from a poem of his, addressed to " the Beloved " :
Our souls are ever turned toward Thee with warm affection;
The hearts of Thy lovers yearn for Thee, and thirst for the bliss
of meeting. . . .
Instead of the darkness of Thy displeasure grant us the light of
Thy favor;
Separation from Thee is night, reunion the light of morning.
The following verses describe the ultimate extinction
{fana) of the devotee who has reached his goal:
They appeared in His presence, every token of their personal exist
ence was gone.
When they saw Him, they stood revealed, and cried aloud.
He gave them annihilation; the veils of existence fell off, and their
souls were dissolved.
The great Muslim biographer Ibn Khallikan says that
Suhrawardi invited trouble by his unwise utterances. This
may well be true; on the other hand, the biographer may
be somewhat influenced by his loyalty to the Muslim au
thorities. A more celebrated case is that of the Sufi martyr Hallaj,
who lived at the beginning of the fourth Mohammedan cen
tury. He was a Persian, the grandson of a Zoroastrian; a

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 175
man of singularly blameless life, but an apostle of pantheism
of a dangerous type. He taught the essential divinity of
man, and a doctrine of incarnation sufficiently like the Chris
tian doctrine to be branded as one of the worst heresies.
" Cultivate the spiritual life, let the divine power drive out
from you the evil human nature, until the way is prepared
for your true self. Then you may be filled with the Divine
Spirit and become a new personality, a God-man. Who
thereafter sees you, sees God ; whatever acts you perform are
divine acts." He was revered by his disciples as a saint,
and more than a saint. They believed that he not only
wrought miracles but had raised a dead man to life. On
the other hand, the pillars of the Muslim faith opposed him
as a dangerous man and a blasphemer. Most intolerable of
all was the famous saying quoted against him, but by many
praised as a noble utterance, " I am the Truth," that is, the
Ultimate Verity, the phrase therefore meaning exactly, " I
am God."
Hallaj was arrested, and put on trial at Bagdad. Against
him were arrayed his written and spoken words, but, as
usual, unequivocal evidence was hard to find. Asked di
rectly what he said of himself, he replied : " I am neither
divinity, nor prophet; I am a man, who adores the One
God." He would not, however, retract his saying, " A'na
'l-Haqq," I am the Truth. The few disciples who stood
by him asserted stoutly that he was divine, and that he
had raised the dead. The judge, like a second Pontius
Pilate, refused at first to convict; but under pressure from
the grand vizir, backed by some of the foremost Muslim
doctors, he at last yielded, and the death sentence was pro
nounced. Hallaj protested, to the last: " I am a Muslim.
I believe the Tradition; I have always recognized the au
thority of the imams, and that of the first four caliphs.
You have no right to shed my blood ! " The sentence passed
upon him was this: he was to be beaten with a thousand

1 76 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
stripes. If he then still lived, a hand was to be cut off,
then a foot; then the other hand, then the other foot.
Finally he was to be beheaded, and his body burned to
ashes. The sentence was executed, and Hallaj met his
death with fortitude. His ashes were thrown into the Tigris
river. Nevertheless his disciples refused to believe that he
was dead. First one, and then another, professed to have
seen him alive some days after. There weie several who
told how they had met him on the road leading to Nahrawan,
and had heard him speak. This was in 922 A. D.
A most important, factor in the development of the later
Mohammedan mysticism, down to the present day, has been
the influence of The Dervish Orders. The " dervish " is
the Mohammedan counterpart of the begging friar of medie
val Europe. He stands on a somewhat lower plane than the
typical Sufi, since he does not, like the latter, give himself
over absolutely to contemplation in the endeavor to eliminate
the last vestige of self. The organization of these Sufi
" schools of the prophets " proceeded naturally, from small
beginnings, the nucleus in each case being some renowned
teacher and the small circle of his pupils. In order to make
the fellowship more significant and more permanent, and to
give it a definite stamp, as the circle increased, rules of con
duct and procedure were adopted ; both the general rules of an
ascetic and religious life, and also whatever special dis
tinguishing regulations or practices their spiritual head, or
their own custom, had prescribed. After the death of the
teacher, he was revered as the founder and patron saint of
the fraternity, and his spirit was held to be still present to
impart instruction. The first of these fraternities were
founded in the twelfth century A. d.
Hughes, Notes on Muhammadanism, gives the following
as the usual method of admission to a certain order of der
vishes. After the prescribed ablutions, the disciple seats him
self before his spiritual guide {murshid). The Murshid

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 177
takes the disciple's right hand, and causes him to repeat sev
eral times the following confession: " I ask forgiveness of
the great God, than whom there is no other deity, the Eter
nal, the Everlasting, the Living One. I turn to Him in
repentance, and beg His grace and forgiveness." Then the
disciple repeats after the Murshid : " I beg for the favor of
God and of the Prophet; and I take for my guide to God
(here the Murshid is named), not to change or to separate.
God is our witness. By the great God; there is no deity
but God! Amen." The two then recite the prayer which
forms the first chapter of the Koran, and the disciple con
cludes the ceremony by kissing the Murshid's hand. After
ward there is a regular system of instruction, with daily ex
ercises. The disciple must visit his spiritual guide fre
quently. The Mohammedan saint, as already noted, is one who
is possessed by the Divine Spirit. The dervish fraternities,
which are training-schools of saints, aim to foster this " pos
session." The ecstatic trance-like condition, in which the
worshipper loses himself completely and is carried away by
the divine power which seizes him, is the thing especially
sought, without much preference as to the means of arriving
at the experience. Hence the general exaggeration, and
cheapening, of the typical Sufi practices and methods; and
those extravagant and grotesque performances with which the
western world is more or less familiar. As the contem
porary of Paul " spoke with tongues," or as the negro in
his camp-meeting " gets religion " with the help of shouting
and singing and rhythmic motions more or less violent, so
the dervish in Constantinople or Cairo, after getting as near
to the divine as he can by means of more self-contained ex
ercises, passes on into devotional esctasy through the excite
ment induced by the beating of drums and thrumming of
lutes, by wild chanting and wailing ("howling"), or by
whirling about in one direction until the human and the

178 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
divine are completely merged in a sort of religious vertigo.
There is also characteristic exaggeration in such matters as
the worship of saints and the importance assigned to the.
working of miracles. In doctrine as in customs these fra
ternities have been free to go their own way, always main
taining their loyalty to Islam. It is not surprising that a
few of the orders, the so-called " lawless dervishes," have
gained an undesirable reputation for laxity in morals, de
fended by them on the ground of superiority to the regula
tions binding on the ordinary sinner.
The great service performed by the Dervish Orders, how
ever, lies in this, that they have been the means of infusing
the devotional, mystical element into the whole fabric of Mo
hammedan religious practice. The Sufi saints and doctors,
with their lofty philosophy and esoteric wisdom, were better
able to awe the public than to show it how to worship.
Such knowledge was too wonderful for the common people,
they could not attain unto it. But what these unapproach
able ones could not do was done by the humbler groups. In
addition to regular members the most of these fraternities
have lay members; and this form of association has been so
generally welcomed that at the present day the typical Mus
lim, in every Mohammedan land, is connected with one or
another of the orders.
Simple forms of the dervish dhikr (generally pronounced
zikr) constitute the ordinary devotional service — supple
menting the prescribed formal worship — in the Moham
medan community. The typical dervish exercise of this nature
has often been described in detail, and the description need not
be repeated here. Among the usual features are the reciting
of sentences from the Koran, and of formulas whose mean
ing is that God is present; the use of instruments of music
or percussion; and a regular system of postures and ejacula
tions. Sometimes a rosary of ninety-nine beads, correspond
ing to the ninety-nine Names of God, is employed. The

MYSTICISM IN ISLAM 179
writer has been much impressed with the manifestly devo
tional spirit in such a Muslim " prayer-meeting." In ob
serving how men and youths, average citizens of the small
town, known as workmen and tradesmen of no apparent
religious turn or especially emotional nature, joined with
interest and fervor in the exercises of the evening; rising ex
citement showing in their eyes as the drum sounded, solemn
formula; were chanted, and the members of the little con
gregation rocked their bodies to and fro; the guest from the
western world felt that all this had much in common with
what he had seen in his own land. Such gatherings and
exercises represent an earnest and sober attempt to realize
the true meaning of zikr (dwelling on the thought of
God), in fulfilment of a conscious need. " God is here " is
the leading idea in all these voluntary religious meetings of
devout Muslims, whatever the form of their exercises, and
however variously the idea of the divine presence may be
conceived. By one the phrase may be interpreted in the direc
tion of pantheism, reminding of the Koran passage (2: 109),
" Whichever way ye turn, there is God's face." To an
other the words and the experience may rather call to mind
the assurance of Allah's personal presence (58: 8), " There
is no conference of three in which He is not the fourth, nor
of five in which He is not the sixth. Be the number less or
more, He is with them." Doubtless each one of the par
ticipants would testify that the zikr meant more to him than
any other single expression of his Islam. Certain it is that
this widespread Mohammedan religious exercise has in it
the seed of new life. Such collective mysticism has often
brought about extensive religious reform where dogma and
tradition have lost their primitive hold, and the history of
other movements may be repeated here. It is a factor that
can never be left out of account by those who are looking
with some hope for a day when the old Islam, which the
world has known too long, may grow into something better.

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE
Charles Allen Dinsmore
In this paper I shall not attempt to set forth the many in
stances in Dante's various writings where he uses the imagery
and language of mysticism, but shall seek to determine from
his works whether his own recorded experiences entitle hira
to be ranked in this strange and noble company of the other
worldly, and, if so, to ascertain the type and degree of his
mysticism. No biographical data which have come down to us from
any contemporary afford us the slightest help here. Neither
the classic paragraphs of Villani nor Boccaccio's garrulous
biography hints at any extraordinary mystical exaltation of
the great Florentine, or suggests that any weird light of holi
ness rests upon him. Tradition also, which has saved a few
meager and rather pointless anecdotes, is silent as a sphinx.
Whatever mystical emotions the poet had were in no re
spect spectacular enough to attract the attention of others.
Most reticent of men, he has, however, with the rare ability
of an exalted genius, laid bare the life of his spirit from its
first awakening until he gazed into the Fountain of Living
Light Eternal. Our task is to search the records for indi
cations of Dante's genuine experiences. This is not as simple
a matter as at first it may appear, for in the Vita Nuova he
is an artist portraying the ideal of love, and in the Divina
Commedia he is a protagonist often representing universal
humanity. Yet Dante's individuality is so positive and
clearly defined that we need not despair of dissociating his
1 80

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE

181

own personal thoughts and actions from the creations of his
art and the demands of his message.
The first question is the evidential value of the Vita Nuova
with its stately opening Incipit Vita Nuova. To what extent
may the dream-like experiences of the poet be considered
autobiographical? Dante's nature was so essentially truth
ful that our investigation would be easy if we were per
suaded that he was attempting to set down his actual thoughts
and emotions, but as we have just stated, he was a trouba
dour of love: an idealist describing his passion in the in
terests of his art: he is evidently more eager to conform
his words to a poetic ideal than to dispassionately narrate
facts as they occurred.
We must furthermore remember that the poems compris
ing the Vita Nuova were selected from the sheaf of verses
which he had written from time to time during the en
chanted days of his youth, while the prose comments which
bind them together were composed between his twenty-fifth
and thirtieth years when he was quite a different being from
the one who wrote the sonnets and odes which they explain.
" An erudite Dante," says Grandgent, " is this commentator,
serious, careful of his reputation, steeped in mysticism, full
of Biblical images and of philosophical doctrine. What he
desires above all is to justify his life before others and before
his own conscience, to read into his juvenile verses a depth
and unity which they were far from possessing, to bring all
the emotions of youth into harmony with the supernatural in
fluence ultimately ascribed to Beatrice, to transform this
gentle Florentine into an angel, to discover in all his relations
with her the sign of heavenly predestination." 1 With this
statement I cordially agree, but the incredible pains the poet
took to bring into unity his conflicting verses indicate that
they grew out of genuine experiences whose mystical mean-
inghis more mature reason was attempting to interpret.
1 Studies of Dante's Lyrics, p. 129.

182 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
With confidence, therefore, we trace and ascribe to Dante
before he reached his thirtieth year four distinct spiritual
experiences. The first occurred when he was eighteen and
he thus describes it: " This admirable lady appeared to me,
clothed in purest white, between two gentle ladies who were
of greater age; and, passing along a street, turned her eyes
toward that place where I stood very timidly; and by her
ineffable courtesy, which is to-day rewarded in the eternal
world, saluted me with such virtue that it seemed to me that
I saw all the bounds of bliss." 2 Intoxicated by the sweet
ness of her words he betook himself to his chamber, " and
thinking of her, a sweet slumber overcame me, in which a
marvelous vision appeared to me." It was a vision of love
as a lord of fearful aspect bearing in his arms the lady of
the salutation sleeping, and in his hand- the poet's heart
all aflame. Love aroused the lady and compelled her to eat
the burning heart.
This chance meeting with Beatrice and her most sweet
salutation awoke the poetic soul of Dante and kindled his
genius to produce the first sonnet he cared to preserve.
His succeeding verses were conventional, and scarcely
superior to those of the little group of poets in Florence to
which he belonged. To dissemble his love, Dante tells us,
he wrote various verses to a screen lady, so that Beatrice
withheld her salutation in such a pronounced manner that
the poet exclaimed: "I have held my feet on that part
of life beyond which no man can go with intent to return."
Beatrice's mockery pierces the pride of the poet to the quick
and creates a crisis in his life. Up to this period his love
had been introspective, henceforth his thoughts and speech
go out in spiritual adoration of his beloved. This change
of center causes him to drop the conventional and artificial
from his verses and to become real. He adopts the dolce
stil nuovo, the sweet, new style, which expresses genuine
2 Norton's translation.

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 183
emotion in a natural way. This change of direction not
only modifies his mode of speech and his theme, it places his
happiness upon securer foundations: for adoration is a more
permanent source of inspiration than introspection.
The third and most vital experience of all came in the
sudden death of Beatrice. The thought of the possibility of
this sorrow had saddened his verses, but now the blow falls,
and the poet exclaims: " Quo modo sedet sola civitas plena
populo! " Instead of an outburst of passionate grief this
composed and subtile poet falls into a profound meditation
on the meaning of the mystical number nine. The number
three is the symbol of the Trinity and nine is three multiplied
by itself, and is therefore a symbol of momentous spiritual
import. His awakened mind, during those months suc
ceeding the death of his beloved, pondered long on her spir
itual significance to his thought and life. He recalled that
he was eighteen, twice nine years, when she gave him her
most sweet salutation. He remembered another meeting
when the beauty of the girl had smitten his heart; eagerly
he reckoned back the years and found to his delight that he
was then at the end of his ninth year and she at the begin
ning of her ninth. In his first sonnet he had noted that
Love had appeared to him when one-third of the night had
passed. This chance line is now to him full of mystical
significance, he thinks he perceives a hidden spiritual purpose.
If the vision appeared in the fourth hour of the night, was
not this the first of the last nine hours of the night, and
therefore pregnant with divine intimations ? Another vision
of Love he remembers came to him in the ninth hour of the
day, though the verse he wrote at the time made no men
tion of it. During a grievous illness he had a most dis
tressing dream of Beatrice's death, of which Rossetti has
painted an impressive picture, and now he figures it out that
the dream occurred in the ninth day of his sickness. An
other fact impressed him. Composing a serventese contain-

184 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
ing the names of sixty Florentine ladies he marveled to find
that the name of his lady would consent to stand in no other
place but the ninth. Again, after Beatrice's death, he was
recalled from his infatuation with the lady of the window,
by a strong imagination taking possession of him " about the
hour of nones " of Beatrice in " those crimson garments in
which she had first appeared to my eyes."
Dante's keen mind found a great joy and supposed in
sight into the divine plans by untangling the mysterious
significance of the date of his lady's death. It took place
on the eighth day of June, 1290. The poet then takes this
date to pieces and displays the hidden signet of God dis
played therein. " I say that, according to the mode of
reckoning in Arabia, her most noble soul departed in the
first hour of the ninth day of the month ; and, according to
the reckoning in Syria, she departed in the ninth month
of the year, since the first month there is Tisrin, which with
us is October. And according to our reckoning, she de
parted in that year of our indiction, that is, of the years of
the Lord, in which the perfect number was completed for
the ninth time in that century in which she had been set
in this world: and she was of the Christians of the thir
teenth century. One reason why this number was so friendly
to her may be this: since, according to Ptolemy and accord
ing to the Christian truth, there are nine heavens which
move, and according to the common astrological opinion,
the said heavens work effects here below according to their
respective positions, this number was her friend to the end
that it might be understood that at her generation all the
nine movable heavens were in most perfect relation. This
is one reason thereof ; but considering more subtilely and ac
cording to the infallible truth, this number was she herself;
I mean by similitude, and I intend it thus : the number three
is the root of nine, for, without any other number, multiplied

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 185
by itself it makes nine, as we see plainly that three times
three make nine. Therefore, since three is the factor by
itself of nine, and the Author of miracles by himself is three,
namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three and
one, this Lady was accompanied by the number nine, that
it might be understood that she was a nine, that is, a miracle,
whose only root is the marvelous Trinity. Perchance even
a more subtile reason might be seen herein by a more subtile
person; but this is that which I see for it, and which best
pleases me." Thus does the poet bring three calendars,
Arabian, Syrian and Christian to bear on this simple date
to wrest spiritual value from.it. The infinite pains he takes
shows a mind that will not disregard facts and a peculiar
mysticism that scents secret meanings in every event. We
can imagine the intellectual glow that came to the young
poet's aroused mind as he seemed to discover significance after
significance in the various trifling incidents of his love. God
had indeed come to him in Beatrice. She was not only the
fairest of gentle ladies, but her nature was rooted in the
Trinity itself. She was God's messenger to him. Meditat
ing upon these high themes he wrote the final, sonnet of the
Vita Nuova in which the metamorphosis of his lady is seen
to be taking place. He beholds her in the highest heaven
clothed in such glory that Love's reporting words are dark.
Then follows an account of his- fourth epochal experience.
" After this sonnet, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in
which I saw things which made me resolve to speak no more
of this blessed one, until I could more worthily treat of her.
And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as
she truly knows. So that, if it shall please Him through
whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for some
years, I hope to say of her what was never said of any woman.
And then may it please Him who is the Lord of Grace, that
my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady, namely, of that

186 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks upon the face of Him
qui est per omnia saecula benedictus (who is blessed for
ever)." This is the insight we obtain into the mystical qualities
of Dante's genius from the facts evident in this first revela
tion of himself. He heard no voices, he saw no blinding
light, he was not initiated into trance-like states. It was
through the ornamented gateway of beauty that the power
of the Eternal entered his soul. Not the beauty of nature
which disturbed Wordsworth " with the joy of elevated
thoughts," but the beauty of woman; not the charm of
physical loveliness, but those spiritual graces which adorn
womanhood, gentleness, courtesy, humility. The passion
aroused was not that of a troubadour for his mistress, or
a knight for his lady, but an ardent spiritual passion for
an ethereal ideal. It was an aesthetic mysticism, — God re
vealed through the aesthetic sense. Such was the mysticism
of Shelley, whose genius had so much in common with Dante
that he has interpreted the Florentine in many marvelous
verses. In the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, written when
he was twenty-four, he describes his awakening sense of
" the awful shadow of some unseen Power " that " floats un
seen amongst us." " When musing deeply on' the lot
Of Life, at the sweet time when the winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming —
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine."
The extremely sensitive nature both of Dante and Shelley
in the springtime of their days quivered under the spell of
the Spirit of Beauty, only to the elder poet the beauty had

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 187
more of a religious meaning and was personal in the spiritual
grace of a woman.
A quickened mind soon becomes aware of many un
suspected interests, and Dante, having had one glimpse of the
sacramental nature of the world, thanks to his thorough
mediaevalism, at once laid hold of the cryptic writing of the
eternal in the temporal, and was preoccupied with the sig
nificance of numbers, symbolism and allegory. In the Vita
Nuova the mysticism of the poetry, which is earlier than the
prose, is the passion for spiritual beauty; the mystical ele
ment of the prose has to do with symbolism, especially the
significance of numbers. Meditation on these things has
fruition in an intuition, which Dante calls a vision, of what
Beatrice might mean to him, his art and to the world.
Although our poet did not see visions and hear voices
after the manner of some mystics, we should not fail to notice
that vision and audition both are prominent features of this
early work. Love is not to him a suffused emotion, but
is beheld as a shining God, a lord of fearful aspect, a youth
in white garments, a pilgrim meanly clad. These. visions
are not the hallucinations of an over stimulated mind, rather
they appear to result from a powerful imagination which
spontaneously visualizes its creations and personifies ideals.
Voices also call through the pages of this volume. Dante
conceived Love so vividly and dramaticaly that he conversed
with him. But the voices are never beyond his control.
They are his stage instruments. For the most part they ap
pear in the prose which was written years after the event.
And it is to be noted that frequently Love speaks in Latin.
As the poet claimed that he first met Beatrice when he was
nine years of age, and as at twenty-five he confessed that he
read Cicero with difficulty, it is not to be supposed that at
that memorable meeting a voice actually called to him say
ing in the ancient tongue: " Ecce deus fortior me, qui
veniens dominabitur mihi."

188 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Between the closing of the Vita Nuova and the opening
of the Divina Commedia is a period of some two decades.
During this time Beatrice is indeed a holy memory, some
times, perhaps, a spiritual presence, but God no longer
reveals himself to the poet through the graces of womanhood.
The way of communication now. is the Truth. The Spirit
of Beauty is superseded by the Spirit of Truth as the
avenue of approach to God. For consolation in the death
of his beloved Dante turned to the study of philosophy,
not as a modern student, languidly conscious of the limita
tions of the human mind and of the fallibility of all systems
of thought; but with the eagerness and assurance of the
mediaeval student who is persuaded that the very heart and
glory of truth may be known.
After the manner of Boethius, who was his model, Dante
personified Philosophy and sang her praises in a volume en
titled II Convivio, the Banquet. His doctrine of Love is
here clearly mystical:
" Love, truly taken and nobly considered, is naught else
than the spiritual union of the soul and of the thing loved:
to which union the soul, of her own nature, runs swift or
slow, according as she is free or impeded." 3
Of the rapture of his love of truth Dante has borne ample
testimony. He turned to philosophy thinking to find silver
and instead he found gold. He felt so much of " her sweet
ness that love of her expelled all other thought." He found
her a " lady full of all sweetness, adorned with virtue,
wonderful in knowledge, glorious in liberty." " Oh, most
sweet and unutterable looks, of a sudden ravishing the mind,
which appears in the demonstrations in the eyes of Philosophy
when she discourses to her lovers."
But noble and genuine as was this philosophical love, it
was superseded and in part condemned by a more worthy af
fection which his deepening experiences of life produced.
8 Convivio III, 2, 18.

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 189
When Dante was in his forty-eighth year, in 13 13, he was a
woefully disillusioned man. He felt most bitterly that the
Papal hierarchy were misleading the people in spiritual in
terests, while the appointed guide in temporal affairs, Henry
VII, had failed and was dead. To his lacerated spirit Phil
osophy seemed a cold comfort, and lyrics to her praise a
childish play. He needed God, else he would be driven to
despair. He would have done with, artistic trifles and seek
for himself and proclaim to others the way of life. This
he does in the Divinia Commedia.
This mediaeval miracle of song has many meanings. It is
the most powerful political pamphlet ever written; it is the
world's greatest poem, it is more than a cross section of Italy
in 1300; it is the quintessence of the spirit of ten centuries.
In it Dante appears as the representative of humanity as well
as in his own propria persona. We shall consider it only as
it reveals the poet's characteristic mysticism.
It is thoroughly mystical in that it is a pilgrimage from
a dark confused forest to God. Dante sets out in full self-
reliance to climb the sunlit mountain, but his own strength
is insufficient; the beasts of incontinence, pride and avarice
are too powerful for him and he is driven back again into
the dark forest " where the sun is silent." Here Virgil,
reason illumined by divine grace, appears to lead him among
the truly dead that he may know what sin is and what its
awful consequences are. After the journey through Hell,
Virgil leads Dante up the steeps of Purgatory to show him
the effects of sin on the human soul, ' and the method of
cleansing its stain and escaping its power.
Having led the way through purgatorial discipline by
which the glorious liberty of the children of God is attained,
human reason can do no more. Divine Revelation personi
fied by Beatrice meets the poet oh the. summit of Purgatory
and conducts him through the stars to the Empyrean — the
timeless, spaceless existence — where God and the redeemed

igo AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
dwell in eternal felicity. Here Dante by spiritual intuition
gazes into the depths of the splendors of the Living Light
Eternal and experiences the goal of all mysticism, — that
supreme, ecstatic moment of understanding which reveals all
things in God and God in all things, and gives perfect peace
and reconciliation. It is interesting to note in this pilgrim
age how thoroughly Catholic is the mystical journey. The
Protestant believes that the way to God is so plain that the
wayfaring man though a fool need not err therein. Let the
seeker only love with his whole heart and he will keep the
way. Thus John Bunyan's Christian has companions but
no infallible guide save the book in his hand. To the Catho
lic Dante, on the other hand, the way is so obscured by dark
ness and so steep that the poet is never for a moment with
out a guide to direct his steps.
The whole conception and machinery of the poem "is
mystical. The desire of the soul for the Good is the im
pelling motive of every action. God, whose glory penetrates
everywhere through the universe, has implanted something
of his divine fire in every human heart. This sacred flame
moves spontaneously toward God its source, as the fire
mounts toward the heavens. But owing- to imperfect in
telligence man follows false images of good, and thus for
sakes the true path. Consequently he needs a guide to re
veal the way. His love is also excessive or defective as well
as perverted, and to " set love in order " is the key to the
discipline of the Purgatory. Urged on by love, walking in
the way that sets love in order, the pilgrim soul will come
at last to that vision of the divine Love whose availing
glory shall subdue all rebellion and win the heart to perfect
peace and reconciliation.
The Beatific Vision, which, is described in the closing
cantos of the Paradiso, is to my mind the most glorious
achievement of the constructive literary imagination. Prob
ably I have read it a hundred times, and never without those

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 191
creeping sensations of the spine which result when the very
center of one's being is shaken. I thoroughly endorse
Cardinal Manning's tribute: "No uninspired hand has
ever written thoughts so high in words so resplendent as the
last stanza of the Divina Commedia. It was said of St.
Thomas, Post Summam Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen
gloriae! It may be said of Dante Post Dantis Paradisum
nihil restat nisi visio Dei.' " Let me quote the familiar and
immortal lines. " O Supreme Light, that so high upliftest
Thyself from mortal conceptions, re-lend to my mind a little
of what Thou didst appear, and make my tongue so powerful
that it may be able to leave one single spark of Thy glory
for the folk to come; for, by returning somewhat to my
memory and by sounding a little in these verses, more of
Thy victory shall be conceived.
" I think that by the keenness of the living ray which I
endured, I should have been dazed if my eyes had been
averted from it; and I remember that on this account I was
the more hardy to sustain it till I conjoined my gaze with
the Infinite Goodness.
" O abundant Grace, whereby I presumed to fix my'look
through the Eternal Light till that there I consummated
the seeing! I saw that in its depth is enclosed, bound up
with love in one volume, that which is dispersed in leaves
through the universe; substance and accidents and their
modes, fused together, as it were, in such wise, that that
of which I speak is one simple Light. The universal form
of this knot I believe that I saw, because, in saying this,
I feel that I rejoice more speciously. . . . Thus my mind,
wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless, and intent, and
ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light one be
comes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to
turn himself from it fof other sight; because the Good
which is the object of the will is all collected in it, and
outside of it that is defective which is perfect there.

192 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
" Now will my speech fall more short, even in respect to
that which I remember, than that of an infant who still
bathes his tongue at the breast. Not because more than one
simple semblance was in the Living Light wherein I was
gazing, which is always such as it was before; but through
my sight, which was growing strong in me as I looked, one
sole appearance, as I myself changed, was altering itself
to me.
" Within the profound and clear subsistence of the Lofty
Light appeared to me three circles of three colors and one
dimension; and one seemed reflected by the other, as Iris by
Iris, and the third seemed fire from which the one and from
the other is equally breathed forth.
" O how inadequate is speech, and how feeble toward my
conception ! and this toward what I saw is such that it suf
fices not to call it little.
" O Light Eternal, that sole abidest in Thyself, sole under-
standest Thyself, and, by Thyself understood and understand
ing, lovest and smilest on' Thyself ! That circle, which ap
peared in Thee generated as a reflected light, being awhile
surVeyed by my eyes, seemed to me depicted with our effigy
within itself, of its own very color ; wherefore my sight was
wholly set upon it. As is the geometer who wholly applies
himself to measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that
principle of which he is in need, such was I at that new
sight. I wished to see how the image was conformed to the
circle, and how it has its place therein; but my own wings
were not for this, had it not been that my mind was smitten
by a flash in which its wish came.
" To the high fantasy here power failed ; but now my de
sires and my will were revolved, like a wheel which is moved
evenly, by the love which moves the sun and the other stars."
That Dante was in intellectual sympathy with the leading
mystics of the Middle Ages and that he has clearly set

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 193
forth the science of mysticism as it was conceived in his time,
is beyond dispute.
The question now arises : To what extent did Dante per
sonally experience this mystical love and union? To my
mind Dante could not easily escape having a genuine mystical •
experience. For years he brooded on his vast; terrible and
resplendent theme. His vivid and powerful imagination
would make his conception most real to him. Such flaming
thoughts held tenaciously in mind through a period of years
would transform his character and lift him to the heights of
emotional exaltation. In the quiet of Ravenna he could not
dwell closely with Beatrice and the stars, contemplating
month by month and even year by year the transcendent
splendor of those realms of glory without having his heart
and will made submissive to the Divine Love. It is not
strange that he affirms in the first canto of the Paradiso:
" In the heaven which receives most of His light I have been,
and have seen things which he who descends from there above
neither knows how nor has the power to recount." In his
dedication letter to Can Grande he declares that his own
unworthiness is no argument to be used against God making
him a messenger through whom to communicate His will,
for even Nebuchadnezzar received divine revelation. In the
closing lines of his vision he solemnly affirms that after his
high fantasy had failed " my desire and my will were re
volved like a wheel that evenly is turned by the love that
moves the sun and other stars." Most "conclusive of all
perhaps is the testimony of the last sonnet he wrote, that to
Giovanni Quirino,
The King by whose rich grace His servants be
With plenty beyond measure set to dwell
Ordains that I my bitter wrath dispel
And lift mine eyes to the great consistory;
Till, noting how in glorious choirs agree

194 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
The citizens of that fair citadel,
To the Creator I, His creature, swell
Their song, and all their love possesses me.
So, when I contemplate the great reward
To which our God has called the Christian seed,
I long for nothing else but only this.
And then my soul is grieved in thy regard,
Dear friend, who reck'st not of thy nearest need,
Renouncing for slight joys the perfect bliss.4
SUMMARY
That mysticism was woven into the very structure of
Dante's mind there can be no question. He saw all things
sub specie aeternitatis. Things seen were but the thin veil
hiding and revealing the Unseen. It was in the eternal world
that he habitually dwelt. He went into the eternal to find
the true meaning of life. That he ended each section of the
Divina Commedia with the word " stars " indicates that he
saw all things against the background of the Everlasting.
But the special characteristics of his mysticism must be
noted. His mystical sense was quite unlike Wordsworth's. In
nature he did not perceive
" Something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns."
Nature indeed calmed his hot and imperious heart, espe
cially the light of the stars and the mystery of the immense
spaces. Yet nature was only the palette from which he took
many colors, her ordered glories did not quicken his sense of
God or awaken " that serene and blessed mood of harmony,
and the deep power of joy to see into the life of things."
He was too good a Catholic, and too convinced a Roman,
not to find God in history; but it was a deduction of his
intellect; he did not see God in the teeming life of the men
of his day. Rather, like Newman, he looked into this busy,
*Rossetti's translation.

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 195
living world and saw no reflection of its Creator. It ap
peared to him " nothing else than the prophet's scroll, full
of lamentations, and mourning, and woe." And, like New
man, he felt the need of an infallible interposition to rescue
and guide humanity.
Neither was his the mysticism of a loving and fervent
heart. Unlike St. Francis whom he greatly reverenced, or
St. Bernard whom he chose for his interpreter amid the
splendors of the Great White Rose, he had no sweet and
precious sense of the presence of Christ during that terrible
journey of his. God to him was the Emperor of the Heavens,
Christ the God-man who had made the supreme atonement,
but Dante did not talk with God as friend to friend, or
commune with Christ as with a dear companion.
His was the mysticism of Plato glorified by the fire that
was in Shelley. His emotions were' always kept in strict sub
ordination to his intellectual perceptions. Even in the un
veiled splendor of the Fountain of Living Light Eternal he
suffered no rapture to merge the outlines of his identity with
the glory about him. In full possession of all his faculties,
and in his proper individuality, he stands a clearly outlined
figure against the intolerable radiance of the Perfect Light.
Unlike many mystics he did not confuse good and evil in a
pantheistic mist. The line demarking them was distinct
even in the highest heaven. Nature might be phenomenal,
but not the wicked spirit.
I have just stated that Dante's mysticism was a cross be
tween that of Shelley and Plato. The spiritual beauty of a
Florentine maiden led his thoughts to the throne of God.
Her grace was the revelation of the divine Love. At her
death his mind was arrested by the occurrence of the number
nine in his relationship with her. She was a nine, a miracle,
and this belief gave his mysticism a peculiarly mediaeval col
oring. In those early days the passion of the' poet was
stronger than the .ardor of the mystic. Not until he wrote

196 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
the closing sonnet of the Vita Nuova and its prose commen
tary did his mystic passion suffuse his pages. Upon the death
of Beatrice he turned to truth and sought it until the sight
of his eyes was blurred, and he grew lean from vigils. Like
Plato he would attain the vision of God by the process of
reflective thought. He had an intuition of the One in the
Many rather than a feeling of the divine Friend. With all
his love of philosophy our poet had little of the serene temper
of the true philosopher. His heart was too passionate and
intense. The cold, crystalline vision that enraptured the
mind of the greatest of Greeks was not that which Dante
framed by his glowing imagination. At first he personified
Philosophy as a rare maiden, whose glowing eyes represented
the demonstration of truth, and the radiance of her smile its
persuasion. Dante is as yet only the philosophic troubadour
yearning for the laurel. He has entered the Temple of
Truth and known full well the joys of study, but into the
Arcanum where every personal wrong and ambition is for
gotten in ecstacy of communion with God's splendor he has
not entered.
But as he searched through the books of his day on science
and theology and mystical love how unified and resplendent
was that conception of Reality which searched through every
avenue of emotion and aspiration ! The Ptolemaic conception
of the universe, and the medieval theology were easily woven
into a system complete and readily visualized, and in our
poet's mind this scheme of things became anything but a dry
scholastic system. His imperial imagination saw it stand as
a flaming and many-hued object of adoration. What a vision
it was! God, the Eternal Light in his timeless, spaceless
Empyrean! Nine hierarchies of angels circling about him
gaze with fascinated vision into the ever unfolding depths
of divine wisdom and grace. The wonders they behold en-
flame their hearts with quenchless love and call forth in them
supernatural powers of service. The light and love of God

THE MYSTICISM OF DANTE 197
passing through their angelic minds stream down through all
the revolving heavens and penetrate everywhere through the
universe, while all created intelligences aspiring toward the
answering love of God cause a cosmic dance of love. Love is
the center and circumference of all things. Love is the goal
and guide of every pilgrim soul.
Prolonged contemplation of this inspiring interpretation
of truth profoundly changed Dante's character. It became
impossible for him to be the mere troubadour either of
Beauty or of Philosophy. To continue the Convivio was
impossible. He must make the whole vision manifest. He
is called to be a prophet of the Highest. He must arouse
men from their sleep of sin and show the way to true felicity.
Therefore he writes the Divina Commedia to reveal the
nature of sin, the way of escape and the path to God.
Continued meditation on the divine truths enkindled in
the poet-prophet a thirst for that all penetrating glance into
the heart of Truth which is the goal of the desire of every
intellectual mystic. " Well I know that the mind never
sated is unless the Truth illumine it beyond which naught
else extends." To behold the splendor of the Ultimate
Truth, to stand as the representative of humanity before the
Fountain of the Living Light Eternal, to interpret as far as
human speech could do the final mystery, this became the
audacious purpose of the poet. The troubadour has long
been dead within him; the artist eager for the laurel has
perished, it is only the mystic passion within him now that
urges him on to look into the face of God. Choosing St.
Bernard, symbol of the mind's intuitive power, " who on
earth tasted of this bliss," as his guide, Dante advanced into
the center of the Mystical White Rose and joined his gaze
to that point of intensest Light ih whose depths he beheld the
ultimate mysteries." And how could a vivid mind like his
hold before it continuously that vision without having its
intolerable glory stamp the divine stigmata on his soul?

198 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
That Dante's mysticism was thoroughly of the intellectual
sort is proved by the structure of the Paradiso. There is
not a sensuous line in it. No golden streets or gates of pearl.
No languishing embrace of lovers. It is a Paradise such as
Sir Isaac Newton might have conceived; the heaven of a
mathematician, beholding the ever heightening beauty of
truth, not defining truth, but dealing in its symbols — the
point and the circle. And God is neither the anthropomor
phic Being of Milton and the artists, nor an abstraction of
the philosophers, — Reason, Thought, a Principle ; but Light,
" Light intellectual, full of love, love of true good, full of
joy, joy that transcends every sweetness."
If I put my thought in a phrase of my own coining, and
therefore perhaps awkward and inadequate, I should call
Dante an aesthetico-intellectual mystic, for he found God by
beholding " the beauty of truth enkindled along the stairway
of the eternal palace."

THE MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART
Rufus M. Jones
Among the mystics who have reached " the shining table
land to which our God Himself is moon and sun," Meister
Eckhart most surely belongs. The details of his life are
nearly all lost and one needs to say " probably " before
almost all statements about him. He was born in the vil
lage of Hochheim in Thuringia, not far from Gotha, some
what before 1260. In his fifteenth year he entered the
Dominican Order at Erfurt, where Luther was later to
distinguish himself. The Order was at its height at this
time and attracted the most highly endowed and thoughtful
youth, among whom Eckhart was a shining example. He
seems to have continued his studies in Cologne under Al
bertus, then venerable with age, the greatest teacher of the
time, the one 'scholar who has won the title of " Magnus,"
and the master who inspired and trained Thomas Aquinas
(1224-1274). He was chosen Prior of the Dominican Con
vent at Erfurt and was made Vicar for the district of
Thuringia and thus the great scholar, who was to glorify
silence and contemplation, found himself in a tangle of in
tricate practical problems.
He was sent to Paris in 1300 on important business for
the Order and with the intent that he should complete his
studies at this great center of learning. He appears to have
spent two years in Paris and to have won the title " Meister,"
by which he has been ever since known. At a later time
he seems to have spent a second period in Paris and to have
taught in the University. During the next twenty years
199

200 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
after becoming " Meister " he was one of the leading ad
ministrators of the Dominican Order in Germany, com
pelled to take long and frequent journeys and to be immersed
in the details and controversies of an extensive religious
Society. He appears to have spent a period in Frankfurt
as Dominican preacher, a somewhat longer one in Strasbourg
and to have settled in Cologne as Teacher in the Dominican
School there, probably about 1320.
Two of the great mystics of the fourteenth century,
Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Suso, came under his in
fluence during the Cologne period. Other persons heard
him, wondered, were touched and moved, went their way
and engaged in the pursuits of life. These two men heard
him, listened with their souls, had the creative fire kindled
within them and became altered forever under the inspira
tion and impact of their teacher. Not only these two pillar
mystics among his contemporaries, but almost • all succeed
ing mystics as well, were influenced by the great spiritual
scholar. He takes his place in the small list of those guiding
thinkers who through the ages have marked out the mystic
path which multitudes of humbler souls have walked.
He was a successful administrator, but his greatest voca
tion was that of preacher. He preached usually in the
vernacular speech and drew large throngs to hear him. It
is one of the amazing characteristics of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries that the people of those times were
able to understand the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the
poetry of Dante and the sermons of Meister Eckhart. Few
college students of the present day are competent for any one
of these three tasks. The most difficult of the three tasks
is understanding Eckhart's sermons to which the common
people flocked, as they did a little later to hear Tauler in
Strasbourg. It was an age of mysticism, in the schools, in the cloister,
in literature, in philosophy and among the common people.

MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART 201
Many popular forms of mysticism were abroad, some of them
good and some of them bad. It was a fermenting, seething
period when religion was the main business of life. The
Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Beghards, the Beguines
and many other loosely mystical brotherhoods were to be
found up and down the Rhine Valley and, to a less extent,
in other parts of Germany. Meister Eckhart was very
familiar with their teaching and their ways. His circuit
had been a wide one and he was an expert in these matters.
He preached sermons sometimes which left the common
earth and its practical problems far behind, but he never
lost, as some of the lesser mystics of the time did, the dis- «
tinction of right and wrong, of good and evil. He had a
profound regard for moral implications. He would go as
far as any one in his insistence upon a Divine Light within
the soul, but he had one criterion by which he distinguished
inner Light from darkness — the Light, if it was Light,
must guide the recipient into truth and goodness, it could
not promote anything which entangled the life in looseness
or evil. " There are," he declared in a sermon, " people
who say, if I have God and His love, I may do what I like.
That is a false idea of liberty. When thou wishest a thing
contrary to God and His law thou hast not the love of
God in thee." * One of the clearest and noblest of all his
words declared: "No person is ever free from the con
sequences of sin until he is free of sin." 2
During the closing period of his life Eckhart was sus
pected of being unorthodox and was charged with " heresies "
in a series of twenty-eight propositions. The technical
" heresies " of which he was suspected need not concern us
now. " He wished to know more than he should," is the
interesting verdict which the Pope gave after the good man
1Pfeiffer's Meister Eckhart Vol. II of Deutsche Mystiker, Leip-
»& »8S7, P- «3Z-
aPfirifrer; op. cit., p. 664.

202 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
had died, with his heresy trial not yet finished. " Orthodox "
in the strict sense he was not, but he was pure, sincere, pro
found, loving, adoring, burning with unmixed passion for
God. We may well match these great characteristics of his
soul off against the modicum of error that may have existed
in the twenty-eight propositions collected out of his sermons.
It is unfortunate that in relation to Eckhart we possess
so little material of an autobiographical character. Per
sonal accounts of experience are of first importance in study
ing a mystic. It is of some value, no doubt, to find out
what type of metaphysics he held and what were his theories
about the soul's relation to God, but these things are poor
substitutes for the person's own description of what hap
pened to him and what he knew first hand. Just because
we possess no " Confessions," no revealing autobiography, of
Eckhart the studies of him have usually taken an abstract
turn and are, as they are bound to be, cold, dry and hard
toread. His style is difficult, because he is fond of epigram
and breathlessly bold paradox. Furthermore he was using a
language not yet adapted for the expression of such pro
found and subtle thought, and finally he goes down into that
inner region of life for which no language has coined words
of easy description. In all these particulars he was like
Heraclitus the Dark, whose famous fragment would have
pleased Eckhart : " You cannot find the boundaries of the
soul by going in any direction, so deep and bottomless it is."
If he wrote the story of " Schwester Katrie " (Sister
Cathie) which is usually attributed to him he was very prob
ably suggesting, in his account of another's experience, what
a long hard road of discipline must be traveled before the
soul can get beyond words about God and can come fully
home to Him. " You must learn," he says, " not only to
ascend, but to descend." " You must know the lonely place
of peace as a man knows his own courtyard." It is not a
state of feelings; it is a work of mind and will cooperating

MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART 203
with Grace. One of his contemporaries bore this interest
ing testimony of him, that " God kept nothing hid " from
Meister Eckhart, which implies that he himself never spared
the " toil of heart and knees and hands " that won the
spiritual heights where he arrived.3
Nothing can be more completely false than the view that
the mystic's way is a lazy man's expedient. Modern
Christians are inclined to look back upon the thirteenth cen
tury as a time of superstition and darkness and to suppose
that the mediaeval saints withdrew from the stern affairs of
life and adopted superficial, rose-water methods of dealing
with sin. Few of us, I am afraid, are made of the fiber
to endure the discipline, to bear the crucifixions, to undergo
the mental training, to stand the strain of concentration
and contemplation required for even the beginner on the
mystic pathway. The attainments of the outstanding figures
like Eckhart and Ruysbroeck are wholly beyond the range of
what is possible to us to-day, I will not say in deed, but
even in thought and imagination. " With all his powers one
must pray," our mystic says. " Eyes, ears, heart, mouth and
the whole mind must be given to it." *
Meister Eckhart was in one particular at least a fore
runner of the Reformation. He put a very low estimate
upon what had come to be called " works " or " merits."
He went so far as to say that it was a suggestion of the
Devil that salvation depended upon fastings, vigils, morti
fications and external performances. These things have no
magic for him. He felt that even works of pity and com
passion, done to secure salvation, were likewise inadequate.
They belong to the stage of the servant, not that of the free
son. There must be an inner work, he always insists. The
motive, the attitude of the soul, the birth of love and de-
3 " Diz ist Meister Eckehart
Dem Got nie niht verbarc.''
* Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 544-5.

204 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
votion are the essential matters. Even ecstasies are no in
dication that one has arrived at his goal. They are
temporary and fleeting. They do not indicate spiritual
height or sublimity. The soul must attain an abiding pos
session, a permanent union with God, and then the inner
state will determine the outer- activities. It is only a weak
spiritual life that leans upon outward garb and external
works, but when the inward life is pure and free from self
ishness one will be ready to leave an ecstasy of the highest
degree, even like that of St. Paul's, to carry a cup of soup
to a poor needy person.5 When once the soul is joined in
union with God, then nothing is too hard, no labors or suffer
ing, no privations or losses. " Torment not thyself [i. e.,
with mortifications] ; if God lays Sufferings on thee, bear
them. If He gives thee honors and fortunes, bear them
with no less readiness. One man cannot do all things; he
must do some one thing; but in this one he can comprehend
all things. If the obstacle is not in thee, thou canst as well
have. God present with thee by the fire or in the stall as in
devout prayer. Thou mayest arrive at the state in which
thou shalt have God essentially dwelling in thee; thou shalt
be in God and God in thee." 6
Not less in the spirit of the Reformation were his emphasis
on the importance of individual religious experience and his
lack of emphasis on the sphere and function of the Church
and ecclesiastical machinery. Doctrine, orthodoxy, sacra
ments, priests, the Virgin Mary, take a very lowly and sub
ordinate place in his thought. Love, faith, earnestness,
purity, consecration count infinitely more than conformity to
system does. " Marv is blessed not because she bore Christ
"Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 553. See also p. 330 and p. 543.
6 The passage quoted is not a literal translation, but a paraphrase
of a striking sermon by Eckhart. Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 543-578.
The paraphrase is taken in part from Ueberweg, History of Philos
ophy, New York, 1874, Vol. I, p. 480.

MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART 205
bodily but because she bore him spiritually, and in this par
ticular every one can be like her." T
The most important point in Eckhart's teaching to select
for consideration in a short exposition like this is his doctrine
of the soul. He arrived at his conception of the soul along
two paths, one of them the path of experience and the other
the path of metaphysics, which is experience deeply reflected
upon. Mere metaphysics does not make one a mystic. _WjS
do not properly call a man a mystic unless through the inner
"ray, in <iilpnre and conternpl^tiftPi or by the tapping of in
terior reseryojrs_pi_eriej^3[ti!e_feeh^
and correspondence with the realm of spiritual resources
and emerges from his experience with trie conviction alive
within him_thaL-God- and man have somehow been finding
each other.
Noone can read Eckhart without feeling assured that such
experiences were an important part of his life. He speaks
always as though he had been there. There is a glow, a
fervor, a radiance breaking through his rugged mediaeval
German sentences which leave no doubt in the mind of the
stumhling reader that this man knows what he is talking
about and that if we could see his luminous face and could
revisualize his transformed, dynamic personality we should
understand why the common people flocked to hear him and
why Tauler and Suso were changed through their fellow
ship with him. Take words like these which he spoke in
one of his sermons: " Earth cannot escape the sky, let it
flee as it will up or down ; the sky flows into it and makes it
fruitful whether it will or not. So does God to man. He
who will escape Him only runs to His bosom; for all corners
of the world are open to Him." 8 That does not sound like
dialectic, it is first-hand testimony. "Truth," he says,
" must be inwardly won " ; " the eternal word must be heard
7 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 280.
8 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 287.

206 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
and understood in ourselves and we must be inwardly united
to God." 8 That is not theory, it is knowledge of acquaint
ance. But at the same time Eckhart did have a very carefully
thought out theory of the nature of the soul. He has
gathered his point of view from many sources, both Christian
and pagan. It has been suggested 10 that there is a strong
Arabian influence apparent in Eckhart's conception of the
soul, especially the influence of Averroes. Such influence is
not impossible, but it does not seem to me necessary to go
out of the beaten track of European thought, leading back to
Aristotle for the sources of the peculiar psychology of Eck
hart. """ihe apex ot the mma " (.das hochste der selen
vernunftigkeit) is unsundered from God. We now realize
that the retina of the eye is to all intents and purposes a
projected part of the brain, somewhat so Eckhart thinks that
there is an active, creative principle in man's soul which
through all the mutability of time and space binds us back
into our divine origin and holds us firmly in Him who made
us for Himself. Eckhart calls this central principle of the
soul the " Funklein," spark, or flash, or glimmer. Sometimes
he names it with an old German word, now obsolete, the
"Ganster" (das ganster des geistes, p. 670; or daz obeste
gensterlein, p. 79). This word also means spark or gleam,
and in a passage on page 79 of Pfeiffer's edition he says that
this highest light-spark in the soul is never separated from
God and operates directly, i. e., without any mediation. It
is the Principle which the schoolmen called synteresis, the
divine ground of the soul, the essential spiritual nature in
man, which makes him exercise faith, become responsive to
God and capable of salvation in the deeper sense. The word
scintilla had sometimes been used for this innermost faculty,
9 Ibid. p. 24.
10 See Karl Pearson in Mind, Vol. XI, 1886.

MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART 207
a word which Eckhart put into popular speech and made cur
rent for the succeeding centuries, as Funklein.
Aristotle had made a sharp distinction between active
reason and passive reason, the higher and lower functions
of the soul. Eckhart used these terms very frequently:
Der menc'h hat eine Wirkende vernunft und eine lidende
vernunft.11 (Man has an active reason and a passive rea
son.) The interpreters of Aristotle, even before the
Christian era had settled upon the conclusion that the active
reason was a gift of God to the soul — was in fact some
thing of the actual substance of God contributed to the soul
and forming the basis and ground of man's spiritual nature.
No other doctrine had such a weighty influence on the entire
history of Christian mysticism as this Aristotelean concep
tion of the soul had. However dark and pessimistic were
the prevailing theological views of man there were always
some Christians to be found who held fast to this idea, which
they attributed to. the great Greek master, that the apex
of the soul was an inalienable contribution of God to the
spiritual structure in man. Passive reason, with its senses
and emotions was wholly dependent for its material upon
the influences of the external environment, but " active
reason " was pure, super-empirical and always as near God
as thought is near the mind that thinks it — " God is nearer
to me," Eckhart says, " than I am to myself." 12 With-this
central conception of the soul Eckhart quite naturally exalted
silence as a way of worship and made very much indeed of
Abgescheidenheit, i. e., withdrawal of the soul from the im
pact of the senses and the appeal of the emotions — all that is
of the " creature." " God is near us," he says, " but we
are far from Him ; God is within but we are without ; God
is at home but we are away in a far country." 13 In a fine
11 Pfeiffer, op cit., p. 16.
12 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 221.
13 Ibid. p. 223.

208 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
passage in the second sermon of Pfeiffer's collection he says:
" The soul, with all its powers, has divided and scattered
itself in outward things, each according to its functions: the
power of sight in the eye, the power of hearing in the ear,
the power of taste in the tongue, and thus they are the less
able to work inwardly, for every power which is divided is
imperfect. So the soul, if she would work inwardly, must
call home all her powers and collect them from all divided
things to one inward work. ... If a man will work an in
ward work, he must pour all his powers into himself as into
a corner of the soul, and must hide himself from all images
and forms, and then he can work. Then he must come into
a forgetting and a not-knowing. He must be in a stillness
and silence, where the Word may be heard. One cannot
draw near to this Word better than by stillness and silence:
then it is heard and understood in utter ignorance. When
one knows nothing it is opened and revealed. Then we shall
become aware of the Divine Ignorance, and our ignorance
will be ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowledge.
And when we simply keep ourselves receptive, we are more
perfect than when at work." xi
The best way to enter into Life is to keep silence, to let
God speak and to let Him work. This happens best when
the human powers are stilled and the " creature " is sup
pressed.15 But Eckhart and the great mystics do not mean
by " silence " a stagnant, inactive soul. They mean, on the
contrary, a soul from the first awake, alive, with the deep-
lying unsuspected energies in full action. The surface self
is dormant, the peripheral man is brought to quiet, but that
innermost ground of our spiritual nature is awake, opera
tive and aware of the real divine environment that sur
rounds it. God is always more ready to give Himself than
14 Ibid. p. 13. I have used Evelyn Underbill's translation given
in her Mysticism, New York, 191 1, p. 381.
16 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 18.

MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART 209
we are to receive Him, and He needs us as much as we need
Him.16 " You shall sink away from your selfhood," this
bold mystic tells us, " you shall flow into His selfhood and
your you shall become completely changed into His Mine,
so that you apprehend eternally with Him His uncreated es
sential being.17 The highest process, the supreme attainment
here, or even hereafter, for this great mystic is the birth of
God, the bringing forth of the Son in man. Eckhart, when
he is in these high regions, never makes his meaning very
clear. He startles with his paradoxes, but he does not sup
ply the seeker with much concrete description. He is say
ing, as all the most spiritual teachers have said, that the
vital stage of religion is not reached until we get beyond
the use of words and phrases, beyond ceremony and ritual,
beyond historical events and things done for us by others,
and exercise our own essential spiritual activities. In Saint
Paul's words : " It is not circumcision that avails but a
new creation." It is not a scrupulous observance of a sacred
law that makes one Godlike; it is dying to the law, being
crucified to even the loftiest external systems, until one can
say out of his own experience : " It is no more I that live
but Christ lives in me."
" Bringing forth the Son," is Eckhart's way of telling his
generation that " works " are dead and empty things, that
pilgrimages and masses, holy relics and prayers to saints fall
far short of what constitutes the essential act of religion.
This consists of an inward act of response to the divine
presence inwardly revealed, a complete surrender of every
thing in the universe which separates the soul from Him,
an undivided inclination of the whole inner being toward
Him and an experience of revitalization comparable only
to a resurrection from the dead. This, to Eckhart's mind,
is the real business of the universe ; suns and stars, mountains

16 Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 60 and 149.
17 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 319.

210 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
and rivers, kings and thrones, generals with their victorious
armies are dust and ashes compared with the spiritual rebirth
of God in a human life. The joy is double. The soul re
joices as Mary rejoiced when Christ was born and God re
joices as does the shepherd when the sheep is found.
It is an unimportant question what Eckhart thought
were the marks which forever distinguished Christ from the
Son reborn in other men. One would need to ask the same
question of Saint Paul. Christ was for them both the pat
tern revelation of the Son, but He is the first-born among
many brethren, since God never ceases to bring forth His
Son and to carry forward the revelation of His creative
activity. " We are celebrating," Eckhart says in his first
sermon, " the time of the Eternal Birth which God the
Father brought forth and never ceases to bring forth to
Eternity: a Birth which takes place in time and in human
nature. Saint Augustine says this Birth is forever taking
place. But if it does not take place in me, what does it
avail? Everything depends on this that He shall be born
in me. 1B
The rebirth of the soul culminates in a union with God in
which the soul is not lost but found. The united soul does
not talk any more of I, or me, or mine. There is no longer
any striving for things that are finite and indifferent. Such
things are estimated at their real value. God is seen to be
all there is worth having or loving or enjoying. The strain
and stress are over. The soul has arrived. Activity, how
ever, does not cease. On the contrary, God works now un
hindered through the soul; the energies of God pulsate
through the reborn man and make him a burning and shining
light. Nothing is now too hard or difficult. Pain and hard
ship, losses and crosses are welcomed. " I say that after God
there was never anything nobler than sorrow. Had there
been anything nobler than sorrow, then surely the Father
18 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 3.

MYSTICISM OF MEISTER ECKHART 211
would have granted that to His Son, Jesus Christ. But
we find that in His humanity there was no other thing of
which Christ had so much as of sorrow. ... If there had
been anything nobler than sorrow then God would therewith
have redeemed man." 19 It was not a stoic, " bloody but
unbowed," who spoke the following message, it was a man
whom God had brought very close to His loving heart:
" That a man has a restful and peaceful life in God is good.
That a man endures a painful life in patience, that is better ;
but that a man has his rest in the midst of a painful life,
that is the best of all." 20
Nowhere does Eckhart reveal more depth of insight than
in the way he deals with time and space, but it is difficult
to see how his listeners could have understood him as he took
them into such breathless regions. Eternity never means for
him something which begins after time ends, or mere end
less time, or a going on forever. Eternity is an all-contain
ing, all-inclusive, indivisible Now. " The Now in which
God made the world is as near the present time as is the
now in which I am speaking; and the Last Day is as near
that Now as is our yesterday. Everything that God does
is an everpresent Now (in eime gegenwurtigen nu)." 21 We
live so much on the lower plane of passive reason with its
discursive methods of spreading everything out in space and
ticking it off in a clock-time succession that we fail to grasp
things as they really are in a miteinander experience, i. e.,
as taking place in one integral whole of reality, the way for
instance that we experience music and visible beauty. The
Eternal Birth is an ascent from this lower plain of life to
that table-land level where the soul sees spiritual things
spiritually. It is true in one sense that Eckhart was a quietist, even
19 Ibid. 335.
20 Ibid. p. 221.
21 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 266.

212 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
that he was a father of quietists. He had no faith in the
capacities of " mere man " (if there is any such being). He
depreciated the " creature." He preached against the exer
cise of confidence in the finite self. He threw everybody
back upon the work which God Himself works through the
soul when man gets his creaturely self out of the way, re
moves the hindrances and allows God to act unimpeded. But
this does not mean passivity, stagnation or cessation of action.
It means action on a higher level, under higher guidance anil
direction. Instead of acting for petty ends and selfish aims,
one now becomes a channel for the purpose of God to flow
through. " All that a man receives through contemplation
he must pour out in love."
It seems to me unimportant to discuss at length the dis
tinction which Eckhart made between the Godhead and God.
This was a common feature of systems which came under
the influence of Plotinus, as Eckhart's did. The logic of
these systems of thought seemed forced to go back to an abso
lute Reality, and in order to get an infinite, all-perfect Source,
they felt compelled to retreat beyond all that was finite, all
that was manifested or expressed, beyond all that could be
defined, therefore beyond self-consciousness, will-purpose and
all we mean by personality. They had to begin with a blank
infinite, an absolute that was super-everything. The attain
ment of the conception of a concrete infinite is one of the
supreme achievements of modern philosophy, and we shall
not need to charge it up against Plotinus, Eckhart and
Boehme that they found themselves forced to take refuge in
the One, the Alone, the Undifferentiated Godhead {die un-
genaturte natur). Their triumph consists in having at
tained such a degree of spiritual life and positive goodness
when they were forced to work with such stubborn abstract
concepts. Would that with our better equipment of in-
'tellectual furnishings we could equal them in dedication of
spirit and holiness of life !

THE MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA1
George Warren Richards
In a study of the mysticism of St. Theresa a we shall have
to take account of those facts and incidents in her life and
times which had a bearing on her religious experience.3 She
was born at Avila, in Old Castile, Spain, March 28th, 15 15,
and she died at Alva, in Leon, Spain, October 4th, 1582.
Through the place of birth, she became a Spaniard, a Roman
Catholic, and a counter-reformer. She was predisposed by
her Spanish blood to a mystical type of piety. Rousselot
says: " Mysticism is the philosophy of Spain." i It was the
land of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus,
and of John of the Cross, Rome's " consummate ascetic."
Both were contemporaries of St. Theresa and the three had
mystical experiences though in different degrees.
Born into a devout Catholic home, she grew up and re
mained through her life a loyal child of the church. She
never consciously diverted to a hair's breadth from the
1 " Of late it has been the fashion to write her name Teresa or
Teresia, without "h," not only in Spanish and Italian where the
"h" could have no place, but also in French, German, and Latin,
which ought to preserve the etymological spelling. As it is derived
from a Greek name, Tharasia, the saintly wife of St. Paulinus of
Nola, it should be written Theresia in German and Latin, and
Therese in French." Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14, p. 516.
2 Her full name was Dona Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y
Ahumada. In the monastery of the Incarnation she was known for
twenty-eight years as Dona Teresa. When in 1563 she entered the
Monastery of St. Joseph, of the Reform of the Carmelites, she took
the name of Teresa of Jesus.
3 Autobiography, chap. 1, 2, note 2.
* Les Mystiques Espagnols, p. 3, quoted by Inge, Christian Mys
ticism, Oxford, 1899, p. 213. 213

214 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE ^
teachings of Rome or the directions of her superiors. She
repeatedly avows her subservience to the dictates of au
thority. " I submit myself in everything to the teaching
of the Holy Mother Church of Rome." 5 Even when there
was a contradiction between the command of her Lqpd and
the direction of her confessor, she obeyed the latter instead
of the former. At such a time " our Lord Himself told
me to obey my confessor. His Majesty afterwards would
change the mind of the confessor, so that he would have me
to do what he had forbidden before." 6
The Reformation, also, gave direction to her life. One
of her biographers significantly says that she was born in
15 15 "when Luther was secreting the poison which he
vomited out two years later." 7 In her mature yeafrs she
traced the cause of the rise of Protestantism to the relaxa
tion of discipline within the religious orders.8 Thereupon
she proceeded, in the face of bitter opposition, to reform the
Order of the Carmelites by founding new convents in which
the more rigorous discipline of the original rule of the
Order was enforced. In this way she became a factor in
the Counter-Reformation. She nurtured her aversion against
" the Lutherans," including of course all Protestants, unto
the day of her death. In the last paragraph of The Interhr
Castle she exhorts the reader, saying: " every time you read
this book, to praise His Majesty exceedingly, and beg of
Him to advance His Church, to enlighten the Lutherans,
and to obtain the pardon of my sins."
Hoar parentage, her physical and mental traits, and her
early training and adventures were formative factors in the
religious life of her mature years. She came of noble an
cestry. She describes her parents as " devout and God-
6 The Book of the Foundations, Prologue, 6; also Interior Castle,
pp. 24, 233 ; Autobiography, chap. 30, 14.
6 Autobiography, chap. 26, 6; Relation, VII, 15.
''Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, Vol. 23, p. 301.
8 Autobiography, 7, 9.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 215
fearing." Her father was " a man of great charity towards
the poor and compassion for the sick and for servants." He
was " very much given to the reading of good books " and
" his life was most pure." Her mother was of delicate
health, " possessing great beauty," though " never making
any account of it." She was " singularly pure in all her
ways." Her " carefulness to make us say our prayers and
to bring us up devout to our Lady and to certain saints, be
gan to make me think seriously when I was, I believe, six
or seven years old." From her mother she seems to have
inherited both a frail body and a highly susceptible imagin
ation.9 Notwithstanding her prodigious labors,10 her writing of
books, founding of monasteries, and constant journeys, she
was weighed down from youth on with grievous infirmities.
" My bodily sufferings," she writes, " were unendurable. I
have undergone most painful sufferings in this life, and, as
the physicians say, the greatest that can be borne, such as the
contraction of my sinews when I was paralyzed." 1X Again,
" I have been suffering for twenty years from sickness every
morning, so that I could not take any food till past mid
day." 12 She speaks of " fainting fits," " disease of the
heart," 13 " noise and weakness in her head." 14
Several instances in her childhood give evidence of her
sensitive nature, vacillating mind, and innate religious dis
position. Following the example of her mother and behind
9 For the facts relating to parents and childhood, see Autobiog
raphy, chap 1.
10 From 1561 to 1582 she founded directly or indirectly sixteen
convents and fourteen monasteries, each of the Carmelite Order
with rigorous discipline in distinction from the Carmelites with a
mitigated rule. The former were known as Discalzos (Bare
footed); the latter as Calzados (Sandaled).
11 Autobiography, 32, 3.
12 Autobiography, chap. 7, 18.
13 Autobiography, chap. 4, 6.
14 Preface of Interior Castle.

216 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
the back of her father, she became intensely interested in
books on knight-errantry. To this reading she afterwards
traced " the beginning of lukewarmness in my good desires
and the occasion of my falling away in many respects."16
Her father prudently diverted her attention from knights and
turned it to martyrs. Impelled less by admiration for their
heroism than by the belief that martyrs went to heaven with
out detention in purgatory, she, in collusion with her brother,
ventured in search of a martyr's crown by running away
from home to the land of the Moors. The children were
foiled in their attempt by an uncle who met them near the
gate of the city and returned them to their mother. But they
continued to give vent to their childlike religious enthusiasm
and anticipated-the work of later years in building hermitages
by piling up small stones scattered in her father's garden.
" I used to delight exceedingly, when playing with other
children in the building of monasteries as if we were nuns,
and I think I wished to be a nun though not so much as I
did to be a martyr or a hermit." 1B With all her re
ligious inclinations, she was by no means insensible to the
allurements of the world. She might have become a belle
as well as a nun. This element in her nature needs to be
remembered if we are to understand her vacillating life in
the monastery. She seems to have been an attractive girl
fitted to enter social life and to enjoy the world. She writes
of herself i "Then growing up, I began to discover the
natural gifts which our Lord had given me — they were said
to be many; and when I should have given Him thanks for
them I made use of every one of them to offend Him."17
She was not averse to the vanities and flirtations of a pretty
girl. " I began to make much o'f dress, to wish to please
others by my appearance. I took pains with my hands and
15 Autobiography, chap. 2, 1.
16 Autobiography, chap, i, 6.
17 Autobiography,, chap. 1, 8.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 217
my hair, used perfumes and all vanities within my reach.
. . . This fastidiousness of excessive neatness lasted some
years." 18 Later, however, she assures us that she never
permitted herself to be led astray by men ; " nor if I had
the power, would I have ever constrained any one to like
me, for our Lord kept me from this." 19
When St. Theresa was " about fourteen years old "20 she
came under the sinister influence of a " light " and " friv
olous " relative who was often in the house. She was very
fond of her company and found pleasure in her vanities.
" The conversation of this person so changed me, that no
trace was left of my soul's natural disposition to virtue and
I became a reflection of her and of another who was given
to the same kind of amusements." 21
Both her father and her older sister were much distressed
by her association with these persons. Partly to save her
from her friends and partly to continue her education, the
father placed her in an Augustinian monastery in the city.
Here she remained about a year and a half, without a thought
of becoming a nun. Yet she could not, impressionable as
she always was, escape the influence especially of the good and
holy conversations of one of the nuns — " a person of great
discretioh and sanctity." Later she wrote: "This good
companionship began to root out the habits which bad com
panionship had formed, and to bring my thoughts back to
the desire of eternal things, as well as to banish in some
measure the great dislike I had to be a nun." 22
Her residence in the monastery was cut short by " a seri
ous illness." She was obliged to return to her father's house.
She spent some time, also, in the home of a devout uncle.
18 Autobiography, chap. 2, 2.
19 Autobiography, chap. 5, n.
20 Autobiography, chap. 2, 4.
21 Autobiography, chap. 2, 5.
22 Autobiography, chap. 3, 1.

218 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
What she heard from him and read to him, helped her to
come to a decision in life. " I came to understand the truth
I had heard in my childhood that all things are as nothing,
the world vanity, and passing rapidly away." 23 Thus she
began a struggle with herself which lasted " three months "
and ended in her resolve to become a nun. Jn this she was
strengthened by reading the Epistles of Jerome.24 Her father
refused his consent when she made known her purpose.
" The utmost I could get from him was that I might do as
I pleased after his death." 25
At the age of eighteen she left her home and became a
novice in the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation. It was
by no means an easy step for her to take. " I remember
perfectly well," she writes, " and it is quite true, that the .
pain I felt when I left my father's house was so great that
I do not believe the pain of dying will be greater, — for it
seemed to me as if every bone in my body were wrenched
asunder." 26 II
From the moment of her entrance into the monastery her
inner struggle ceased arid she felt happy. " I was filled with
a joy so great that it has never failed me to this day."27
She devoted herself ardently to the cultivation of saintliness,
greatly helped by the perusal of a book given her by her
uncle, entitled, Tercer Abecadario by Fray Francisco de
Osuna, and treating of the prayer of recollection. The
effect of this book upon her she describes as follows: "I
was much pleased with the book, and resolved to follow the
way of prayer, which it described, with all my might. And
23 Autobiography, chap. 3, 6.
2* Autobiography, chap. 3, 8*.
25 Autobiography, chap. 3, 9.
26 Autobiography, chap. 4, 1.
27 Autobiography, chap. 4, 2.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 219
as our Lord had already bestowed upon me the gift of tears,
and I had found pleasure in reading, I began to spend a
certain time in solitude, to go frequently to confession, and
make a beginning of that way of prayer, with this book for
my guide." 28
But now, again, after the time of her novitiate had ex
pired, she became the victim of her vacillating nature. Her
first zeal for holiness died down. She yielded to the more
easy-going life of the other nuns who lived under the miti
gated rule of the Carmelites. This allowed much freedom
and condoned slackness in discipline. The sisters had free
intercourse with the society of Avila, received and returned
visits, and often absented themselves from the monastery for
weeks and months at a time. St. Theresa was only too
ready to accept these privileges though not without scruples
of conscience. " On one side," she says, " God was calling
me ; on the other, I was following the world. All the things
of God gave me great pleasure ; and I was a prisoner to the
things of the world." 29 She found no satisfaction in this
wavering and inconstant mood. " I may say that it was
the most painful life that can be imagined, because I had no
sweetness in God and no pleasure in the world." 30
After twenty years of " strife and contention which arose
out of my attempt to reconcile God and the world," 31 she
began a life of absolute surrender to God. This may be
called her conversion, not indeed from the world to God,
but from a life of compromise between the world and God,
to a life of unconditional submission to God. She was
fully conscious of the change. " Henceforth, it is another
and a new book — I mean another and a new life. Hith-
28 Autobiography, chap. 4, 8.
29 Autobiography, chap. 7, 27.
30 Autobiography, chap. 8, 1.
81 Autobiography, chap. 8, 4.

220 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
erto my life was my own; my life, since I began to explain
these methods of prayer, is the life which God lived in me, —
so it seems to me." 32
As she had ascribed her former life to her failure "to
lean on the strong pillar of prayer," 33 so she found the secret
of her later life in the resumption of prayer. " Prayer is
the door to those great graces which our Lord bestowed upon
me." Si Of course she always prayed, but in a perfunctory
and servile way. " The days that passed over without my
spending a great part of them in prayer were few." 35 It
was, however, only the ordinary customary vocal prayer
neutralized by her worldly affections.*6
After she had given herself wholly to God, " trusting in
His Majesty " alone and " thoroughly distrusting " herself,
she began a new way of prayer, which in distinction from
" vocal " she calls " mental " prayer.37 She defines it. as
" nothing else but being on terms of friendship with God,
frequently conversing in secret with Him who, we know,
loves us." Prayer now became for her spontaneous, irresist
ible, the joy of her life. " I understood perfectly well that
what had happened was something supernatural, because at
times I was unable to withstand it ; to have it when I would
was impossible." 3S
The beginning of her conversion, i. e., her advance from
one stage of prayer to another, and the time when she began
to mend her ways and " grow better," was an experience she
had one day in the oratory.39 She saw a picture of the
wounded and suffering Christ. She was overcome by the
32 Autobiography, chap. 23, 1.
33 Autobiography, chap. 8, 1.
84 Autobiography, chap. 8, 13.
35 Autobiography, chap. 8, 3.
36 Autobiography, chap. 8, 2.
37 Autobiography, chap. 8, 5.
38 Autobiography, chap. 23, 5.
39 1555, Bouix.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 221
thought of what He had suffered for her and of the evil
return she had made for those wounds. She threw herself
on the ground weeping and imploring Him to strengthen her
once for all so that she might never offend Him again.40
By this prostration before the picture she made " greater
progress " than ever before. " I have grown better ever
since." She was, also, inspired to new life by reading the Confes
sions of Augustine. " When I came to his conversion, and
read how he heard that voice in the garden, it seemed to
me nothing less than that our Lord had uttered it for me.
I felt so in my heart. I remained for some time lost in
tears, in great inward affliction and distress." 41 She now
gave herself in a special way to prayer. " His Majesty be
gan to give me most frequently the grace of the prayer of
quiet and very often that of union." 42
Her conversion, begun in her prostration before the picture
of the suffering Savior in the oratory, was consummated
one day when she was reciting the hymn Veni Creator. " I
fell into a trance — so suddenly, that I was as it were carried
out of myself." " This was the first time our Lord be
stowed upon me the grace of ecstasy. I heard these words:
I will not have thee converse with men but with angels." is
After this she alludes to the suddenness of the changes in her
life. " From that day forth [the time of the trance] I have
had courage so great as to leave all things for God who in
one moment was pleased to change His servant into another
person." " " Our Lord raised me in four months to a
greater height than I have reached in seventeen years."
40 Autobiography, chap. 9, 1.
41 Autobiography, chap. 9, 9.
42 Autobiography, chap. 23, 2.
43 Autobiography, chap. 24, 7.
44 Autobiography, chap. 24, 8.

222 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
III
The primary cause as well as effect of her new life was
prayer — prayer of an extraordinary kind. Of this she had
foretastes in her early days in the monastery. Before she
• was twenty years old she resolved to follow the prayer of
recollection described in Francisco's Abecedario. She was
then already raised " to the prayer of quiet and occasionally
to that of union, though I understood not what either one
or the other was." 45 What in her youth happened at long
intervals now came frequently. The intermissions of world
hness and frivolity ceased and she now lived constantly in
the power and the joy of prayer. " The joy and sweetness
which I felt were so great, and very often beyond the power
to avoid." Withal she felt herself growing " better and
stronger." 46
At first she was alarmed and perplexed by her spiritual ex-
<S periences which were beyond her control. She feared that
she was either self-deceived or deluded of the devil. She
consulted a number of spiritual advisers. They differed in
their judgment of her case. Two of them agreed that she
was deceived by an evil spirit but urged her to ask advice of
a certain father of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit assured
her that she was clearly under the guidance of the Spirit of
God. " He left me consoled and fortified." In obedience
to his counsel she began to mortify her body, disciplining it
" even unto blood." 47 Both to convince herself and her
directors that she was not under diabolic influence, and to
show others, also, the way of prayer, she wrote at the com
mand of her spiritual advisers, an account of her life which is
now known as her Autobiography. i3
45 Autobiography, chap. 4, 9.
48 Autobiography, chap. 23, 2.
47 Autobiography, chap. 24, 2.
"¦J**'0*1'?*?'^' chaP- l6> Io: x°. i7- Preface to the Life,
XXXI; Relation VII, 8, footnote 2.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 223
In this and later books she proved herself a master of
" descriptive psychology." A recent author has pronounced
her writings " the most complete and vivid description ever
penned of the successive phenomena of the inner experiences
of a saint.49 She is classed with the foremost writers of
Spanish prose. Though she repeatedly disclaims any ' learn
ing,' her literary productions are proof of native intellectual
and religious genius of the highest order."
IV
The mysticism of St. Theresa consists in her life of prayer
which she divides into four stages or degrees — the prayer
of meditation, the prayer of quiet or recollection, the prayer
of union, the prayer of rapture or ecstasy. These degrees
correspond in the main to the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
mansions in The Interior Castle. The seventh mansion is a
stage above the four degrees and symbolizes the marriage of
the soul with God. Her prayer was attended by the phen
omena which are common in mystics in all ages and lands
such as insensibility, ecstasy, rapture, vision, locutions, levi-
tations, and flight of the spirit. Of these we shall say more
later on.
The degrees of prayer are not based upon the quantity or
quality of revelation but upon the psychological effects of
the revelation upon the body and soul of the saint. Nor
do the degrees always indicate progressive stages in the
way of spiritual and moral perfection. They are merely
varieties of psychological experiences without relative supe
riority of one over the other.50
Two forms of spiritual experience underlie the four de-
49 Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Art. Mysticism,
p. 98.
50 " AH this tends to show that it is safest to regard St. Theresa's
original four degrees as psychological varieties which are not al
ways successive stages nor always signs of definite degrees of per
fection." Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, p. 99.

224 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
grees of prayer. The first is the 'result of human effort —
thought, meditation, diligence, and " comes with a noise."
The second is a gift freely bestowed of the Lord at His
pleasure without any effort on man's part. We cannot tell
whence and how it comes. She explains these experiences
and their mode of operation by an illustration taken from
flowing water, her favorite comparison " for explaining
spiritual subjects." B1
The first experience is like a cistern filled with water led
through pipes from a spring at a distance. It may be skill
fully done but the water none the less flows with certain
amount of noise and in spurts. The second experience is
like a cistern that is filled by a spring at the bottom, the
water running slowly and quietly to the top and overflowing,
without effort on the part of any one. Pipes are needless
and the water never fails. The source is God and the power
by which it flows is God.52
In the former experience man is active in meditation,
recollection, and resolute fixing of the mind upon God.
Divine blessings are conditioned by man's diligence. In the
latter experience man is passive and receptive; God appre
hends him when and where and how He wills. It is of
His great mercy that we receive His revelations and con
solations. This reminds one of Luther's experience of the
sufficiency of divine grace alone.
In the Autobiography 63 the figure of water is used in a
different way to illustrate the nature of the four degrees of
prayer. There are four ways of watering a garden: first,
by drawing water out of a well " which is very laborious " ;
second, by raising water out of the well with the aid of
" engine and bucket drawn by a windless. It is a less trouble
some way than the first and gives more water " ; third, by a
01 Interior Castle, p. 81.
62 Interior Castle, pp. 8i, 82.
63 1, 11, hi.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 225
stream or a brook, whereby the garden is watered in a much
better way — " for the soil is more thoroughly saturated,
and there is no necessity to water it so often, and the labor
of the gardener is much less " ; fourth, by a shower of rain,
" when our Lord Himself waters it without labor on our
part, and this way is incomparably better than all the others
of which I have spoken."
These four ways of watering a garden, which symbolizes
the soul, represent varying degrees of man's activity in the
attainment of God's blessings. From one degree to the
other man becomes more and more inactive until in the fourth
the work is done wholly by God.
Let us now consider the characteristics of the four de
grees of prayer.
1. The Prayer of Meditation. This is the stage of " be
ginners in prayer." 54 " They are those who draw the water
up out of the well." One must separate himself from the dis
tractions of the world that come through seeing and hear
ing. He must fix his attention on God and dwell in solitude.
St. Theresa speaks of beginners " practising the presence of
God." By this is meant the direction of acts of love to
His Sacred Humanity, and remaining in His presence con-*
tinually, speaking to Him, praying to Him in necessities and
complaining to Him in troubles, being merry with Him in
joys and not forgetting Him because of joys. All this one
may do without set prayers, but rather with words, befitting
our desires and needs.55
There will be seasons of aridity, when we seek to draw
water from the well and find it empty. God will send tor
ments and permit temptations to try those who love Him.
There will be times when we are not able to engage in prayer.
Then we should turn to " exterior works of charity and
spiritual reading." Even these the soul cannot always do.
54 Autobiography, chap, ii, 13.
65 Autobiography, chap. 12, 3.

226 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
The body should be properly cared for by recreations —
" holy ones, such as conversation or going out into the
fields." B6
Notwithstanding these obstacles and apparent failures,
which God permits for a good purpose, beginners are to per
sist in their efforts toward holiness. " We must renew our
strength to serve Him, and strive not to be ungrateful be
cause it is on this condition that our Lord dispenses His
treasures." 5T
2. The Prayer of Quiet or Recollection.58 This is like the
drawing of water out of the well with the aid of a windlass
and bucket with less labor than in the first degree and with
intervals of rest and quiet. " The soul is now touching on
the supernatural — for it never could by any efforts attain
to this." The will is wholly in unison with God's will.
Without knowing it, it " consents to become a prisoner of
God." The other faculties, the understanding and the
memory, may help the will and " render it capable of the
fruition of so great a good." They may, however, become
distracted and " hinder the will very much." 50
The consolations of God come with but slight labor; and
prayer, even if persisted in for a long time, is never weari
some. The tears which flow are tears of joy and are not
the result of any effort of our own. The virtues thrive
much more " beyond all comparison, than they did in the
previous state of prayer." 60 Once the soul has reached this
stage, it begins to lose the desire of earthly things, for it sees
clearly that there are no earthly riches that can for a moment
be compared with the things of the Spirit.
The scful, also, has a sense of the nearness of God. So
56 Autobiography, chap, n, 24.
67 Autobiography, chap. 10, 8.
68 Autobiography, chap. 14. "
59 Autobiography, chap. 14, 4.
60 Autobiography, chap. 14, 6.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 227
near is He " that messengers need not be sent to Him," but
one may speak to Him directly; " and not with a loud crying,
because so near is He already, that He understands even the
movement of its lips." 61 In this stage, however, man is not
yet wholly passive, though far less active than in the first
stage. The power of God works in greater measure and
with less resistance and more voluntary cooperation on the
part of man.
3. The Prayer of Union. This is like the watering of a
garden by a flowing river or brook; the water needs not be
drawn, only directed.62 The Lord takes upon Himself " the
work of the gardener refusing to let the soul undergo any
labor whatever." It takes its ease, consenting to the grace
of God. The soul has completely abandoned itself to God.
While the will is abiding in peaceful union, " the under
standing and memory are so free that they can be employed in
affairs and be occupied in works of charity." 63 In the
prayer of quiet, the second degree, the soul which would
willingly neither stir nor move, is delighting in the holy re
pose of Mary; but in this prayer, the prayer of union, the
soul can be like Martha also. Thus it may live the active
and contemplative life at once, and be able to attend to deeds
of mercy and the affairs of its state and to spiritual reading.64
What the soul has tried to bring about by fatiguing the un
derstanding for twenty years and failed, God accomplishes in
an instant. The virtues, also, are now stronger than ever
before. The pleasure and sweetness are incomparably greater
than in the former state. St. Theresa uses terms like the
following to express her sense of delight: "beside myself,"
" drunk with love," " heavenly madness." 65
61 Autobiography, chap. 14, 7.
62 Autobiography, chap. 16.
68 Autobiography, chap. 17, 5.
64 Autobiography, chap. 17, 6. Relations, VIII, 6.
68 Autobiography, chap. 16, 3, 8.

228 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
4. The Prayer of Rapture or Ecstasy.66 In this state,
which rarely lasts more than a half hour, body and soul are
passive. How the ecstasy is effected the Saint cannot tell.
It is the experience of Paul (II Cor. 12: 2-3) who knew not
whether he was in the body or out of the body. The soul
is wholly insensible to its surroundings. There is " only
fruition, without understanding what that is the fruition
of which is granted," though " it is understood that the frui
tion is of a certain good containing in itself all good together
at once." " The senses are so occupied that not one of them
is at liberty, so as to be able to attend to anything else,
whether outward or inward." Body and soul feel them
selves penetrated with a sweet holy pain as of the most fear
ful heat or of the highest degree of weakness or of a sense of
choking. Yet, withal, there is a powerful uplift of the
spirit which gives the body an ethereal feeling. The soul,
however, even if it wished, cannot make known its feelings.
After one recovers from the ecstasy, there remains " an
exceedingly great tenderness " in the soul. It is possessed
" of so much courage, that if it were now hewn in pieces for
God, it would be a great consolation to it." This is the
time " of heroic determinations, of the living energy of good
desires, of the beginning of hatred of the world, and of the
most clear perceptions of its vanity." 67
In The Interior Castle, written fifteen years after the
Autobiography, St. Theresa describes a state higher than
that of the fourth degree of prayer. The beginning of it
was a vision of the Most Sacred Humanity. He appeared
to her, after she had communicated, in " a figure of great
splendor just as He was after His resurrection." He said
to her: " Now was the time she should consider His affairs
as hers and that He would take care of hers." This was
the consummation of the " spiritual nuptials." " As great is
66 Autobiography, chap. 18.
67 Autobiography, chap. 19, 2.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 229
the difference between the spiritual espousals and the spirit
ual marriage as there is between those who are affianced and
those who are really united in matrimony."68
The effect of this union is felt in the body and the soul.
" The body is no more remembered than if the soul were
out of it." 69 The Lord appears in the center of the soul
and is seen not by the bodily eye but by intellectual vision.
Thus He appeared to the apostles, without entering in at
the door,70 when He said to them : " Pax vobis." Even the
persons of the Holy Trinity discovered themselves to her.
God and the soul can now no more be separated ; they blend
as water from heaven flowing into a river or spring.
Three effects are clearly marked: 1. Forgetfulness of
self, so that one truly seems no longer to exist; 2. A great
desire for suffering and joy in persecution ; 3 : Desire to serve
Him and to benefit some soul; the cessation of all raptures,
except at rare intervals. There are no more ecstasies or
flights of the spirit.71
In this state St. Theresa discovered that the psycholog
ical effects, which had reached their culmination in ecstasy,
ceased or at least greatly diminished ; and that she could expe
rience even higher communications than before without any
suspension of the bodily faculties; nay more, that the peace
of " quiet " or " union " was no longer needed, for she could
be conscious of mystical light and of the Trinity,72 while
giving her mind fully to necessary occupations.73
Her sane and practical view of the religious life is sum
marized when she said: "Believe me, Martha and Mary
68 Interior Castle, p. 210.
69 Interior Castle, p. 211.
70 Interior Castle, p. 211.
71 Interior Castle, pp. 217-221.
72 " The imaginary visions have ceased but the intellectual vision
of the Three Persons and the Sacred Humanity seems ever present,
and that, I believe is a vision of a much higher kind." Revelation
XI, 3.
73 Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, p. 98.

23o AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
must go together in entertaining our Lord and in order to
have Him always with us, we must treat Him well and pro
vide food for Him," and " His food is that we should strive
in every possible way that souls may be saved, and may
praise Him." 74

V
Her prayer was accompanied by strange and varied mysti
cal phenomena. Of these she speaks in the Autobiography
and especially in the Relations of Her Spiritual State. She
had her first rapture when she was repeating the Veni
Creator in the oratory.75 " I fell into a trance so suddenly
that I was, as it were, carried out of myself." In that con
dition breathing and all bodily strength failed. The hands
could not be moved without great pain. The eyes closed
involuntarily, and if they opened they saw nothing. The
ears heard, but what was heard could not be comprehended.
It was useless to speak because it was not possible to conceive
a word.76 Different names are given to the same experience.
Rapture, transport, flight of the spirit, and trance she con
sidered the same thing as ecstasy.77
She had numerous visions, bright and dark. She beheld
Jesus frequently, both beside her and within her, the Holy
Trinity, the Mother of God descending from heaven, a
soul in a state of grace, truth itself and how all things are
in God. At one time she saw hell and the horrors of a lost
soul. The devil and his emissaries appeared in frightful
forms to disturb her devotions.
Occasionally things heavenly appeared in a gross and almost
repulsive way. One day while at prayer Jesus showed her
His hands of indescribable beauty,' afterwards His face, and
74 The Interior Castle, p. 229.
75 Autobiography, chap. 24, 6, 7.
78 Autobiography, chap. 18, 14.
77 Autobiography, chap. 18, 14.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 231
finally His Most Sacred Humanity. At another time He
placed a ring, with a stone set in it like amethyst, upon her
finger.78 Again, an angel' appeared to her with a golden
dart tipped with fire which he thrust into her bowels, draw
ing them out after it. This was followed by the feeling
of a sweet agony of love to God. Once when she was par
taking of the Holy Communion the host in her mouth dripped
with blood and her whole face and body seemed to be covered
with it.79 Instances of a similar kind could be multiplied,
but those mentioned suffice to indicate the character of her
experiences. She repeatedly emphasizes the fact that what she saw and
heard came not through the eye and ear of the body. They
were interior voices and visions.80 At times, however, if
we may judge by her descriptions, the interior experiences
came close to external realities. " It is the essence of mysti
cism," says Vaughan, " to confound an internal creation or
process with some external manifestation." sl
The saving feature in St. Theresa was that she did not
overestimate the value of visions and locutions. " I know
well that holiness does not lie herein " 82 [in raptures, reve
lations, and visions]. They may be necessary for begin
ners and " for poor women, such as I am, weak and infirm
of purpose." But she expresses her " disgust " for servants
of God who are men of weight, learning and sense, and yet
make much account of God giving them sweetness in devo
tion.83 " They ought to understand that they have no need
of it and be masters of themselves when they have it not."
True union with God, which she so much desired, she did not
await through raptures. They may indicate union if, when
78 Relations IX, 25.
79 Relations IV, 5.
80 Relations VIII.
81 Hours With the Mystics, London, 1880, Vol. 2, p. 57.
82 Book of Foundations, chap. 4, § 8.
83 Autobiography, chap, n, 21.

232 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
they are over, they are followed by obedience ; " but if, after
raptures there ensues but scanty obedience, and self-will re
mains, this latter as it seems to me, will be joined to self-love
and not to the will of God." 84 In this respect she agreed
with the masters of the spiritual life in all ages. They, as a
rule, attach little importance to visions or at best they ap
peared to them only as aids to faith. St. Bonaventura said
of them: "They neither make nor show one holy; else
Balaam would have been holy; and the ass which saw an
angel." 8B It would not be true, however, to the facts of ex
perience to deny all value to visions. Professor James says:
" The great Spanish mystics, who carried the habit of ecs
tasy as far as it has often been carried, appear for the most
part to have shown indomitable spirit and energy, and all the
more so for the trances in which they indulged." 86
VI
The difficult question, how to account for the mystical
experiences of St. Theresa, remains to be considered. They
may be explained in several ways, — as a delusion of an evil
spirit, as self-deception or hallucination, as pious fraud, an
attempt to deceive others but with good intentions, as a
direct work of God, as the result of pathological conditions,
disordered nerves, " suggested and imitated hypnoid states,
on an intellectual basis of superstitution or a corporeal one
of degeneration and hysteria." 87
Two of her contemporaries, Juan De Avila and , Fra
Domingo Banes,, wrote cautious and discriminating reviews of
her Autobiography. They were convinced that " she is not
84 Book of Foundations, chap. V, § 14.
85 "Nee facunt sanctum nee ostendunt; alioquin Balaam sanctus
esset; et asina quae vidit angelum."
88 The Varieties of Religious Experience, N. Y. and London,
1903, p. 418.
87 The Varieties of Religious Experience, N. Y. and London,
1903, p. 413.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 233
a deceiver." They were slow to accept the reality of locu
tions and visions and admonished men not to seek them. Yet,
at the, same time, they admit that God has granted such bless
ings to saints in the past and that one must distinguish the
genuine from the counterfeit. Both conclude that, in view
of her goodness, her truthfulness, her obedience, mortifica
tion, patience and charity toward her persecutors, the visions
and revelations of St. Theresa are to be accepted as having
come from God.
In our age, when we are wont to account for phenomena
through the forces of heredity and environment, i. e., his
torically and psychologically, none of the theories above
named satisfies us. Direct action of God, delusion of Satan,
self-deception, shattered nerves do not adequately explain
all the effects which were wrought in her life. We shall
have to interpret these in the light of tradition, surround
ings, and personal characteristics.
Religion in its earliest form was the outcome of man's
reaction toward the universe as a whole. There were two
factors in religion, the objective and the subjective, later
called the divine and the human. Reduced to their lowest
terms they may be described as mystery and emotion. Man
felt impelled to express the emotion and to define the mystery
in such language as he could command. He had to speak in
parables and his earliest social relations furnished symbols for
the interpretation of his religious experience. The great
unknown Prophet cried : " To whom will ye liken God, or
what likeness will ye compare unto Him ? " 88 To find
words to fit facts, phrases that made clear his " blank mis
givings " and " obstinate questionings " — that was the task
of evolving man.
With the rise and spread of literature the language of
religion became a fixed tradition, and the sons were prone to
voice their faith, the substance of mystery and emotion, in
88 Isaiah 40: 1 8,

234 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
the words of the fathers. Oral and written tradition became
an additional factor in the formation of religious thought
and life. The prophet was followed by the priest and the
scribe. True, men as always felt the impact of the universe
and responded to it, but they no longer explained the mystery
or voiced the emotion in their own original way but cast them
into prescribed formulas and rituals. This naturally resulted
in different religions among different nations, and in varia
tions in type of the same religion. The adherents propa
gated their beliefs and practices by word and deed, line upon
line and precept upon precept, in ways of their own.
In Christianity there are two main types — the Catholic
and the Evangelical. Each of these has its varieties with
distinctive doctrines, cultus, polity, and piety. In Catholi
cism we need but mention the Greek and Roman forms.
In each form there are definite tendencies, schools, orders
— the laymen and the clergy, the secular and the regular,
the dogmatist, the ritualist and the mystic, differences due
to heredity, racial and individual genius, religious leader
ship, degrees of culture, and environment. The varieties
of the same species are naturally transmitted by spoken
and written word, by individual and corporate action, from
one generation to the other. Men, accordingly, by reason of
birth, blood, caste, personal predisposition come under the
power of one or the other species of Catholicism or Protest-
anism. In speech spoken or written, in act public or private,
they are usually limited by lines laid for them by the founders
and the fathers of their group.
One can readily trace the mystics extending from apostles
to counter-reformers. They were a class by themselves
within Catholicism, and they have their kith and kin in each
century. With all their differences, they have certain things
in common which enable us to put them in the same group.
They speak the same language, have the same experiences,
follow the same methods, and seek the same end, Professor

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 235
James cites four marks of the mystical conscious state, —
ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, passivity. Professor
Inge considers the following four traits essential to mysticism,
— 1. the soul as well as the body can see or perceive; 2. to
know God, we must be akin to God; 3. without holiness
we cannot see God; 4. our guide in the upward path is
love. The scala perfectionis was generally divided into
three stages. The first is called the purgative life; the sec
ond the illuminative, while the third is the goal rather than
a part of the journey and is called the unitive life.89 All
of them methodically cultivated the mood by which they
hoped to attain the experimental union of the individual
with God.90 All recognize stages or degrees in the path that
leads Godward. In the dhyana of the Buddhist there are
" Four stages " and beyond these three higher degrees. The
numbers at once suggest the four degrees of prayer and the
seven mansions of St. Theresa. All of them seek God in
the inner life and are never satisfied until they have pierced
through all that is not God and have penetrated to God Him
self. As a rule they are pantheists and optimists, though
the use of these philosophic terms would be strange to them.
" In the mystic state we both become one with the Absolute
and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting
and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by dif
ferences of clime or creed." 91
Against this background of historical religion we must view
the life and mysticism of St. Theresa. She was the heir of
Catholic traditions and of an ascetic and mystic type of piety.
These prevailed in Spain, in the city and home into which she
was born, in her uncle's house and in the monastic school in
which she was educated. From childhood she read books on
89 Inge, Christian Mysticism, Oxford, 1899, p. 9.
90 Ecclesiastical tradition held that the practice of continual as
piration is the best means of attaining pure prayer and " union
with God without any medium."
91 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 419.

236 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
martyrs and saints, most, if not all of whom, were mystics.
She was predisposed by nature to a distinctively religious
life, though she was not without affections for the vanities
of the world. Under the instructions of her mother she
began " to think seriously when she was six or seven years
old." As a child she longed for a martyr's crown, built her
mitages at play, " wished to be a nun but more to be a her
mit." At eighteen, under the influence of a prudent and
devout nun, she turned her mind to " eternal things " and
read with avidity the religious books of her uncle. The
habit of reading she continued through life, and commends it
to those who desire to advance in the way of perfection. She
came into close personal fellowship with the great ascetic
and mystic, Peter of Alcantara, whose manner of life she
describes graphically in her Autobiography.
By conscious effort she tried to attain certain forms of
prayer, especially that which was treated in Francisco's
Tercer Abecadario. When she was but twenty " she spent
much time in solitude," made a beginning in the prayer of
recollection; and the Lord gave her "the gift of tears."
Then already she was raised " to the prayer of quiet and
occasionally to that of union," though " I understood not
what either one or the other was." 92
She had a frail body and a highly sensitive soul, physical
and mental traits which made her receptive to all kinds of
religious stimuli. In her vain attempt for twenty years
" to reconcile God and the world," she reached a crisis, a
point of final decision, when through a deep inward struggle,
supported by pictures, books and prayers, she completely re
nounced the world and gave herself wholly to God. The
new religious experience found expression in visions, locu
tions, raptures, and tears of sweetness and joy.
She, also, had a way of " practicing the presence of God "
by deliberate effort. " I used to labor to picture our Lord's
92 Autobiography, chap. 4, 9.

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 237
Humanity and I never could." But in time the effort was
crowned by vision. She " contrived to picture Christ as
within me." On such occasions " a feeling of the presence of
God would come over me unexpectedly, so that I could no
more doubt either that He was within me and that I was
wholly absorbed in Him." She concentrated her attention
on " the prayer in the garden." This she did " for years,
nearly every night before she fell asleep."
The eager desire for communion with God, the persistent
effort to reach Him, the condition of body and soul, the
mystical and ascetic traditions to which she was heir
through books, institutions, and living men and women, her
native genius which is inexplicable — these furnish sufficient
ground for her unique religious life. While she " differed
greatly from other mystics in her estimates of the various
facts and is the starting-point of a new tradition," her orig
inality is not due to the revelations she received or to the
emotions she felt, but to the unparalelled mastery of the art
of describing her religious states. The gift of analysis and
clear statement made her the founder of a new school of
mysticism which is in high favor in the Catholic Church to
this day.
The visualizing of the fleeting images of a highly stim
ulated fancy and the materializing of the figures which tramp
across the field of consciousness in the day dreams of a devout
saint, are to be expected in a church and a land where
pictures of Christ, the virgin, and the saints, angels and
demons, confront the plastic mind of the child on canvas
and in marble, on parchment and in ritual. Excitable
natures, subject to nervous instability and bodily infirmities,
naturally express their religious emotions in such tangible
forms. This is done spontaneously and in sincerity, with
out thought of deception. It is a psychic process controlled
by certain conditions and when these meet, the result follows
as by necessity. " It has value only for him who experiences

238 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
it, and then only as it promotes the life of faith and love.
It is a mark, not so much of a high type, as of a unique
kind, of saintliness.
Professor Hermann, in The Communion of the Christian
with God, after discussing mysticism in general, asks whether
or not, it seeks God as a Christian ought to seek Him?
whether the God whom the mystics believe they find is the
living God of our faith ? He answers in the negative. One
must put the mysticism of St. Theresa to this test. She, like
all her kind, put aside " everything which affects us from
without," — nature, history, cultus, doctrine, even the his
torical Christ. All these are simply means to an end, at
most useful only to produce the frame of mind in which
God comes inwardly near us. St. Theresa soared above and
left behind the faculties of the soul, the Scriptures, the
record of Jesus, and came into immediate and rapturous con
tact with God, the Holy Trinity, the Divine Humanity,
angels and demons. However admirable her life may have
been, beneficent her deeds, and sane and sound her counsels,
her way of perfection is' no longer in harmony with the high
est spiritual and ethical views of life or with the ideals of
evangelical piety. Men now do not seek God by mystic
vision, dogmatic tradition, or the way of ratiocination.
There is a more excellent and a less spectacular way, the way
of faith working in love. When the will conforms to the
purposes of a Christ-like God, men will see Him as He is,
see Him always not apart from nature, history, the historical
Jesus and the church, but in these and through these; see
Him not in tangible and visible forms but feel His presence
in life that is active in works of faith, labors of love, and is
sustained by the patience of hope.
The mysticism of St. Theresa belongs to an age and a
mood that are vitally related to a view of the world and
of life which men to-day can no longer hold. They are
not a spontaneous product of the modern spirit. They

MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA 239
belong to the mediaeval order. The modern man is not
less religious and perchance equally mystical, but he seeks
access to God in other ways and voices his religious ex
periences in other words than those used by St. Theresa.
In the preparation of this chapter the writer used the following
books of St. Theresa in English translation:
St. Teresa of Jesus, embracing the Life, Relations, Maxims and
Foundations Written by the Saint, edited by John J. Burke, C.S.P.,
the Columbia Press, New York, 1911.
The Interior Castle of the Mansions, translated by the Rev. John
Dalton, John J. McVey, Philadelphia, 1893.
The Book of the Foundations of S. Teresa of Jesus, translated
from the Spanish by David Lewis, Benziger Bros., New York.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX
Rufus M. Jones
George Fox was born in 1624, the same year that Jacob
Boehme, the great Silesian mystic, died. Fox had no inter
est in the theosophical alchemical interpretations of the
universe which were so dear to Boehme, but in almost every
other way these two Protestant mystics were kindred. They
were both unlearned men — the peasant type and not the
scholar type. They both were born and brought up in
narrow rural, provincial surroundings, having almost no
contact with the great currents of business and thought.
They both kept sheep and they both learned the shoemaker's
trade. They reveal the same general psychological traits of
personality. They were both shy, retiring, introspective,
conscientious, morbidly inclined boys. They naturally with
drew from games and sports; they shunned fellowship; they
were solitary and meditative. They lived in companionship
with the Bible and found their real world in the unseen
rather than in the seen. They were both of unstable psy
chical disposition — the type that hears voices and sees sights
which are not there for other people. They were both
acutely sensitive to suggestion. Certain ideas burst into their
consciousness with explosive force, and, as they could not
trace them to any external source in the world of men, they
were convinced that these ideas were " communicated " to
them. They both passed through a momentous crisis-experi-
. ence which inaugurated a new era for their lives, from which
event they began to interpret to the world the revelation
which they had received. Of course they both suffered from
240

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 241
pitiless persecution, since that was a feature of life which
any prophet anywhere at that stage of history was bound
to undergo.
Even more striking is the parallelism in their fundamental
interpretation of Christianity. They both radically revolted
from the dominant theology of the Reformation — in one
case the Lutheran and in the other case the Calvinistic.
They felt about these vast theological systems as the great
Hebrew prophets felt about sacrifice, or as St. Paul felt
about the " law," or as Luther felt about " works," or as
the Puritans felt about illicit survivals of superstition. They
looked upon them as " substitutes " for real Christianity —
" mental idols," Boehme calls them. These systems seemed
to both these mystics ways of securing " salvation " without
the necessity of going through any spiritual process, without
real change of nature and transformation of life. Salvation
for them both was first and always a vital process. " A
Christian," Boehme says, " is a new creature in the ground
of the heart ; " x " The Kingdom of God is not from without,
but it is a new man, who lives in love, in patience, in hope,
in faith, and in the cross of Jesus Christ." Fox, in the
same general vein and in his vivid style says, " As I was
walking in Mansfield, the Lord said unto me, That which
people trample upon must be thy food. And as the Lord
spoke, He opened it to me that people trampled upon the
life, even the life of Christ ; they fed upon words* and fed
one another with words; but they trampled upon the life;
trampled under foot the blood of the Son of God, which
blood was my life, and lived in their airy notions, talking
of Him." 2
They both thought of Christ primarily as an inward
revelation. They did not spiritualize the historical facts
1 Mysierium Magnum, LXX, 40 Fourth Epistle.
2 Journal, I, p. 20. Compare Isaiah's phrase " Tramping the
Temple."

242 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
of the gospel nor minimize the importance of the incarna
tion. But they refused to consider that Christ came, in his
historical manifestation, to found a Church or to inaugurate
a scheme of salvation or to furnish men with a magical
theological doctrine. He was then, and always is, a revela
tion of God. He can no more be turned into an institu
tion or a scheme or a system, than poetry can be turned
into a theory of poetry, or than music can be turned into a
mathematical system of acoustics, or than love can be caught
and turned over hito a chapter of psychology. Christ is for
them both a living reality, a vital fact, a real presence.
The reality, the fact, the presence must no doubt be inter
preted in the light of the gospel, in terms of the incarna
tion, but nothing must be a substitute for Him, here and
now. No verbal form, constructed by " opinion-peddlers,"
no system which the modern " Babel-builders " have erected
in the hope of reaching heaven, no " letter-scheme," formu
lated by " titular Christians," must be allowed to deprive
us of the unspeakable privilege of direct and immediate
relation with Christ, who is here now as surely as He was
in Galilee when Peter and John found Him. The Christ
who was born of Mary must be born anew in our hearts,
is their persistent message. " This birth," Boehme says,
must be wrought within the person himself. " The Son
of God must arise in the birth of your life, and then you
are in Christ and He is in you, and all that He and the
Father have is yours." 3 " They were discoursing of the
blood of Christ," Fox says of " professors " at Mansfield,
" and as they were discoursing of it, I saw through the
immediate opening (or revelation) of the Invisible Spirit, the
blood of Christ. And I cried out among them, and said,
' Do ye not see the blood of Christ. See it in your hearts,
to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead works to
serve the living God.' For I saw it, the blood of the New
8 Boehme's Three Principles IV, 9.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 243
Covenant, how it came into the. heart."4 This inward ex
perience, this inmost birth, this reliving of Christ — " going
through Christ's whole journey and entering wholly into
His process " as Boehme puts it — is absolutely essential to
the Christianity of both these prophets of the common people.
They both represent a peculiar branch of the Reforma
tion movement. They are not an outcome positively or
negatively of Lutheranism or Calvinism. They are both
vigorous interpreters jtnd prophets of another type- -of
Christianity which is not a product developed from the main
current of the Reformation. Their spiritual ancestors are
to be found among the martyrs and lonely messengers of a
new way, who were contemporaries of Luther and Calvin,
who were convinced that a more radical Reformation was
needed, whose sympathies were with the people rather than
with the rulers or the nobility, who thought of religion
primarily as experience and not as doctrine, who were tired
of ecclesiasticism and wanted to bring men to the living
Christ, who were determined not to patch up and revamp
the old Church but instead to restore and revive primitive,
apostolic Christianity. The most striking and influential
figures in this group were Hans Denck (1495-1527) of
Bavaria, a humanist, a mystic, an eager reformer, a friend
of the people; Sebastian Franck (1499-1542) of Schwabia,
also a humanist, a mystic, a historian, a radical reformer;
Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489-1561) of Silesia, one of the first
scholars of his time, a spiritual prophet of high order, a
man dedicated to the task of restoring apostolic Christianity;
Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563) of Switzerland, though
born in France, a humanist, a co-laborer of Calvin's and
later an opponent, a great defender of spiritual freedom,
a tragic sufferer for truth, a forceful interpreter of
Christianity as a way of life. These men and their fellow-
laborers and successors and the little groups of seekers which
4 Journal, I, p. 24.

244 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
were formed under their guidance or under the influence
of their little books, supplied the main ideas that are found
in the interpretation of Christianity as given both by Boehme
and Fox.
Jacob Boehme diligently read and pondered the writings of
Theophrastus Paracelsus and Valentine Weigel. Through
them he was led to believe that the secret of the universe,
the mystery of darkness and evil and the way of light and
life might be found within the soul of man by the aid of a
mighty divine illumination. In the year 1600 such an il
lumination burst in as a " flash " upon the soul of Boehme.
His eye fell by chance upon the surface of a polished pewter
dish which reflected the bright sunlight, when suddenly he
felt himself environed and penetrated by the Light of God,
and admitted into the innermost ground and center of the
universe. His experience, instead of waning as he came back
to normal consciousness, on the contrary deepened. He went
to the public green in Gorlitz, near his house, and there it
seemed to him that he could see into the very heart and
secret of Nature, and that he could behold the innermost
properties of things. In his own account of his experience,
Boehme plainly indicates that he had been going through a
long and earnest travail of soul as a Seeker, " striving to
find the heart of Jesus Christ and to be freed and delivered
from everything that turned him away from Christ." At
last, he says, he resolved to " put his life to the utmost
hazard " rather than miss his life-quest, when suddenly the
" gate was opened." He continues his account as follows:
"In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than
if I had been many years together in a University. ... I
saw and knew the Being of Beings, the Byss and Abyss, the
eternal generation of the Trinity, the origin and descent of
this world, and of all creatures through Divine Wisdom. I
knew and saw in myself all the three worlds — 1 ) the

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 245
Divine, Angelical, or Paradisaical World; 2) the dark world,
the origin of fire ; and 3 ) the external, visible world as an
out-breathing or expression of the internal and spiritual
worlds. I saw, too, the essential nature of evil and of good,
and how the pregnant Mother — the eternal genetrix —
brought them forth."
He has also vividly told his experience in the Aurora:
" While I was in affliction and trouble, I elevated my spirit,
and earnestly raised it up unto God, as with a great stress
and onset lifting up my whole heart and mind and will
and resolution to wrestle with the love and mercy of God
and not to give over unless He blessed me — then the Spirit
did break through. When in my resolved zeal I made such
an assault, storm, and onset upon God as if I had more
reserves of virtue and power ready, with a resolution to
hazard my life upon it, suddenly my spirit did break through
the Gate, not without the assistance of the Holy Spirit,
and I reached the innermost Birth of the Deity and there
I was embraced with love as a bridegroom embraces his
bride. My triumphing can be compared to nothing, but the
experience in which life is generated in the midst of death
or like the resurrection from the dead. In this Light my
spirit suddenly saw through all; and in all created things,
even in herbs and grass, I knew God — who He is, how He
is, and what His will is — and suddenly in that Light my will
was set upon by a mighty impulse to describe the being of
God." Other experiences of a similar type came to him at later
periods. He became a voluminous writer, often writing
under what seemed to him immediate guidance, and ex
pounding through his books — in spite of his barbaric termin
ology and his tedious repetitions — a truly marvelous way
of life, one of the most marvelous that any unlearned man
in the Protestant era has given. His books were all trans-

246 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
lated into English by his admirers between the years 1646
and 1 66 1. They profoundly influenced John Milton,5
Sir Isaac Newton, and, at a later date, William Law, but
their most important influence is to be found in the popular
religious movement of the commonwealth period (1640-
1660). The ideas and spiritual aims which worked like
leaven in the groups and mystical societies in that dynamic
epoch do not by any means all emerge from Boehme. They
came to England from the continent by many devious routes
and over many strange bridges, but they were unmistak
ably set into motion by the men and the groups to whom I
have referred, and Boehme was probably, through his trans
lations, the most effective single force.
Nobody before 1648 had succeeded in organizing any large
society of persons to express, interpret and propagate these
ideas of the spiritual reformers. The anabaptists who rep
resented one branch of the movement had been numerous
in many parts of Europe, but they had been more or less
fluid and chaotic. They exhibited a tendency rather than
an organization. They had been of many types and varieties.
Groups of them gathered around individual leaders who had
their own peculiar traits and teachings. They did not and
could not mass their forces. In any case, they were piti
lessly martyred and in many parts of the world annihilated,
though the movement eventually became the parent of power
ful and impressive modern churches. The Schwenckfelders
formed a small society of devoted followers of the Silesian
reformer. In Holland and England there were large
numbers of Seekers more or less grouped in semi-organized
societies, called in Holland " Collegiants." The Friends,
or Quakers, are however the first people to form a large
and successful society of the distinct type which the mystics
and spiritual reformers of the preceding one hundred years
8 See Margaret L. Bailey's Milton and Jacob Boehme. Ameri
can Branch of the Oxford Press, New York, 1914.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 247
hoped for and worked for. This Society owed its existence
primarily to George Fox (1 624-1691), who is the best
known and the most successful of the long line of spiritual
reformers of this common group.
He was an intensely moral and religious youth — " I
had," he says, " a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit
not usual in children." 6 " Boys and rude people " laughed
at him, but " people generally " had respect for his " in-
nocency and honesty." William Penn says of him in his
youth : " From a child he appeared of another frame of
mind than the rest of his brethren." 7 He was evidently pure-
minded as a boy and not oppressed by a sense of his own sin
— " When I was eleven years of age," he says, " I knew pure-
ness and righteousness." 8 When he was nineteen, a pro
found change came over him. He became weighed down
and oppressed under a tremendous sense of wickedness
in the world and an almost overwhelming conviction that
Christians " professed " something which they did not in
reality possess. This disturbing discovery swept over Fox
at a definite moment and was occasioned by a peculiar cir
cumstance, but the trivial incident merely served as a focus-
point to bring into consciousness deep-lying processes which
had been for some time dimly present in him.9 " I did not
go to bed that night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked
up and down and sometimes prayed and cried unto the
Lord." The entire ground of disturbance is not his own sin,
as was the case with Bunyan, but the vanity and insincerity
of life, the large degree of sham, in the world around him,
and he heard, as though through an audition, the com
mand, " Thou must forsake all, both young and old, and
keep out of all and be as a stranger unto all." Therefore
6 Journal I, p. 2.
7 Journal I, Preface p. xliv.
* Journal I, p. 3.
9 Journal I, p. 3.

248 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
he broke off all normal fellowship with society, closed up his
business occupation and started out as a lonely wanderer
across the world. Wherever he heard of anybody who was
likely to be of spiritual help to him, he visited him, but all
helpers failed him. They proved to be " miserable com
forters," " empty hollow casks," " broken cisterns," " pro
fessors without possession," and one and all unable, in his
own words, " to speak to my condition." The poor youth
was evidently in a pitiable state of depression. He describes
himself as in " great sorrow and troubles," walking alone
many nights, drifting along from town to town, often tempted
to despair utterly, finding the so-called religious guides " all
dark and under the chain of darkness." His physical con
dition was ominous and his own account reveals plain evi
dences of abnormal nervous disturbance. An attempt was
made by medical advisers to try the usual remedy of the time,
i. e., to bleed him. " But they could not get one drop of
blood from me," he says, " either in arms or head, my body
being as it were dried up with sorrows, griefs, and
troubles."10 A little later (in 1647) a still more profound
disturbance occurred. " A great work of the Lord fell
upon me," according to his own account, " to the admira
tion [i. e., wonder] of many, who thought I had been dead:
and many came to see me for about fourteen days. I was
very much altered in countenance and person, as if my body
had been new molded or changed." He adds that in this
state he could discern the inner condition of people and more
or less read their thoughts.11
During this critical period of wandering and search, Fox
was evidently not as random, and aimless as his account
written much later would imply. He was almost certainly
finding bands of dissenting people in the midlands who put
10 Journal I, p. 6.
11 Journal I, pp. 20-21. Fox's Journal shows many instances of
telepathy.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 249
him on track of fresh light. He met with " tender people,"
he became acquainted with a remarkable woman named
Elizabeth Hooton; he read his Bible until he almost knew
it by heart and he began to have new impressions, or " open
ings " as he called his experiences. These were sudden
flashes of insight which seemed to burst into his conscious
ness as revelations. He implies that they came as " audi
tions " though he may only mean that these things came
inwardly and vividly to his consciousness. In any case, the
" openings " brought the presentation of truths and insights
which were current among the small mystical groups and in
the writings of the spiritual reformers. They were truths
like the following: " Only those who are born of God
and have passed from death to life are true believers " ;
" Being bred at Oxford or Cambridge is not enough to fit
and qualify men to be ministers of Christ " ; " God who
made the world does not dwell in temples, or buildings
made with hands." " The Scriptures can be understood
only through the help of the Spirit who gave forth the
Scriptures." These ideas were all essential principles of the
spiritual groups spoken of above. Finally, after two years
of eager search, Fox had an experience not unlike that which
marked the crisis in Boehme's life. I give it in his own
words: "As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the
separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most ex
perienced people; for I saw there was none among them all
that could speak to my condition. When all my hopes in
them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing out
wardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then O!
then I heard a voice which said, ' There is one, even Jesus
Christ, that can speak to thy condition ' ; and when I heard
it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see
why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my
condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory;
for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief,

250 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the preeminence,
who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power.
Thus when God doth work, who shall hinder it? and this
I knew experimentally." 12 This constructive, illuminating
and unifying experience marks an. epoch in Fox's life. He
now felt that he had the key to the mysteries of life in his
own hand. He found in himself the way which he had
sought in vain in books or creeds or systems. " Inward life,"
he says, " sprang up in me." The strain and perplexities
were not entirely over. He did not by a sheer leap emerge
upon a table land. His months were full of travail, but
he had at least settled the main point, namely that there
is an immediate revelation of God, through the Spirit or
living Christ operating within the soul of man. " I saw
that all was done through Christ the Life." 13 Fresh in
sights and comforting bursts of light continued to come to
him — " great openings," as he calls them. None were more
striking than the one in which he saw Light and Love
triumphant : " I saw that there was an ocean of darkness
and death; but an infinite ocean of Light and Love, which
flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that I saw the in
finite Love of God." 14 Nothing could be finer than that
and it gave Fox through all his sufferings and difficulties
an underlying ppjimism, so that, as he puts it, " when at any
time my condition was veiled, my secret belief was stayed
firm, and hope underneath held me, as an anchor in the
bottom of the sea."
Another impressive " opening " came to him apparently
in the year 1648. His account of it is couched more in the
style of Boehme than is that of any of his other experiences,
and " the new smell " of creation is an extremely vivid
feature: " Now was I come up in Spirit through the flam-
12 Journal I, p. n.
13 Journal I, p. 14.
14 Journal I, p. 19.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 251
ing sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new ;
and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before,
beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pure-
ness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed into
the image of God by Christ Jesus, to the state of Adam,
which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened
to me; and it was showed me how all things had their
names given them, according to their nature and virtue.
I was at a stand in my mind, whether. I should practice
physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues
of things were so opened to me by the Lord. But I was
immediately taken up in Spirit, to see into another or more
steadfast state than Adam's innocency, even into a state
in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord
showed me that such as were faithful to him, in the power
and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which
Adam was before he fell; in which the admirable works of
creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through
the openings of that divine Word of wisdom and power, by
which they were made." 15 He proceeds to say, very much
after the manner of Boehme, that he came to " know the
hidden unity in the Eternal Being," " through the Word of
Wisdom [Boehme's ' Sophia '] that opens all things." 18
In his early period, which was a period of visions and rap
tures and enthusiasm, Fox felt that he could read the inner
life and spirit of the people around him somewhat as sensi
tive mystics of the Middle Ages felt that they could catch
an odor of sanctity from those who were really-truly saints
while they got a miserable stench from those who concealed
hidden sins — so that in some towns they had to hold their
noses as they walked through the streets ! Fox says the Lord
showed him the natures which were hurtful within, in the
hearts and minds of wicked men — " the natures of dogs,
16 Journal I, p. 28.
16 Journal I, p. 29.

252 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
swine, vipers of Sodom and Egypt, Pharaoh, Cain, Ishmael,
Esau, etc." Though these typical natures of evil were not
present, in his own heart, he was given a vivid " sense " of
them in others, so that he might " speak to the condition "
of those who had such inner natures." 1T It is interesting
to find that Jacob Boehme makes much of these same typical
inner natures. " A man's soul," he says, " is sometimes like
a wolf, sometimes like a dog, sometimes like a lion, some
times like a serpent — subtle, venomous and slanderous,
sometimes like a toad — poisonous." Not only so, but
Boehme further says at undue length that men's souls are
inwardly and figuratively like Sodom and Egypt and
Babylon, like Cain, Ishmael and Esau. In fact every per
son and country mentioned in the Bible is reproduced as a
" state " within men's lives.18
Among the most beautiful of Fox's " openings " are his
first hand experiences of the love of God. " As I was walk
ing toward the jail [in Coventry]," he says, " the word of
the Lord came to me, saying, ' My love was always to thee,
and thou art in my Love.' And I was ravished with the
sense of the Love of God, and greatly strengthened in my
inward man." 19 Of another experience he says, " One day
when I had been walking solitarily abroad and was come
home I was wrapped [he plainly meant ' rapt '] up in the
Love of God so that I could not but admire [i.e., wonder at]'
the greatness of His Love." 20 Again something like an
audition came to him when he was walking in the fields,
where he seems to have felt himself especially close to the
sources of life : " On a certain time, as I was walking in
the fields, the Lord said unto me, ' Thy name is written in
17 Journal I, p. 19 and in various places.
18 This is worked out extensively in Boehme's Mysterium
Magnum. 18 Journal I, p. 47.
20 Journal I, p. 14. He frequently speaks of being caught up in
" raptures."

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 253
the Lamb's book of life which was before the foundation
of the world ' ; and as the Lord spake it, I believed and saw
it in the new birth." 21
However these experiences may be psychologically inter
preted, one fact seems very clear, from this period onward,
a new power becomes evident in Fox's life. There were
still recurrences of nervous disturbance. He was " struck
blind " at Mansfield, and he underwent at a considerably
later period just before the Restoration another profound
travail of spirit and a marked physical alteration.22 But
on the whole there now occurred a striking unification of
personality in him. He became possessed with a sense of
mission. He was sure of his call — " I was commanded to
turn people to that inward Light, Spirit, and Grace, by
which all might know their salvation and their way to
God." 23 He had become meantime absolutely unafraid and
fearless. When an enraged man on the island of Walney
brandished his pistol and called for Fox to come out, the
latter walked straight up toward the cocked pistol without
the least fear.24 When a " reputed conjurer " in Derby jail
proposed to do dreadful things to him and threatened to raise
the devil and break the house down, Fox was " moved of the
Lord " to say to him, " Come let us see what thou canst
do; do thy worst now." We are not surprised to hear that
" the power of the Lord chained the devil-raiser down, so
he slunk away from me." 25 Two or three times opponents
declared that they could not endure the power of his eyes.
" Do not pierce me so with thy eyes; keep thy eyes off me," 2*
one man cried out when Fox gazed intently at him. " A
high notionist " in Carlisle came up and asked him, " what
21 Journal I, p. 35.
22 Journal I, pp. 24 and 447.
23 Journal I, p. 36.
24 Journal I, p. 134.
25 Journal I, p. 72.
26 Journal I, p. 167.

254 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
must be damned? " " I was moved immediately to tell him:
' That which spoke in him was to be damned.' " 27 The
rabble of Cambridge students set upon him when he rode
into their town in 1655, but he was fully their match. " Ye
schollors was uppe hearinge of mee; and was exceedinge
rude: but I kept on my horse backe and ridd through ym
in ye Lords power: Oh said they he shines hee glisters."28
William Penn's testimony on this point of Fox's ability to
stand the universe and to meet all types of men is all that
could be desired. He says : " I write my knowledge and
not report, and my witness is true, having been with him
for weeks and months together on divers occasions, and those
of the nearest and most exercising nature, and that by night
and by day, by sea and by land, in this and in foreign
countries: and I can say I never saw him out of his place,
or not a match for every service or occasion." 29
I have used most of my available space on the experience
and personality of Fox and have reserved little for a study
of his interpretations of his principles. I have done this,
however, advisedly. The great thing after all about George
Fox was his first hand experience and the personality which
his experience produced — " a new and heavenly-minded
man; a divine and a naturalist and all of God Almighty's
making," as William Penn declared.30 Others, especially
Robert Barclay, the Scotch Quaker, gave an elaborate
interpretation of the central principle of Quakerism, couched
in the terms of seventeenth century psychology and meta
physics, but fortunately Fox knew no metaphysics, was
simple, natural and naive, and was primarily concerned, like
a plain man, "to speak right on" and tell what he had
heard with his own ears, what his eyes had seen and his
27 Journal I, p. 166.
28 Journal, Cambridge Edition, I, p. 196.
29 Journal, Preface, p. 1.
30 Journal, Preface, p. i.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 255
hands handled of the Word of life. If he had read Boehme's
books, he at any rate showed no interest in the Teutonic phil
osopher's difficult account of the fundamental nature of the
visible and invisible universe. It seems almost certain that
Fox got his knowledge of Boehme through others and not
from the writings of the latter. He may very likely never
have known the source of the influences which came to him.
One central interest dominates Fox and that is the^ testimony
of the soul. WiffiarrrT'emrTTasr some apt words on this
point" He says that Fox was endued with " clear and
wonderful depth." " He would go to the marrow of things."
"The most awful, living reverent frame I ever felt or be
held I must say was his in prayer. And truly it was a
testimony he knew and lived nearer to the Lord than other
men." He " bottomed people," Penn adds, on the principle
that there is something of God in themselves.31
The mysticism of Fox leaves wholly behind and on one
side the long trail of metaphysical speculation which came
into mediaeval mysticism from the Neo-Platonists. The
abstract and negative God, solitary, above and beyond all
our ladders of approach and to be reached only through a
superhuman ecstasy and " flight of the alone to the Alone,"
is nowhere mentioned in Fox. The via negativa is not Jajs
highway of holiness. He is emphatically an affirmation
mystic. In his stress and agony he found something in his
own soul which flooded him with fresh light, which poured
a new energy into him, which restored and recreated him
and which seemed without any further debate to»be some
thing of God within him. He calls the experience " the day-
star rising in the heart," or he says that it is the germinating
seed of Christ, or he names it the Operation of the Light
within, or it is thought of as the Spirit working in the cen
tral deep of man. Writing to his own father and mother, in
31 Journal I, Preface, pp. xlvi-xlviii.

256 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
1652, he says, " to that of God in you both I speak and
beseech you both to return within and wait to hear the
voice of God there." 32
Fox, \vjthojut-altogether realizing the step, broke utterly
witfi~Augustinian theology. He no longer thinks in terms
of human depravity. The " man " whom he knows best is
not a mass of sin, foul and defiled from birth, unattended
by any divine splendor or untouched by any inner springs
of grace. He does not feel that his world is separated by
a vast chasm from God's world. He believes rather that
man and God are very close companions. In fact, somehow
— he does not undertake to solve the how — something of
God is embedded in the very structure of the human soul.
Barclay, with his Cartesian metaphysics, makes this divine
seed a thing wholly foreign to man himself, a seed-particle
deposited in the otherwise barren soil of man's fallen nature
and brought from another world across the chasm, into this
one. Fox is innocent of this contrivance. It does not occur
to him that the chasm is there. He is impressed with the
principle of darkness in the universe. He knows that evil
is an appalling fact and he says much of Satan and the
seed of the serpent which must be bruised. But God for
him is the supreme reality and He is of such a nature
that He is somehow unsundered from the soul whom He has
created. Something radiates out from the life of God and
shines into our souls with illuminating power so that we can
see ourselves as we are and can draw upon the resources of
help within our reach. " That which shows a man his sin
is the same that takes it away." 33 Every spiritual step is
a process of inward life. There is no way for a man to be
saved apart from the man himself. All that really matters
is the discovery of power, the formation of an attitude,
conformity to the true model, the construction of character
32 Epistles, v.
33 Journal I, p. 67.

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 257
and habits, the creation of a spirit. " I bid them give over
babbling about the Scriptures," Fox says, " I told them not
to dispute about God and Christ but to obey Him." 34 He
changes his central interest from a concern about getting
ready to__die_to a profound concern about getting ready to
hie* There is nothing forensic in his Christianity. Tie is
done with " notions " and schemes. He is endeavoring to
launch a movement which begins and ends with life, and '
the ground of his faith in this life-movement is his confidence
that man has something of God in himself and can cor
respond with God, as the eye does with light, until the inner
life is fortified with divine power and recreated in inward
purity and holiness. " Live in the life of God," he writes,
" and feel it." 35 " Dear lambs, and babes and plants of
the Lord God," again he says, " dwell every one of you in
your own [i. e., in your own inner self] that you may feel
the precious springs of God." 36 In a beautiful Epistle of
counsel, he reminds his friends that they have tasted of " the
immediate working power of the Lord," that they have ex
perienced "an alteration" in their minds and have learned
to " see from whence virtue doth come, and strength that
doth renew the inward man and doth refresh you." Even
" though you see little and know little, and have little," he
continues, " and you see your emptiness, and see your naked
ness and barrenness and unfruitfulness and see the hard
ness of your hearts and your own unworthiness ; it is the light
that discovers all this and the love of God to you. So wait
upon God in that which is pure, in your measure, and stand
still in it every one to see your Savior." 37
All this sounds naive and uncritical. It is what Fox him
self once called " the movings and bubblings of life." The
34 Journal I, pp. 50-56.
35 Epistles, xcv.
36 Epistles, lxxxi.
37 Epistles, xvi.

258 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
ibest test of its religious value is found in the type of person
ality which the experience produced in Fox himself and its
dynamic power in the Society which he founded. He had
little education and, as Penn puts it, " the side. of his under
standing which lay next to the world " was untrained and
undeveloped and yet he plainly bore " the marks of God's
finger and hand." There was an extraordinary interior depth
within him, a moral quality of a rare order, an unusual
power of penetration into the heart of social problems, a
great capacity of leadership and what Penn well calls " a re
ligious majesty " which " visibly clothed him with a divine
preference and authority." He broke with all recognized
'authorities. He denied all outward infallibilities and yet he
kept his movement from running into a wild and lawless
chaos. One of hfe jailers pronounced him " clear as a bell
and stiff as a tree." He knew what constituted spiritual re
ligion and he stood unbendingly for it. Persecution could
not weaken him, prisons could not break him, or budge him..
One might truthfully say of him what the present Master of
Balliol College (A. L. Smith) said of one of Fox's later fol
lowers, Thomas Hodgkin, " I always came away from him
with higher thoughts and the feeling of having breathed
purer air; his walk with God was so real. He was one of
those men who make us feel that personality is more real and
more immortal than anything else in this world." He pro
duced a religious fellowship — he called it a Society and
not a Church — with no visible head, with no rigid system,
with no cramping official authority, with no creed, no ordin
ances, no ritual. Exceedingly individualistic, free and demo
cratic, it nevertheless held together by its internal co
herency and it has proved to be the most impressive experi
ment in Christian history of a group-mysticism, a religious
body maintaining corporate silence as the basis of worship
and affirming for two centuries and a half its faith in spirit-
guided ministry. Its weakness has not been its radicalism

THE MYSTICISM OF GEORGE FOX 259
or its fanaticism, but its conservatism and crystallization. It
has been much inclined to settle into a dangerous quietism, the
seeds of which lay hidden in the original interpretation of
its principle, but whenever strong social sympathies and
human interests have blended with its inner passion for
God a fine type of religious life has flowered out and a
beautiful quality of sainthood has been realized.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH
E. Hershey Sneath
Notwithstanding the production of an exceptionally large
literature relating to Wordsworth's poetry, very few writers
have reckoned sufficiently with his mysticism in its influence
upon his life and art; neither has the literary critic nor pro
fessional psychologist dealt thoroughly with the nature of
this unique mode of functioning of the poet's consciousness.
And yet there can be no adequate understanding of much of
the poetry of Wordsworth without a careful consideration of
this conspicuous feature of his personal psychology. Those
refined spiritual conceptions of Nature and her wholesome
ministry to the spirit of man; that perception of the unity
of things, and of the unity of man under moral law; those
intimations of preexistence and immortality, to be found in
his poetry, are largely due to the mystic flashes of his genius
and to the more profound trance experiences that gave
warmth to it. And when we eliminate the poetry of mysti
cal insight from his large body of verse, comparatively little
is left that would entitle him to a seat among the immortals.
It is fortunate that we are able to deal with this unique
experience, to a very large extent, first hand. " The Pre
lude," Wordsworth's elaborate metrical autobiography, " The
Excursion," " Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey,"
" Ode, Intimations of Immortality," and other poems by the
author, are descriptive and, in a measure, explanatory of
it. There are also several letters containing conversations
of Wordsworth which throw light on the nature of the
trance experience to which he was subject in his boyhood
260

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 261
and youth, and which largely determined his spiritual inter
pretation of Nature and Man. With such sources of in
formation at our command, there is little danger of going
astray in our attempts to discover the real nature of Word-
worth's mysticism.
" The Prelude " is Wordsworth's chief autobiographical
poem. It is, as the sub-title suggests, an account of the
" growth of a poet's mind." In it we find a record of ex
periences which leave no doubt in the reader's mind that
Wordsworth was essentially a mystic. In the first book he
relates three that occurred in early boyhood, which, while
not of the trance order, were the beginnings of that mystical
apprehension of Nature so peculiar to the poet. They are
experiences of a moral character and are interpreted by
him as Nature's " visitations " to his soul. The first re
cites an adventure in trapping woodcock by night. In his
pursuit, he stole a bird trapped by another. The result was
that, under the influence of a guilty conscience, he had an
immediate apprehension of Nature as possessed of spirit,
and bent on punishing him for his theft :
" And when the deed was done
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod." 1
If this were the only case of the kind, it might be dis
missed without consideration. But, when we take it in con
nection with similar cases, we will note thus early in the
poet's experience a unique functioning of consciousness in
its relation to Nature, which later takes on the form of a
profound mystical trance.
Immediately following the above account, Wordsworth re
lates another case of boyish theft. He robs a raven's nest,
1 The Prelude, Bk. I, 11. 321-325.

262 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
and again he is the subject of peculiar sounds as well as sights.
The sound of the wind seems unusual in character, and the
clouds wear an unearthly aspect. It is not a boy's ordinary
perception of Nature. There is something mysterious about
it — so mysterious that Wordsworth many years afterward
regarded it as one of Nature's " visitings " in which she
administered wholesome moral discipline. The important
point is, that here again consciousness functions in a peculiar
manner — the boy perceives a "strange utterance" in the
wind, an unusual aspect in the sky, and a peculiar move
ment in the clouds:
" Nor less when spring had warmed the cultured Vale,
Moved we as plunderers where the mother-bird
Had in high places built her lodge; though mean
Our object and inglorious, yet the end
Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky
Of earth — and with what motion moved the clouds! " 2
This, too, might be dismissed as merely the result of the
activity of a vivid imagination under the influence of peculiar
excitement; but the narrative is followed by the recital of
another incident which resulted in a more pronounced ex
perience of a unique and most uncanny character. Once
more the boy is guilty of " an act of stealth." He takes
a boat belonging to another, and, as he rows on the lake,
under the influence of fear and compunction, he becomes con
scious of a spirit in Nature. A huge black peak pursues him
" with purpose of its own, and measured motion like a living
2 The Prelude, Bk. I, 11. 326-339.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 263
thing." For many days afterward he has a vague " sense
of unknown modes of being." Normal sense-perception is
superseded by an abnormal consciousness. Familiar objects
are banished, and strange and mighty forms take their place
by day and trouble him in his dreams by night. This is
one of Nature's " severer interventions," and the effect on
consciousness is unusual compared with what might be ex
pected in the case of the average boy under similar cir
cumstances :
" I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark, —
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood ; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sky or sea, no colors of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams." 3
Again it may be 'said that these somewhat singular mental
3 The Prelude, Bk. I, II. 373-400.

264 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
experiences — these " images floating on the moving deeps of
feeling " — might be dismissed as not indicative of a mystical
behavior of consciousness, were they to be considered in
dependently of subsequent experience of a far more pro
nounced mystical character. But one finds, as he follows
Wordsworth's account of his mental evolution, these early
experiences were really the beginning or dawn of a decidedly
supernormal consciousness that developed in his intercourse
with Nature, and which enabled him " to see into the life
of things," as well as into the life of man. Often during
this early period, in the pursuits of childhood, he says:
"I felt
Gleams like the flashing of a shield ; the earth
And common face of Nature spoke to me
Rememberable things." 4
That these were mystic gleams there will be little doubt
as we follow him from childhood to adolescence. Here we
find the love of solitude so characteristic of the mystic. As
he himself remarks concerning his relations to Nature during
this period : " I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of Solitude." 5
It was during these moments, when alone with Nature,
that " the visionary power " developed :
"for I would walk alone,
Under the quiet stars, and at that time
Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound
To breathe an elevated mood, by form
Or image unprof aned ; and I would stand,
If the night blackened with a coming storm,
Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
The ghostly language of the ancient earth,
* The Prelude, Bk. I, 11. 585-588.
6 The Prelude, Bk. II, 11. 76-77.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 265
Or make their dim abode in distant winds,
Thence did I drink the visionary power." 6
However, not only in storms, but also in more peaceful
scenes, does mystical consciousness function. He now feels
marvelous things; he now experiences "a holy calm" that
inhibits bodily sight. In these moments he sees, as St.
Theresa would say, with " the eyes of the soul." In other
words, the trance consciousness now dawns, and an inner
world emerges from the depths of the soul. These
trance states are frequent at this time. Often, on his way
to school, as he walks around Esthwaite Lake, he seats him
self on some eminence to view the peaceful vale below.
Then the " blessed mood '' takes possession of his soul.
Normal sight gives way to supersensible vision. The outer
prospect is superseded by a prospect in the mind.
" Nor seldom did I lift our cottage latch
Far earlier, ere one smoke-wreath had risen
From human dwelling, or the vernal thrush
Was audible; and sate among the woods
Alone upon some jutting eminence,
At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale,
Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude.
How shall I seek the origin? where find
Faith in the marvelous things which then I felt?
Oft in these moments such a holy calm
Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes
Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw
Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
A prospect in the mind." 7
In the description of his experience at this time, Words
worth calls attention to a contribution which his mind makes
to objects of Nature. Extra-mental objects are invested
with a " new splendour," which increases his obeisance for,
and devotion to, Nature, and fills his soul with ecstatic joy.
« The Prelude, Bk. II, 11. 303-311.
7 The Prelude, Bk. II, 11. 339-352.

266 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
This transfiguration of Nature is attributed by him to an in
ternal " auxiliar light." " An auxiliar light
Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds,
The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on
Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed
A like dominion, and the midnight storm
Grew darker in the presence of my eye:
Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence,
And hence my transport." 8
Later, when we consider Wordsworth's celebrated ode to
Immortality, we will meet with a more detailed description
of this " vision splendid " due to the " auxiliar light."
One of the marked tendencies of the mystic is an appre
hension or, intuition of the unity of things. So pronounced
is this perception of unity that it frequently cancels all in
dividuality or separateness of things, and sees only the one
ness of all Reality. Mysticism, whether philosophic,
theologic, religious or poetic, has been prolific of Pantheism.
The apprehension of the unity of Being is often so pro
found that so-called corporeal things and finite spirits are
submerged in " the All " or Absolute. At this period of
Wordsworth's career a mystical, unifying tendency is mani
fest. He begins to observe affinities among things that are
not apparent to duller minds. He recognizes a brotherhood
among the objects of Nature. Things are instinct with life
and happiness, and, under the influence of great emotion,
he perceives a cosmic harmony — a unity in the manifold.
His joy reaches the point of ecstasy as he communes with
all things in earth and heaven. He hears them singing the
same song. So profound is his mood or trance that the bodily
ear is overcome by the prelude of the strain, and he hears
with the spiritual ear a soul-entrancing chorus.
8 The Prelude, Bk. II, 11. 368-376.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 267
"Thus while the days flew by, and years passed on,
From Nature and her overflowing soul,
I had received so much, that all my thoughts
Were steeped in feeling; I was only then
Contented, when with bliss ineffable
I felt the sentiment of Being spread
O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;
O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought
And human knowledge, to the human eye
Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;
O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,
Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not
If high the transport, great the joy I felt,
Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
One song they sang, and it was audible,
Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain,
Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed." 9
This is a mystical intuition of the unity of Nature. " There
is a synthetic functioning of consciousness, largely dominated
by feeling, that cancels the ordinary perception of Nature
by the senses as a world of independent entities bound to
gether only by space relations, and substitutes for it a world
of objects invested with spirit-life, and existing in spiritual
relations, all constituting a harmonious system, and all ador
ing and loving the one Uncreated Source of Reality. But
Wordsworth's mysticism does not abolish the individuality
of things as philosophical mysticism often does. It does not
swamp their being in the immeasurable Being of the Infinite.
It destroys merely the world of uncritical sense-perception,
which is a mere manifold or multiplicity of corporeal ob
jects, and by intuition lays hold of the spiritual reality of
9 The Prelude, Bk. II, II. 396-418.

268 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
things, with their mutual spiritual relations and their re
lations to a spiritual Absolute.
" Furthermore, he, too, is part of the world and is in com
munion with things, whether earthly or heavenly. And, as
he listens to the song of a spiritual universe, and his own
soul is enraptured with the music, his mystical communion,
though ecstatic, is not so profound as to submerge his own
self-consciousness in the Being of the Absolute, as is the case
so often with religious mystics. The ' mortal limits of the
self,' to use Tennyson's expression, are not ' loosed.' The
boundary lines of finite personality are not wiped out.
Therefore, there is no Pantheism here. The distinct reality
of ' the Uncreated,' the reality of things, and the reality of
self are preserved. Wordsworth's mystical mind has simply
apprehended the spiritual nature and relations of all
Reality." 10
If we turn from The Prelude for a few moments to The
Excursion — Wordsworth's most elaborate poem — and
compare the accounts of his mystical experiences in boyhood
and youth with the accounts of The Prelude given above,
we will find an essential agreement. There can be little
doubt that Wordsworth, in his account of the Wanderer
— one of the leading characters of The Excursion — is giv
ing an account of himself. The experience of the
Wanderer's boyhood and youth is that of a mystic. " The
things he saw " as a boy are similar to those described in
the early books of The Prelude that refer to the poet's child
hood. They are unusual. They are associated with Nature.
They are seen in solitude. They involve communion " not
from terror free." They are powerfully felt, and make such
deep impressions on the mind as to disturb " the bodily
sense." They are impressions over which he broods, nar
rowing the field of consciousness, concentrating the mind
10Sneath, Wordsworth, Boston, 1912, pp. 25-26.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 269
upon it, and thus intensifying the" " pictured lines " until
'" they acquired the liveliness of dreams."
" From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak,
In summer, tended cattle on the hills;
But, through the inclement and the perilous days
Of long-continuing winter, he repaired,
Equipped with satchel, to a school, that stood
Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge,
Remote from view of city spire, or sound
Of minster clock! From that bleak tenement
He, many an evening, to his distant home
In solitude returning, saw the hills
Grow larger in the darkness; all alone
Beheld the stars come out above his head,
And travelled through the wood, with no one near
To whom he might confess the things he saw.
" So the foundations of his mind were laid,
In such communion, not from terror free,
While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects that they lay >
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense. He had received
A precious gift; for, as he grew in years,
With these impressions would he still compare
All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms;
And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines
Intensely brooded, even till they acquired
The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail,
While yet a child, with a child's eagerness
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the moving seasons brought
To feed such appetite — nor this alone
Appeased his yearning: — in the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags
He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,

270 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression every varying." u
But, it is in the description of the Wanderer's youth that
we find, as was the case in The Prelude, Wordsworth's
mysticism becoming more pronounced. Here, too, it is
associated with Nature and solitude. Here, also, his ex
perience, although involved in and stimulated by sense, is
primarily more subjective, arising largely from inner spiritual
depths. His animal being seems to be submerged into his
spiritual being. Thought is lost in feeling. Here is a
visitation from God, and there is a rapturous communion
that transcends even prayer and praise. In short, the youth's
experience, as described by Wordsworth, bears all the es
sential marks of mystical consciousness, as the following
words reveal: " Such was the Boy — but for the growing Youth
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked —
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay
Beneath him : — Far and wide the clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live ; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation' from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
11 The Excursion, Bk. I, 11. 118-162.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 271
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him ; it was blessedness and love ! " 12
It is Nature that thus affects the mind of the youth. Often,
when alone with her, when " communing with the glorious
universe," his experience is so ecstatic that he is as one
possessed. Indeed! according to the poet's account, he is
possessed. In this state the great realities are objects of
emotional intuition and vision. He feels his faith in im
mortality. He sees spiritual prospects :
" A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops,
Such intercourse was his, and in this sort
Was his existence oftentimes possessed.
O then how beautiful, how bright, appeared
The written promise ! Early had he learned
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die;
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
All things, responsive to the writing, there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving; infinite:
There littleness was not; the least of things
Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects, nor did he believe, — he saw." 13
These accounts of the mystical experiences of Words
worth's boyhood and youth in The Prelude and The Ex
cursion are supplemented by conversations of the poet re
corded in several letters written by his friends. In a letter
from Rev. Robert Perceval Graves, of Windermere, we find
a description by Wordsworth of the trance to which he was
subject in boyhood. According to it, the world with which
consciousness was concerned was not an extra-mental, but an
12 The Excursion, Bk. I, 11. 197-219.
13 The Excursion, Bk. II, 11. 219-232.

272 , AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
intra-mental one; not a world of corporeal objects, but of
the mind's own creation, — the mind acting apparently in
dependent of an external stimulus. " I remember," writes
Mr. Graves, " Mr. Wordsworth saying, that at a particular
stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently so
rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the
external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him,
and he had to reconvince himself of its existence by clasping
a tree, or something that happened to be near him. I could
not help connecting this fact with that obscure passage in
his great Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, in which he
speaks of " Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things;
Fallings from us, vanishings ; etc." 14
To the same effect are the words found in a letter by Pro
fessor Bonamy Price: " It happened one day that the poet,
my wife, and I were taking a walk together by the side of
Rydal Water. We were then by the sycamores under Nab
Scar. The aged poet was in a most genial mood, and it
suddenly occurred to me that I might, without unwarrant
able presumption, seize the golden opportunity thus offered,
and ask him to explain these mysterious words. So I ad
dressed him with an apology, and begged him to explain,
what my own feeble mother-wit was unable to unravel, and
for which I had in vain sought the assistance of others, what
were those ' fallings from us, vanishings,' for which, above
all other things, he gave God thanks. The venerable old
man raised his aged form erect; he was walking in the
middle, and passed across me to a five-barred gate in the wall
which bounded the road on the side of the lake. He
clenched the top bar firmly with his right hand, pushed
strongly against it, and then uttered these ever-memorable
14 Poems, edited by William Knight, London, 1896, VIII, p. 201.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 273
words: ' There was a time in my life when I had to push
against something that resisted, to be sure that there was
anything outside of me. I was sure of my own mind ; every
thing else fell away, and vanished into thought.' Thought,
he was sure of; matter for him, at the moment, was an un
reality — nothing but a thought." 1B Again we have the
world of sense-experience cancelled, and a transcendental or
supra-sensible world constitutes the object of consciousness.
In his eighteenth year, Wordsworth entered St. John's Col
lege, Cambridge. Here, as in boyhood and early youth, his
mysticism is evident. He feels
" Incumbencies more awful, visitings
Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul." 16
Now he invests " every natural form," even the stones of
the highway, with a moral life. For him they are spiritual
beings, and he sees them feel. For him the whole world
of material things is imbedded " in a quickening soul." All
things respire with " inward meaning." It is a world of his
own creation: it exists only for him and for God, who sees
into the human heart :
" Here to record that I was mounting now
To such community with highest truth —
A track pursuing, not untrod before,
From strict analogies by thought supplied
Or consciousnesses not to be subdued.
To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the high-way,
I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,
Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass
Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all
That I beheld respired with inward meaning." lr
15 Poems, edited by William Knight, London, 1896, VIII, pp.
201-202. 16 The Prelude, Bk. Ill, II. 119-120.
17 The Prelude, Bk. Ill, 11. 125-135.

274 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Wordsworth, at times, betrayed his feelings, inner visions,
and intuitions by gestures and looks which some interpreted
as a kind of " madness " ; and madness it was, says the poet,
if " moods of thoughtfulness matured to inspiration," or
prophetic and poetic vision, may be regarded as madness.
However, with him it was mystical insight, similar in char
acter to the inspiration and vision of the Hebrew prophets.
We next meet with an experience in which Wordsworth's
soul is unveiled, and seems to be in the very presence of
God; to have "glimmering views" of immortality, and to
become conscious of the dignity and worth of moral en
deavor. It occurs during the summer vacation after his first
year at Cambridge, while the poet is making the circuit of
the lake at Hawkshead. His account of it is as follows:
" Gently did my soul
Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood
Naked, as in the presence of her God.
While on I walked, a comfort seemed to touch
A heart that had not been disconsolate:
Strength came where weakness was not known to be,
At least not felt; and restoration came
Like an intruder knocking at the door
Of unacknowledged weariness. I took
The balance, and with firm hand weighed myself.
— Of that external scene which round me lay,
Little, in this abstraction, did I see;
Remembered less; but I had inward hopes
And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed,
Conversed with promises, had glimmering views
How life pervades the undecaying mind;
How the immortal soul with God-like power
Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep
That time can lay upon her; how on earth,
Man, if he do but live within the light
Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad
His being armed with strength that cannot fail." ls
This is an experience of mystical intuition and vision, of
« The Prelude, Bk. IV, II. 1 50-171.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 275
spiritual illumination. The noetic element is conspicuous.
God, immortality, and the dignity and value of moral effort
are the great realities revealed.
This summer vacation records another experience unique
even among the many unique experiences of his youth and
young manhood. It involves a " call " to the poet's office
or vocation — a spiritual dedication to a particular life-work.
However, it is not a case of self-dedication. He is conscious
of relationship to a higher Power — the Spirit of Nature —
who makes vows for him. To fail to perform them would
be to " sin greatly." This dedication occurred one morning
on his return from a dance. The beauty of the dawn was
responsible for the mystic mood. " Magnificent
The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e'er I had beheld — in front,
The sea lay laughing at a distance; near
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn —
Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds,
And labourers going forth to till the fields.
Ah, need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim
My heart was full ; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit. On I walked
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives ! " 19
After his graduation from college, Wordsworth made a
visit to London. Even here, in the midst of the din and tur
moil of the large city, he feels himself in touch with the
Spirit of Nature, who is gradually leading him to a love of
Man. Although there is no trance experience evident here,
there can be little doubt that, in his apprehension of the city
19 The Prelude, Bk. IV, II. 323-338.

276 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
and its varied life, Wordsworth's mind was affected by his
mystical consciousness. It will be remembered how, in
earlier years, his soul observed affinities in things " where no
brotherhood exists to passive minds '' ; how he was able to
intuit the harmony and unity of Reality — feeling the senti
ment of " Being spread o'er all things." A similar power
is his in the city. Here, the diversity of objects which he
beholds is not " blank- confusion " for him, as it is for many
for whom things are " melted and reduced
To one identity, by differences
That have no law, no meaning, and no end."20
" The Spirit of Nature is upon him, and
'The Soul of Beauty and enduring Life
Vouchsafe her inspiration, and diffused,
Through meager lines and colours, and the press
Of self-destroying, transitory things,
Composure, and ennobling Harmony." 21
Here he sees men, multitudes of them, under divers condi
tions and in divers states — a vast, heterogeneous, motley,
and often repulsive throng; but his mystical mind looks
beyond all individual peculiarities, all personal conditions, all
differentiating physical and moral shapes, and sees the es
sential, the universal in Man — the tie that binds all human
beings into one great system or brotherhood. The synthetic
vision is his once more, and he beholds
'the unity of man,
One spirit over ignorance and vice
Predominant, in good and evil hearts;
One sense for moral judgments, as one eye
For the sun's light.' " 22
20 The Prelude, Bk. VII, II. 726-728.
21 The Prelude, Bk. VII, 11. 767-771.
RiTv?TTath,', Wordsworth, Boston, 1912, pp. 49_so. The Prelude,
X»K« Vill, II. 668-672.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 277
Thus from early childhood, through youth and young man
hood, Wordsworth was subject to mystical experiences that
transfigured the face of Nature, and to mystical moods that
varied from mild abstraction, yielding flashes and gleams of
insight into the heart of Nature and Man, to profound il
luminating trances in which his soul was enabled to per
ceive the spiritual nature and unity of all reality, to stand in
the presence of God, and to gain a vision of the soul's im
mortality and the dignity of duty. It was thus that " the
vision and the faculty divine " were developed in him. It
was thus that he came " to see into the life of things " and
men. We now come to an interesting and pathetic experience
in the life of the poet — one that involves a temporary loss
of his mystical power. His account of this spiritual crisis
is contained in the eleventh and twelfth books of The Pre
lude. It is a record of unsouling or despiritualizing the
world of things and men. This was largely due to his great
interest in the French Revolution, and to the more abstract
study of man under the influence of the rationalistic spirit
of the age. Very early Wordsworth espoused the cause of
the revolutionary movement. With ardent soul he cherished
high hopes for humanity. He had naive confidence in the
power of " right reason." But the excesses of the Revolu
tion, and England's attitude early in the crisis, filled his soul
with much bitterness and disappointment. In his extremity
he took refuge from men in an abstract study of man — a
study of man in his essential nature, — endowed with lordly
powers of reason and will, — who eventually would throw
off the tyranny of custom and law. He subjected .both man
and Nature to the analytical scrutiny 6f the logical intellect,
with the result that he soon lost not only his faith in moral
reason, but also his consciousness of a Spiritual Presence in
Nature. His mystical soul no longer functioned. He was
in the grip of a " moral disease." He was in the darkness

278 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
of the skeptic's night. There is a similarity here to the
peculiar experience of such religious mystics as Henry Suso,
St. Theresa, St. John of the Cross, and Madame Guyon,
which experience is known as " the dark night of the soul."
With the religious mystics this is a period of desolation and
torment. To them it is one of the stages in the " mystic
way,'" leading to a higher and. richer mystical experience.
From this "malady " Wordsworth gradually recovered
under the tender ministry of his sister, and the healing power
of Nature. With his recovery there came a rebirth of the
mystical vision and intuition. Through the influence of
Dorothy Wordsworth he was made at this time to seek
beneath the poet's name his " office upon earth," and the
dozen years immediately following are pronounced by com
petent critics to be the period in which he produced his best
poetry — the dominant characteristic of which is mystical in
sight. The Lyrical Ballads represent the first fruits of Words
worth's mental and spiritual restoration. Among these
ballads we find poetry relating to both Nature and Man.
In the former, the " mystic gleam " is most evident. Here
Nature is instinct with life and mind. She pulsates with
happiness and love. Out of her abundant resources she
ministers to Man's mind and heart. She gives of her wealth
to those who commune with her ; who indulge in " a wise pas-
siveness " ; who come forth into the light of things with a
heart " that watches and receives "; who observe " the hour
of feeling," in which
" One moment may give us more
Than years of toiling reason." 2S
In such poems as " Lines Written in Early Spring," " To
My Sister," " Expostulation and Reply," and " The Tables
Turned," we note this mystical approach of Wordsworth to
Nature. Here we have the poet, as in boyhood and youth,

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 279
in close touch with Nature's spirit, communing with her and
seeing deep " into the life of things." Coleridge once re
marked to Hazlitt, before the poetry of the Lyrical Bal
lads appeared in print, that " it had a grand and compre
hensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the
universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition
rather than by deduction." 23 Intuition it unquestionably
was — born largely of mystical feeling.
Among the poems of the Lyrical Ballads, is one entitled,
" Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey." In
this poem we have once more a description of his mystical
trance. In it the poet deals with both its psychological and
physiological aspects. It is a " serene and blessed mood " in
which the soul's burden of the " unintelligible world is light
ened " ; a mood in which breathing and the circulation of the
blood almost cease. The bodily powers are " laid asleep,"
but the soul is awake. The eye of sense is quieted, its func
tion being inhibited by the power of harmony and joy, — but
the inner eye is active, and gains insight into Nature's life.
"Not less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: — that serene and 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." 24
28 The Liberal, II, 371.
24 Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 11. 35-4&

280 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Later in the poem, in memorable lines, he acknowledges
having felt a Presence in things and men. He has experi
enced " a sense sublime " of " a motion and a spirit " that
is operative in all things and in the human mind. The ex
perience is due to Nature, and because of it he recognizes in
her the guide and guardian of his heart, the very soul of his
moral being. " And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a 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 thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, — both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being." 25
This is mysticism — a mood in which there is immediate
experience of, or contact with, a Higher Spiritual Power,
and a recognition of the essential unity of all things. So
intimate is the relation between the Universal Presence
and things and minds, that he barely escapes resolving the last
two realities into the first. Indeed, there have been those,
like Bishop Wordsworth, his kinsman-biographer, who have
interpreted this poem pantheistically. However, this is a
misinterpretation. Pantheism identifies finite things and
minds with the Absolute or " the All." It makes them
25 Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 11. 93-111.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 281
merely modes of its energizing. But Wordsworth does not
do this. He merely says that the Presence is in things and in
minds, that " the light of setting suns," " the round ocean,"
" the living air," " the blue sky," and " the mind of man "
are its dwelling; that it is a motion and a spirit which is
not identical with " all thinking things " and " objects of all
thought," but which impels them ; and not that it is all things,
but that it " rolls through all things." In other words, he
preserves the individuality of the Universal Presence, the
individuality of things, and the individuality of the finite
spirit, while at the same time he intuitively recognizes that
spirit rather than matter is the great reality; and that Man,
Nature, and the Spirit of Nature are all involved in an in
timate spiritual relationship. He apprehends that in a true
sense things and minds live and move and have their being
in a Higher Spiritual Power and yet are distinct from it.
The Higher Power is, indeed, immanent, but it is also
transcendent. It is not Pantheism, but Theistic Idealism
that is taught in this great poem.
The Grasmere period of the poet's life is especially rich
in communion with Nature, and his spiritual interpretation
of the physical world is very evident. More than a score of
poems testify to this. Those, however, in which we are
specially interested are : " It was an April morning ; fresh
and clear," " To Joanna," " The Cuckoo," and " Yes, it was
the mountain Echo." In these poems the impressions of
sense seem to sink deep into the spirit, where, affected by
mystical feeling, by some strange psychological chemistry,
they are transformed into a new mental product. In this
work of transformation, a synthetic or unifying power is
manifest. Many sounds and sights are fused into one. In
the poem entitled " It was an April morning " the various
sounds of Nature lose their identity and become " the voice
of common pleasure," — " some natural produce of the air."
In the poem, " To Joanna," the laugh of the maiden, under

282 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
the spell, of Wordsworth's mood, fills the mountains. His
ear is touched " with dreams and visionary impulses." In
the poem, " To the Cuckoo," the cuckoo's voice is univer
salized, and, under the influence of the notes of the " blessed
bird," the earth is unsubstantialized, it is supplanted by that
ideal world constructed from materials of the inner self.
The cuckoo not only brings to him " a tale of visionary
hours " — the mystical hours of childhood already described ;
but now, even in young manhood, under the magic influence
of its " wandering Voice," ,
" the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place."
In " Yes, it was the mountain Echo," the echo or series of
echoes of the cuckoo's notes impel the poet to speak of echoes
from beyond the grave, heard by the inner ear, — intima
tions of immortality given of God to the spiritual self : —
"Hears not also mortal Life?
Hear not we, unthinking Creatures!
Slaves of folly, love, or strife —
Voices of two different natures?
Have not we too ? — yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognized intelligence !
Such rebounds our inward ear
Catches sometimes from afar —
Listen, ponder, hold them dear;
For of God, — of God they are."26
Whose consciousness, but that of a mystic, under the in
fluence of Nature, on the occasion of ordinary sense-impres
sions, could give rise to such spiritual auditions, such tran-
26 Yes, it was the mountain Echo, 11. 9-20.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 283
scendental apprehensions? They are the mystic's immediate
consciousness of God and immortality.
Finally, in studying the mysticism of Wordsworth we are
brought to the consideration of his superb creation, — " Ode,
Intimations of Immorality," of which Emerson said, " It is
the high-water mark which the intellect has reached in this
age " ; 2T and of which, with " Lines, composed a few miles
above Tintern Abbey," Professor Saintsbury remarked, that
not only do we reach " the summits of Wordsworth's poetry,"
but that these two poems are " poems of such astonishing mag
nificence that it is only more astonishing that any one should
have read them and failed to see what a poet had come be
fore the world." 28 This great ode is autobiographical in
character, and is based on the poet's mystic gleams and trance
experiences of childhood. In a Fenwick note, he says:
" There may be no harm in adverting here to particular feel
ings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure
of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me
in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state
applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere —
A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb
What should it know of death ! —
But it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that
my difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of
the Spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of
Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, what
ever might become of others, I should be translated, in
something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling con
genital to this, I was often unable to think of external things
27 Emerson, English Traits, Boston, 1883, p. 282.
28 Saintsbury, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, New
York and London, 1896, p. 54.

284 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
as having external existence, and I communed with all that I
saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own
immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I
grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of
idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such
processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we
have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character,
and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in
the lines — Obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings, etc." 29
We have already quoted Wordsworth's remarks contained in
the letters of Rev. Mr. Graves and Professor Price, to the
same effect. This poem is really a poem on child psychology,
based on Wordsworth's experience as a child, together with
certain inferences founded on it, although such experience
was believed by him to be common to all men. According
to Wordsworth, to the perception of the child the world of
physical things is invested with a celestial glory and splendor
that is not present to the consciousness of the adult. With
the adult it is a case of lost vision. With him " the vision
splendid " gradually fades into the light of common day.
" There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; —
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
"The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
28 Poems, edited by William Knight, Vol. VIII, p. 189:

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 285
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
"Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm: —
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
— But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"30
This radiant glory and splendor peculiar to childhood's
vision of the world indicates, according to our poet, the near
ness of the child-mind to a preexistent state. It is largely
an inheritance from another world. Incarnation or birth
means merely sleep and forgetfulness of former mental riches.
As the child advances in years he grows farther and farther
away from this heaven that lies about him in his infancy,
30 Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 11. i-i,8, 36-57,

286 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Youth's path is still attended by the glorious vision, but
manhood " perceives it die away."
" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere 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;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He upholds the light, and whence it flows
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day." 81
But the experience of childhood involves more than the per
ception of a world " apparelled in celestial light." As the
poet notes the child's desire to gain earthly experience, he
wonders why a being possessed of such marvelous powers
should be so eager to exchange them for the limitations of
the man. And what, according to Wordsworth, are these
remarkable gifts of the child? The answer to this question
throws further light on his psychology of childhood — a psy
chology which was undoubtedly born of his mystical expe
rience — especially the trance experiences that have been
described. According to Wordsworth, the child's body belies the im
mensity of his soul. The child is the true philosopher, re
taining as he does his glorious inheritance. He is " the eye
among the blind." He is conscious of eternity and the eternal
81 Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 11. 58-76.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 287
mind. As philosopher and seer, he intuits those truths that
men toil a lifetime to discover. Over him broods immor
tality. With him it is an evtr-present fact. He is con
scious, also, of preexistence.
"Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal mind, —
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
"O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: —
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

288 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 32
This exalted view of childhood was characteristic of
Wordsworth. He refers to it not merely in this immortal
ode, but elsewhere. In The Prelude he says :
" Our childhood sits,
Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne
That hath more power than all the elements.
I guess not what this tells of Being past,
Nor what it augurs of the life to come " ; 3S
Again, in The Excursion, he asks :
" Ah ! why in age
Do we revert so fondly to the walks
Of childhood — but that there the Soul discerns
32 Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 11. 108-167.
38 The Prelude, Bk. V, 11. 507-511.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 289
The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired
Of her own native vigour; thence can hear
Reverberations; and a choral song,
Commingling with the incense that ascends,
Undaunted, toward the imperishable heavens,
From her own lonely altar ? " 34
It has been suggested that Wordsworth in his views of
preexistence, the nearness to which state accounts for the
remarkable powers of the child, is simply giving an expres
sion to views borrowed from Plato. A Fenwick note reveals
the fact that Wordsworth was acquainted with Plato's teach
ing on this subject. But this does not justify the statement
that Wordsworth's belief was based merely on his acquaint
ance with Plato. The poet's conviction was undoubtedly
rooted in his trance experience of boyhood. He confesses
this in the prefatory note to the ode on Immortality already
referred to. Others have thought that he might have been
influenced by a seventeenth century poet, Henry Vaughan,
whose " Silex Scintallans " and " The Retreate " show him
to be a mystical poet, and a believer in preexistence. Unless
Wordsworth became acquainted with Vaughan's works
through Coleridge, there is no external evidence to prove that
he was familiar with these poems. There is, indeed, a sim
ilarity in their teachings. But such views are the common
property of mystical poets. The true explanation of Words
worth's belief is, that it was due to his mystical conscious
ness which was active in childhood and youth and which
brought him in contact with not only a transfigured sense-
world, but also with a world that transcended the limits of
space and time — an eternal spiritual world — member
ship in which antedates birth, which is merely the soul's in
carnation. We find thus that an examination of Wordsworth's poetry
and other sources of evidence shows that he was essentially a
34 The Excursion, Bk. IX, II. 36-44.

290 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
mystic. Professor James mentions four marks of mysticism,
— ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity.35
These marks were characteristic of Wordsworth's unique
consciousness. His experiences were often ineffable. They
were so wonderful that frequently he found it impossible to
adequately express them. His spiritual visions and auditions,
his rapturous feelings and intuitions, defy description and ex
planation. " How," he asks of Coleridge in The Prelude,
" shall I seek the origin ? where find faith in the marvelous
things which then I felt ? " What he saw was indescribable
in terms of sense ; it seemed like " a dream, a prospect in the
mind." It was " with bliss ineffable " that he " felt the sen
timent of Being spread o'er all things." In the clouds he
" read unutterable love." The noetic quality was also pres
ent. His moods and trances were illuminating. There was
spiritual vision, audition and intuition. He was immediately
conscious of a transcendent world; of the Spirit of Nature;
of the High God ; of the spiritual nature of all Reality ; of the
relations of the Universal Presence, finite things and minds in
a spiritual system ; and of their ministry to his soul ; also of
preexistence and immortality, and the dignity and worth of
duty. Transiency, too, was a mark of the poet's supra-sen
sible experiences. Both the trance and lighter moods were
comparatively short-lived. They were the fleeting, not the
permanent fo.rms of consciousness. Passivity constituted
still another mark. The bodily frame, according to the
Poet's own description, was inactive. Its powers were " laid
asleep." The mind, too, was in a passive, receptive state.
A " wise passiveness " seemed to pave the way for the ap
proach of the Spirit of Nature and its communications or
revelations. In all of this, the " marks " or " characters " of
the mystic's consciousness are manifest.
85 The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York and London,
1902, Lectures XVI and XVII.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 291
These " blessed moods," with their illuminations and " in
effable bliss," made a profound impression on the mind of the
poet, and deeply affected his life and work. He regarded
them with reverence and gratitude, and they exercised a
purifying and ennobling influence upon him. What he says
in • this respect of the Wanderer in The Excursion is
descriptive of himself :
"What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,
Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart
Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind,
And whence they flowed ; and from them he acquired
Wisdom, which works thro' patience ; thence he learned
In oft-recurring hours of sober thought
To look on Nature with a humble heart,
Self-questioned where it did not understand,
And with a superstitious eye of love." 36
His was a life of pure desires and lofty thoughts. He looked
upon these unusual experiences as visitations from the Spirit
of Nature, or from the High God. He interpreted them as
ministrations to his spirit; and regarded himself as dedi
cated by a higher Power to the poet's life, to be the high
priest of Nature and Man, " speaking no dream, but things
oracular." For many years he practically abjured society,
and lived in comparative solitude, giving himself up to his
art, serving with clean hands and pure heart, with lofty aim
and faithful effort, the Spirit that had made vows for him.
The outcome is manifest in a large body of verse, the endur
ing portion of which owes its existence and immortality to
the influence of his mysticism. Matthew Arnold says,
" Wordsworth composed verses during a space of sixty years ;
and it is no exaggeration to say that within one single de-
36 The Excursion, Bk. I, 11. 233-243.

292 AT ONE WITH THE INVISIBLE
cade of these years, between 1799 and 1808, almost all of his
really first-rate work was produced." 37 Principal Shaip
and Professor Dowden, although differing from Arnold's
estimate, agree that the decade referred to above represents
" the springtime of his genius." During this period most of
his poetry of insight into Nature was written. Occasional
poems of Nature appear afterward, but few of them reveal
" the gleam." A majority of them are descriptive in char
acter. The reason for this is doubtless the fact that Words
worth's mystical consciousness ceased to function after this
period. He perceived it " die away, and fade into the com
mon light of day." With the loss of this mystical appre
hension of Nature, he turned to other subjects for poetic in
spiration. One nature poem, composed in 18 18, entitled
" Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour
and Beauty," evinces that for a moment, as the poet re
marks, the mystical apprehension was " by miracle restored."
But -.here, also, Wordsworth is conscious of the loss of the
"vision splendid ":
" Such hues from their celestial Urn
Were wont to stream before mine eye,
Where'er it wandered in the morn
Of blissful infancy.
This glimpse of glory, why renewed?
Nay, rather speak with gratitude;
For, if a vestige of those gleams
Survived, 'twas only in my dreams.
Dread Power ! whom peace and calmness serve
No less than Nature's threatening voice,
If aught unworthy be my choice,
From Thee if I would swerve!
Oh, let thy grace remind me of the light
Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored;
Which, at this moment, on my waking sight
Appears to shine, by miracle restored;
37 Essays in Criticism, Second Series, London, 1898, p. 136.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH 293
My soul, though yet confined to earth,
Rejoices in a second birth!
— 'Tis past, the visionary splendour fades;
And night approaches with her shades." 88
With the loss of his mystical vision and intuition, Words
worth was shorn of much of his poetic power.
33 Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and
Beauty, 11. 61-80.

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