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19

THE MEANING AND VALUE
OF MYSTICISM

Firtt Edition^ No^'embcr, loi^
Second Edition, J'""'?* 191 6
Third Edi tion f y^nCt iijzz

THE
MEANING AND VALUE
OF MYSTICISM

E. HERMAN
t I *
AVTBOH Of *'cRK.\TiVS FKAYiiR/' *** JlUCKKN AND BKRG»ON," KTC,

THIRD EDITION

LONDON
JAMES CLARKE & CO., LTD.
13 & 14 FLEET STREET

M. H.

PREFACE
It has become a platitude to speak of a mystical
revival, but so far it has been a revival of interest in
Mysticism rather than of Mysticism itself. In spite
of the remarkable output of literature on Mysticism
within the last few years, we have few first-hand
mystics among us, very few who can speak with
authority and not as the scribes. Nor are there any
indications of a revival of mystical religion among
" the simple and the pure, into whose hearts Truth
falls like dew into a fleece of wool." Such a revival
was, indeed, hoped for by many as a result of the
general reaction from ecclesiastical authority and
traditional theology, but up to the present these
expectations have not been realised. On the con
trary, the weakening of traditional bonds has been
accompanied by an alarming degree of spiritual
mediocrity, strangely yoked to a superficial spiritual
alertness and power of assimilation which create the
impression of an age " haunted by the Unseen."
Never was there such a stinging curiosity abroad
regarding the most private sanctities of the spiritual
-life. Conversion, prayer, " interior quiet," recol
lection, contemplation, vision, the life beyond, are
investigated by mixed multitudes with a blend
of Athenian inquisitiveness and pathetic credulity.
Mysticism has become a word to conjure with, and

PREFACE
an)' and everything that is sweetly unreasonable or
piquantly obscure is welcomed in its narne and exalted
to the dignity of a more or less esoteric cult. Here
and there we have felt the first stirrings of a yet
unborn movement towards genuine Mysticism, but
the most salient characteristic of the situation as a
whole has been a fatal quickness of superficial appre
ciation which mistakes its enjoyment of the report
of an experience for the possession of its reality.
But with the sudden outbreak of war new possi
bilities have entered into the situation, and what was
curiosity, or, at most, a vague wistfulness, is being
purged and transformed into a new wonder, a deep
hunger and thirst for Reality. Much was talked in
the days before the war about the delusion and peril
of a materialistic civilisation and the refuge which
" the simple life " and " the mystic quest " offered to
disillusionised and wearied spirits. To-day what was
then an armchair philosophy is being deepened into
a vital conviction. We see in the case of Germany a
great materialistic civilisation, which has dared to be
true to its ruthless self, dying of its own brutal logic.
We know now what once we merely theorised about
— that a materialistic system cannot survive in a
spiritual universe ; that we are set in a world in
which man cannot live by bread alone, even though
each loaf be guaranteed by a militarist State. More
over, this grim apocalypse of a nation which has
clothed brute force with the philosopher's mantle
and the preacher's gown has most eflEectually shattered
the cherished superstition that " it doesn't matter
what a man believes." To read essays upon the
vi

PREFACE
beauty of ideas, the power of ideals and of dreams, is
one thing ; to feel their explosive force, as we are
feeling it now, is quite another. Our reassuring con
viction as to the futility of " mere " thought and our
brave contempt of the professorial mind have been
broken against the rock of history. The pragmatist
has seen the impossible happen. He has seen abstract
theories do concrete damage, and " pure " thought
blast the foundations of a world. And out of this
sudden, ruthless shattering of our pragmatist fiction,
there will spring, not, indeed, a new intellectualism,
but a rehabilitation of the higher Reason. And it isl
in the due honouring of this higher Reason that |
Mysticism will at last come into its own.
For, say what we will. Mysticism can thrive on
pragmatist, voluntarist, or intuitionalist soil as little
as it could thrive in the stony ground of intellec
tualism. True, the great mystics were certainly
intuitionalists ; nevertheless they were the product
of ages in which Reason was- " king." Platonism,
Scholasticism, the Renaissance — these were the back
ground of the mystic portrait, and it is only out of
such a background of speculative thought and intel
lectual struggle that Mysticism can arise. Intuition\
sinks swiftly to decadence and morbid degeneration,)
unless it grows a magic blossom on the tough stalk j
of intellect. One much-needed conviction will emerge
out of the present upheaval as it affects our spiritual
life — that it is sheer_,fu_tiHty__to_ oppose „tfcte_jnystical
to^the^inlellectuaXpr institutional elements of religion,
as claiming an exclusive right to spiritual apprehen
sion and fruition. There is no such thing as a " pure "
vii

PREFACE
mystic ; where he exists, he belongs to the realm of
pathology. If the great clash of ideas teaches us
that the thing that matters most — nay, the only
thing that matters — is that strange, mysterious life
behind the brain that cries out for the living God, it
also teaches us that that interior life is not isolated,
but has its deep roots in many worlds.
I believe, then, that out of the confusion and bitter
mental anguish that cloud our souls to-day there is
arising a deep and genuine desire for contact with the
Eternal, a humble and resolute purpose to have done
with pretty illusions and to grip Reality with naked
hands. More especially will men everywhere begin
to respond to the message of a truly Christian Mysti
cism — that is, a Mysticism whose passion for intimacy
with God is checked by the Christian sense of sin,
based upon a deeply ethical conception of salvation
and sanctity, and born of a vision of God as He is
in Christ Jesus. Sudden contact with grim realities
may, and very likely will, make men even less tolerant
of ecclesiastical and theological conventions than they
were before, but it will likewise make them more
suspicious of the preciosity, mock esotericism, and
cheap transcendentalism of fashionable, heterodox
cults, and far more open to the appeal of an experience
of spiritual immediacy founded upon the realities of
the Christian Gospel. The present book is based
upon such a reading of the situation.
In the many volumes on Mysticism which have
appeared recently, one of two methods has been fol
lowed — the historical or the psychological. Both are
indispensable for our understanding of the subject,
viii

PREFACE
but each taken by itself has its grave disadvantages.
The historical method, in presenting the great mystics
embedded, as it were, in the matrix of their times,
tends to regard Mysticism as indissolubly bound up
with certain classic forms and definite theological
and philosophical presuppositions. The psychological
method, on the other hand, based upon a time
lessness of Mysticism which makes Plotinus the
true contemporary of Francis Thompson, is apt to
leave us with a vague abstraction. Neither of the
two, if rigidly followed, tells us how to make the
great mystical heritage available for our own day and
generation, and how to link it up to the plastic, living
movements of the present time.
In this book I have endeavoured to suggest the
meaning and value of Mysticism for our day. My )
conviction that Mysticism is essentially a spirit and i
not a system, or even a method, has precluded any-'
thing like a detailed application of mystical principles_\
to the movements of to-day. But I have at all
points tried to show how the mystical element may
be brought to bear upon the Christian thought and
life of to-day, and to suggest where its dynamic and
transmuting power can go to shape the Christian
thought and life of to-morrow.
I have thought it well to devote the first five
chapters entirely to the elucidation of the nature of
Mysticism, the resolving of some of its inherent anti
nomies, and the removal of difficulties, obscurities,
and ambiguities which stand in the way of intelligent
discussion. These are followed by a study of a typi
cal mystic, my choice falling upon Blessed Angela de
ix

PREFACE
Foligno as exhibiting the characteristic weaknesses as
well as the characteristic strength of Mysticism. The
remaining five chapters deal with the relation of
Mysticism to Nature, Philosophy and Theology.
In the discussion of the mystical attitude to Nature,
Asceticism and its significance for us to-day is spe
cially considered ; the chapter on Mysticism and
Philosophy deals, inter alia, with the relation of expe
rience and intuition to intellectual synthesis. In
treating of Mysticism and Theology, the problem of
the relation of Mysticism to Eschatology seemed to
demand a chapter to itself. In it I have tried to
show how, on the one hand, Mysticism will prove the
only solution of the eschatological problem, and how,
on the other, that problem is not solved, but rather
aggravated, by a total transmutation of eschatology
into Mysticism. In this connection I have attempted
a brief discussion of the obscure doctrine of the Holy
Assembly or Interior Church, which seems to me to
have an unexplored eschatological reference. I have
added a brief annotated Bibliography for the con
venience of those to whom an exhaustive list would
only prove confusing.
I need hardly say that I make no claim to exhaustive
treatment. Within the prescribed limits of a volume
such as this, one can only offer a broad and suggestive
presentation of a subject, any one aspect of which
would need a whole volume for its fuU and detailed
exposition. This applies especially to the section on
Mysticism and Theology, where I have endeavoured
to suggest lines of thought which I hope to elaborate
at some future time.

PREFACE
My indebtedness to previous writers is very con
siderable, and I wish first and foremost to record my
deep obligation to Dean Inge, to whose writings on
Mysticism I owe my first insight into the subject.
With him I would couple an earlier writer. Professor
Alexander V. G. Allen, whose well-known book. The
Continuity of Christian Thought, exercised a forma
tive and permanent influence upon my thinking. I
have also, in common with all students of Mysticism,
to acknowledge my indebtedness to the erudite and
penetrative work of Baron von Hiigel. Of other
writers to whom I owe much stimulus, both by way of
fruitful suggestion and by the provocation of dissent, I
would specially mention Dr. Rufus M. Jones and Miss
Evelyn Underbill. The names of many others of
whose work I have availed myself are referred to in
the body of the book.
My warmest thanks are due to the Rev. Ivor J.
Roberton, M.A. for his kindness in reading the
proofs and for many valuable suggestions.
E. H.
London,
Octaber, 1515.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The demand for a second edition within eight
months of publication, and that at a time when even
the most absorbed dreamer is being stabbed broad
awake by the harsh actuahties of the War, seems to
xi

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
demonstrate that genuine concern about inward
religion which I ventured to assume in the preface to
the first edition. To many these great and terrible
days have laid bare the things by which men live.
Deeper than our horror at the sudden apocalypse of
evil which Germany has flashed upon the world, deeper
even than the spirit of heroic devotion and unsparing
sacrifice which the call of an Empire pledged to the
highest ideals has evoked among us, is the dawning
realisation of spiritual need, and the hunger for
communion with the living God which is finding a
voice in so many quarters. It is this conviction
which, in the midst of so much that saddens and
perplexes, makes one humbly glad to live in this
difficult and splendid day.
I would take this opportunity of thanking the
many reviewers who have accorded to this book so
cordial and generous a reception and, while belonging
to widely varying schools of thought, have been at
one in their sympathetic understanding of the
writer's intention and ideal.
For the purposes of this edition, I have only been
able to correct a few errors in the text and to make
some additions to the Bibliography (pp. 387, 388),
including some important books which have appeared
since it was first issued.
E. H.
London,
June, 1 91 6.

xn

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
It is now seven years since this book was first
published. During these seven years the face of
life has wondrously changed for us. Some would say
that the years of strain and stress from which we hoped
so much have brought only the shattering of these
hopes. Others would maintain that it was idle to
expect even so grim an experience as world-war
to change what will remain the same to the end of
time — the human heart. Only a few would dare to
say that there has been a radical change for the better.
But it seems to me that there has been a change for
the better — the more radical because not easily
observable. The dark hour has passed, and proved
to be the turning point of the darkness, the hour before
the dawn. But the dawn comes to the mountain
tops before it lightens the plain and pierces the
darkness of the valley. And our newspapers and books
on social and political questions deal only with the grey
plain and the dark valley. They tell us of the broad
levels of national and social life ; they cannot, of
necessity, give any report of life on the heights. To
discern that life one must go to the hidden souls that
are the salt of the earth and the leaven of a languid
Church. I make bold to say that there are more
such to-day than before the war. I have marked
their growing influence, not only in the Church but
in a world that professes to despise them.
xiii

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
These souls, and the many others who follow their
footsteps, if only from afar, are to-day turning, as
perhaps never before, to the great masters of the
spiritual life, the mystics. As never before they can
appreciate that love of poverty, obscurity and humilia
tion which is the hall-mark of the mystic character.
They know that as long as a soul seeks comfort,
honour, praise, and popularity, it cannot hold inti
mate communion with the God who became man and
took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was
despised and rejected of men. Before the war comfort
and ease were considered quite compatible with the
most spiritual religion, and luxurious ladies read
S. Teresa and S. Catherine of Siena in their armchairs
without a qualm. To-day there are few readers of
spiritual literature who do not suspect, deep down in
their hearts, that it is futile to seek the experience of a
S. Teresa or a S. Catherine without living the kind
of life they lived.
That this introduction to the mystics may still be
of use to those who turn longing eyes to a form of
religion which involves a life of unreserved self-
oblation is my earnest desire.
E. Herman.
London,
June, 1922.

XIV

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introductory ...... i

CHAPTER II
The Nature of Mystic Apprehension . 19
CHAPTER III
The Psychic Phenomena of Mysticism . 43
CHAPTER IV
The Contemplative Ideal ... 69
CHAPTER V
Some Elements of the Contemplative
Life ....... 105
CHAPTER VI
A Typical Mystic : Blessed Angela de
Foligno . . . . . .139
CHAPTER VII
Mysticism and Nature : Asceticism . 167
XV

CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII
fAGK
Mysticism and Nature : Symbolism . 197
CHAPTER IX
Mysticism and Philosophy -, . • 241
CHAPTER X
Mysticism and Theology . . . 283
CHAPTER XI
Mysticism and Eschatology . . . 341
Conclusion , > 1 . . 369
Bibliography .,,,.. 379
Index .,.,*•. 391

XVI

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
No word in our language — not even " Socialism " — has been employed
more loosely than " Mysticism.'' Dean Inge.
The religious feeling is a fact which psychology simply analyses and follows
in its transformations, but it is incompetent in the matter of its objective
value. RiBOT.

ERRATA.

On p. 237, the words from " birds and angels " to
mounded feet," and on p. 239, the words from " He
3ws " to " Sacred Heart," should have been acknow-
tged as from John Cordelier, The Spiral Way (1912),
. 129 and 132.
On p. 296 (footnote), instead of " also his interesting
)nograph," read " also A. Dorner's interesting mono-
iph."WTierever Thomas Traherne's work is referred to, read
Centuries of Meditations " for " Centuries of Medi-
ion."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII
Mysticism and Nature : Symbolism

PAGE

CHAPTER IX

Mysticism and Philosophy

. 241

CHAPTER X
Mysticism and Theology . . , 283
CHAPTER XI
Mysticism and Eschatology . . . 341
Conclusion , . ... 369
Bibliography .(,,.. 37q
Index .,.,,,. 391

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

No word in our language — not even " Socialism " — has been employed
more loosely than " Mysticism." Dean Inge.
The religious feeling is a fact which psychology simply analyses and follows
in its transformations, but it is incompetent in the matter of its objective
value. KiBOT.

SYNOPSIS
The appeal of Mysticism — Its historical function — ^The
present-day revival of interest in Mysticism : the influence of
the new religious psychology and the study of comparative
religion — The need for a valid intellectual appreciation of
Mysticism. I. A fundamental misunderstanding : failure to
distinguish between the mystical experience and its form and
background — This confusion strengthened by the new psycho
logical interpretation of Mysticism — The psychological method
to be' supplemented by the historical — Its reducing and
abstracting character — Dr. Rufus M. Jones on psychology —
Psychology a science of origins, not of validity. II. The weak
ness of the psychological method illustrated from Leuba's
A Psychological Study of Religion — Arbitrary distinction
between metaphysical and empirical theology — Psychology
discredited by attempts to usurp function of metaphysics —
The criteria of religious experience outside the realm of
psychology — ^Miss Underbill's application of the psychological
method to Jesus and St. Paul. III. Difficulty of defining
Mysticism — Contradictory definitions — Questions to be
answered in subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Beneath the currents which by action and reaction
have gone to shape Christian thought there sounds,
like the fabled sunken bell, the strain of Mysticism.
Thrust down by victorious institutional, rational
and moralistic forces, the mystic note floats up from
the depths — now muffled, now clear. Every now
and again the penalty of success overtakes the ruling
system, and Christian men, disillusioned of a hollow
civilisation and an externalised Church, listen to
the submerged melody and find it a song of de
liverance ; and out of such moments of reaction are
born the great spiritual movements, whether ex-
pUcitly mystical or only showing deep affinities with
Mysticism. Thus out of the protest against a young
Church already secularised and hardened into inflexi
bility there came Montanism with its wild prophetic
passion, to die and to reappear again and again in divers
forms throughout the course of Church history. Thus
in a time of unparalleled spiritual and moral bank
ruptcy, when the corruptions of the Church, the
" Babylonish Captivity," the great Civil War and the
Black Death conspired to wean the soul from the
intoxicating rhythm of external cults and affairs and
attune it to the murmur of eternity upon the horizon,
that most elastic and elusive of mystical groups, the
3

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Friends of God, came into existence. Again, when
the new-born Reformation theology tended to exhaust
itself in the correction of abuses and a negative
polemic against Rome and met men in revolt against
the external authority of a Church with the no less
external authority of a book and a creed, the so-
called " spiritual reformers " bequeathed to a Church
which despised and persecuted them not only
" a religion of inward life and power," but also the
foundations of a new theology.
And to-day once more a silence of disillusionment
and misgiving has fallen upon the human spirit, and
in the most unlikely quarters men are wondering if
there be not some unguessed balm of healing, some
transcendent word of liberation, in the dim and
unfamiliar depth of mystical religion. Once more
the spectacle of a tragically successful materialistic
civilisation dying in blood and fire is shattering the
delusions of a shallow and complacent optimism and
driving us back upon the deeps of the soul where
God speaks His creative and redeeming Word. And
while this return upon the inwardness of things is
not general in the sense of being a popular movement,
it is so widely spread and so often found in places
which seemed given over to the most naked material
ism that it may be argued with conviction that we
are on the verge of a true revival of mystical religion.
What precise form this revival will take it is not
easy to conjecture. As far as one can see, it is not
likely to conform to any clear-cut type — at any rate,
in its initial developments. It will follow not the
mechanism of the " mystic way," but the spirit, which,
4

INTRODUCTORY
bound to no one schetna, links the severe and culti
vated insight of a St. John of the Cross to the homely
vision of Miss Anna Bunston's Wiltshire peasant who
communes with God under his apple tree. That the
new interest in Mysticism has thrown the door wide
for the charlatan and the pseudo-adept, and has
fostered a craze for the " supernatural " in which
a cold Athenian curiosity and a blind pathetic
credulity are strangely mingled, need not cause us to
look askance at the present renascence of mystical
feeling. Such amateur cults are the inevitable ex
crescences of a deep and genuine movement towards
spiritual reality.
Of positive elements which have contributed to a
revived interest in Mysticism two must be mentioned
— the new religious psychology and the study of
comparative religion. The first brought unexpected
support to a theology based upon the reality,
autonomy, and self-evident character of the religious
experience ; the second, while superficially tending
towards a false tolerance, has really gone to demon-
:strate the uniqueness of Christianity. In impressing
it upon us that the aim and vital impulse of all
xeligions is communion with the Unseen and the
Eternal, the study of comparative religion serves
to throw those elements in Christianity which make
it the religion of ethical and spiritual communion
with God into sharp relief against the many muddy
and sterile factors that stultify the influence of the
^reat ethnic religions.
But while a present-day revival of interest in
.Mysticism must be accepted as a fact, it remains to
5

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
ask how much of it is merely the unconsidered
sympathy of minds touched with a vague mystic
feeling and ready to accept as genuine Mysticism
anything that ministers to their mood, often mistaking
an instinct for spiritual beauty for a vision of spiritual
reality, and how much is based upon a valid appre
ciation of Mysticism. The intellectual element needs
special emphasis here, for while it is quite obvious
that the humblest and most untutored soul with a
genius for spiritual reality may be a mystic of the
loftiest type without any exphcitly inteUectual con
ception of the nature of Mysticism, it is equally
clear that a juster inteUectual appreciation of what
is reaUy involved in Mysticism may result in a
curious metamorphosis of opinion. In some cases it
would convert the uninformed enthusiast into a cold
critic ; in others it would transform the prejudiced
decrier into a sympathetic inquirer. No subject is
more impenetrably hedged about with difficulties,
ambiguities and misunderstandings, and any treat
ment of Mysticism which is to be of genuine service
must begin with an attempt to resolve some of the
main difficulties which beset the average student.
I
To begin with a fundamental source of misunder
standing. Mysticism stands primarily for a religious
experience, but it also, at any rate in its historical
form and development, involves certain philosophical
and theological presuppositions : it has, in fact, a
history and a background. The inevitable result is
6

INTRODUCTORY
that many who live by the mystical experience, but
who are repelled by the philosophy and theology
underlying the classical forms of Mysticism, frankly
declare themselves averse to it ; while others who
neither possess, nor would very much care to possess,
a genuine mystical experience are attracted by its
philosophical and theological background and like
to be accounted mystics. A case in point here is
that of the person who revolts from the historicity
and moralism of a narrow evangelical theology and
desires an expression of the Divine activity in cosmic
terms. His natural bent of mind is towards ideas
rather than towards " facts," and he will therefore
find a most satisfying system of thought in many
types of Mysticism. He may have but the slightest
sympathy with its devotional aspect, and may even
be repelled by the passionately personal element in
the true mystic's approach to God. But he finds
Mysticism identified with the view of God and the
world which corresponds most closely with his own
intellectual affinities, and so he has no hesitation in
confessing himself the disciple of masters whose in
most mind and spiritual practice he would be the
first to repudiate.
This initial misunderstanding is greatly strength
ened by the new psychological method of treating
Mysticism which has found its most able and attractive
English exponent in Miss Evelyn Underbill. Such
a method proceeds upon the fundamental unity of
aU mystical experience. Christian or pagan. Eastern
or Western, and ignores altogether the historical
settings of the various periods and great figures of
7

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Mysticism. It introduces us to the movements of
the timeless mystic soul ; it takes no cognisance of
the raw material of contemporary ideas, hereditary
prepossessions, and ecclesiastical influences upon
which that soul worked and which reacted upon
it. It therefore tends to obUterate the distinction
between the temporal and accidental and the per
manent and essential elements in Mysticism, reducing
everything to the same level of timelessness. Of
the value of this method, which marks a most im
portant advance in our understanding of Mysticism,
it is not necessary to speak at this late day. All its
defects are inherent to specialised treatments of any
subject, and specialised treatment is fast becoming
the only possible method of doing justice to the
increasing complexity and vastness of every field of
knowledge. To-day Mysticism is seen to be a subject
of far wider reference and greater complexity than
was dreamt of by its earlier interpreters, and to
attempt a general treatment combining the historical,
theological, and psychological methods within the
limits of one volume would be to court failure. But
while specialised interpretations are a necessity, it is
to be regretted that writersfwho take the exclusively
psychological view are not always careful to point
out that their interpretation needs to be supple
mented by the historical method, with the result that
the beginner is confronted with needless difficulties
and discrepancies. AUowing to the utmost for the
deep principle of timeless unity which links the
mystics of all climes and ages together, it still re
mains that a great deal, not only of mystic thought,

INTRODUCTORY
but also of the form of mystical experience, is deter
mined or coloured by the religious and intellectual
conceptions of its day. It follows that an inter
pretation Uke the psychological, which is, of neces
sity, from the historical point of view, an exposition
in vacuo, must result in investing its subject with an
air of unreality. As a matter of fact, however richly
it is illustrated from the lives and sayings of the
mystics, and however detailed and accurate its
analysis of concrete cases, it can, in the last resort,
only introduce us to that indispensable but none the
less misleading abstraction " the mystic," just as
such books as Professor James' Varieties of Religious
Experience, in spite of their wealth in genuine human
documents, leave us*in the end with a useful diagram
or skeleton," the religious temperament," but utterly
and necessarily fail to bring us into touch with the
religious life. It cannot introduce us to Mysticism
in living interaction with the general stream of human
Ufe ; and it must be remembered that such inter
action took place even where the individual mystic
was a recluse out of aU physical contact with his age.
Moreover, the mystic, viewed as a psychological
abstraction, is not a unity, for psychology can give
us nothing more than a succession of psychological
states ; it cannot give the Divine activity initiating,
sustaining, and unifying the human. As Dr. Rufus
Jones reminds us,^ psychology is as empirical as any
other science and possesses no ladder by which it
can transcend the empirical order. It does not, and
1 spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Intro
duction, pp. xvi — xix.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
in its very nature cannot, do more than describe
certain reactions which take place in the soul in
response to stimuU which may, or may not, have
objective value. But that which gives its meaning
to religious experience is precisely that transcendent
and objective element concerning which psychology
has nothing to say. It is when God says, " Seek ye
My face," that the soul replies, " Thy face. Lord, wiU
I seek." Psychology merely presents to us the
soul in the act of seeking ; it can tell us nothing
about the object of her search, nor even whether
there is an " object " outside of her own self-induced
activity. And when psychologists here and there
make the categorical assertion that religious expe
rience is nothing more than the subjective activity of
the soul revolving round its own axis, they are
venturing upon a judgment which, as psychologists,
they have no right to make. Psychology is a science
of origins, not of validity ; and to claim for it the
power of deciding upon the validity or truth of ideas
is, in the end, to discredit it.
II
A characteristic instance of this vicious use of
psychology, aU the more significant as coming from
one who is confessedly the reverse of a materialist, is
seen in Professor Leuba's treatment of the relation
between theology and psychology.^ Professor Leuba
starts from the assumption that " the gods of religion
are inductions from experience." ^ He then pro-
1 A Psychological Study of Religion, Chap. XI., especially pp. 244 — 261.
^ Ibid., Preface, p. viii. 10

INTRODUCTORY
ceeds to make an arbitrary distinction between
metaphysical and empirical theology. The former
he rejects, in a somewhat RitschUan fashion, as giving
us a God-idea which has nothing to do with religion.^
The latter resolves itself, in his view, into a mere
matter of psychological analysis. Theologians have
made a hopeless muddle of the problem : the only
person who can grapple with it is the scientific
psychologist, of whom theologians have so craven and
superstitious a fear.
Now when Dr. Leuba starts from the position that
the gods of religion are inductions from experience,
one need not quarrel with that thesis, provided it be
understood to mean that the induction is made by the
experient, and not by the analytic psychologist who
coolly anatomises the experience in the sterile atmo
sphere of his laboratory. It is one thing for the
believer to say, " I know that God exists, because I
have felt Him working in me to comfort, strengthen
and inspire. I know Christ saves, for I called upon
Him in the hour of temptation and was made
strong to tread sin beneath my feet." It is quite
another thing to claim that the validity or otherwise
of such a conclusion can be established by psycho
logical analysis. The soul that has had a deep,
inward experience of God may utter its conviction
1 Dr. Leuba's criticism of the Ritschlian position is characteristic. He
describes the " empirical apologetics " which is the outcome of Ritschhanism
as resting upon " two mutually exclusive propositions. On the one hand, it
would protect religion against metaphysics by setting up inner experiences
as . . . the only source of rehgious knowledge. On the other hand, it
would defend religion against science by invoking the principle of tran
scendence according to which science is incompetent; to deal with religious
knowledge and in particular with the question of God " [A Psychological
Study of Religion, p. 244).
II

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
with a spiritual authority unchallenged within its
own sphere. The psychologist can only make a
partial pronouncement upon such experience.
While one may frankly agree with Dr. Leuba that
theology has failed to acknowledge and utilise the
indispensable work of the scientific psychologist, that
work, valuable as it is, is strictly Umited in scope.
His claim to make religious experience the subject
of analysis is fuUy justified, but not the claim that his
analysis is exhaustive : he must be content to work hand
in hand with the metaphysician, the theologian, and
the historian. He cannot usurp their functions with
out bringing his science into disrepute. After aU, we
cannot speak of reUgious experience without asking
not only. Of what ? but. Of Whom ? And the validity
of such experience is found in its relationship to and
action upon the whole coherent system of our experi
ence, which involves metaphysical, theological, his
torical, and other problems outside the scope of
psychological analysis. The question is whether a
given religious experience unifies our world, is in
harmony with universal principles, solves problems
which no other power could solve, and is effective
in something more than the crude, pragmatic sense.
Psychology can, at its best, only give us one half of a
movement in which it is precisely the remaining half
which justifies the whole. This is obvious ; yet such
is the glamour which the very term " religious
psychology" has for certain minds, that a book like
Professor James' Varieties of Religious Experience is
hailed as the final justification of religious experience
against aU assaults, and the complete solution of ^U
12

INTRODUCTORY
mysteries involved in the soul's contact with the
Eternal. How far astray an exclusively psychologi
cal method may lead a most gifted exponent is seen
in Miss Underbill's The Mystic Way, where she
attempts the tour de force of fitting the experience of
Jesus and of Paul into the conventional three-stage
mould of classical Mysticism, with the result of
sacrificing all sanity of historical interpretation with
out gaining even a consistent psychology.
It foUows, therefore, from aU this, that a really
adequate study of Mysticism must include researches
in fields not immediately related to the mystical
experience. It certainly involves, in the case of the
study of Christian mystics, a knowledge of Church
history, and especiaUy of the great theological
struggles ; also, of course, a knowledge of the history
of philosophy and more especially of that move
ment which may roughly be called Platonism, as it
influenced the thought of speculative mystics in
succeeding ages and, indeed, may stiU be said to
influence it. One half of what seems bizarre, ir
rational or irrelevant to the average reader of mystical
Uterature will become luminous and significant when
viewed in relation to the particular inteUectual or
religious confiict out of which it was born, and the
tendency against which it was designed to react.
A subsidiary diificulty which meets the student
on the very threshold arises out of the inevitable
limitations and idiosyncrasies of mystical literature.
His introduction to the original sources is rendered
difficult by the peculiar language of the great mystics
— a language which has no parallel in the religious
13

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
phraseology of to-day. And when he turns from the
original sources to the interpreters of Mysticism, he
finds that our best writers are entirely steeped in the
language of the great mystics. This is natural enough,
but we need not conceal from ourselves that the
very thing which seems most real and congenial to
the writer impresses the reader who is not familiarised
with mystical phraseology as unreal, if not deliberately
affected. The discerning reader wiU not for a
moment deny that the language and presentation of
such interpreters — one can only once more instance
Miss Underbill — are touched with beauty of an ar
resting and keenly poignant type, and have their own
spiritual distinction and charm. But their beauty is
of a weirdly unfamiUar character, and as the reader
gropes his way through phrases consecrated by age
long mystic uses, but to him dim as faded tapestry
and remote as an old-world fable, he misses aU sense
of continuity with his own life and experience.
There is nothing more curiously powerful than the
influence of phraseology upon the mind, and in eight
cases out of ten a proposition which would be con
vincing if couched in the language of the reader's
inteUectual habitat becomes "sicklied o'er with the
pale cast " of artificiaUty and quasi-esotericism when
presented in a foreign tongue.

Ill
To arrive at a satisfactory working definition of
Mysticism is not easy, and an acquaintance with
existing definitions wUl increase, rather than lessen,

INTRODUCTORY
the difficulty. One need only glance over the well-
known definitions of theologians, philosophers and
poets^ to realise the complexity and multiplicity of a
subject that can produce such a variety of conflicting
impressions upon trained minds. We find Noack
laying it down that Mysticism is " formless specu
lation," while Coventry Patmore insists that it is the
most concrete and definite kind of spiritual appre
hension of which man is capable. Goethe leaves us
groping in the twilight after he has told us that
Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic
of the feelings ; Lasson, on the other hand, accuses it
of overvaluing knowledge and reason. Cardinal
Wiseman extols it as the science of love ; Harnack
stigmatises it as rationalism applied to the sphere
above reason. Ewald holds mystical theology to be
in consonance with simple evangelical faith ; the
theosophical mystic defines his object as initiation
into the Gnosis, the wisdom of Divine mysteries.
Ultramontane writers agree in defining Mysticism
as the experience of miraculous, or at least super
natural, phenomena ; and Protestant writers deny
that such phenomena are essential, or indeed anything
but harmful, to the mystic quest. A large but steadily
decreasing number of interpreters charge the mystics
with laziness, selfishness, and indifference to human
woe ; an increasing number, on the contrary, agree
with Ewald that " the true mystic never withdraws
himself from the business of life — no, not even from
the smaUest business."
^ For an extensive and interesting list of definitions, see Inge, Christian
Mysticism, Appendix A. 15

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
A group of theologians, including Principal Forsyth
and Professor Oman in England, and Professors
Herrmann and Schlatter in Germany, foUow the
RitschUan school in contending that Mysticism, so
far from being the movement of the Christian soul
at its highest power, is essentiaUy alien to Christianity
and must be combated as a weakening and vitiating
influence. They are sharply opposed by another
group, including Dean Inge, Dr. Gwatkin, the late
Canon Moberly, and many young and rising men,
who see in Mysticism the central and essential
element in Christianity to which theological thought
must return. To take one more instance. There
are those who agree with Harnack that Mysticism is
essentiaUy Catholic, and a Protestant mystic a logical
absurdity ; while others assert with Dr. Gwatkin
that the basal principle of Mysticism is specifically
Protestant. Such glaring discrepancies of definition cannot
be accounted for by relegating them entirely to
the idiosyncrasies of the various interpreters. It
is obvious that a person of expUcitly practical
bent wiU be incUned to accuse the mystics of idle
dreaming, and a scholar of severely inteUectual type
wiU charge them with hypertrophy of sentiment;
but this does not account for the amazing contra-
dictoriness of existing definitions, many of which
are determined by no such temperamental bias. A
more generaUy valid explanation is found in the
characteristic ambiguity of many of the great mystic
writers who used loosely terms which the modern scribe
uses with more or less scientific exactitude, and who,
i6

INTRODUCTORY
where they possessed scholarly training, employed
the language of a philosophy and a psychology un
familiar to many otherwise well-informed interpreters.
But the main explanation lies elsewhere. The con
tradictions and antinomies that irritate us as we
study the existing definitions are, with certain excep
tions, not due to the temperamental or inteUectual
bias of the interpreter, nor are they to be accounted
for>;by verbal misunderstandings : they are inherent
in Mysticism itself. A movement of the soul which
unites in itself the timeless and the progressive, the
static and the dynamic, passivity and activity,
absorption and independence, surrender and ac
quisition, must hold within itself the most baffling
oppositions, the most obstinate antinomies. Paradox,
passion, " offence " — these are the three " notes "
of Christianity which are most clearly impressed
upon the mystic heart. The contradictions of those
who essay to define Mysticism are but echoes of more
vital contradictions in the thing defined — contra
dictions which are not, indeed, outside logic, but
which demand a larger logic than mere ratiocina
tion to resolve them.
Even if we lay this conflicting jumble of opinion
aside and adopt as our starting point the rough
statement that Mysticism is a direct inward appre
hension of the Divine, we do not escape the pres
sure of inherent antinomies. Immediately certain
questions present themselves. Is a special sense or
spiritual instinct necessary for such apprehension,
or is it achieved by means of the normal powers or
faculties of the soul raised to their highest potency ?
17

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Is this development of the spiritual powers open to
all, or confined to an esoteric circle ? What relation
does mystic apprehension bear to the psychic pheno
mena of Mysticism ? What is the place of the con
templative and the active elements in the mystic
life ? What is the relation of the mystic to the world
of nature, of thought, and of social relationships f
To these questions and to others arising therefrom
the succeeding chapters will attempt an answer,
keeping in view throughout the meaning and value of
Mysticism for the present day.

i8

CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
Within man is the soul of the Holy, the wise silence, the universal Beauty
the Eternal One. EmEK90N.
The most dangerous and lasting of all the aberrations of Mysticism arosi
from yielding to the inordinate desire to establish the fact of some conscious
activity otber than Reason imparted by God to the elect only. Rtc^JAC.

SYNOPSIS
Is there a special mystic sense or organ ? — Is mystical appre
hension open to all or the pecuUar property of an esoteric
circle ? I. A special mystic sense asserted by few modern
writers — The influence of Gnosticism and Manichsean dualism
— Mediseval fjnooKoyCa : Hugh of St. Victor — ^Miss Underbill on
the mystic faculty — Is it something other than reason, will and
emotion ? — Is it to be sought in the sub-conscious ? — Critique
of Miss Underbill's position — Mystic apprehension not a special
organ, but reason, wiU and emotion turned upon their source
and goal — The place of passivity in mystic apprehension —
Jacob Boehme on true mystic " silence " — ^Mysticism not the
whole of religion — A " pure " mystic is a monstrosity —
Coventry Patmore on spiritual apprehension — Valid and
degraded forms of Mysticism. II. The problem of esoteri
cism : are there two " ways " to God ? — The initiate versus
the exoteric disciple — Esotericism and universality of appeal
in mystical literature — The mystic and the common people :
Tauler, Hilton, Law — ^A vicious view of esotericism — The
esoteric principle inherent in life itself, but misused by quasi-
mystical cults — The true initiate — The elect not a segregated
caste of adepts, but pioneers — Coventry Patmore's portrait
of a saint.

CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
The question as to whether there is a special mystic
sense or organ, and whether this faculty is — in its
rudimentary form at least — common to all or the
pecuUar mark of an esoteric fraternity, has exercised
mystical writers of all races and ages. Speaking
roughly, the philosophical mystics, who derived their
metaphysics from Neoplatonism and their theology
from the Greek Fathers, held that in every soul there
is a core of that God-likeness which alone can com
prehend God, and that spiritual apprehension is
therefore the most truly " natural " activity of the
soul. The devotional and practical mystics, on the
other hand (but this phrase must not be taken to imply
that the philosophical mystics lacked devotion and
spiritual passion), being influenced partly by the
old Gnostic leaven, partly by the Roman doctrine
of a salvation and grace imparted from without,
tended to conceive of a special organ of apprehension
other than the will, the emotions and the reason, and
imparted or withheld as the occult justice of God
decreed. In an age when philosophy had fallen into
disrepute among the reUgious and psychology in the
modern sense was yet unborn, the doctrine of a
special mystical faculty was readily accepted by many
practical mystics as affording a plausible solution of
21

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
such problems as the apparent inability of the mass
of mankind to assimilate mystical teaching, and the
seeming violence done to the human reason in mystical
experience. I
Few modern writers are bold enough to argue for
the existence of a separate mystic sense, different in
kind from those faculties of the soul which the mystic
shares with the rest of humanity. Such a pro
position is rejected by most writers as a mediaeval
survival which cannot for a moment bear the test of
either psychology or metaphysics. It takes us back
to Gnosticism at its worst, to a division of men into
three classes — mere animals, initiates of the secret
wisdom, and that unfortunate middle class which can
neither attain to adeptship nor wallow contentedly
in the slough of material things. It marks a retro
gression to that Manichaean duaUsm which has
haunted Christian thought from age to age, and is
the peculiar snare of those who approach Mysticism
without an adequate study of the influences that
helped to give it its traditional forms. Such students
are constantly betrayed into an attempt to graft
unrecognised Gnostic and Manichsean elements on to
their own essentially modern monistic view of the
universe, with the result of presenting a piebald inter
pretation shot through with an element of pseudo-
occultism which puts sensible persons on their guard.
Mystics who assume a special mystic sense almost
invariably oppose it to reason, which is understood
by them not merely in the narrow sense of the dis-
22

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
cursive understanding, but as including the whole
inteUectual and perceptive side of life. Thus Hugh
of St. Victor tells us that when the soul is immersed
in contemplation of the Absolute " the Reason of the
soul sleeps, because, ignorant of the cause of such
happiness, it is not capable of conceiving its origin,
its present reality, and its purpose." ^ But this
implies, per contra, that when reason wakes again,
it either flatly denies the reality of the soul's mystic
vision, or else is completely unaware of it. In either
case a dualism has been introduced which would make
mystic apprehension an alienation in the patho
logical sense of that word.
A most interesting discussion of the nature of
mystic apprehension is contributed by Miss Under
hiU.^ Her position is not altogether clear, and her
statement self-contradictory in places ; but as an
attempt to re-state the old doctrine of a special
mystic sense in terms of modern psychology it is
of considerable significance. Miss Underbill clearly
postulates a special mystical faculty, which she pro
ceeds to relate to the ordinary or " normal " faculties
of the soul. In her view, the special mystic sense
" differs from and transcends the emotional, intel
lectual and volitional life of ordinary men " ^ ; but
this must not be taken to imply that it is opposed to
or separated from that life. On the contrary, it
" has attachments at each point to the emotion, the
intellect and the will " and " can express itself
1 De Contemplatione et ejus Speciebus [trans. Haureau], p. 140.
2 Mysticism, pp. 58-69.
» Ibid., p. 59.
23

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
under each of the aspects which these terms
connote

" 1

The intention here is clearly to escape from the
impossible irrationalism and duaUsm of mediaeval
Mysticism, but the choice of such an expression as
" attachments," with its suggestion of an external
addition to the ordinary faculties, and a using of them
as a man uses tools, is unfortunate. It belongs to the
conception of things which in the realm of religion
has made Divine grace and inspiration to consist in
the introduction from the " outside " of a power
fundamentally different from the soul that receives
it. To preach such a doctrine from the pulpit to-day
would be a reversion to a superseded view of God and
the world. Why, then, introduce terms sufficiently
ambiguous to suggest such a view into a discussion of
Mysticism ? If mystic apprehension is anything but
a pathological symptom, it must conform to the
criterion of identity which we apply to aU " super
natural " facts. It must be continuous with the
emotion, the intellect and the wiU, not " attaching "
itself to them and, as it were, expressing itself through
them, as the Dsmon was supposed to express himself
through the tranced prophet, but augmenting them
from within, " adding the same to the same." It is
not for a moment suggested that Miss Underbill
intends anything so external as this, but her use of the
term " attachment " and her quotation in this con
nection from Plotinus — " Another inteUect, different
from that which reasons and is denominated
rational " — imply an opposition rather than a vital
^ Mysticism, p. 59.
24

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
connection between the mystic sense and reason. In
a passage which seems to represent her final position
she contends that " since normal man, by means of '
his feeling, thought and will, is utterly unable to
set up relations with spiritual Reality, it is clearly
in the depth of being — in these unplumbed levels of
personality — that we must search if we would find
the organ, the power, by which he is to achieve the
mystic quest. That alteration of consciousness which
takes place in contemplation can only mean the
emergence from this fund or bottom of the soul
of some faculty which diurnal life keeps hidden in
the deeps." ^ In what foUows she admits that that
power or organ is present in its rudimentary form, and
more or less deeply hidden, with aU men, but that in
the mystics, those " natural explorers of the Infinite,"
the silent, hidden " DweUer in the Innermost " be
comes active and articulate. There is a " putting to '
sleep of that normal self which usuaUy wakes and the
awakening of that ' Transcendent Self ' which usually
sleeps." ^ It is, in fact, " a re-making of the whole
personaUty in the interests of one bit or spot of man
which belongs not to Time but to Eternity." '
AU this does not teU us anything very definite
about the precise nature of that special mystic sense
which is to be found hidden in the depths of the
personality — the sense which Miss UnderhiU seems to
identify at times with the whole spiritual self, the
hidden man of the heart. On two points she is quite

1 Mysticism, p. 6i.
' Ibid., p. 67.
* Ibid., p. 63.

25

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
clear. The hidden faculty must not be identified
with that very mixed and muddy quantity, the sub
conscious ; and its action upon will, feeling and intel
lect is positive, enhancing and not paralysing their
activity. The mystics, she says, " have roused the
Dweller in the Innermost from its slumbers and
round it have unified their life. Heart, reason,
wiU are there in full action, drawing their energy,
not from the shadow-show of sense, but from the
deeps of true Being ; where a lamp is lit and a
consciousness awake of which the sleepy crowd
remains obUvious." ^ Here she stands in whole
some contradiction to the negative conception of the
mystic faculty as held by the Victorines, St. Bona
ventura, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa and many
others, who think of its action as a process of empty
ing and stripping bare and silencing and putting to
sleep the normal powers of the soul.
It would, indeed, appear from the tenor of Miss
Underbill's language that what she means by a
special mystical sense is really man's susceptibility
for God. But in that case her choice of language
is particularly unfortunate, for the soul's suscepti
bility for God cannot be legitimately symboUsed
by such spatial figures as " a bit or spot of man."
Nor can it be described as an occult faculty which
moves and inspires heart, reason, and wiU. It is
in reality nothing else than the intellectual, volitional
and emotional powers turned upon their source
and goal. So far from the " normal " man being
" utterly unable to set up relations with spiritual
1 Mysticism, p. 75.
26

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
reality by means of his feeling, thought and will,"
these three are the organs by which man is intended to
make contact with God ; and wherever they corre
spond merely to the " natural " world, we have a
condition which, so far from being normal, is, in the
deepest sense, abnormal. It is at this point that a
return to the root-principles which gave to early
Greek theology its enlarging and energising power
wiU save Mysticism from an essentially narrowing
dualistic conception. The early Greek Fathers taught
that man's susceptibility for God is not something
other than " normal," but that it is the natural
craving of a spirit constituted for God and inalienably
affiliated with the Divine. It is not something moving
the reason, directing the will, setting the emotions
on fire : it is reason, will and feeling exercising their
most truly natural function — the whole personality
of man in contact with its Source and End. We are
accustomed to say, in common religious parlance,
that man has a deep hunger for God, and the phrase
suggests a special capacity which cries out to find
its fulfilment in God. But what do we reaUy mean
by it ? Is it not that man's heart cries for a home in
the heart of God, that man's mind aches for the light
of the Eternal Reason, that man's will gropes for
anchorage in the Divine wiU ? One or other of
the three faculties may be primary in the move
ment towards God, according to the individual
temperament, or all three may have an equal share
in it. But whichever be predominant, man's
hunger for God cannot, without violating all good
sense, be described as a special spiritual organ or
27

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
capacity. In the case of the mystic that suscepti-
bUity for God which is latent and neglected in the
average soul reaches its full development and becomes
real apprehension — a vital perception of Reality
more clear and convincing than the testimony of
the senses. As Miss UnderhiU rightly says, " Just as
genius in any of the arts is, humanly speaking, the
final term of a power of which each individual pos
sesses the rudiments, so Mysticism may be looked
upon as the final term, the active expression of a
power latent in the whole race." ^
But here it may be objected that a conception
of the mystic faculty which identifies it with emo
tion, intellect and will raised to their highest potency
and exercising their most truly " natural " function
contradicts not only the theory, but the experience
of all the great master-mystics, who invariably found
that the Eternal can only be experienced in a pro
found and brooding silence extending even to thought
and desire. Nothing, indeed, is more common in
mystical experience than the vision and transfigura
tion that come to the soul within the dark "cloud
of unknowing," the mysterious spiritual potency and
fertility which are the outcome of deep, interior quiet.
How then can we say that mystic apprehension is
reason and feeling and will in supreme action f A
passage from Jacob Boehme on true quiet of soul
suggests the answer to such a question : " Cease but
from thine own activity, steadfastly fixing thine
eye upon one point. For this end, gather in all
thy thoughts and by faith press into the Centre,
^ Mysticism, p. 87.
28

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
laying hold upon the Word of God, which is infalUble
and which hath called thee. Be thou obedient to this
call, and be silent before the Lord sitting alone with
Him in thy inmost and most hidden cell, thy mind
being centraUy united in itself and attending His wiU
in the patience of hope. So shall thy light break
forth as the morning." ^ Here the two elements which
make up true silence of the soul are clearly set forth.
There is atterition — the capacity for steady and
sustained insight into reality — and there is the
active co-operation of the obedient spirit. Boehme's
" silence before the Lord " is not that sleep of the
reason which Hugh of St. Victor extols, for the
sleeping reason cannot " gather in all its thoughts."
It is rather the wise " passiveness " of Wordsworth
by which the soul is nourished. It is reason (by
which is meant not the discursive understanding to
which Boehme rightly denies spiritual vision, but
" the whole logic of the personality ") in that state
of pure receptiveness and purged passivity which is
in itself an act involving all the energies of the soul.
Reasoning and speculation are indeed suspended,
but only for the sake of those " good thoughts " which
are " the free children of God and do not come by
thinking." Such activity of the soul may be described,
as an " alienation," but not in the sense of a drugging
or hypnotisation of the faculties : it is reason, wiUI
and emotion alienated from their preoccupation with
the ephemeral, and naturalised to their high original
uses. It should be remembered here that it is quite
• Dialogues ofthe Supersensual Life, p. 56.
29

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
iUegitimate to claim a monopoly of the spiritual
instinct for Mysticism, as Miss Underbill appears to
do. The mystical is only one element in religion, and
while every true Christian is, to some extent, a mystic,
the spiritual self comes to its own in temperaments
whose main bent is not in the direction of Mysticism.
Communion with God, spiritual inwardness, inspired
insight into ReaUty, are not confined to mystics ; nor
must it be forgotten that the greatest mystics have
owed their force and stability to the admixture
of other elements, whether rational, evangelical
or institutional, in their spiritual constitution. A
" pure " mystic is, indeed, unthinkable outside the
madhouse. For a description of mystical apprehension which,
however partial and defective, has the merit of being
untechnical and modern in feeling we may turn to
Coventry Patmore. His terminology differs some
what widely from that of the present-day psycho
logical interpreter of Mysticism, and he takes his
start from that form and degree of real apprehension
which is " emphatically the quaUty which constitutes
good sense." " To see rightly is the first of human
qualities ; right feeling and right action are normally
its consequence. There are two ways of seeing :
one is to comprehend, which is to see aU round a
thing and to embrace it ; one is to Apprehend, which
is to see it in part or to take hold of it. A thing
may be really taken hold of which is much too big
for embracing.^ . . , You cannot read the writings of
Newman, Hooker, Pascal and St. Augustine without
^ Religio Poette, p. z8z.
30

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
being strongly impressed with the presumption that
they have a real apprehension of the things they
profess to believe ; and, since they do not justify
in any other way the theory that they are lunatics,
a right-minded reader is disposed to think that what
they have thus seen exists, and that his not having
seen such things need not materially diminish that
probabiUty.^ . . . Genius is nothing but great good
sense or real apprehension exercised upon objects
more or less out of common sight, and the chief
ingredient of even the highest and most heroic
sanctity is the same apprehension taking hold upon
spiritual truths and applying them to the conduct of
the interior as weU as the exterior life. . . .*
" The inteUect is the faculty of the seer. It dis
cerns truth as a living thing . . . without anything
that can properly be called ratiocination. • . .
Although this faculty of direct vision is very rare in
comparison with those of ordinary ratiocination and
memory, it is not nearly so rare as is supposed. . . .
For one seer who has the accomplishments and
opportunities whereby his faculty can be turned to
pubUc account, there are scores and hundreds who
possess and exercise for their private use their extra
ordinary perceptive powers. To whom has it not
happened, at one time or other, to witness the instan
taneous shattering of some splendid edifice of reasoning
and memory by the brief, Socratic interrogation of
some ignoramus who could see ? " ^
* Religio PoetdB, p. 285.
* Ibid; p. 284.
° Ibid., pp. 291-292.
31

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Fragmentary and of purely suggestive value as
this account is, it emphasises an important point —
the continuity of spiritual with ordinary apprehen
sion. The implication is not, of course, that every
person of good sense could exercise mystical appre
hension if only he felt so inclined, but that the
mystical apprehension is the highest rung of a ladder
which reaches from common sense to ecstasy
We are left, then, vpith a conception of mystical
apprehension which makes it not " another sort of
consciousness, another ' sense ' beyond the normal
qualities of the self " ^ ; but man's native suscepti
bility for God as the controlling principle of his
whole personality — that steeping of mind, heart and
will in what is vital and eternal, which is not the mere
beholding of a Divine Image, " with open face," but
the being " transformed into that same Image from
glory unto glory." It is the Seeing of which all
other seeing is but a shadowy type ; that eating of the
Bread of Heaven of which aU Eucharistic celebrations
are only a pale copy. While realised fully and ex
pUcitly by comparatively few, it is, in some degree, the
property of aU truly spiritual beings ; and the number
of inarticulate mystics who have neither the gift of
expressing their experience, nor the art of recognising
it for what it is, is far larger than we imagine. Above
all, it must be kept in mind that any so-caUed mystical
experience which is the result of putting the reason to
sleep, of self-hypnotisation, or of any deliberately
cultivated psychic process, is a degraded form of
Mysticism. However often such methods may have
' E. Underbill, Mysticism, p. 59.
^2

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
been employed in good faith by mystics of the most valid
insight and of the highest ethical character, they must,
in themselves, be regarded as belonging to an occultism
which has nothing in common with the high moral and
spiritual energies of the soul that seeks the Uving God.
II
We have seen that the mystic faculty is not a
special organ, but the development of what is rudi
mentary in aU. The point before us now is whether
this development is open to all, or whether the relation
of mystics to non-mystics is that of esoteric initiation
to exoteric discipleship. And here it must be borne
in mind that an esoteric circle need not necessarily
be a smaU one. We may grant quite readily that
while the great master-mystics are few, the number
of those who share the mystic gift without the power
of expressing it, or even of recognising it in themselves,
is far larger than we think, and yet we may hold that
the circle is closed — that not all men are capable of
reaching the point of development at which their
instinctive sense of God passes into vital perception.
The question is one that has agitated Christian
opinion in aU ages. On the one hand, we have those
who interpret the mystic " way " as a speciaUsed
form of the search for Reality to which only the
" elect " are caUed ; on the other, there are very many
who oppose this doctrine as alien to the spirit of
Christianity. For the Christian, they say, there is
but one road to God, and the wayfaring man, though
a fool, cannot err therein. Honesty, simplicity,
spiritual receptivity, a humble and loving heart,
33

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
these are the only conditions of initiation into a way
which is equally open to John the farm labourer and
to John the Divine. Between these two views the
inquirer stands perplexed. A healthy instinct makes
him recoil from the idea of a special order of initiates,
with its inevitable tendency to breed the most objec
tionable form of spiritual priggishness and to end in
a debased occultism. But over against that he has
intimate personal knowledge of men and women who
actuaUy live on loftier planes of spiritual insight
and activity than their fellows — ^whose life, indeed,
suggests a difference not merely in degree, but in
kind ; and such facts are stubborn things to quarrel
with. Moreover, the Bibles of aU religions are
standing witnesses to the fact that special intuitions
of truth and grace are given to elect souls. Nay,
every aspiring spirit has stood for brief but indelible
moments upon the confines of a new world, has
touched heights he was not competent to keep, has
felt in one passing flash of direct intuition that all
things were possible to him that beUeveth. Such
meteoric iUuminations have made him turn wistful
eyes to the Mystic Way, only to be repeUed once more
by its sharply defined stages, its unfamiUar mechanism
and its archaic trappings ; above aU, by its hateful
suggestion of esotericism.
When we turn to mystical Uterature the same oppo
sition confronts us. We are made conscious both of
a strict and intimate esotericism and of a broad and
far-reaching appeal to what is most truly and deeply
human in man. Its esotericism is not the provincial
temper of the sect, the secret society, the coterie of
34

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
adepts ; it is the august secrecy of the Holy Assembly
— that interior Church gathered together from every
age and nation, in which a humble shoemaker may be
the chief hierophant of mysteries and the little child
take place among the doctors. Hence we are not
surprised to find that the most influential parts of
mystical literature are not those which have gone to
produce sects and societies, but rather those which
speak most plainly to the universal human heart.
Such Uterature does not busy itself with the shibbo
leths of any " school " of mystical doctrine, but
opens up that philosophia perennis which is the only
theosophy that is not at the mercy of changing
intellectual fashions and is approved by the pure and
aspiring heart everywhere.
WhUe the vision of the mystics is " so inter
woven into the very fibre of his inmost being that
it refuses to be detached and offered to others
as material for mental assimilation," ^ God ever
comes to the true mystic seer, not merely as He who
has called him by name, but as " the light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
Knowing God as the hidden ground of his own being,
he also knows Him as the hidden ground of every
man's being ; and so, while he must ever say, " My
secret unto myself," he is also pledged to an apos
tolate among men. For him there can be no
frofanum vulgus — such paganism is entirely abhorrent
to the mystic genius. For him there is no such thing
as an " exoteric " crowd. At all times and in aU
places he is conscious of addressing himself to the
* W. F. Cobb, Mysticism and the Creed, p. 37.
35

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Divine witness in the heart, to the unknown Christ
in man. While, therefore, duly on his guard against
the casting of pearls before swine, no timid scruples
lest he profane the mysteries will keep him aloof
from the common people, nor wUl a vicious dignity
blind him to his kinship with his fellows. Among
Christian mystics, at any rate, we find little affec
tation of esotericism such as the uninformed critic
often assumes, but, on the contrary, a simple-hearted
wiUingness to impart of their treasure to aU who ask
in sincerity, and, not infrequently, the passion of
the preacher or prophet. Thus Tauler preached
Mysticism to crowded congregations of average
church-goers — to those who " made shoes by the
Holy Spirit " as weU as to those who wrote books.
Walter Hilton, that most humble and sweet-spoken
of English mystics, wrote for such as had not even a
working acquaintance with every-day religious lan
guage. In the writings of WilUam Law it is the simple
Rusticus, innocent even of the art of reading, who
loves Jacob Boehme and apprehends mysteries which
are the despair of the learned Academicus. Ruys-
broeck, most daringly speculative and esoteric of
Catholic mystics, was also one of the most easily
accessible of teachers, ever ready to open up the way
to the most ignorant and unpromising of inquirers.
And the instinct which prompts the mystic to stand
before a group or a crowd and make appeal, not
to the crowd-spirit, but to Him who ever goes in
advance of His messengers and who speaks in the
heart of the hearers before He speaks in the voice of
the preacher, has been amply justified by results.
36

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
In the most unlikely quarters souls have responded to
the mystic witness. There is no " church " so uni
versal, so representative, as the innumerable company
of unknown mystics throughout the world. Not
only the restless and unconventional, the wild
adventurers in search of the Mysterium Magnum,
answer to the mystic message ; in every humble
work-a-day Christian congregation there are those
who Uve by mystic apprehension. The discerning
traveUer marvels again and again at the large number
of poor unlettered folk, often in remote country
sides, who have deep kinship with the great mystics,
and, by an infallible instinct, understand what
they have never been taught in so many words,
holding in toil-worn hands the key to realms of
spiritual truth whose gates are barred to the deliberate
frequenter of mystic societies. " I have heard,"
says Coventry Patmore, " some of our ' savages,'
haunters of little ' Bethels,' ' Sions' and * Carmels,'
use the obscurest imagery of Scripture with an
evident grasp of its significance which many a
Bishop might have envied." ^ The fact is that
our conception of the mystic life is determined by an
entirely false and mischievous convention. We have
become obsessed by a doctrine of mystic esotericism
which the great mystics would have repudiated in
wrath. Everything they have written concerning
the severe secrecy of the mystic quest has been exter
nalised by us, until we have imported into our study
of Mysticism the atmosphere of the shUling seance, the
"New Thought" centre, and the average Masonic lodge.
' Religio Poeta, p. 236.
37

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Such conventional esotericism should be called by its
true name, which is not Mysticism, but Occultism.
But aU this does not dispose of the main issue.
Are there really two ways to God ? And is there a
body of Christian " initiates " who possess a secret
withheld from the generality of believers ? We
answer both No and Yes. If the term " a body of
initiates " impUes that God faUs to satisfy the humble
soul that approaches Him in faith because it does
not possess a certain genius for the Absolute, the
answer is unequivocally No. It is told of Soeur
Therese, of Liseux, that when as a small child she was
abnormally exercised on the subject of different
degrees of illumination and grace her big sister bade
her bring a tumbler and a thimble and fill both with
water, and then pointed out to her that while the
tumbler held much more than the thimble, yet both
were full to the limit of their capacity. And from
that time she never doubted that God not only
has mercy on the longing soul, but that He satisfieth
it and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. There
is in this sense no favoured class of initiates upon
whom the less gifted need look in envy. Fulness of
life is promised, not to the illuminated, but to those
who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Yet there
is a profound difference between, say, the spiritual
life of St. Paul and that of the average weU-meaning
Christian soul. Wherein does that difference consist,
and can it be said that Paul was master of a special
and more immediate " way " to God ?
A very simple iUustration may serve to set us on
the right track. In every rightly-ordered home
38

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
there is an equally open and direct way for every
child to the father's heart, and very often the child
that is weakest physically and mentally is the surest
to find it.. But take the case of two equally healthy
and weU-developed children. The one, genuinely
dutiful and affectionate, but somewhat unimaginative
and easy-going, takes his father's affection for granted,
and makes no conscious effort to get into sympathy
with that father's mind. The other makes himself
his father's companion and almost instinctively
anticipates his wishes. That child may be said to
have found a way to his father which the other does
not dream of. And when the ground of this perfect
sympathy of one son with a father who loves both
equaUy is investigated, it will be found that while
painstaking love is one essential element in it, and
an impelling desire to enter into his father's mind and
life another, yet they cannot completely account for
the difference. Deepest of aU, there is something
that defies analysis — an instinctive sympathy, an
inborn divination, a genius for filial affection ; some
thing which the other boy could not wholly attain,
took he ever so much pains. And in admitting this
we have granted the esoteric principle, not, indeed,
as defined by quasi-mystical secret societies, but as
inherent in life itself.
And simple as this is, it covers the whole case, as
far as we can cover it. Here is a trusty, unimagina
tive, well-intentioned Christian man, doing his duty
in life and sending many an honest prayer heaven
wards as he goes along. Who would deny that such
an one has found a plain and sunUt road to the

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Father's heart ? But here is another man — an un
lettered and obscure toiler, maybe — who finds deep
in his heart the instinct for communion with the
Eternal, and, having found this treasure, for the joy
of it goes and seUs aU that he has, that he may own
the field of his soul. Such a man will so regulate his
life as to make room for deep brooding and long
silent vigils before the lamp of the hidden sanctuary.
This is bound to involve a greater or lesser measure of
weariness, self-denial, ridicule, and loss of popularity
and money. Such a man may never have heard of the
stages of the Mystic Way, but the less acquaintance
he has with mystical jargon the deeper his hidden
life is likely to be. He may never do any out
standing work in the world, but he wiU wear that
indefinable hall-mark of spiritual aristocracy which
never fails to be recognised by those who live at the
king's court. He will impress men with a strange
integrity and self-identity of soul. He will manifest
the supreme simplicity and honesty that can come
only of an unsparing self-abandonment to God. He
may possibly incur a charge of being remiss in " good
works " and spending too much time in brooding
meditation, yet no candid soul will doubt that he is
one of the world's benefactors. We ask. Why the
difference between him and bis good-hearted but
obtuse brother in Christ ? Why is not the in-seeing
eye given to all God's children ? There is only the
answer which is and is not an answer : " My sheep hear
My voice " ; " AU men have not faith." We have
arrived at a gateless barrier. There is this star in the
darkness, however : the mysterious gift of mystic
40

NATURE OF MYSTIC APPREHENSION
apprehension is bestowed upon elect souls not for
their own glory, but for our sakes and for the sake
of the whole Church of God. They are not a segre
gated caste of adepts ; they are pioneers, beating
plain with bleeding feet the road we all in our measure
are caUed to tread. Their triumphs are ours, their
brimming cup of life is drawn from the same deep
weU into which the duUest and most imperfect may
freely dip their buckets. The true mystic never
glories in that the very devils are subject to him, but
rather in that his name, in common with that of aU
God's children, is written in the Book of Life. With
us they rejoice in the one way that is hidden from the
wise and prudent but revealed unto babes.
It needs to be emphasised again and again that the
authentic mystic does not affect a special would-be-
esoteric attitude and manner. He abhors aU those
quasi-spiritual affectations which the writer of The
Cloud of Unknowing shrewdly terms " monkey tricks
of the soul." He detests eccentricity, and looks upon
an affectation of singularity as speciaUy hateful to
God. Gaiety and robust good sense are his dis
tinguishing characteristics. To describe the type is
so difficult that one may search literature in vain for
a " speaking likeness." Perhaps Coventry Patmore,
in spite of his exaggerated recoil from anything that
may fit into the framework of ordinary "Church
piety," comes nearest the mark, and conveys a hint
of that astringent yet alluring humour which is a
characteristic of the mystic saint. " There is nothing
outwardly " (he remarks) " to distinguish a saint
from a common person . . . the saint has no fads,
41

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and you may live in the same house with him and
never find out that he is not a sinner like yourself,
unless you rely on negative proofs, or obtrude lax
ideas upon him, and so provoke him to silence. He
may impress you, indeed, by his harmlessness and
imperturbable good temper . . . and by never seem
ing to have much use for his time when it can be of any
service to you ; but on the whole he wUl give you
an agreeable impression of general inferiority to
yourself. You must not, however, presume upon
this inferiority so far as to offer him any affront; for
he will be sure to answer you with some quiet and
unexpected remark, showing a presence of mind —
arising, I suppose, from the presence of God — ^which
will make you feel you have struck rock, and only
shaken your own shoulder. ... I have known two
or three such persons, and I declare that but for the
peculiar line of psychological research to which I am
addicted, and hints from others in some degree akin
to these men, I should never have guessed they were
any wiser or better than myself or any ordinary man
of the world with a prudent regard for the common
proprieties." ^
The conventionally religious always demand from
their saints some degree of pious attitudinising ; that
is why the genuine mystic has in all ages found it
easy to preserve his incognito. Even in times of the
most intense spiritual exaltation, it is given to the
true mystic to conceal the flame he bears beneath
that garment of sober and seemly social prudence
wherewith God " guards the honour of His friends."
- The Rod, the Root and the Flower — " Magna Moralia," xiv.
42

CHAPTER III
THE PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
The majority, almost, of men learn God from visions. Tertullian.
We forget, whilst arguing industriously on these matters, that it is really
as impossible for those who have never experienced a voice or vision to
discuss it with intelligence, as it is for stay-at-homes to discuss the passions
of the battlefield on the materials supplied by war correspondents. Evelyn Underbill.
The frontiers between sense and spirit which are the devil's hunting-
grounds. Coventry Patmore.

SYNOPSIS
The present stage of the controversy : reaction against
rationalism, naturalism, and emergence of a more enlightened
doctrine of revelation and inspiration — Limits of our inquiry.
I. Practical difficulties : can we trust a message which comes
through abnormal, if not morbid, channels ? — Does auto
suggestion explain anything ? — The mystics on psychic
experiences : St. Teresa, The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John
of the Cross — ^Are psychic phenomena negligible ? — Visionary
experiences inseparable from the spiritual intuitions and great
activities they evoke — The place of visionary experience in
Scripture — Psychic adventures perilous, but unique, vehicles
of spiritual apprehension — The neural side of psychic pheno
mena : " mystic ill health " — ^Miss Underbill's view of St.
Paul's " thorn in the flesh." II. What is to be our attitude to
psychic phenomena ? — Validity does not depend upon objec
tivity — Normal and abnormal hallucination — The ultimate
criterion — Do psychic experiences add anything " new " to
the mystic's knowledge ? — Stigmatisation : St. Francis de
Sales and Dr. Rufus M. Jones on the stigmata of St. Francis —
Psychic experiences not " abnormal " — What constitutes a
vocation to the mystic life i

CHAPTER III
THE PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
** I WILL come now to visions and revelations of
the Lord." To determine the place of ecstatic and
kindred states in mystical experience and their value
for the soul's apprehension of God has always been
a most difiicult matter. For a time any attempt
at serious discussion was practicaUy foredoomed to
faUure, because it involved the impossible task of
bringing together two attitudes which were not only
diametrically opposed to each other, but had no
common " universe of discourse " and each of which
resolutely closed the door upon anything like genuine
inquiry and examination. On the one hand, a
rationaUstic philosophy and a naturalistic science had
relegated aU psychic phenomena to the realm of
pathology and delusion ; on the other hand, an un
critical and literalist faith, founded upon a theology
which reduced God to an arbitrary thaumaturge,
insisted upon the Divine and objective nature of all
mystic states, holding them to be direct " super
natural " revelations, too sacred for analysis or argu
ment. By far the larger number of such unqualified
beUevers in the objectivity of visions held that
genuine examples of such " revelations of the Lord "
were confined to the Bible and, more often than not,
exchanged their massive credulity for an attitude of
4S

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
cold scepticism where extra-Biblical examples of such
experiences were concerned. But this did not affect
the principle of the matter ; two entirely irreconcil
able attitudes which could not even be brought to
accept a common basis of controversy stood opposed
to each other. To-day, however, these intractable
and cast-iron conceptions are rapidly giving way to
more reasonable and arguable positions on either side.
A healthy reaction against rationaUsm and naturaUsm
and a more intelligent conception of revelation and
inspiration make fruitful discussion possible, and, on
the whole, the tendency is towards the rehabilitation
of psychical phenomena as legitimate accompani
ments of the mystical life, if not as essential elements
in its mechanism. The most formidable obstacle
to the reasonable appreciation of these phenomena
is a mechanical laboratory psychology, which airily
brackets the visions of St. Teresa with the haUucina-
tions of an anaemic schoolgirl under the elastic term
of hysteria, and which relegates St. Paul to the sana
torium with the neurotic victim of mediumship.
But, on the whole, there is a marked change of
opinion with regard to mystic phenomena. Super
stitious creduUty and shaUow scepticism are aUke
yielding to an attitude at once more enlightened and
more modest.

A full and adequate discussion of the subject is
obviously outside the scope of an inquiry into the
meaning and value of Mysticism as a whole. It
demands the technical and detailed treatment of the
46

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
psychological specialist, and students who wish to
make a more special study of it are referred to the
works of Flournoy, Delacroix, James Cutten, Scho-
field, Ribot, Le Roy,^ and other well-known investi
gators ; while for a brief but most comprehensive
and illuminating discussion Miss UnderhiU takes first
rank.* In these pages we are concerned with the
subject only as it affects the inquirer whose main
interest is religious rather than scientific. What is to
be his attitude towards the psychic phenomena which
he finds recorded in mystical literature ? How will
they affect his spiritual endeavour to enter for him
self into that direct and vital contact with Reality :
which we call the mystic experience ?
On the face of it, these phenomena affect us with a
sense of the weird and abnormal. We do not need
the pronouncement of the laboratory psychologist to
inspire us with misgiving as to the complete sanity
of those who experience them. We read the writings
of the great mystics, and their authentic spiritual
insight and convincing assurance of communion with
God attract us mightUy. But we also note how,
over and over again, the very insight and splendour
of conviction which influence us so deeply are de
scribed as the direct outcome of visions, locutions,
and other unfamiliar psychic states which stir us to
more or less active and definite suspicion. And so
the question is forced upon us whether we can and
may trust spiritual intuitions and convictions which
sprang from so doubtful a source. Such phenomena
1 See Bibliography.
' Mysticism, pp. 319-356, 427-452.
47

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
suggest the morbid, or, at any rate, the deceptive, to
our unaccustomed minds ; must not the result of
such states be little, if anything, more than the
sickly delusion of a self-hypnotising emotion ? And
if we yield to the responsive impulse which would
urge us, too, to make trial of the " Mystic Way,"
shaU we not also be caught in a net of haUucination,
so that the coveted experience may, in the end, take
more from our personality than it gives — may, in fact,
shatter the spiritual vessel in the act of filUng it ?
Thus it happens that even while we shrink from
the coarse, purblind interpretation of the laboratory
psychologist at his worst, we are grateful to him for
a term which seems to reUeve us of our misgivings
vpithout insulting the seers we have learnt to reverence
— the term auto-suggestion, with its comforting impli
cation that what alarmed us as apparently a cerebral
lesion was a merely normal instance of religious sub
jectivity. But when we come to examine this reas
suring term, it does not appear as satisfactory as
we first believed. Auto-suggestion implies a self to
which something is suggested and a self that suggests.
What is that larger suggesting self ? The problem
here is parallel to that which arises in every thinking
mind when reflecting upon the common phenomenon
of religious doubt. In every case of genuine doubt
we have the self asking questions which it cannot
answer. Try to escape it as we may, we have, in
every instance of genuine doubt, the activity of a
transcendent self whose inquisition leaves us dumb —
a " more than self," continuous and bound up with
the " self," yet none the less distinct. The same is
48

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
true of the psychic phenomena of Mysticism. To
label them auto-suggestion is only to substitute one
unknown for another. " Auto-suggestion," when
predicated of experiences which, unlike the morbid
disturbances of hysteria, contribute to the ennobUng
of life, is as great a mystery as that which it is meant
to solve. As Dr. Rufus Jones reminds us, the word
explains nothing, and leaves us to conclude " either
that the personal self is a bottomless affair, carrying
within itself infinite unexplored chambers and un
dreamed-of energies which sometimes ceme into
play, or that the personal self is bosomed on a
larger Realm of Consciousness from which we draw
our being into the bounds of individuality, and
with which we may correspond. . . . And auto
suggestion may be only another way of saying that
God and man are conjunct, and that, in the deeps
of the soul, beyond our power of knowing how.
Divine suggestions come to human consciousness." ^
This much is clear, that unless we are stiU content
to accept a crudely external and anthropomorphic
conception of God as acting upon the soul " from the
outside," we must conceive of Divine inspiration and
revelation as a state in which the soul is conscious of
something other and more than itself, which is yet
known to be more really and intimately itself than
any other influence it has ever experienced. We may
be modern and call this state auto-suggestion, or we
may, with St. Paul, say it is " I, yet not I." In either
case we stand before a mystery of life which defies
dissection in a psychological laboratory.
^ Studies in Mystical ReUgion, Introduction, pp. xxxi-xxxii, xxxiii.
49

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
But at this point the present-day writer on Mysti
cism steps in and assures the disturbed inquirer that
he need not bother himself very much with these
phenomena after all, seeing that the very mystics
who experienced them laid little stress upon them,
and, indeed, deprecated them as needlessly confusing,
if not positively dangerous. At best, these writers
remind us, the great masters of the spiritual life
assign to these phenomena a very low place in the
mystic ladder of ascent, regarding them at best as
encouragements to beginners who might otherwise
be easily appaUed by the naked austerity of a purely
spiritual discipline, and ranking them with the
" beggarly elements " which full-grown souls leave
behind them. Again and again they warn their
disciples that such experiences must be subjected
to the most stringent tests, assuring them that what
seems most divine may be most truly the work of
Satan, and that even where the experience is palpably
" from above," it may easily be perverted by our
pride and vanity to the soul's undoing. Passages
might be multiplied on this point. St. Teresa,
herself abounding in visions and locutions, brings
the sharpest edge of her shrewd and reality-loving
mind to bear upon their analysis. She is tireless in
" trying the spirits whether they be of God," and
does so with quick, decisive touch, convinced that
" Satan quickly betrays himself." That she found
the proof of satanic origin in the sterility of given
psychic experiences is clear from a well-known
passage concerning locutions in which she assures
her spiritual children that " words formed by the
50

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
understanding effect nothing, but when our Lord
speaks it is at once word and work." ^ It is interest
ing to note that she fully recognised the possibility
of auto-suggestion, but that the point she is con
cerned about is not whether a given experience is
" objective " or " subjective," but whether it comes
from " above " or from " below." And, as we have
seen already, she settles this question by what must
be termed pragmatic tests. Does a given experience
make for moral and spiritual enlargement ? is her
constant cry. Is it fruitful or sterile ? Auto-sugges
tion is also the bugbear of the penetrative and
humorous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, who
has much that is quaintly wise to say about these
" monkey tricks of the soul " which delude ill-balanced
persons into deeming themselves the subjects of
supernatural revelation. Such persons, he remarks,
thinking to encompass Spirit with their senses, " turn
their bodily wits inwards to their bodies against
the course of nature ; and strain them, as they
would see inwards with their bodily eyes, and hear
inwards with their ears, and so forth of aU their
wits, smelling, tasting, and feeUng inwards . . .
and then as fast the devil hath power for to feign
some false light or sounds, sweet smells in their
noses, wonderful tastes in their mouths ; and
many quaint heats and burnings ... in their mem
bers." * His characterisation of a certain type of
visionary who claims to have climbed into the
third heaven would satisfy the most rationalistic
^ Autobiography, p. 215.
^ The Cloud of Unknowing, pp. 237-238.
51

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
psychiatrist in point of sheer contemptuous coolness.
" They stare in the stars," he says mordantly, " as
if they would be above the moon, and hearken
when they shaU hear any angel sing out of heaven.
These men wiU sometime, with the curiosity of their
imagination, pierce the planets and make an hole
in the firmament to look in thereat. . . . Some of
these men the devU will deceive most wonderfuUy.
For he will send a manner of dew — angels' food
they ween it to be — as it were, coming out of the
air, and softly and sweetly falling in their mouths ;
and therefore they have it in custom to sit gaping
as they would catch flies." ^
An equally mercUess and more profound critic of
psychical phenomena was St. John of the Cross, in
whom suspicion of aU so-caUed " supernatural "
revelations was carried to its extreme point. In a
passage which might have been written by a mid-
Victorian evangelical, he asserts that the man who
desires " to know anything by extraordinary super
natural ways implies a defect in God, as if He had
not given us enough when He gave us His only
Son.'^ . . . One good work, or act of the wiU,
wrought in charity, is more precious in the eyes of
God than that which aU the visions and revelations of
heaven might effect. Many souls to whom visions
have never come are incomparably more advanced
in the way of perfection than others to whom
many have been given." ^ His aversion to psychic
phenomena carries in it a suggestion of positive fear,
"• The Cloud of Unknowing, pp. 254-255.
^ Ascent of Mount Carmel, p. 1S6.
* Ibid., p. 195.
52

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
and thus he urges his readers not merely to avoid
placing any reliance upon such experiences, let alone
encouraging them, but to " fly from them without
even examining whether they be good or evil. For,
inasmuch as they are exterior and in the body,
there is the less certainty of their being from God.
It is more natural that God should communicate
Himself through the spirit — ^wherein there is greater
security and profit for the soul — than through the
sense, wherein there is usually much danger and
delusion ; because the bodily sense decides upon
and judges spiritual things, thinking them to be what
itself feels them to be, when in reality they are as
different as body and soul, sensuaUty and reason." ^
This consensus of conviction among mystics of all
Churches and ages tempts us to escape from a difficult
situation by reminding ourselves that psychic phe
nomena do not in any sense belong to the essence of
Mysticism, and may therefore be safely left to the
tender mercies of the psychological expert. We are
only too ready to assure ourselves that they consti
tute the abnormal element in Mysticism, and to
fortify ourselves with Baron von Hiigel's statement
(unassailable enough within its intended limits) that
" the downright ecstatics and hearers of voices and
seers of visions have all, wherever we are able to
trace their temperamental and neural constitution
and history, possessed and developed a definitely
peculiar psycho-physical organisation." *
But, scarcely have we ensconced ourselves in a
^ Ascent of Mount Carmel, p. 200.
* The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. ii., p. 42.
S3

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
sheltered position so strongly fortified by expert
opinion, than we are shaken out of our new-found
security. In accordance with our finding, we proceed
to the task of separating the normal and spiritual
from the abnormal and psychic elements in mystical
literature, but on the very threshold we are brought
to a standstill. Even the most rigid theorist, if he
be honest, cannot go very far without discovering that,
like aU real worlds, the world of mystical experience
cannot be cut in two with a hatchet. Speaking
ideally, it is quite easy to picture the perfect
mystic entirely guiltless of any aberrations into
the psychic realm ; nor is it difficult to abstract the
fine spiritual sayings of the great mystics from the
rest of their life and work and view them beneath
the protecting glass of meditative appreciation. But
such abstraction cannot, in the long run, satisfy us.
It is another instance of the unsatisfying delusion of
a fragment of nature morte — a dull, hard-edged lump
cut out of the warm, living landscape as with a
knife : it not only utterly fails to convey the magical
quality of the whole, but, in its correct deadness,
fatally misrepresents it. Try as we may, the spiri
tual acquisitions and discoveries of the great mystics
are for the most part more or less directly related
to certain visionary and auditory experiences which
very few of them lacked. It is not too much to say,
indeed, that most, if not all, of their most fruitful
and dynamic intuitions and their most influential
and redemptive activities were inspired by psychic
experiences. This is, be it remembered, a common
note of aU seership not generally recognised as
54

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
mystical, and we need not go beyond the Scriptures
to find ample proof. Elijah's recognition of God as
free Personality and the spiritual Force behind all
phenomena ; Isaiah's conception of the Divine holi
ness ; Ezekiel's conviction of the regenerating power
the Spirit ; Peter's perception of a supra-national
God — all these and many other creative and fructi
fying intuitions of the human spirit were given to
the world through visionary and auditory experiences.
Nor does this hold true in the realm of thought
alone. The world's greatest doers have also been
made conscious of their high calling in moments
of vision and ecstasy. When the Voice spake to
Moses out of the burning bush, it was to send
him on a heroic national mission. When the
nameless Captain of the Lord's host appeared unto
Joshua, it was to bid him take Jericho. When the
Hebrew prophets dreamt strange dreams and saw
soul-shaking visions, it was that they might " go and
teU this people " that would hound them from the
shelter of spiritual ecstasy with blows and stones.
When Jesus appeared to the wistful, silent longing
of Mary, it was that she who loved to sit silent in the
house of contemplation might run and tell her story
to the disciples. When St. Paul was apprehended on
the Damascus road, his stricken soul was immediately
moved to cry out, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do ? " Throughout the history of mystical religion
psychic experiences have shown themselves to possess
a "life-value," and never failed to " vaUdify themselves
in action." ^ Religious and humanitarian reforms,
* Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, Introduction, p. xxxi.
55

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the exodus of whole nations and races from spiritual
bondage and inteUectual darkness into a large land
of freedom and clear light, the rescue of great ideas
from externalisation and petrifaction, the widening
of the frontiers of human thought and the enlarging
and deepening of the human heart — all such great
and universally efficacious movements have been led
by men who saw the " pattern " of their endeavour on
the Mount of Vision, and received their commission
from the Voice that has never been heard with the
hearing of the ear.
We cannot therefore separate mystic thought
from mystic experience, the spiritual pioneer from the
ecstatic visionary, in this facile fashion. Ideally
separable, the two elements are inextricably inter
twined in actual life. In spite of the contrary
conviction expressed in the writings of the mystics
themselves — a fact easily explained by their wise
fear of pride aud self-deception and their instinctive
emphasis upon that which is inward — psychic experi
ences have ever been the often unrecognised
vehicles of their profoundest and most far-reaching
intimations of the Eternal. That such experiences
are easily counterfeited and always fraught with
peril is obvious ; that they are not themselves acts
of spiritual apprehension, but only a possible means
to it, is equally evident ; but neither of these ele
mentary truisms can lessen their significance or
justify us in beUttUng them. The mystics were
entirely right in going beyond the psychic phe
nomenon to the spiritual Power of which it is a
vehicle and which could act independently of aU
56

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
such means. They were right in warning the young
and the unstable against cultivating a form of ex
perience whose counterfeit deceived the very elect.
But in estimating their reiterated warnings against
relying upon and encouraging visionary experiences,
we must not forget that, for the most part, these
warnings were written by men and women who them
selves owed their deepest insight into the nature of
God to the experiences which they subjected to such
searching tests. What they so sanely and deeply
probed was the very stuff of their spiritual life, the
raw material of their most exalted thought, their
most Christlike activity — the sacred Bread and Wine,
which was transubstantiated, not by priestly magic
on the altar, but by the action of their assimilating
love, into the very Body and Blood of Christ.
That those mystics who abound in visionary and
auditive experiences were distinguished by a peculiar
and highly sensitised psycho-physical organisation
is undeniable, but this does not mean that the pos
session of such an organisation constitutes in itself a
sufiicient predisposing cause. On the one hand, the
fact that rudimentary mystical feeling is extra
ordinarily widespread and often found in the most
unlikely persons would show that in an elementary
and undeveloped form the mystic consciousness is
present in most religious souls. On the other hand,
the presence of the temperamental and neural con
stitution commonly defined as " mystical " more
often than not issues in degraded forms of occultism,
in hysteria and in other nervous disorders, without
for a single moment producing anything that shows
57

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the marks of authentic mystical vision or audition.
Moreover, what we often so rashly assume to be the
predisposing cause of mystical experience may be
not a cause but an effect. Supposing we admit with
the rationalising psychologist that St. Paul was an
epileptic, it still remains to be shown that his epilepsy
was the cause, and not rather the effect, of the moral
and spiritual upheaval which he experienced on the
way to Damascus. When we duly consider the
heroic quality of the lives of the great mystics — their
unreserved submission to the most exacting forms of
mental and spiritual discipline, their often extreme
asceticism, and their unremitting and strenuous
external activities in Church and State, hospital and
mission field — ^we shall be less easily persuaded to
attribute their vision of God to the stimulus of frayed
and twisted nerves. We shall rather be inclined to
believe that a very large part, if not the whole, of the
physical disabilities from which many of the great
mystics suffered was not the explanation but the
result of a spiritual life so intense as to strain the
earthly vessel to breaking point. Miss Underbill
calls such physical disabilities as are the outcome of
visionary experiences " mystic ill-health," ^ and cites
St. Paul's " thorn in the fiesh " as an example of the
penalty the body has to pay for the painful delight
of a spirit caught up into the third heaven.* It is
quite clear, however, that no such hypothesis is
needed to account for the infirmity of one whose years
were spent " in journeyings often, in perils of waters,
^ Mysticism, pp. 70 et seq.
2 The Mystic Way, p. 174.
58

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own country
men ... in weariness and . . . watchings often, in
hunger and thirst ... in cold and nakedness." ^
His manifold hardships, his arduous labours, and the
ill-treatment that was repeatedly meted out to him
are quite sufficient to explain the ill-health that
dogged his steps to the end. But Miss UnderhiU
carries conviction when she cites Plotinus, St. Ber
nard, the two SS. Catherine, St. Teresa, and St. John
of the Cross as instances in which distinctly mystical
activities have so reacted upon the body as to pro
duce pains and disturbances which could not be
traced to any other cause but were clearly due to the
strain which a soaring spirit put upon the recalcitrant '
flesh. " Mystic iU-health," she tersely remarks, " is \
the natural result, and not the pathological cause, s
of the characteristic activity of the mystics." * It
must also be noted that this mystic ill-health in no
case impairs the fine mental balance or paralyses the
vigorous activity of its victims ; it must therefore
be sharply differentiated from any and every form of
hysteria. We find those afflicted with it undertaking
missionary journeys under conditions which might
weU appal perfectly healthy persons. We find them
organising and reforming religious Orders, managing
large hospitals, administering public funds, leading
great movements, and doing all these things with
conspicuous practical acumen and success. There is
nothing vague and dreamy, nothing occult and
" creepy " about them. Their peculiarity does not
1 2 Cor. xi. 26, 27.
* The Mystic Way, p. 175.
59

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
consist in the want of anything that goes to make up
full humanity, but in a something more which, while
it may baffle investigation and, to that extent, be
termed " abnormal," adds to and enhances every
normal faculty and channel of activity.
II
What, then, is to be our attitude to these psychic
phenomena ? To begin with, we must steadily bear
in mind that the validity of a vision or audition does
not depend upon its objective reality. We can no
longer beUeve in the objective nature of visions and
auditions, but neither do we any longer imagine that
the objectivity or otherwise of mystical experiences
is the crucial point in question. Whatever dis
service the materialistic psychologist has rendered to
us, he has at least accustomed us to the term " hallu
cination " and rescued it from the grip of the path
ologist. He has told us that hallucination of the senses
is not necessarily a symptom of mental disease, but
may and does occur in perfectly normal subjects, and
that the ultimate test must be sought not in the
mental mechanism, which is the same, but in its effects,
which are poles apart in the two cases. M. Ribot
puts the difference clearly and tersely when he tells us
that " the one is an evolution and tends towards the
more, the other is a dissolution and tends towards the
less." ^ M. Recejac, whose treatment of the psy
chological side of Mysticism is particularly suggestive,
sums the matter up by saying that " in hallucination
^ Quoted by M. Recejac in Essay on the Bases of the Mystic Knowledge,
p. 162.
60

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
through Idea (normal hallucination) the dominating
emotion comes from the active personality, and
Reason, by means of attention, dominates the organic
disturbances. The contrary takes place in pathologi
cal hallucinations : the consciousness is confused,
because Reason has ceased to belong to itself. . . .
The cause of the second class of hallucinations must
always be looked for in some defect of personality,
some moral alienation of the ego, either originating
in the subject or inherited." ^
To a large extent the attitude of the reverent
inquirer into these experiences has been analogous to
that of the naive Catholic believer in sacramental
transubstantiation. The mistake of both has been
a tendency to ascribe sanctity to the " elements " —
the symbolic representations through which the
experience is given — rather than to the spiritual
reality wbich they convey to the soul, and which is
manifested through them. It is in relation to their'
life-enhancing quality that we must study these
phenomena. They are of value to us only in as far
as we can trace in them the genesis of great iUumi-
nating, purifying and fructifying forces which we see
wrought into the life and teaching of the mystics.
It is their assimilation of the visionary " elements "
that matters, the play of their consecrated reason
upon what was given them in a flash of transcendent
symbolical intuition, their practical realisation of it
in fruitful contemplation and redemptive service.
We must remember that the goal of the mystic is not
the passing flash of vision, but " the blessed country
^ Essay on the Bases ofthe Mystic Knowledge, p. 162,
61

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
which is no mere vision, but a home." On the other
hand, this principle must not be strained to imply
that only those visions whose permanent effect upon
the personality can be traced are valid. The spirit
of man again and again wins heights which it is not
competent to keep, and sees promised lands upon
which it is not yet permitted to set foot. Far more
than we dream of, we live by unrecognised and
untraceable influences, and the vision which is
deplored as a mere elusive glint of heavenly glory,
too swift and dazzling to be woven into the mesh of
life, may be that Bread from Heaven in the strength
of which we journey through the wilderness for
forty years. Still, it must be our rule to judge of
mystical phenomena by their practical effects upon
life and thought. The vision itself may be hid in
darkness, but its consequences should be plain for
the average man to read.
It has been often objected that mystical experiences
are, after aU, only the objectivisation of ideas
already in the mind. They do not add anything
new to the treasury. They represent thoughts
and memories presented in concrete and pictorial
form rather than the soul's effort to grasp a
message from beyond itself, to translate the high
language of the Spirit into the homely vernacular
of the senses. The point to note here is clearly
the ambiguity of such words as " new " and
" beyond." Mystical experience does not add any
thing " new " to our knowledge. To insist that it
does is to pass from Mysticism into the nebulous
realm of theosophy. Mystics, like other human
62

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
beings, receive their knowledge through ordinary
rational channels. When it seems to them that an
entirely new truth has been revealed through a vision,
one of two things has really happened ; either a
forgotten truth has been recalled so vividly and
forcibly as to impress the sense of a new discovery
upon the mind, or thoughts which have long been
shaping through hours of brooding meditation, but
which failed to come to actual birth, are made explicit
and articulate to the mind, which cannot recognise
them in the finished form. Very often things that
were learnt almost automatically in childhood, or
were conventionally accepted in the course of reading,
are suddenly flashed upon the screen of the inner
most consciousness and seen to be of supreme
import. It is therefore idle to assert that visions which are
clearly made up of elements already existing in the
mind — e.g., many of the visions of Blessed Angela de
Foligno, which were evidently suggested by the
frescoes in the churches of Assisi and the valley of
Spoleto — are of doubtful value. Knowledge is never^,
our own until it becomes part of the very stuff of our
life, and the mystic experience through which it is-
thus vitally incorporated into our substance does add
something " new " to our personality, and does so in
the only real sense in which anything " new " can
come to us. As we trace the life-history of individual
mystics, we find again and again how visions and
auditions which were palpably wrought out of the
subject's previous knowledge and experience came
to make aU things new : clothing a half-lost ideal
63

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
in robes of undeniable authority ; cutting through
mists of indecision with a clear, sharp word of com
mand, speaking undreamed counsels of perfection
into the groping soul, cleaving a shining pathway
of thought through the jungle of perplexity, con
ferring an unexpected gift of insight, bringing order
out of confusion, flashing light upon the darkness,
leading the spirit out into a large place. Not one of
these visions is " new," as the critical psychologist
and philosopher counts newness ; but once we cease
from dissecting them as dead specimens and see them
in their place, embedded in lives of commanding
power and creative fertility, we know them to be
manifestations of the new-creating energy of God,
There wiU always, of course, remain a distinction
between visions which are manifestly the soul's
deciphering of a message given for the first time, and
those which are clearly the pictured reflection of
what was already in the mind. But no sharp Une of
demarcation can be drawn — very probably most of
the great dynamic visions were a compound of both
kinds — and we cannot affirm that one is of greater
value than the other. They must be measured by
the extent to which they minister to the enlarging
and deepening of the religious personality and to the
building up of the Ufe of communion with God.
A fairly common view of psycho-mystical pheno
mena is that expressed by Dr. Rufus Jones when he
says with reference to the stigmata of St. Francis
that such experiences are " a point of weakness
rather, than a point of strength. Instead of prov
ing the marks of a saint, the stigmata are the marks
64

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
of emotional and physical abnormality." ^ The
latter part of this argument has been answered
already. Stigmata, like all other forms of mystical
experience, may be the marks of such abnormality,
or may not. That stigmatisation is an instance of
abnormal psycho-physical parallelism is plain ; but
this does not affect the question as to whether it is a
sign of weakness or of strength in any given case.
Where it takes its rise in pure hysteria, it is, of course,
the former ; but dare we come to this conclusion in a
case like that of St. Francis, where it was clearly the
outcome of a living, adoring sympathy with the
Redeemer which imprinted its wounds upon the body,
welding soul and sense in one by the fusing flame of
pure love ? What can there be in common between
a spiritual energy which writes its law upon tables of
quivering flesh, and the numerous neurotic stig-
matisations which superstition has exalted into
sacraments of sanctity ? The stigmata of St. Francis
were a real transfixion of his inmost soul with the
wounds of Christ and — this is the crucial point —
initiated a new phase of sacrificial outpouring of his
life for his brethren. In the case of the neurotic
subject, it signaUses a farther stage in the develop
ment of the disease, and while it may be accompanied
by extreme devotional fervour and an extraordinary
quickening of the imagination, it does not confer any
solid gifts of spiritual insight, nor does it inspire to
heroic activity. St. Francis de Sales rightly points
out that such an experience as that of St. Francis of
Assisi is due to the action of " love bending its whole
strength of will to comply with and conform to the
1 Studies in Mystical ReUgion, p. 165.
65

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Passion of the Well-beloved, so that the very soul,
no doubt, was transformed into a second crucifix.
Then the soul, as form and mistress of the body,
using its power over the body, imprinted on it the
sorrowful wounds which had wounded its Lover
just as He had suffered them. Love is very wonder
ful, that it can so sharpen the imagination as to fene-
trate through all to the outermost." ^
We are left, then, with the conclusion that genuine
visionary experiences are not " abnormal " in the
pathological sense ; they are, indeed, entirely normal
to the subject who experiences them, and vindicate
their normality by adding to every noble faculty of
his being. One half of our alarm at the very thought
of such experiences arises from our confounding of
the normal with the average. No genuine spiritual
height can ever be attained along the path of the
average. It is in our steady and unremitting struggle
with the average that our salvation lies : to conform
to the_average is to lose one's sojul. In moments of
natural mystic feeling, when the beautiful tremulous
life of a spring landscape enters into us till we are
made one with it ; in moments of heroic resolve and
self-donation, when the voice of duty comes to us
from beyond ourselves and we are conscious of contact
with ultimate Reality — in such moments we know
ourselves to stand upon the confines of a new and
strange world, and that it is the tyranny of the average
that keeps us from entering. Who knows but that
at such moments the difference between ourselves
and the mystics is simply that they recognised these
' Traite de V Amour de Dieu, I., vi.. Chap. XIV.
66

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM
fugitive intimations of the Beyond as a Divine call
and dared to obey it, while we, in bondage to con
vention and in dread of being accounted strange, if
not mad, are disobedient to the heavenly vision !
It is often said that the force which creates the
mystic is a natural unquenchable desire for the
Mysterium Magnum, an inborn hunger of the soul,
a sick craving of the very flesh for the living God.
This is only partly true, at least if consciousness of
such a desire is implied. The gay and graceful
St. Francis arrested in the middle of pleasant easy
going Italian life ; Blessed Angela de Foligno driven
from a course of overt sin to the confessional by
nothing deeper or more spiritual than a superstitious
fear of hell fire ; St. Catherine of Genoa dragging
herself to confession against her will, a disillusionised,
world-weary woman of twenty-six with a taste
neither for pleasure nor for God — all these are
instances of initiation into the mystic way without
any conscious predisposing desire. And it may
weU be that our moments of transcendental sesthetic
feeling or moral impulsion, of spiritual quickening
and religious upheaval — moments which come into
the life of the most average human being — constitute
a vocation for the mystic life, a call to make a more
intimate and experimental communion with God.
It may or it may not be so ; the decision belongs
solely to the individual concerned and no stranger
intermeddleth therewith. One test is always applic
able and has the approval of the great masters of
the spiritual life. If there be any inclination to
cultivate mystical experiences from a desire for
67

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
occult knowledge or power or from a curiosity to
explore the supersensual world, then such an incUna
tion should be most strenuously resisted by the soul
that values its own integrity. Nor is the natural
craving for joy and for the comfort and exhilaration
that come of communion with God to be taken as
the mark of an authentic vocation. The only true
mystic motive is the love which desires, not the gifts
of God, but God Himself, and which cannot rest
until it is transformed to the Divine will and imbued
with the Divine thought- It does not despise
knowledge, but broods long and patiently over what
it has seen in the sanctuary ; neither does it despise
joy or deprive itself of pleasure. But its beginning
and its end, its driving power and its substance, is
disinterested love. With St. Catherine of Genoa it
desires, not anything that comes forth from God,
but God only ; with Dame Gertrude More it testi
fies that " to give all for love is a most sweet bargain,"
and cries out in its passionate moments, " Let me
Jove or not live." Such love is continents removed
from the flabby religious emotion that passes under
that name. It is neither sentimental nor nebulous.
It is the intelligent and deliberate identification of
the soul with the mind and purposes of God, and
involves a sharing of the sacrificial life of Christ. It
imposes an inexorable discipline and commits to a
war from which there is no discharge.

68

CHAPTER IV
THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
That tender and reverent listening at the feet of Wisdom which is the true
.ind acceptable idleness. Coventry Patmore.
He who would experience the divine union must Uve altogether in God, in
such a manner as to satisfy his superior instinct in all its energy interior and
exterior. Love must transport him to the mountain where the creature
dies in God : wherein she dies to herself and to all she calls her own, where
she submits herself implicitly with all her powers to the transforming action
of the incomprehensible Truth, which is God. The act of life must drive
man outwardly to the practice of the virtues ; the act of death must drive
him into God in the depth of his own being. These are the two movements
of the perfect life united as matter and form, as soul and body. RuYSBROECK.

SYNOPSIS
The reaction from pragmatism — The influence of the
present war. I. The practicality of the great mystics — The
mystics not practical in the present-day sense — Their relation
to the monastic ideal — Their message a protest against the
popular apotheosis of the practical — The mystic, even when
most active, essentially a contemplative. II. Mr. R. H. Coats
on the ethical weakness of Mysticism — His misinterpretation of
" taking leave of virtues " — Contemplation not mere feehng
or sterile absorption — Richard of St. Victor on spiritual fruit
fulness — The moral degeneracy of mystical groups — The
Beghards and the Brethren of the Free Spirit — Doubtful
character of the historical evidence — Antinomianism not
peculiar to mystics — The root of ethical weakness a defective
doctrine of God — Ruysbroeck upon false contemplatives and
spiritual loafers. III. The charge of pious heartlessness
against the mystics — Its baselessness — Margery Kempe, of
Lynn — St. Catherine of Siena — Her realisation of the organic
unity of mankind — A popular misinterpretation of Lady
Julian — The mystic's attitude to sin and evil determined by
his fundamental conception of God — Miss Underbill and
Bishop Chandler : a contrast. IV. The mystic's conscious
ness of social obligations also ultimately determined by
his theology — St. Catherine of Siena ; Jacob Boehme ;
Thomas Traherne — True Socialism essentially mystical — The
communism of the primitive Church based upon a mystical
conviction — Balance of individual and social elements in
Mysticism — The perils of the contemplative life recognised by
the mystics.

CHAPTER IV
THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
To ask whether vital apprehension of Reality is
most surely reached by way of contemplation or by
way of action is to provoke to a somewhat contemp
tuous impatience a generation for which the old-time
rivalry between the contemplative and the active
ideals simply does not exist. Let anyone propose
to himself a life of contemplation as a means to an
interior and experimental knowledge of God, and the
world of sensibly religious folk will consider him too
hopelessly mediaeval to be seriously argued with. Yet
this is the day, or at least the dawn, of a revival of
inwardness, and on every hand there are indications
that the crude and thorough-going pragmatism of
yesterday is begetting its inevitable disillusionment
and reaction. Tbe intellectualism which preceded it
attacked feeling in the name of reason, and left tbe
soul, cheated of its birthright of insight and vision,
with a mass of external knowledge dry as dust to the
palate. Pragmatism followed and offered the much-
desired escape from a tyrannous and barren speculative
tradition. It opposed " pure " reason in the name of
Ufe, as it understood life, advocating a facile solvitur
ambulando attitude which commended it to our
practical and concrete temper. This congeniality
to our innately practical genius promised a very long
71

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
day indeed to pragmatism, among the Anglo-Saxon
peoples at any rate, but it had not appeared above
the horizon very long when it was assailed on the
very point which was its boasted strength. Closer
examination revealed it to be not nearly as practical
as it looked, for the simple reason tbat it acted iri
vacuo. It proposed, in the words of a blunt American
critic, that we should lift ourselves by our own boot
straps. And while pragmatism is still too much
with us, it is perceptibly loosening its hold, even in
certain religious circles where spiritual experience
had long been construed as the discovery of whatever
" works " best all round. Once more men of affairs
and of practical religion are prepared to listen to the
thinker, to the mystic, for whom the question whether
anything " works," in the popular pragmatic sense
of the term, is the babbling of fools. To this result
the present war has contributed not a little. People of
the most narrowly and doggedly practical tempera
ment have awakened to the fact that ideas, which
they imagined to be the harmless esoteric amusement
of a handful of university professors and preachers,
have a startling and alarmingly explosive way of
acting on the practical plane and flinging nations and
continents into a cauldron of seething passions.

But while there is an increasing readiness to con
sider ideals which do not bear their pragmatic justi
fication on the surface, interpreters of Mysticism are
still, for the most part, unduly apologetic and negative.
72

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
Their main concern is not so much the positive, con
structive exposition of the mystical ideal and the
demonstration of its value for our own day, as the
defence of the great mystics against the undeserved
charge of pious futility and sentimental dreaming,
and the attempt to prove them to have been, on the
contrary, the most severely and efficiently practical
of persons. In some popular interpretations this
apologetic tendency is so disproportionately promi
nent that the naive reader might be left with the
impression that Plotinus elaborated his obscure
philosophy and passed through his severe ecstatic
experiences with the express purpose of fitting him
self for the more important duties of a trustee and
a manager of estates, and that St. Catherine of Siena
wrote her Dialogues by way of a mild relaxation
from her strenuous ecclesiastical activities. One fre
quently finds, for instance, in popular expositions
of Mysticism, that the only reference to such a master-
mystic as St. Catherine of Genoa consists of a
quotation from Baron von Hiigel to the effect that
throughout the seventeen years of her work, first as
hospital nurse, then as matron, her mystic conscious
ness did not interfere with her devotion to duty or
lessen her efficiency. There is, of course, room for
such reminders that intense spirituality has nothing
in common with inefficiency, but rather begets
carefulness and whole-hearted concentration in the
ordinary business of life. But to over-labour this
point in what purport to be expositions of mystical
religion is to invite from the plain, sensible reader the
objection that, after all, history bristles with names
73

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
of great men and women whose work of practical
philanthropy may conveniently be studied without
any obscure and irritating admixture of Mysticism.
After a long period of one-eyed and hostile criticism
which branded the mystics as idle dreamers, it was
only natural that a new generation of more discerning
interpreters should make it a point of honour to
emphasise the great practical activities of the mystics ;
but their over-emphasis of the practical element, like
all one-sided reactions against distorted judgments,
fails to satisfy in the long run. Even while we
rejoice in the long array of facts which must go to
commend the mystics to, our practical age, we are
assailed by a doubt whether, after all, this takes us
very far towards a true understanding of the real
nature of Mysticism ; whether, indeed, the practical
activities of the mystics, important as they are, do
not often obscure rather than illuminate the central
secret of their life. We suspect that a closer exami
nation of these activities in their proper spiritual
atmosphere and setting would reveal the great mystics
as less " practical " than a first " detached " survey
might lead one to imagine. A long list of reforms
and philanthropies, marshalled in quick succession
and without any reference to the personalities who
exercised them and the circumstances in which they
arose, certainly presents an imposing mass of practi
cality. But let them fall into their proper place in
the life of those personalities, and be clothed in no
significance other than those personalities intended
them to wear, and the focus immediately shifts, till
we come to wonder if the great mystics were really
74

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
practical at all — i.e., in our modern sense of the
word. To begin with, a steady bearing in mind of the
controlling aim and purpose of Mysticism will serve
to show us that the practicality of the great mystics
differed radically both from the practicality of the
pragmatist, whether of the schools or of the street,
and from that of the modern religious symbolist and
nature-mystic. It lacked two salient modern ele
ments — joy in labour, either for its own sake or for the
sake of resulting benefits to oneself or the race, and a
sense of the sacramental value of work per se. For
the mystics the goal of all striving was union with
God. The means by which this union was to be
reached was love, and " good works " were valued
only as an expression, and by no means the only, or
even the highest, expression of that love. They
found their joy neither in external activity itself nor
in the good that might accrue from it, but in that
hidden Ufe in God of which it was an imperfect mani- '"
festation and to which it ministered. And while,
indeed, they might be said to have viewed such
activity as sacramental, they held it to be sacramental
only for him who had already received Christ in the
depth of his soul. Such an one served Christ in His
members and found Him in the cleaving of wood or
the raising of a stone ; but it need hardly be pointed
out how far removed this is from the popular modern
habit of tacitly assuming that work, by whomsoever
done, can take the place of prayer or sacraments,
and possesses an inherent sanctifying and illuminating
force. 75

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Such passages as the following from Ruysbroeck are
often quoted in support of the opposite conviction,
but in reality only confirm our contention. " In
terior consolation," says Ruysbroeck, " is of an
inferior order to the act of love which renders ser
vice to the poor. Were you rapt in ecstasy Uke
St. Peter, or St. Paul, or whomsoever you will, and
heard that some poor person was in want of a hot
drink or other assistance, I should advise you to
awake for a moment from your ecstasy to go to
prepare the food. Leave God for God ; find Him,
serve Him, in His members : you wiU lose nothing
by the exchange." ^ This would seem, on the sur
face, to favour the view that the mystics shared the
modern conception of the sacramental nature of all
good work. But it must be noted that Ruysbroeck
does not contrast the contemplating and the active
life here, but the spiritual consolation derived from
acts of contemplation — a subordinate and entirely
non-essential element in the mystic life — and the love
that cannot but serve. And, moreover, he is speaking
not of mankind in general, but of the " religious." As
in Longfellow's poem it is the cloistered monk who is
assured by the Lord whom he left to serve the poor,
that if he had not gone the Vision would surely have
vanished. The whole atmosphere and emphasis of
such passages are against an interpretation that would
make them paraUels to the popular recitation in eulogy
of " Jim Bludso," the profligate, wife-beating engine-
driver who died in saving a train. Between the
sentiment of such pieces — " God ain't goin' to be too
^ Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic p. 54.
76

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
hard on a man what died for men " — and the keen-
edged temper of the mystics there is a wide gulf fixed.
Nor dare we blind ourelves to the fact that the
activity of the great mystics — rich and heroic as it
was — did not arise immediately out of a social or
altruistic impulse, as we understand it to-day. To
begin with, the great figures of classic Mysticism
lived in a religious atmosphere — essentiaUy mediaeval,
but persisting dovrai to modern times — characterised
by an inhuman aloofness from the joys and sorrows
of mankind, a frigid unconcern in face of the evil
and wrong. This aloofness, miscalled " detachment,"
did not, indeed, do away with altruistic activity,
but it drove it into narrow channels, chiUing its
warm impulse and dehumanising it into a theological
requirement. It stood for a depreciation of human
and social relationships in the supposed interest of
the soul's undivided allegiance to God, regarding
them as hindrances rather than as sacramental
means to sanctification. In short, it represented
the monastic ideal of sanctity, and it was only
natural that the great mystics should, to some extent,
have been influenced by it. It would, however, be a
most superficial judgment to attribute their charac
teristic attitude towards external activity solely to
that influence. On the contrary, while the paralysing
touch of monasticism is manifest in their work and
life, they have always, on the whole, transcended the
monastic conception ; and almost all there is of warm
humanity and spontaneous kindliness in mediaeval
reUgious life is traceable to them. Yet, even when
their love for their feUows found its warmest and
77

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
freest expression, we are conscious that with all its
glow and spontaneity it is something other, some
thing far less " practical " and altruistic, than the
modern feeling. Works of beneficence are never
regarded by them as self-contained and self-sufficient,
but always as part of a greater whole — of that ascent
which leads to pure union with the Unseen. The
driving power behind them has no " practical " aim.
It gladly validifies itself in beneficent action, yet its
main purpose is not to advance the interests of the
race or to inspire and exemplify " practical " reUgion.
On the contrary, whenever the soul of Mysticism
speaks, it is to protest against that popular apotheosis
of practicality which has been more or less charac
teristic of all ages. Mysticism proclaims to all
generations that the man who prays is of greater
spiritual importance than he who merely gives bread
to the poor ; that one moment of pure love towards
God is worth more than the founding of fifty hos
pitals or churches ; that interior silence is a higher
activity than eloquence or influence. While never
forgetting that the love of one's neighbour is part of
the love of God, and that " what a man takes in
by contemplation he must pour out in love," they
never relaxed their insistence upon the supreme
significance and value of interior activity. It foUows -
that, so far from essaying to minimise this insistence
in the interests of conciliating the modern mind, we
must rather admit that to be accused of idle dreaming
and futile contemplation would have been accepted
by the great mystics as the unconscious tribute of
those who know not by what things men Uve. More-
78

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
over, no assurances to the contrary can, in the end,
avail to keep the shrewd and reality-loving critic who
has no temperamental affinity with Mysticism from
suspecting that at bottom the mystics were not
practical at all, but, on the contrary, of that chill
and aUen type which for him is summed up in the
word " contemplative." For the practical man the
mystic ideal is not only sown with every eventuality
of psychic degeneration, or, at least, of morbid
religiosity ; it is also a menace to ethical or intellec
tual integrity — probably to both.
II
In a short study on Mysticism as a type of English
piety ^ which is of considerable interest as giving a
particularly clear-cut and able expression to the
characteristic objections of the practical Christian
mind of to-day, the Rev. R. H. Coats asserts that
Mysticism has always been weak on the ethical
side, and teaches that " a life of merely contemplative
and exalted feeling is in itself superior to one of
moral action." ' In seeking to illustrate this weak
ness from mystical literature, he hits somewhat
unfortunately upon the weU-known passage in The
Mirror of Simple Souls, where the contemplative
" takes leave " of virtues, declaring himself emanci
pated from their exacting rule.^ Surely such words
^ Types of English Piety, pp. 156-230.
* Ibid., p. 221. The contemplative Ruysbroeck has forestalled Mr. Coats's
criticism : compare his strictures upon false contemplatives who " declare
themselves above all commandments, beyond religious exercises, too deeply
merged in grace to be concerned with action " {Flowers of a Mystic Garden,
p. 96).
' Ibtd., p. 222 (note).
79

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
should be read by discerning souls as they were
doubtlessly written — with a holy smile ! They are of
a piece with St. Augustine's " Love God and do what
you like," and express, on the one hand, the soul's
vision of so complete and instinctive an identification
of herself with the good as to translate her into a
region which, in the most honourable sense, is
" beyond good and evil," and on the other hand,
the soul's present emergence from a state of moral
servitude to a state of holy freedom, from the work of
a hired labourer to that of the creative artist. To
conclude that he who has thus " taken leave of
virtues " and entered into the love that can do as it
likes has denied ethical obligations is tantamount to
contending that the artist who works con amore,
driven by his free creative impulse, is ethically
inferior to the factory hand who grinds out his daily
task under the foreman's eye. In fine, the mystic's
half-humorous adieu to aU virtues is but a playful
variant on Ruysbroeck's " He only is a contem
plative who is the slave of nothing, not even of his
virtues," ^ and " Pure love frees a man from him
self and his acts " ^ — truths which every practical
teacher and preacher who bas suffered from the
fussy anxiety and scrupulosity of well-meanijig
persons bent upon moral self-tinkering can fully
appreciate. Such a position as that represented by Mr. Coats
rests upon a common misunderstanding. He as
sumes that by contemplation the mystics mean mere
^ Flowers of a Mystic Garden, p. 45.
2 Ibid., p. 89.
80

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
feeling or sterile absorption in the Infinite. As a
matter of fact, mystical Uterature is written over from
end to end with warnings against a false contem
plation which is " spiritual gluttony " and fails to
minister to practical righteousness. Contemplation,
according to the great mystics, must issue in
holiness and helpfulness, whether these be expressed
in active service in the world or in saintly and
unselfish living in the cloister. The vision of God
is to them not a superstition, but a discipline, and
they shun sterile ecstasy or absorption as the very
snare of heU. AU the great mystics unite in a whole
some abhorrence of religious emotion which stops short
of action, of spiritual self-indulgence which sterilises
rather than fructifies tbe energy and leaves the soul
drained of its virtue. Ruysbroeck is full of warnings
against such mystical dissipation ; St. Teresa is
bluntly expUcit upon the subject ; St. John of
the Cross brings his dry and cutting judgment to
bear upon it. Even Richard of St. Victor — trou
badour of the spiritual marriage, in whom mystical
emotion found unfettered expression and who dared
apply the nuptial relationship, in aU its implica
tions, to the communion of the soul with God
— lays wholesome emphasis upon the fruits of the
spirit. The end of his spiritual marriage is not
barren enjoyment and ecstasy, but fruition, and he
makes it clear throughout that the soul that would
seize the raptures of love and shrink from its pains
and duties is unfaithful to the high vows of her
betrothal. Even where the mystic feels himself
caUed to a life of pure contemplation unrelieved by;
8i °

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
active service, he is pledged to test his visions
and revelations, not by the emotional pleasure they
give him, or the feeling of exultation and tran
scendence which they produce, but by the measure
in which they conform to the great basal prin
ciples that govern the ethical and spiritual life of
the Church and the soul. Any experience which
issues only in selfish enjoyment, however refined)
is to be deprecated. True contemplation is not
to be coveted as a luxury, but to be solemnly
entered upon as a vocation involving the most
severe, and often agonising, activity of soul. We
may reject such a conception as morbid, but we
cannot, with any pretence to fairness, regard it
as otherwise than heroic. Of dreamy sentimen
tality and spiritual self-pleasing there is not a trace
in it.
Critics often seek to prove the ethical weakness of
'Mysticism from history, and an undiscriminating
I appeal to history does not fail to produce a crop of
I apparently damning facts. The contemporary re-
• cords of the moral delinquencies and degeneracies
of the pantheistic mystics of the thirteenth century,
for instance — of the Beghards, the Brethren of the
Free Spirit, and other mystical groups — amply sup
port an interpretation of Mysticism which makes
it essentiaUy anti-ethical, and traces a tendency
that was only kept in check in the case of the great
master-mystics by a noble moral endowment to its
inevitable and disastrous climax in their foUowers.
Closer examination, however, reveals that, as is
generaUy the case, the " proof " from history proves
82

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
surprisingly little.^ To begin with, the vast majority
of the damaging records of mediseval mystical com
munities come from an inquisitorial clergy, them
selves anything but dazzlingly pure of life, and were
derived from renegade members of those brother
hoods who were, in not a few cases, expelled from
their communities for the very offences with which
they charged their former comrades. The notorious
John de Brunn, whose Confessions reflect more
dishonour upon himself and upon a priesthood which
welcomed them than upon the communities they were
meant to expose, is a case in point. With notable
exceptions to which we shall refer presently, the
evidence against these groups is derived entirely
from hostile and prejudiced sources ; their own
writings, which were very numerous and contained
the authoritative expression of their tenets, were
burnt by papal edict — one of many indirect testi
monies to the popularity of communities which
weathered great gales of persecution and had the
sympathy and support of the common people.
The only reliable testimony against them is found
scattered throughout the pages of Ruysbroeck,
Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso, who were profoundly
disquieted by the degeneracies of contemporary
Mysticism and castigated them with no gentle touch.
But while the witness of these great mystics is
conclusive, as far as it goes, it does not imply
that moral laxity was the rule among these groups.
Its warnings and denunciations clearly refer to
1 For a masterly sketch of the pantheistic mystics and brotherhood
groups, see Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 178-216,
83

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
individuals and small coteries which were infected
by the so-called doctrine of the Free Spirit ;
nowhere are the groups as a whole antagonised or
condemned.^ The appeal to history is dangerous for yet another
reason. If history is hard on the mystics, it is not
one whit kinder to members of evangelical Churches
and sects. In point of fact, the worst that can be
urged from history against a certain type of Mysticism
has been urged, with a far greater force of proof,
against a very widespread type of evangelical religion.
Antinomianism — and the thing is larger than the
word and of protean character — has been the blight
of evangelical, as it has never been of mystical,
religion. Since the days of St. Paul there has
never been a lack of those who gave themselves
up to sin the more that grace might the more
abound, and to this very day isolated sects sur
vive on the Continent which teach a naked and
unashamed antinomianism, while individual examples
are found everywhere. If these perversions do not
stultify the evangelical doctrine of grace, it is diffi
cult to see why the moral aberrations of weak-
minded and degenerate quasi-mystics should be
adduced as arguments against the ethical soundness
of Mysticism.
It is also clear that any moral weakness which
characterises Mysticism here and there has its root,
not in the contemplative habit which pertains to
^ It is significant to note in this connection that one of Ruysbroeck's most
mature and profound works is called The Book of the Twelve Beguines and
that its most inspired passages are put into the mouth of members of tbe
Beguine order.
84

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
the method rather than to the substance of Mysticism,
but in a defective conception of the object of contem
plation. In other words, the question is one of
theology, and we shaU consider it in detail in the
section dealing with Mysticism and Theology. Mean
while it suffices to remind ourselves that what is
popularly called Mysticism is, after all, only a schema
— a method of approach whose results will be entirely
determined by the nature of the goal to which
approach is made. If this object be conceived in
ethical and spiritual terms, as He who bids us be
holy because He is holy, it will pledge the aspiring
soul to a life-long warfare against every unrighteous
impulse and to a process of profound, though not-
legalistic, self-purification. If, on the other hand,
the goal of striving be conceived as union with an
empty, indeterminate Absolute about which nothing
but AU-ness can safely be predicated, then the soul
is bereft of any ethical criterion or imperative ;
and the whole mixed multitude of its impulses,
whether chaste or licentious, may be equally referred
to the inspiration of a deity whose only real attribute
is aU-inclusiveness. That a movement which has
been influenced so constantly and ^jrofoundly by
Neoplatonic, Asiatic, and (when traced to their
ultimate source) Manichaean tendencies as Mysticism
has ever been, should not have given a loophole
to libertinism is unthinkable ; on the other hand,
it must not be forgotten that precisely the same
influences which opened the door to licentiousness
also produced an extreme asceticism. While one
section of false mystics, whose most unlovely mani-
85

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
festation is seen in the eroticism of the Adamites of
Paris, welcomed every impulse of flesh and spirit as
divine, another section approximated to the ascetic
exaggerations of the Waldenses, and among these, be
it noted, were not a few of the very group that bore
so evil a reputation — the Brethren of the Free
Spirit. When all this is borne in mind, as well as the over
whelming probability that comparatively small num
bers, even of the libertine section, actually practised
the " liberty " they preached, it will be seen that the
alleged moral dangerousness of Mysticism shrinks
into very small proportions — is, in fact, no greater
than that which accompanies every type of religion
that is not narrowly moralistic or harshly intellectual.
Make love the alpha and omega of religion, and you
introduce an element of peril : you are at once beset
with every possibility of perversion. It is not in
Mysticism that the peril resides, but in Christianity.
To live as a Christian is to live dangerously ; but
what soul worthy of its Divine calling would desire
to live " safely " and to miss the revelation that
can only be read in the bright face of danger ? Even
religious eroticism is not the monopoly of the mystics.
It is found in writers — one need only mention Samuel
Rutherford — who were the bitterest opponents of
Mysticism in their day.
It is a pity that those critics who so glibly talk
of contemplation as the esoteric amusement of self-
styled adepts who deem themselves superior to ethical
considerations and leave practical service to " carnal "
persons are not more closely acquainted with the
86

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
innumerable passages in mystical literature in wbich
false contemplatives are chastised as with scorpions
For example one need only turn to the writings of
Ruysbroeck, who anatomises the vicious contempla
tive with merciless precision, preserving throughout
the just balance of the active and passive elements
in the mystic life. Thus, while he insists that even in
eternal life happiness could not exist without activity,
and that " interior consolation is of an inferior
order to the act of love which renders service to
the poor," ^ he equally insists upon the " repose of
the abyss " wherein the soul is lost in a holy dark
ness in which " to contemplate and to know, to
experience and to feel, to have and to be are one." ^
He has scathing words for the contemplative
who seeks a refuge from responsibiUty in quietism.
" Such peace," he declares, " is an outrage on God,
is the crime of Use majeste. . . . He who flnds his
peace outside of action, who yields himself to a
tranquillity without performance, has lost the way.
. . . This false contemplative is like a merchant
who desires only profit. ... It is spiritual luxury,
the love of pleasure which, turning a man in upon
himself, holds him in the prison of self, saying,
' Happiness lies there.' . . . Men of themselves set
forth on this barren, erring quest, content in their
self-absorption, not even seeking God by desire.
It is not He who holds them in this deceptive
inaction, for this is an emptiness of soul and idle
ness of body that surely drive the man downwards,
1 Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic, p. 54.
2 Flowers of a Mystic Garden, p. 74.
87

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
... He who yields himself to peace devoid of
activity, goodness and effort is lost. He attains
but to spiritual pride and interior satisfaction and
becomes an incurable. The seed of every sin lies
hidden within this quiescence. It is the fall of
the angels." ^ No modern decrier of quietism and
passive contemplation could dispose of it more tren
chantly that the thirteenth-century ecstatic, and even
Ruysbroeck's most esoteric utterances do not fail of
this characteristic touch of crisp common sense, nor
of the robust moral feeling which we like to think is
essentiaUy modern. This emerges notably in the
matchless passages in which he treats of the relation
and interaction between the active and the contempla
tive states. At one moment he seems to exalt naked
contemplation. " Pure love," he says, " frees a
man from himself and his acts. ... If we would
know this in ourselves, we must yield to the Divine,
the innermost sanctuary of ourselves. . . . Our
love must outweigh aU else, and, sinking into the
very substance of the creature, find no resting
place till it meets God in the abyss where He dwells
alone." ^ Here the matter-of-fact reader wiU be
overcome by impatience at a eulogy of a state which
seems to him psychic rather than spiritual, and
below rather than above morality and reason. But
immediately he is swept back into a clearer air.
" From here," continues Ruysbroeck, " comes the
impulse and urgency towards active righteousness
and virtue, for love cannot be idle. The Spirit
^ Flowers of a Mystic Garden, pp. 92, 93, 98, 99.
2 Ibid., p. "89.
88

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
of God, moving within the powers of the man
urges them outwards in just and wise activity.
. . . And the stability of righteousness remains
in us." ^ Again, in speaking of that spiritual gift
of intelUgence wbich initiates men into tbe contem
plative life, he begins by speaking of " those happy
and hallowed ones who have found refuge in the
great solitude of the Divinity, where the Lord
possesses and enjoys His own essence ; and the
light fails because the Divine essence knows no
human measure." But immediately he goes on to
say that while Christ was " the greatest contem
plative of all times," yet He was " ever at the
service of men, and never did His ineffable and
perpetual contemplation diminish His charity, or
His exterior activity." ^

III
Another charge brought against the mystics by
Mr. Coats is that of pious heartlessness. " They
have thought to become so united to God," he
remarks, " as to leave aU poor sinners in the mire.
. . . They would rather swoon into the infinite than
heal a broken heart or help a lame dog over the
stile. Some might even be counted on, in the manner
of the Emperor Nero, to hearken complacently to the
music of their own sweet violin while the world was
burning," ^
1 Flowers of a Mystic Garden, p. 90,
^ Ibid., pp. 129, 130.
' Types of English Piety, p. 219,
89

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
We have already referred to a certain element of
inhumanity in mediseval sainthood, and pointed out
that while the mystics did not altogether escape its
baneful influence, this " holy " callousness to human
pain and sin was comparatively rare among them.
At their worst the mediseval mystics did not exhibit
the bleak, unfeeling and sometimes explicitly cruel
temper so commonly met with in the annals of " saint
hood," while at their best they were the great human
ising force in the reUgious life of their time. One
need only think of St. Francis, who illuminated and
warmed a whole arctic region of the spirit — a golden
and irresistible sun whose magnitude obscured the
many lesser lights that softened bleak skies and made
little flowers of love and delight to spring up in stony
places. Mystical literature abounds in passages and
whole books breathing what we should caU a strangely
modern feeling for human pain and woe, a feeUng
which overflowed to our dumb brethren. Every
where we find it fragrant of that " pure sympathising
spirit " which John Woolman praised so highly in his
dry and sober fashion. Take as an example of rare
and persuasive charm the short record of one
Margaret Kempe, an obscure precursor of Lady
Julian : " When she saw the crucifix," recounts
her chronicler, " or if she saw a man had a
wound, or a beast ; or if a man beat a child before
her, or smote a horse or another beast with a whip,
if she might see it or hear it, she thought she
saw our Lord beaten or wounded. ... If she saw
any creature be punished or sharply chastised,
. . . then would she weep for her own sin and for
90

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
compassion of that creature." ^ Again, Christ is
described as saying to this most Christ-like soul :
" And, daughter, I thank thee for the charity that
thou hast to all lecherous men and women, for thou
prayest for them and weepest for them many a
tear, desiring that I should deliver them out of
sin . . . and with this condition thou wouldest
that each one of them should have twenty pounds
a year to love and praise Me. . . . Furthermore,
daughter, I thank thee for the general charity
that thou hast to aU people that be now in this
world, and to all those that are to come unto
the world's end ; that thou wouldest be hacked
as smaU as flesh to the pot for their love, so
that I would by thy death save them aU from
damnation." ^
With a more profound insight and a firmer grasp
of spiritual principles, St. Catherine of Siena records
how a revelation of " the neediness of the world "
caused her to pray in the spirit of Moses that the
punishment of the world's sin might fall upon her.
She tells us how " a certain soul " had a selfless
desire, and how this desire, which had long been
great and continous, " grew much more when the
First Truth showed her the neediness of the world,
and in what a tempest of offence against God it lay.
AU this lighted the fire of her holy desire with
grief for the offences, and with the joy of the
Uvely hope, with which she waited for God to provide
' The Cell of Self-Knowledge : Seven Early English Mystical Treatises,
PP- 54, 55-
» lbid., pp. 56, 57. 91

MEANING AND VALUE OP MYSTICISM
against such great evils. And since the soul seems
in such communion sweetly to bind herself fast
within herself and with God, and knows better His
truth, inasmuch as the soul is then in God, and God
in the soul, as the fish is in the sea, and the sea in
the fish, she desired the arrival of the morning in
order to hear mass. And when the morning
came . . . she sought with anxious desire her
accustomed place ; and, with a great knowledge of
herself, being ashamed of her own imperfection,
appearing to herself to be tbe cause of all the evil
that was happening throughout the world, conceiv
ing a hatred and displeasure against herself, and
a feeling of holy justice, with which knowledge,
hatred, and justice she purified the stains which
seemed to her to cover her guilty soul, she said
' O Eternal Father, I accuse myself before Thee in
order that Thou mayest punish me for my sins in
this finite life, and inasmuch as my sins are the
cause of the sufferings which my neighbour must
endure, I implore Thee, in Thy kindness, to punish
them in my person.' " ^
A curious misinterpretation of the mystical attitude
towards sin and pain is seen in a not uncommon
view of Lady Julian of Norwich, which represents
her as " praying peacefuUy in her cloister " and
viewing the world's pain and confusion so very much
de haut en bas that she " may part her pale lips to
murmur tranquilly ' Sin is behovable, but aU shall
be weU, all shall be weU and aU manner of thing
'^ The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, " Treatise of Divine Providence,"
pp. 28-29.
92

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
shaU be well.' " ^ Nothing could be farther from
the truth. Lady JuUan saw the " behovingness " of
sin in a vision which, so far from being a piece of pious
armchair dreaming, was the result of her desiring
" three graces by the gift of God," namely, to have
mind of Christ's passion, bodily sickness, and three
wounds, which are the wound of contrition, the
wound of compassion, and the wound of a steadfast
longing towards God.^ It was when pierced with these
three deep wounds that it was shown her by Christ
that sin is behovable. Hers was a simple, sunny,
tender soul, lacking the sombre depth and keen
penetration of St. Catherine of Siena, and so the
announcement that sin was behovable evoked no
passionate protest from her. But she did anything
but murmur tranquilly, " AU shall be well." Quite
the contrary. Bleeding from her wounds of con
trition and compassion, she turned wistful eyes to
Him who assured her that aU shall be well, saying,
" Ah, good Lord, how might all be well, for the great
harm that is come by sin to Thy creatures ? " ^
And she goes on to tell how " our good Lord " made
" comfortable " answer to all her questions and
doubts. And her vision of the behovableness of sin,
which seems to be a source of constant apprehension
to a school of writers who hold it up as the warning
example of tbe extent to which Mysticism can delude
a pious soul, in no wise impaired her just and vivid
sense of the sinfulness of sin. " If," she says soon
' Revelations of Divine Love, p. 56.
2 Ibid., p. 5.
' Ibid., p. 60.
93

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
after, " there were laid before me all the pain that
is in hell and purgatory and in earth . . . and sin,
I had liefer choose all that pain than sin. . . . For
aU is good but sin, and nothing is wicked but sin."
And again, in oft-quoted words, " To me was shown
no harder hell than sin." ^

IV
At every point the attempt to see in contemplation
a source of ethical weakness or of pious heartlessness
breaks down when confronted with the testimony
of the mystics themselves. Throughout their writings
the student wbo forgets the " timelessness " of aU
truly spiritual experience and insight is startled by
a certain modernity of feeling. The above quoted
passage from St. Catherine of Siena, for instance,
startles by its passionate realisation of the organic
unity of mankind. It is the cry of a soul which
sees a slur upon its own honour in the dishonour
of knaves and profligates ; which feels the ruin
of the outcast as its own unhealing wound, its own
deepest blame ; which, smitten to the core by a
revelation of human sin, knows itself as the one
that brought the nails which fixed humanity to its
cross. Here again it is ultimately a question of theology,
and, with aU that can legitimately be said about the
timeless unity of mystical theology, it remains that
even Christian mystics differ sharply in their funda-
* Revelations of Divine Love, p. 83.
94

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
mental conception of God. To realise this difference
one need not go to such glaring and obvious contrasts
as that between that most sombre mystic of the
Counter-Reformation, St. John of the Cross, and the
sane and serene Nature-mystic, Wordsworth, or that
between George Fox and Francis Thompson. Two
examples taken from recent mystical literature, both
of the confessedly " Catholic " type, will serve
to show how wide the cleavage may be. The
first is taken from a poem. The Likeness, by Miss
UnderhiU :
" Thine undaunted daughters of the slum,
Faithfully dealing with hopeless intractable life ;
Fostering their broods in the dark basement,
Down at heel, slattern hair, yet radiant of love and of
courage,
Fruitful of fresh souls, new strange disguises for Thee.
*****
" Thy naughty ones, rebellious, cunning, adventurous,
Breaking the toys of their brothers, thrusting their
tortuous lives athwart the respectable web —
These too 1
Do these not exhibit Thy vigour, Thy rude inexhaustible
freedom,
Correcting vnth flushes of passion our colourless pictures
of God ?
" Hast Thou Thy favourite amongst these scattered chil
dren ?
Hast Thou any one of them of whom Thou canst say :
This is My beloved child f
Nay, I think not- so.
Love buildeth her temple,
Its name is Life : 95

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
" It hath columns strong and lovely, deep earth-set founda
tions.
Gargoyles for the amusement of Thine angels, and pin
nacles glad in the blue.
And the souls of Thy children shall build it ; Thy mark is
on every one of them.
All hast Thou made for their office,
All have their place in Thy home."
The background of such a poem — the only back
ground out of which it could have grown — is, let us
say it quite frankly, an essentially unethical con
ception of God. To speak of wayward souls as
exhibiting the vigour, the " rude inexhaustible free
dom " of God and forming gargoyles on the temple of
life for the amusement of the angels is to make a
confession of faith, to formulate a creed, which is not
the faith and the creed of the Christian soul, how
ever broadly we may define Christianity. Such
utterances are not the characteristic outcome of the
mystic spirit, and therefore cannot be used to prove
the unethical, or anti-ethical trend of Mysticism. They
are the poetic expression of a theology, a thought of
God, shared to-day by thousands who make not the
sUghtest pretence to mystical affinities.
For a direct contrast we may turn to such a book
as The Cult of the Passing Moment, by the Bishop
of Bloemfontein, who, in his earlier work, Ara Coeli,
has given us one of the simplest and profoundest
expositions of mystical theology our recent literature
can boast of. Bishop Chandler is essentiaUy a
CathoUc mystic. Like Miss UnderhiU, he is steeped
in the writings of St. Teresa and St. John of the
96

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
Cross, but his reading of their intention differs most
significantly from hers. Writing of religion — and
to him religion always means mystical religion —
Bishop Chandler says, " The nature of religion, and
its distinctness from other things, are shown very
strikingly in the fact that reUgion, unlike them, can
only be approached in a spirit of penitence and
self-humiUation. This spirit is, in fact, the constant
characteristic of religion ; it is only deepened and
strengthened in the process of religious growth.
Such a fact would be inexpUcable if religion were
merely a branch of ' humaner letters' or a synonym
for philanthropic action ; we do not look for
humility in ' Gigadibs the Uterary man,' nor are we
surprised at its absence in a Social Democrat or,
perhaps, in a charity organiser ; but we feel that
it is a natural and reasonable thing, if religion is
union with God, and that it is a necessary and
inevitable thing if that God is Christ crucified." ^
Proceeding to define more closely the penitence and
self-humiliation tbat spring out of a vital relationship
with the Crucified, he has much to say on the fellow
ship of the suffering of Christ, both for ourselves and
for others, on the nature and justification of vicarious
penitence, and on other aspects of the matter in
which the more romantic qualities of Mysticism — the
qualities which make Mysticism attractive to the
dilettante — come into view. But again and again we
are reminded that the essence of that penitence which
is at the root of aU true religion is not a mystic
absorption in the sufferings of Christ, a sensuous cult
* The Cult ofthe Passing Moment, p. 92. B
97

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
of the Sacred Wounds, or a heroic choice of the
purgative way, but simply " a real sorrow for sin and,
hatred of sin." ^ To come to bis pages straight from
such rhapsodies as those of Miss Underbill is to come
into a different world, to breathe a different atmo
sphere. It is the underlying conception of God that
makes the difference — a conception, again, not exclu
sively mystical, but shared by those who have scant
affinities with Mysticism. Miss UnderhiU defines
Mysticism as " the expression of the innate tendency
of the human spirit towards complete harmony
with the transcendental order, whatever be the
theological formula under which that order is
understood." ^ But whatever may or may not be
said as to the adequacy of such a definition, the man
of good, honest sense will always feel that in the end
it is not so much the innate mystic feeling as that
upon which it feeds that really matters. If human
history has any genuine value, if human sin and woe
are of moment to God, if there is any validity in ethics,
any reality in redemption, then it does matter
infinitely " whether that end [the end of mystic
union] be called the God of Christianity, the World-
Soul of Pantheism or the Absolute of Philosophy," '
To use such values as indifferent alternatives is to
trifle with realities, to play with life itself.
And the same applies when it is not a question of
a shallow view of sin, but of callousness to human
suffering and failure to realise social obligations.
1 The Cult ofthe Passing Moment, p. 94.
^ Mysticism, Preface, p. x.
» Ibid.
98

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
Everything turns upon the mystic's thought of God.
If He is conceived of as a vague Hegelian Absolute,
blank rather than deep, which can only be reached
through the dehumanising discipline of the via
negativa, or as that heavenly " Bridegroom of the
soul " to whom all creation is but a poppy-couch
from which to snatch His bride and stab her awake
with His kiss to possess her in timeless rapture,
then the mystic's life necessarily resolves itself into
a sterile quietism or a spiritual epicureanism. And
the result must obviously be a de-etbicising of the
personality and a tragic blindness to the fact and
the horror of evil. But if, on the other hand, the
God whom the mystic seeks is
" the Lamb of God that takes
Each living hour a world's red guilt away ; "
if, in other words, his God be One wbo is Himself
afflicted in aU human affliction and nailed to the
Cross by aU human sin, whose ruling passion is the
world's redemption, whose mind is ever bent upon
His frail and struggling children, taking thought for
each one with the illimitable inventiveness of Love,
then the soul that seeks union with Him must seek
participation in His atoning sympathy. His redemp
tive intentions, plans, and purposes for men. The
more intimately such a soul is conjoined with its
God, the more completely will it be informed with a
self-sacrificing and substitutionary spirit. This the
authentic representatives of mystical religion never
failed to reaUse. So far from sinking into selfish
absorption or unbridled luxury of feeling, they gave
99

. MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
themselves to their brethren and were, in the deepest
sense, the pioneers of the social conscience.
True, their social sense was often — and that inevit
ably, considering the times they lived in — restricted
to the brotherhood of faith. But how nobly and
sacrificially did it operate within that sphere, often
(as in the case of St. Catherine of Siena) assuming with
St. Paul " the care of all the Churches," and crying
out, " Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is
offended, and I burn not ? " A widely different
atmosphere and training enabled the passion for
social righteousness which was deep-rooted in the
brooding heart of Jacob Boehme to find a more
modern expression or, if we prefer, to take the form
of a return to the prophetic cry of woe upon the
oppressor of the poor. With eyes ever upon that
" deep door " of the soul that opens into eternity,
Boehme had yet the heart at leisure from itself to
note the bitter misery of him who laboured for a
mere pittance. With words that sting like a lash,
he castigates a Christianity which " consumes the
sweat and blood of the needy " and battens upon
" the sighs and groans of the poor." ^ He warns
his contemporaries tbat a profession of Christianity
which is not a practical recognition of " fraternity
in the life of Christ " is an insult to God. " Thy
brother's soul," he insists, " is a fellow member
with thy soul " ; * and with all the prophet's urgency
he pleads that possessions, goods and talents should
not be held selfishly, but freely given to enrich the
1 The Three Principles _ XIX., 47 ; XXI., 32.
* Forty Questions, XIL, 39.
100

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
common life of humanity and to benefit the com
munity. And so widely different a mystic as Thomas
Traherne exclaims : " O Christ, I see Thy crown of
thorns in every eye ; Thy bleeding, naked, wounded
body in every soul ; Thy death liveth in every memory ;
Thy crucified Person is embalmed in every affection ;
Thy pierced feet are bathed in everyone's tears ; and
it is my privilege to enter with Thee into every
soul."i It is not too much to assert that all true social -
life and effort are grounded in Mysticism. This is
true historically. In a certain measure it holds true
of Joseph Eels and Prince Kropotkin, as well as of
Arnold Toynbee and Josephine Butler. The brother
hood of man, however conceived, is a mystical
doctrine. Belief in a unity which is not a mere
numerical expression, nor an arbitrary confederation
dictated by self-interest, can ultimately be justified
only by an appeal to that eternal world in which
Christ is the Vine and we the branches. If held on
any other grounds it is at the mercy of dry analysis,
and will prove too flimsy to subdue the selfish indi
vidualist impulse. That is why no secular prophet,
however single-minded and impassioned, has ever been
able to convert our democracies to any conviction that
might fairly be termed brotherhood, to anything more
vital and regenerative than trades unionism. Human
brotherhood is a beautiful dream, a dazzUng mirage,
unless it is conceived in terms of conversion. The
fact of our membership one with another will remain
a burden productive only of chafing and fretting, of
} Centuries of Meditation, p. 65.
lai

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
mutual distrust and antagonism, until we become
conscious of our common Ufe in God. And this
consciousness, as distinct from a mere sentimental
acceptance of a doctrine of Divine Fatherhood, is
essentiaUy mystical. It is not gained in crowds.
Each one enters the narrow gate alone and hears the
secret whisper meant for no other. " My secret to
myself," he says. And yet — here is the paradox of
all true reUgion — that which has flashed upon him
as the hidden ground of his most individual being also
reveals itself as the hidden bond which unites him
vitally with aU his brother men. In the very act of
secret entrance into the true life of the spirit, he has
also entered into sure and- inalienable possession of
his brotherly rights in humanity. His consciousness
!of God speaking to him in the wilderness of his
I lonely soul and his consciousness of soUdarity with
every other human soul are but two sides of the same
shield. The light which shone in the dark centre of
his being is the light that Ughteth every man that
cometh into the world. The life he feels weUing up
in him is the life of the Vine which flows through
many branches. True socialism is essentiaUy mys
tical, and a socialism which is built on a non-mystical
foundation must inevitably coUapse, for at bottom
it is but a confraternity of coUective selfishness. It
may be objected that the communism of the primitive
Church, while profoundly religious, was not mystical ;
but we must not confine the term to mystical theories
of life consciously held. The primitive faith was
faith in a mystical fact — in the fact' of a common
Lord and Giver of life — and the communism of the
102

THE CONTEMPLATIVE IDEAL
early Church was possible only as long as her life was
truly, though unconsciously, mystical in essence.
It follows that while we shall do well to recognise
certain de-ethicising and dehumanising tendencies
which dog the path of Mysticism, we shaU be careful
to view them from the standpoint of the great mystics
themselves who stigmatised them so unsparingly,
and not from the standpoint of " outside criticism."
The most stringent prophet of righteousness and
humanity approaching Mysticism from the outside
could not feel the degeneracies and aberrations of
Mysticism as they were felt by a Ruysbroeck, a Tauler,
a St. Teresa, to whom they were as leprous sores on
the body of a beloved child. ' With relentless severity
they and other great mystic saints inveighed against
them, using language of naked contempt and con
demnation, prescribing heroic remedies, treating delin
quents with scant ceremony, yet never for a single
moment suggesting the surrender of the contempla
tive life in the interests of a purer ethic and a more
practical charity. For they knew the things by
which the soul lives. They knew that but for the
abandonment of some to communion with God, to
the discipUne of purgation and to the work of contem
plation, the world would perish for lack of contact
with God, asphyxiated by an atmosphere lacking the
oxygen of the spirit. They were aware — no modern
critic more so — that theirs was a perilous path ; that
the soul's thirst for God may be perverted into a
thin, sour craving for esoteric adventures ; that
spiritual gluttony may blunt and even kill all natural
human feeling, all decent moral sense ; that what is
103

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
begun in the spirit may end in the flesh, and even at
times in gross carnality. But they did not seek safe
paths ; they sought only that to which the implac
able Voice called them. They took aU risks, and
their stainless and opulent lives invite every man
who hears even a whisper of that call to follow in
their train.

104

CHAPTER V
SOME ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
Man is no better than a leaf driven by the wind until he has completely
mastered his great lonely duties. If he has no habit of retiring from all that
is world and of conversing face to face with his inner man, if he does not,
alone, invite the gaze of God, if he does not draw down upon his soul " the
powers of the world to come," then he is no man yet ; he has not found the
life of man nor the strength of man ; he is a poor, unhappy creature, sporting
only with shadows, and affrighted before the real and the eternal. He owns
a great house, a wonderful house, but it is shut up, and he lives outside with
his fellow cattle : the inside is wholly unknown to him, and he has lived
outside so long that he is afraid of the inside. John Pulsford.
When first the busy, clumsy tongue is stilled,
Save that some childish, stammering words of lovt
The coming birth of man's true language prove :
When one and all
The wistful seeking senses are fulfilled
With strange austere delight, . . .
Then may the senses fall
Vanquished indeed, nor dread
That this their dear defeat be counted sin.
For every door of flesh shall lift its head
Because the King of Life is entered in.
Evelyn Underhili.,

SYNOPSIS
Contemplation as a means to the knowledge of God —
Contemplation an askesis — ^Zeb-un-Nissa dn the discipline of
Love. I. Introversion — Not to be confounded with intro
spection — " the fountain in the heart " — Father Faber,
Maeterlinck, and William Law on Introversion — Introversion
as a way to self-knowledge — The doctrine of the Christ within
as a source of penitence and humility — Self-knowledge not
merely a knowledge of sin — Much of our theology really a
pathology — The discovery that we can do all things through
Christ — The eschatological element in such self-knowledge —
Christ known in the heart — Meditation as a preliminary step.
II. Mystic quiet — Not to be identified with quietism —
Father Augustine Baker on active stillness — The passive
element in mystic quiet — the art of " listening " — The practice
of corporate silence as recorded in The Fellowship of Silence —
Such experiments in a line with mystical tradition — Passi
vity not the end of mystic quiet — Ruysbroeck on the passion
ate " encounter " of Love — Mystical experience, active and
passionate. III. Contemplation in the specific sense :
Ecstasy ; rapture — The brevity of vision — St. Augustine on
the moment of vision — The infiuence of visionary moments
upon his life and work — Flashes of vision not peculiar to
mystics — The price of vision — Coventry Patmore on its pecu
liar perils — Obedience the safeguard.

CHAPTER V
SOME ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
Dr. Rendel Harris remarks somewhere that in
these days there are many who know God a little,-/
but very few who know Him much ; and no one who
looks at his day and generation with sober eyes can
doubt that this is true. The world is perishing for
lack of that dynamic and experimental knowledge of
God which is the crown and glory of the saints.
We have many whose morality is touched with
emotion, who are keenly sensitive to spiritual sugges
tions and have a quick insight into religious questions,
but few who are pre-eminent for an authentic, first
hand, intimately personal knowledge of God which
shapes their Uves and sets its indelible seal upon their
souls — few, even, whose deep and settled purpose it
is thus to know God. Yet, after long silence, the
mystic's voice is once more heard caUing us to con
templation as a means of knowing God with the under
standing of love, and here and there his caU meets
with a response, if only in the wistful curiosity which
asks, " Tell me wherein thy strength lieth ? TeU
me what this unfamiliar thing — contemplation — reaUy
means ? " The answer is simple enough. In its"'
essence contemplation is nothing else than a humble. | •,
steadfast, brooding attentiveness to the things of]
eternity in the solitude of our own souls. It means a
107

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
concentration of attention, an absorption such as
that of the true artist in his subject, which can only
be learnt by slow degrees, but is, nevertheless, the
natural attitude of a spiritual being. It involves
the extrusion of all alien interests, the gathering of
scattered thoughts, the folding-in of vagrant imagin
ings — in short, that attitude of soul which finds
its appropriate symbol in the story of the disciples
assembling in the upper room and " closing the door
for fear of the Jews." It is not a mood, or a state of
feeling, but a discipline, an askesis ; and our just and
wholesome suspicion of the elaborate exercises where
by " New Thought " experts and the promoters of
other pseudo-mystical cults profess to train ambitious
aspirants to become " adepts of eternity " must not
be made an excuse for casting all discipline on the
scrap-heap and ruling the ascetic element out of
our spiritual life. That we have practically no
modern ascetic literature is taken by some as the
haU-mark of spiritual liberty ; in reality it is the
sign of a petty and shallow temper which imagines
that the Eternal and Holy One may be apprehended
by every casual seeker after spiritual sensation in
his sleep, as it were. True, God dwells not neces
sarily with the master of askesis, but with him that
is of a contrite and humble spirit ; yet, neither
contrition nor humility can come to their right
growth without persistent discipline. Discipline and
freedom are inseparably conjoined in both art and
life. It is the fashion in these days to represent the
ordinary pious soul as a mechanic in bondage to
rules and regulations, and the mystic as a free creative
Io8

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
artist of the Spirit. Let the figure stand. The eye
of the artist is the disciplined eye ; the boldest,
most untrammeUed vision that ever broke upon his
soul depends upon the severely trained hand for its
expression. And the discipUne is none the less austere
because it is the discipline of love. We say that the
mystic soul looks out upon its world, not with the
cold look of observation, which is the manner of the
scientist, but with the ardent look of love, which
is the way of the artist. But is the discipline of love
less relentless than the discipline of science ? Does
the devoted servant of an impersonal idea suffer one
half of the rigour, the sternness, the purifying flame
which love imposes upon her apprentices ? Certainly
there is no formal and stereotyped method in the
school of love^ and we do well to distrust any cut-
and-dried system, any rigid formula or elaborately
sub-divided s6heme which may be offered to us in
the name of Mysticism. But just because it is not
formal, it is tbe more exacting. Many of the Oriental
mystics, for all their tendency to luxuriate in religious
eroticism, knew love's long, unremitting discipline,
her stern demand of spiritual poverty, chastity and
obedience, as we, who boast of having purged ourselves
of their crass anthropomorphism, do not. Thus the
Indian poet. Princess Zeb-un-Nissa sings :
" O Love, where dost Thou lead.
Upon what travel fares our caravan ?
By Hedjaz desert shall thy footsteps speed,
The longest journey since the world began." ^
1 The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, p. 80.
109

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
And again, more expUcitly :
" Treading Love's path so long.
Under such heavy burdens did I bow,
At last my chastened heart has grown so strong
No task, no pain, can bend my spirit now." ^
That love is not only an inspiration but also a
discipline holds nowhere more true than in the soul's
communion with God ; and the fundamental reason
why we know God so little is that we are too volatile
and impressionist to submit to the long, searching
process of practising the presence of God. To attend
to God is a lost art. We lack the requisite patience.
St. Gregory Nazianzen's Solius Dei impatientes sumus
is poignantly true of our day.

What is involved in the contemplative disciphne
of the mystics ?
First, Introversion, which must not be confounded
with introspection. Introspection is the attitude of
the spiritual egotist, who examines his soul periodically
to " see how it is getting on." It is, in the last
resort, not an inward activity at all, but an attempt
to observe one's soul from the outside — a holding
up of the mirror to oneself, which simulates humility,
but in reality only ministers to pride. Introversion,
on the contrary, is a turning inwards, from the circum
ference to the centre, in order to hold converse, not
with oneself, but with the Word, the Spirit, the
indwelUng Christ, call it what we will, speaking in
^ ihe Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, p. 47.
IIO

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
the deep places of the soul, purging it from its stains
and unreality and guiding it into paths of wisdom,
peace and love. The " deep door " does not lead
into a palace of mirrors, but into tbat upper room
where Christ reveals Himself to His disciples. Intro
version must, therefore, never be contrasted with
that outgoing of the soul towards God of which it is
but " the other side." It is, in fact, that coming to
oneself which alone makes possible the cry, " I wUl
arise and go to my Father."
The mystics, then, caU us to introversion, declaring
with one voice, " Better the fountain in the heart
than the fountain by the way." We do not readily
beUeve that. We live in a land fuU of fountains.
Scarcely have we left one wayside well behind when
another offers its sparkling draught to our eager lips.
Life has expanded and grown rich beyond measure,
and with it there has come to us a sharpening of
sensibility, an eagerness of appreciation. Our hands
are fuU to overflowing, and still there remains so
much we should like to grasp. We tend to live more
and more outside ourselves ; even our concern in
spiritual things often resolves itself into the interest
of an intelligent onlooker anxious to study the
varieties of religious experience. Thus it comes about
that of aU the undiscovered continents which lie
about us none seems more forbidding to our relaxed
taste than our own heart. Frederick W. Faber
reminds us that a man needs to keep his heart warm
by living in it, and it is for want of being lived in that
our hearts seem to us arctic regions for which we are
loath to exchange the genial sunshine of our busy and
III

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
interesting external life. Occasional excursions into
the fringes of the unexplored breed in us a nameless
discomfort, a ghostly fear ; and we haste us back
to a more friendly and familiar landscape. And
so we go on, until one day some " act of God " shatters
our dream-world and we awake to the fact that
nothing really matters except that strange, mys
terious life behind the brain in which man touches
God. Such a revolution may come through the
sudden explosion of a hidden mine in the heart,
through the terrifying emergence of unsuspected
furies, undreamed-of passions. It may come as a
revelation of spiritual bankruptcy, or as a discovery
of untapped sources of spiritual wealth. Some
sudden and complete bouleversement, outward or
inward, cuts the ground from under our feet, and we
turn to our neglected hearts, to realise with pain
that we are not at home in our own house, that we
have lost the key to our true kingdom.
But the mystics remind us that we need not awake
to so bleak and desolate a dawn. " Had your eyes
been open," asks Maeterlinck, " might you not have
beheld in a kiss that which to-day you perceive
in a catastrophe ? " ^ " Your heart is your life,"
says William Law. " Thou art a stranger to this
principle of Heaven, this riches of eternity within
thee. . . . Heaven is once more brought to us as a
treasure hidden in the centre of our souls." ^ And
again, speaking of the Church within the soul,
" Accustom thyself to the holy service of the inward
^ The Treasure oj the Humble, p. 175.
' The Spirit of Prayer (Works, vol. vii.), pp. 29, 30.
112

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
temple. In the midst of it is the fountain of living
water. . . . There the Mysteries of thy redemption
are celebrated. . . . There the Supper of the Lamb
is kept, the Bread that came down from Heaven
that giveth Ught to the world is thy true nourish
ment. . . . When once thou art grounded in this
inward worship, thou wilt have learnt to live unto
God above time and place." ^ And with reiterative
insistence he bids us dig deep for the pearl that was
never hid in any earthly field. " Awake, then, thou
that sleepest, and Christ, Who from all eternity
has been espoused to thy soul, shall give thee
Ught. Begin to search and dig in thine own field
for this Pearl of Eternity that Ueth hidden in it ;
it cannot cost thee too much, nor canst thou buy
it too dear, for it is All, and when thou hast found
it, thou wilt know that aU which thou hast sold or
given away for it is a mere nothing, as a bubble upon
the water." ^
Plainly, this getting accustomed to the worship of
the inmost temple, this digging for the hidden pearl
of our hearts, is a slowly-acquired art and involves
a steady and searching discipline ; and the question
which immediately arises in minds accustomed to
easy and all-but-unconscious acquisition of treasure
is whether the gain is commensurate to the effort.
What shall we find in that dense and baffling jungle
of passions, desires, aspirations and motives we
caU our heart ? Two things, say the mystics :
knowledge of self and knowledge of God.
1 The Spirit of Prayer (Works, vol. vii.), p. 35.
* Ibid., p. 29.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Self-knowledge must always be partial and limited,
and, like all partial knowledge, is a dangerous thing
unless it is acquired by gazing at something other
and higher than self. We have said that introversion
is not self-inspection, but the beholding of God as
immanent in the soul ; and we might add that
vital knowledge, either of self or of God, can come
in no other way. " To mount to God," says a great
mystic (probably Albertus Magnus), " is to enter into
one's self. For he who inwardly entereth and in
timately penetrateth into himself, gets above and
beyond himself and truly mounts up to God " ^ To
look into one's heart with honest, humble eyes is to
place oneself under the discipline and instruction of
One who is greater than our heart.
This suggests the well-known mystical doctrine of
" the Christ within," which will be more fuUy dis
cussed in a subsequent chapter — a doctrine which has
in all ages fallen under the suspicion of engendering
self-deception and of weakening, if not destroying,
the sense of sin. To use Mr. Chesterton's blunt charge,
Jones begins by worshipping the Christ within and
ends by worshipping Jones. Now this may be pain
fuUy true — of the said Jones ; but there are others
in the world besides him. As a matter of hard
fact, the doctrine of the indwelUng Christ, whatever
be its dangers and perversions, has been in all ages
one of the most fruitful sources of penitence and
humiUty. For, to the true mystic, the Christ that
is found in the heart is not merely a genial and
indulgent Friend, but first and foremost a holy Critic
^ De Adhaerando Deo, chap. vii.
114.

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
and a Discerner of secrets, a wise and severe Peda
gogue guiding His pupils through the valley of con
trition and humble penitence into the happy ways
of wisdom, peace and love. He is the Son of God who
is sent to the heart as well as to the world to convict
of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He is the
unsleeping witness against a sinful self, a Herod-sword
in the breast, slaying a thousand cherished infants
of innocent-seeming desires and purposes. In the
classic words of William Law, "He is in the heart
as a Bruiser of thy serpent, as a Light unto thy feet
... as an Holy Oil, to soften and overcome the fiery
properties of thy nature and change them into the
humble meekness of Ught and love." ^
This is not the language of theology, but the tongue
of love, and aU who know what it is to be smitten
with shame and pierced with self-abhorrence in the
pure presence of the one they love will understand.
And where the Beloved of the soul is God, His intimate
presence is a progressive initiation into the fiery ordeal
of a self-knowledge which would surely issue in despair,
were not the eyes which expose and condemn the
eyes of love. Yet, even so, the ordeal is terrible.
Motives and considerations which we imagined to be
supremely influential in our inner life are seen to be
the merest conventions, while others we imagined
to have no power over us are seen to dominate our
very life. As we turn in upon ourselves, veil after
veil of unreality is stripped from our quivering eyes
and life gradually becomes a profounder, greater
thing, more heavily fraught with awe and travail.
1 The Spirit of Prayer (Works, vol. vii.), p. 33.
US

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
We know ourselves and walk with a deeper humility,
a truer understanding, among our fellows. Cen-
soriousness is slain, and in its stead there comes a love
that longs to cover the multitude of sins. This, the
mystics teach, is the beginning of the contemplative
life. Without it, contemplation is an intellectual
pastime, an emotional dissipation.
But a sense of sin is only the beginning of true
self-knowledge. Much of our popular Christianity,
especially of the Evangelical type, ends there. Much
of our systematic representation of Christianity
remains, even to this late day, a pathology — one might
almost say a criminology — rather than a theology.
Self-knowledge is still taken to be conterminous with
a knowledge of sinfulness and frailty of the self. But
with the great mystics self-knowledge has always
included, as its crown, the recognition of all the
glorious powers, the exquisite graces, the transcendent
possibilities which slumber in the soul that is destined
to be a new creation. Not in a far-off heaven, but
here and now these powers and splendours can be
assumed. Heaven and hell are born together with
the human soul ; but heaven, not hell, is its natural
habitat, its victorious principle. To gaze into the
shuddering depths that yawn beneath the surface of
conventional well-doing and to know oneself a
sinner is good ; but to know that one can " do all
things through Christ " is far better. If He is first
discovered in the heart as the Revealer of sin, the
next glance shows Him to be the great Inspirer, the
unfailing Guardian of the smoking flax, the absolute
Guarantor of every holy aspiration.
ii6

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
" Whom do you find within, O Soul, my Brother ?
Whom do you find within f
I find a Friend that in secret came ;
His scarred hands within,
He shields a faint flame."
And there is even more than that. The conscious
ness of the present possession of hitherto unguessed
capacities and virtues in Christ is a prophecy of a new
heaven and a new earth, of a new humanity which is,
by slow degrees, being interiorly built up behind
the scaffolding of the earthly life of those who Uve
by the power of Christ working in them. We have
been told ad nauseam that Mysticism and eschatology
are irreconcilable ; but while it is true that the great
mystics would have Uttle to do with the popular
eschatology of their age, it is equally true that in the
very heart of Mysticism, giving it a foothold upon
reality, there slumbers an unrecognised eschato
logical principle. In the very act of realising the
timeless possession of the indwelling God, the soul cries
out for something that is clearly perceived and yet
felt to be far off — something that is, indeed, present
" now," but not " here." " I saw Him and sought
Him ; I had Him and I wanted Him," says Lady
Julian. The very act of seeing and possessing brings
with it a vision of something " to come " — not some
thing that wiU suddenly descend from heaven ready-
made, but an end which is seen, not merely as the
tree in the acorn, but also as the goal to which the
athlete bends his steps. If the mystic realises his
eternal life here and now, it is because God makes the
end so to shine for him in the Ught of His in-working
117

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
grace that, even while on earth, he sits with Christ in
heavenly places. If he knows Christ in the heart as
a present timeless Power, it is because He has seen
Him as the Hope of Glory. The two elements — that
of a present, timeless possession of eternity and of a
Divine event toward which the soul moves — are the
two necessary movements of Christian experience,
and in Mysticism they find their complete fusion,
their perfect synthesis.^
Introversion, then, is the first step in that great
mystical discipline which is at once a purgation and
an illumination, a bringing into captivity and a
liberation, a praxis and a gnosis. The mystics have
ever found that a turning in upon the hidden man
of the heart does not merely issue in a humble and
chastened temper, but also in a fructifying of thought,
a quickening of joy. In the deep, quiet places of the
heart Jesus Himself draws near and, walking with
His own, expounds to them, in aU the Scriptures, the
things concerning Himself. It is there that the
soul becomes not only familiar with herself, but
colloquial with Christ. There His most deUcate
and intimate approaches are discerned. His lightest
touch felt ; there Love exercises its most constraining
power and Grace achieves its most glorious triumphs.
There the mystery of the Cross, so often profaned
by the glib tbeorisings of popular theology, is " in-
spoken " in all its mortifying and vivifying power.
And thus he who has the courage, the patience, and
the humility to turn in upon himself feels a fountain
^ For a more detailed discussion, see Chapter XI., "Mysticism and
Eschatology." Il8

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
opened in his heart which is better far than any
fountain that ever sprang up by the way.
That such introversion is not an easy thing, that
it involves a habit of recoUection, concentration,
and attention against which flesh and spirit alike
rebel is known to all who have tried to attain to it.
Christian mystics have always sought to acquire it by
way of meditation on some aspect of God's being
or of man's redemption, some article of faith, some
verse or incident of Scripture. Meditation, however,
while it may be described as the preUminary step
in the contemplative life, is not the exclusive property
of the mystical type. It is essential to aU Christian
Ufe, and the great reason why the Bible has lost its
hold upon the average religious person (as distinct
from the " man in the street ") is to be sought in the
impatience and lack of self-control which have made
meditation a lost art. A great book yields its true
spirit, its interior sweetness, only to long and patient
brooding ; and no amount of modern Bible study,/
however intelligent and up-to-date, can take the/
place of that slow, deep pondering which at one time /
was the joy of every pious farm labourer who could, '
by any means, speU out the sacred page.

II

It is not our object to trace the various steps of
contemplation or to expound its psychology. Those
who wish to read a popular but competent psycho
logical study of the subject can do no better than to
119

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
consult Miss UnderhiU's attractive account.^ For our
purpose it is sufl&cient to note that introversion
begets a great stillness in the soul, which is technically
termed Quiet, or the Orison of Quiet. This, as Miss
Underbill justly remarks, is " the danger zone of
introversion," for nothing is easier than for the
fruitful StiUness of Mysticism to pass into the sterile
impassivity of Quietism, which Ruysbroeck, as we
have seen, does not hesitate to caU treason towards
God. Yet no mistake could be more fatal than to
reject mystic Quiet as a doubtful and dangerous
element. It is not only an integral part of mystical
religion ; it is the necessary condition of God's deep
self-communication to the soul. " Be still and know "
is the great rule of the mystic life.
1 That such stillness is not idleness but action has
been pointed out again and again by the great mystics.
It is that " busy rest " in which the soul abandons all
superficial activity for the supreme act of stretching
towards God. It is not a vacancy, but a great drawing-
in of wisdom and energy. Father Augustine Baker, in
a metaphor of thrilling effect, describes it as the soaring
of an eagle in mid-air which, for a good space, can
cleave its way through the blue " with a great swift
ness but withal with great stillness, quietness and ease,
without any waving of the wings at all or the least
force used in any member, being in as much ease
and stillness as if she were reposing in her nest." *
It is, in fact, the rest that is born of triumphant and
all-effective energy. With these interpretations of it
1 Mysticism, Part II., chaps, vi., vii. and viii.
" Holy Wisdom, Treatise III., J iii., chap. vii.
120

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
the modern mind finds itself in fuU sympathy. It
can weU understand a state of intense receptivity in
which every pore of the soul is open to receive im
pressions, in which the mind stretches out a thousand
prehensile tentacles of inquiry and appreciation. The
soul on tip-toe, waiting in a tense rigour of expectancy
to know, to feel, to experience, to taste as much of
Ufe as its quivering palate can assimilate — such a
conception is essentially modern and makes a
strong appeal to a generation which delights in giving
itself up to the impressions of each moment.
But while aU this is true, it is not wholly in this
way that God gives Himself to the soul. There is
also a negative element in_taystic_Quiet. The soul
that would hold the Divine Word as the shell holds
the ocean must be empty, not only of vagrant
thoughts and superficial interests, but of its own
darting inclination towards whatever seems to it
Divine. It must no longer go out to seek ; it must
wait. This passivity does not nullify the more
active stretching towards God. Both have a place in
the spiritual Ufe ; but in the Orison of Quiet it is the
passive and not the active side that (though the latter
is present also) gives its character to the whole.
Passivity is an essential element, not only in all
genuine religion, but also in all great art and all true
science. It is the wisdom of the scientist to empty
his mind of all theories and speculations and surrender
himself humbly to Nature, as it is the prudence of
the saints to be still that God may speak.
Passivity is not a gymnastic exercise for spiritual
cranks — part of the ritual of those who deem them-
121

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
selves hierophants of an esoteric tradition : it is a
fundamental law of spiritual health. If we reaUy
beUeve that eternity is ever murmuring upon the
horizon, that the stiU, smaU voice never ceases to
whisper in all the myriad ways of life, that the
spiritual world knocks every moment upon the gates
of sense, then our only wisdom is to be still and listen.
We read such mystical rhymes as —
" Once in a silent night a Child was born.
Who brought again what once was lost and torn.
Could but thy soul, 0 man, become a silent night,
Christ would be born in thee and set all things aright,"
or, " Would you look in Paradise,
It must be with closed eyes.
Would you hear the singing spheres,
Lie and list with closed ears " —
and we dismiss them as quaint mediaeval conceits.
But a deeper consciousness tells us that they are the
naked truth ; that we have missed that Holy Thing
which waited to be born in us because we have
preferred the pride of inutile noise to the humility of
fruitful silence ; because we could never honestly
say, " Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." It is
here that the message of mystic Quiet Ues for a
garrulous and facUe generation.
Speaking generaUy, the practice of mystic Quiet
is individual and solitary, though corporate silence
was never excluded from the practice of the great
mystics. At the present day, however, a new con
ception and psychology of " togetherness," which
naturaUy found its first expression in that form of
122

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
corporate prayer known as " guided supplication and
intercession," and then led, here and there, to the
practice of corporate thinking, has produced a
remarkable movement towards fellowship in silence.
The silence contemplated is not, strictly speaking,
the mystic Quiet, but rather the " quiet meeting " of
the Society of Friends extended and modified to suit
the requirements of members of other Churches or
reUgious bodies who wish to unite in silent waiting
upon God. In a recent book, The Fellowship of
Silence, two members of the Society of Friends and
three Anglican clergymen record their experiences
" in the common use of prayer without words."
Their testimony is based upon actual experiments,
the first of which was made in a New Zealand viUage,
where Anglicans, Quakers, and Theosophists met
together in an AngUcan church for the corporate
silent practice of the Presence of God. Week by week
this strangely-composed company met and remained
for a space in " an attitude of stiU waiting upon God
with aU the faculties of the soul alert if it might
be that God would speak to His children." They
were not mystics, or even experts in the habit of
silent waiting, yet they found no difficulty in prac
tising what is admittedly a most difficult spiritual
art, for the simple reason that they did it in feUow
ship with others and drew from that association a
power that is denied to the isolated soul. The
record of these experiments is a valuable human
document, and, while not mystical in the technical
sense of the word, forms a significant addition to our
very scanty present-day Uterature of concrete first-
123

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
hand spiritual experience. Much in the book must
be left to " lie on the table " ; much may fairly be
questioned by mystics and non-mystics alike. What
concerns us here is the fact that bodies of ordinary
Christian believers, with no pretence to high spiritual
attainments, are meeting here and there in the feUow
ship of silence, and that both the spirit and the method
of these meetings are in essence that of the great
mystics. To read, for instance, the editor's account
of silent meetings under AngUcan auspices, is to
read a page from the mystics translated into terms of
present-day religious usage.
There are, generally speaking, four stages in this
form of the fellowship of silence. The first is a brief
space for preliminary recollection, the common
recital of the Lord's Prayer, and a simple act of con
fession. Of the second stage — that " stilling of the
mind and soul " upon which the mystics lay such
stress — the editor, the Rev. Cyril Hepher, says,
" The very activity of the brain may make a man
a bad listener, and listening was our goal. The
intellect needs to learn how to be stiU no less than
the body, if it is to concentrate aU its powers upon
the work of hearing. . . . There are two things
which are practically of service. First, the recollec
tion of God under some aspect of His boundless
immensity . . . His awful sanctity. His enfolding
Being. . . . Here, too, it is useful to have in mind
some quick word of recall, by which the wandering
of thought can be instantly . . . brought back
to the central purpose. The word ' God,' not
spoken but sounding in the mind, the holy name of
124

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
Jesus, or 'Deus, Deus Meus,' form such words of
recall. This preparation may take long. ... It
is worth persisting in till it has gained its end, till
mind and soul are silent unto God." ^
The next stage is that of " listening." " We pass
thus," says Mr. Hepher, " to the centre of our
silence. The wiU is at its highest activity. As
an insect poised in the air, seemingly motionless,
with wings in such rapid motion that they are
invisible, is all the while sustained by its resistance
to the air, so the wiU in this listening is not passive.
. . . This is very far from making the mind a blank.
It is the fiUing of the mind with God to the exclu
sion of aU else. Here our silence differed most
profoundly from inteUectual meditation. We were
not seeking to think new thoughts, only to hear
them. We rested on the belief that God is in His
very essence THE WORD. His wiU is to speak,
to reveal, and He has created man to hear and
understand. . . . Not in words, nor visions, nor
signs did we look for the communications of God.
Thoughts rising spontaneously, movements and
stirrings welling up from the depths of the soul, the
inner glory of God hidden in the soul of man,
emerging, filUng the Temple, none of these word-
images convey what cannot be conveyed. Only
we knew God, and we knew that we knew Him. If
this sound too bold a claim to make, my excuse
must be that to say less would be to belittle the
generosity of God." ^
1 The Fellowship of Silence, pp. 128, 129.
» Ibid., pp. 130, 131. 125

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
There is a final stage which Mr. Hepher defines as
the active outpouring of the soul's devotion before
the throne of God. " God has revealed Himself
in the silence and we must not be disobedient to
the heavenly vision. Aspiration and longing are now
focussed into the resolution of the will. With aU its
powers awake the soul surrenders itself without reserve
into the hands of God. The prayer of the affections
blends with the prayer of the will. Now, again, out
of the depths of the Divine Being that we havc been
contemplating, we draw for our need, or for the necessi
ties of those for whom we desire to intercede. . . .
Human need and its divine supply meet in the soul
which has passed rightly through the ' stiUing' and
the ' listening.' Here is a defence against spiritual
self-centredness or selfishness." ^
Here we have a striking example of that pra-
paratio mystica which is going on at present quietly
and steadily, often in quarters which few would
connect with distinctly mystical aspirations. The
quotations are given at length because they illus
trate so perfectly the influential and practical nature
of the great basal principles of Mysticism. A group
of people here and there meet in all simplicity to sit
together and hear what God wiU say unto them, and,
without knowing it, they discover for themselves the
great mystic wells of silence, recollection, introversion,
orison, purgation, iUumination, and union. They
discover with the great mystics the inspiring and
fructifying power of silence and its tremendous
dynamic. Their experiments convey a much-needed
^ The Fellowship of Silence, pp. 133, 134.
126

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
lesson to the aspirant after mystical experience. At
the root of our incapacity for true introversion,
quiet, and contemplation there lies our aU-but-
incurable fear of simple silence, whether with our
fellows or with God. In many cases it is not the
absence of what we call mystical affinities which
hinder our claiming our high spiritual birthright of
direct and intimate knowledge of God ; it is simply
that we lack the courage to pass into that deep
silence where His voice is heard, where alone He
can be known. To not a few the revival of Retreats
has been the means of revealing the blessings and
potentialities of silence, its constraining and in
spiring force, its searching and regenerating function.
" Those who have never tried the experience," rightly
observes Mr. Hepher, "will speak of this silence as
artificial or unnatural. It is the endless chatter of
needless talk that strikes the man who has just come
from Retreat as artificial and unnatural." But the
majority shrink from the experience. Silence reveals
the soul that is in them, and they are not at home
¦with their soul. Silence is the hand of God besetting
them behind and before, and they cannot endure that
touch of the spiritual life, and here also Voltaire's
blunt observation holds true — " It is the misfortune of
most good men that they are cowards." Our desire
for God lacks the virile force that could cope with this
constitutional timidity. It is too feeble to make an
adventure upon its object. " If it be indeed your
desire," says Maeterlinck, " to give yourself over
to another, be silent. . . . Some there are that
havc no silence, and that kill the silence around them,
127

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and these are the only creatures that pass through
life unperceived. To them it is not given to cross the
zone of revelation, the great zone of firm and faithful
light. We cannot conceive what sort of man is he
who has never been silent. It is to us as though
his soul were featureless. ' We do not know each
other yet,' wrote to me one whom I hold dear
above aU others ; ' we have not yet dared to be
silent together.' " ^ And we of to-day know God so
little because we do not dare to be silent with Him.
But while passivity is the characteristic element
in mystic Quiet, it is characteristic only because it is
the condition of something other than itself. This,
indeed, is true of the whole act of mystic Introversion
and Orison. While it should never be used as certain
occultists use it, as a deliberate means to the attain
ment of " supernatural " intimations and powers,
it is essentially a listening, and the act of listening
is incomplete where no voice is heard and the soul
remains empty and disappointed. The great mystics
have found the classic symbol of receptive stillness
of soul in the story of the Annunciation, where the
Virgin Mary receives the angelic salutation with the
grave simplicity and humble surrender of a soul
emptied of itself and presenting no obstacle to the
incoming of God. But if Mary was emptied of self
it was only that she might become " full of grace,"
for true emptiness of self is but
" the female twin
Of Fulness, sucking all God's glory in."
^ The Treasure of the Humble, pp. 13, 14.
128

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
When Mary spoke her Jiat of submission, then it
was divined in Heaven, though the word had not
been spoken on earth, that " Whosoever doeth the
wiU of God, the same is ... My Mother." But
what does this mean for us? Mystical theology
answers that it means the incoming of a force, a life,
which pierces while it charms, and hides a long, sharp
agony in its first sweet inrush of joy. At last the
Uttle human heart, so full to bursting with its own
selfhood, so madly preoccupied with its baubles, so
greedy of ease and comfort, is purged of its idols
and discipUned to a great silence. It waits, and it
has not long to wait ; for " Thy opening and His
entering are but one moment, and to wait until
thou openest is harder for Him than for thee." But
how terrible and tumultuous His coming may be !
How acute may be the pain of an incursion in which
every door of flesh and spirit is wrenched out of its
socket that the King of Glory may come in ! Ruys
broeck has much to say about this aspect of God's
response to man's welcome. Writing of the eternal
Love coming to the soul, he says : " Love gives
more than we are able to receive, and exacts more
than we are able to give. Its requirements are Uke
a devouring fire : the body shares the impatience of
the soul ; the spirit burns with a consuming eagerness.
This panting avidity recollects the spirit in the simple
peace of the deep. The Spirit comes into contact with
our spirit and says to it in the depth : ' Love Me as
I love thee — as I have loved thee eternally.' Now this
voice, this prayer, this interior demand, is so terrible
to hear that our spirit is utterly overthrown by the
129 "

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
tempest of love ; and aU the powers of the soul,
shaken and trembling, turn to each other asking,
' Do we indeed love the eternal Love — the Love
inexhaustible ? ' " i With the mystics, self-emptying
and silencing of soul always result in the incoming
of a life which is at once a fulness and a want, a
gift and a demand, a satisfying peace and a devouring
passion. Even where the Divine comes to man, as
the Holy Child came to Mary, in the guise of simple
tenderness and homely joy, so that the heart is filled
with a sweet delight and yields itself gladly to the
charm and enchantment of Divine grace, an edge of
pain, a sharpness as of coming woe, is dimly fek.
Even in these gentle encounters of the soul with God
terror mingles strangely with loveliness. Deep secrets
have been told, a new, strange life is pulsing where
only the life of nature was before. Never again can
the soul look out upon the world with the old placid
contentment ; never again can she hug the green shores
of sensuous existence and turn her back upon the great
deeps of eternal life. Her ears are filled with the sound
of many waters, her eyes are fixed on One Whom to
possess is to desire ever more ardently.
Ill
Speaking broadly, then — for there is, of course, no
such thing as a stereotyped spiritual process — it
may be said that mystic Quiet is the source of that
spiritual passion of whose fires are born Contem
plation proper. Ecstasy and Rapture. Contemplation
may briefly be defined as an immediate conscious-
^ Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic, p. 82.
130

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
ness of God ; Ecstasy is an involuntary state of beingf
caught up to God, and if instead of coming at the/
end of a period of introversion it seizes the soul)
suddenly, it is termed Rapture. The two forms of
involuntary absorption need not concern us here,
but students wiU do well to note that however
weird and morbid these states often appear, it is a
matter of historical fact that in all genuine ecstatics
these trance states, so far from weakening their
mental and moral fibre, ministered directly to the
effectiveness of their life and thought, and even, in
many cases, to their physical well-being. Here, as
in the case of aU psychic states, we must be careful
to distinguish between the morbid and the healthy,
the test always being their ultimate effect upon the
inteUectual and moral calibre of the subject. With
contemplation in the specific sense we have a some
what closer concern. It is a brief experience — " a
flash," " an instant," " the space of an Ave Maria,"
say the mystics. It is essentially the instant made
eternity — a winged experience of disconcerting fleet
ness, yet never to be lost. It is a single blinding
flash of briUiance, but the eye that has been smitten '
by it retains its light for ever. " My mind," says
St. Augustine, " withdrew its thoughts from ex
perience, extracting itself from the contradictory
throng of sensuous images, that it might find out
what that Light was wherein it was bathed. . . .
And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it
attained to the vision of That which Is. And then,
at last, I saw Thy invisible things understood by
means of the things that are made, but I could not
131

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
sustain my gaze : my weakness was dashed back, and
I was relegated to my ordinary experience, bearing
with me only a loving memory, and, as it were, the
fragrance of those desirable meats on the which as
yet I was not able to feed." ^
St. Augustine was somewhat distrustful of these
fugitive glimpses into the Eternal, and decidedly
sceptical of the utility or advisability of seeking to
attain to them. His preponderantly metaphysical
genius precluded the naivete which belongs to those
who see and know not what it is to doubt their
vision. Yet his moments of vision were the influen
tial moments of his life, and as we work our way
through the difficult and intricate development of
his doctrinal convictions with, perhaps, a growing
antagonism to his later views, we realise that it was
not by his theology, whether earlier or later, that he
lived, but by those flashes of spisitual insight by
which, for a few fleeting moments, he beheld the
Face of God. To assert this is something other
than to say, as is often done, that while Augustine
wrote many influential books, he wrote only one
immortal work, the Confessions. This is, however,
not quite true ; for while the Confessions is the only
one of his writings which belongs to the literature of
the soul, whole ages have been shaped by his strictly
theological works, and if every word of them perished
they would stiU live on in institutions, and systems,
and countless great minds which have been influenced
by them. Even the thinker who deUberately sets
himself to demolish the Augustinian edifice must forge
^ Confessions, book vii., chap. xvii.
132

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
his weapons of destruction from the stuff of certain
great intuitions and convictions which first became
articulate and fruitful in the mind of St. Augustine.
But what is true and what we are concerned with is
that the elements in aU of St. Augustine's writings
which authenticate themselves most infallibly to the
Christian consciousness were born of these rare experi
ences, when for one brief and almost delirious moment
he was caught up to God before being dragged back
once more by his own weight.
This experience of a sudden, brief, direct realisation
of the Eternal, while essentially mystical, is not
confined to Mysticism — is, indeed, not confined to
the realm of religion. The most ordinary and un
spiritual Ufe bears testimony to the revolutionary
and permanent influence of some passing flash of
insight, some sudden reaUsation of hidden powers.
And when we come to the sphere of religion we find
so unimaginative and decidedly legalistic a soul as
President Finney suddenly plunged into an experience
such as might have overwhelmed the flaming heart
of St. Teresa. Minds of the most widely varying type
and training, temperaments of the most diametri
cally opposite quality, have been re-made by such
brief flashes of spiritual lucidity, when the soul
sees and " endures " God. This means that while
not aU have a specifically mystical endowment and
can place themselves under a characteristically mys
tical discipline, one element at least of the higher
mystical experience is common to all passionately
apprehending souls.
And if this is rarer than some enthusiasts will admit,
133

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
it is not so much because few are temperamentally
qualified for it, as because few will submit to the
discipline and pay the price of such an experience.
The soul instinctively knows that God cannot be
loved with impunity. Vision is an extortionate
trafficker. Not content with demanding a price m
advance, she exacts almost as heavy a price at the
end. A moment of insight has to be paid for
by months — years, maybe — of spiritual aridity. A
glimpse of celestial light makes the shadows of earth
more oppressive and solid than ever before. A vision
of holiness lends its sharpest sting to temptation,
and a soul in love with purity must needs offer a
vulnerable heel to the crawler in the dust. So
fearfully and wonderfully are we made that our frail
spirits are for ever touching heights which they are
incompetent to keep, and for which the thwarted
flesh plots to take terrible revenge. Let us not be
mistaken. There is that in Mysticism and in the
whole mystical aspect of religion which may well
inspire the sober-minded with wholesome fear. To
discern its moral peril is not the narrowness of the
religious bourgeoisie, it is common ethical prudence.
The contemplative soul stands on that haunted
frontier line between sense and spirit which is the
devil's own hunting ground. On the one hand, we
see it on the mount of God, ringed about with Heaven
— the proudest and the humblest of all created
things. It plucks stars where we gather filthy lucre.
It sees God where we stare greedily at the gargoyles
of sense. It keeps step to the music of angels while
we dance to the world's piping. But, on the other
134

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
hand, we see it surrounded by perils, stalked by fiends.
We know that the fisher in the waters of the Spirit
may have his net so full that he cannot draw it to
land without the risk of being dragged into the
deep ; that it is all but impossible to bear a full
cup unspilled across a swaying bridge, to carry
a white bird unsoiled through the grimy market
place. Of the many perils and temptations which attach
to the act of Contemplation and the gift of vision
mystical literature has much to say. The most
elementary of these is the temptation to impatience.;'
" If the Lord tarry, wait for Him " is the first law
of contemplation, and Coventry Patmore observes
shrewdly that " the impatience of the soul for vision
is one of the last faults that can be cured. Only
to those who watch and wait with absolute indif
ference as to the season of revelation do all things
reveal themselves." ^ This impatience is guarded
against by the controlling objective of Mysticism,
which is not knowledge or power, but Love. Love
can wait and serve seven years for his beloved and
count them but a day. A more tragic temptation is
that of aUowing the bliss of vision to reconcile the
heart to an imperfect obedience. Here again Coven
try Patmore is the best modern interpreter : " The
occasional exaltation of the faculty of intellectual
perception to heights far above the present ability
of the moral nature to follow is a fact of every man's
experience. . . . The visits of angels to them are
few and far between, but they are always frequent
1 The Rod, tbe Root, and the Flower : " Aurea Dicta," CXI.
135

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and bright enough to fix themselves for ever in the
memory, and to take away aU excuse on the plea
of ignorance for not striving for true life ; and their
more frequent occurrence would constitute an im
mense peril, as we see in the examples of many of
these persons who are called ' men of genius.' , . .
They not only . . . join evil with a present and
perceptive knowledge of good ; nay they often . . .
look on the bared splendours of Purity with eyes
of the untransfigured passions." ^ Yet another peril
is found in the delusion of taking the seeing of
visions for the possession of their Reality. This
is the tragedy of many mystics — to imagine they
are what they only see. " Long," says Coventry
Patmore, " I mistook seeing the end for being in
the way." It is here that Mysticism parts company
with poetry, art, and aU romantic experiences and
movements. Whatever be true of the poet and the
artist, it is the mystic's vocation not merely to
behold the Face of God, but so to behold it in
righteousness that he may be satisfied when he awakes
with His likeness.
And here again it is not so much upon the act of
seeing as upon the Thing seen that the whole matter
hangs. There are visions which affect the soul as
poppy seed — visions which are aUied to sleep, poison,
and eternal night. There are visions of Divine Love
which lack the steel fibre of righteousness, and so relax
and delude. There are visions of a glory without
shame, of a crown without a cross, which exalt the
soul to the brow of the hill, only to cast her down and
1 The Rod, the Root, and the Flower : " Magna Moralia," XX,
136

ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
dash her against the stones. But what if the soul's
vision be a call to service, and its very radiance
secure that
" Tasks in hours of insight vsdlled
Shall be in hours of gloom fulfilled " ?
What if it smite the soul with pity for a whole travail
ing creation ? What if its touch of fire thrust it
forth into an apostolate of world-wide scope ? What
if it be a vision of the Crucified Redeemer ? To close
one's eyes because there is peril in keeping them
open is sheer insanity. If there is danger in vision, is
there less danger in refusing to see ? But the true
mystic has always remembered that not all visions
are from above, and that the fleeting moment of
contemplative vision is not only a fulfilment but a
chaUenge, not only an answer but a question. Baptis
mal moments are always followed by a temptation
in the wilderness ; the unveiling of beauty always
involves a stern ethical choice. Upon the seer rests
the special obligation to be obedient to the heavenly
vision, and obedience is not a natural instinct; it is a
matter of long training, of continuous moral discipUne.
The two alternatives which front the mystic as he
comes down from the mount of contemplation have
been characteristically expressed by a recent poet : ^
" Thou canst choose the Eastern Circle for thy part,
And within its sacred precincts thou shalt rest ;
Thou shalt fold pale, slender hands upon thy breast.
Thou shalt fasten silent eyes upon thy heart.
* Ruth Temple Lindsay.
^37

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
If there steal within the languor of thine ark
The thunder of the waters of the earth,
The human, simple cries of pain and mirth.
The waUs of little children in the dark,
Thou shalt contemplate thy Circle's radiant gleam,
Thou shalt gather self and God more closely still ;
Let the piteous and the foolish moan at wdll,
So thou shelter in the sweetness of thy dream.
" Thou canst bear a blood-stained Cross upon thy breast.
Thou shalt stand upon the common, human sod.
Thou shalt lift unswerving eyes unto thy God,
Thou shalt stretch torn, rugged hands to east and west.
Thou shalt call to every throne and every cell —
Thou shalt gather all the answers of the earth.
Thou shalt wring repose from weariness and dearth,
Thou shalt fathom the profundity of hell —
But thy height shalt touch the height of God above,
And thy breadth shall span the breadth of pole to
pole.
And thy depth shall sound the depth of every soul,
And thy heart the deep Gethsemane of Love."

T38

CHAPTER VI
A TYPICAL MYSTIC: BLESSED ANGELA DE FOLIGNO
only sought for the Heart of God, therein to hide myself. Jacob Boehme.
That remarkable personality, the Blessed Angela of Foligno, -who Yi3i
converted from a life of worldliness to become not only a Christian and a
Franciscan, but also a Platonist. In her account of her " dark " contem
plation of the Divine -we seem to hear the voice of Plotinus speaking from
the Vale of Spoleto. £vEi.YN Underhill.

SYNOPSIS
A typical mystic, one who exhibits the defects as well as
the virtues of his type. I. The Life of Blessed Angela — Her
conversion — Her initial weakness — Her early spiritual selfish
ness replaced by a spirit of redemptive love. II. Her develop
ment as recorded in her writings — Her first vision of Christ —
Its dynamic force and humbling effect — Her conversion to a
Franciscan love of Nature — Her conviction of sin the measure
of her love — The superstitious and spurious elements in her
visions — ^Her evangelical quality — Mr. Algar Thorold on her
Book of Visions — Her capacity for self-observation and
analysis — Her surrender to the stern discipline of love — She
is denied a " sign " — Her joyful surrender to heroic demands
— Her persistent self-criticism. III. Her swan song of Love
— Her " Last Testament " to her children — Her final vision —
Her influence upon Ubertino de Casale. IV. Her claim to be
considered a typical mystic : (i) Her development is natural
and not forced into the mould of any " mystic way " ; (2) Her
combination of mystical and institutional elements ; (3) Her
m ngling of high contemplation and deep humility, of exalta
tion and mortification ; (4) Her perfect exemplification of
" love expressing itself in joy " ; (5) Her sanity and balance
of the heroic and the submissive, the active and the passive,
the austere and the tender.

140

CHAPTER VI
ATYPICAL MYSTIC : BLESSED ANGELA DE FOLIGNO i
In most treatises on Mysticism the " typical "
mystic is chosen for his spiritual genius or his con
spicuous sanity, with the unmistakable purpose of
convincing the reader that the great mystics are not
made of " carpet slippers and weak tea," that they
are immune from the superstitions of their age, and
that they Uve on something stronger and saner than
locutions, visions, and such like psychical phenomena.
The result is not infrequently that the critical reader,
especiaUy if he have some knowledge of mystics other
than the pattern submitted for his approval, wiU be
irritated at the manifest " tendency " of the choice
and, moreover, have a shrewd suspicion that to prove
the mystics free from the weaknesses which accom
pany their spiritual type is to prove altogether too
much. We shaU therefore take as our " typical " mystic
not the sane and passionate, practical, and contem
plative St. Teresa, or the high-soaring and lowly-
hearted Ruysbroeck, or the romantic " Minnesinger
of God," Richard RoUe, or that most typicaUy
English of mystics, Walter Hilton, whose sweet, sane,
hospitable spirit makes him the favourite example
' The quotations are taken throughout from the English translation of
the Visionum et Instructionum Liber, published under the title of The Book
ofthe Divine Consolation. 141

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
with English writers on Mysticism. All these not
only exhibit spiritual genius of a high order (in the
case of the first two, of the very highest order), but
are also remarkably free from the defects of their
qualities. We shaU rather look for one who does
possess in some degree, though not, of course, suf
ficiently to invalidate his positive contribution, the
defects of his type, and who, while he may not reach
the dry and virile sanity of St. John of the Cross,
retains the humanity which the stern Carmelite
counted a world well lost. Such a one is found in
Blessed Angela de Foligno, and it is not without
intention that we select an essentially feminine
mystic — one who entirely lacks the characteristic
" virility " of St. Teresa or St. Catherine of Siena.
I
Of the life of Blessed Angela we know comparatively
little, and what we know corresponds externaUy with
the life and development of the average mediseval
woman " saint." She was born in 1248, and, in con
trast to most mystics, her childhood was unclouded
by premature seriousness. For her no whisper of
eternity upon the horizon to strike trouble to her
childish heart, no dim foreboding to chill her bUnd
eagerness on the threshold of an early marriage, no
warning voice to thunder in her ears, when, after
marriage, a treacherous world cried to her to come
and take her fill of love and joy while youth was
still hers. Without a trace of mystic intimation,
without stirrings of conscience even, and, indeed,
142

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
without a thought but of the pleasures that beckoned,
she ran gaily into the trap that awaited her. No
young rebel of to-day, bitten with Nietzschian
immoraUsm, could take the plunge into lawlessness
more resolutely and unregrettingly than this mediaeval
girl, born on soil consecrated by an innumerable army
of martyrs, breathing the very atmosphere of her
dear " old father," St. Francis.
Her captivity to fleshly lust endured for many
years, until one day fear found her unguarded soul
and forced her, trembling, to go to confession — a
duty she had long neglected. But finding herself
in the confessional, shame overtook her, and she
failed to tell her more serious sins. Torn between
remorse and love of sin, she took Holy Communion,
thus adding to her many transgressions the sin of
sacrilege which weighs so heavily upon the Catholic
conscience. In this state of " bad faith " she lived
for some time, until, driven by a craven fear of hell
fire, she betook herself to St. Francis, beseeching
him, among many things, to guide her to a confessor
to whom she could teU her worst sins without fear of
being misunderstood. St. Francis gave her no definite
answer, but on the day following she heard a friar
preach at the Church of St. Felicien, and, feeling
certain that he was the confessor whom St. Francis
intended for her, she confessed her sins to him
honestly and fully.
On that day she began that slow and toilsome
pilgrimage which she describes with such depth and
candour in her writings. She entered the family of
St. Francis as a Tertiary hermit, living in retirement
H3

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
with a religious companion in the neighbourhood of
the Church of the Friars Minor at Foligno until her
death in 1 309.
Viewed superficially and externally, the life of
Blessed Angela does not offer very promising material.
It is the story of a wayward and frivolous young
woman given over to gross indulgence, who, even when
summoned by the Voice which none dare gainsay
with impunity, lacked sufficient resolution and single
ness of mind to make a sincere response. ShaUow,
emotional, afflicted with that maddening infirmity
of purpose which is inherent in such natures as hers
and increases a hundredfold through self-indulgence,
she stood shivering on the brink of the bitter waters
of repentance, wetting a reluctant foot, as it were,
and withdrawing it again with coward haste. And
when at last she took the plunge, it was not because
her eyes were opened to the Love she had misused
and grieved, or that she was stricken with shame
for her insincerity, but from sheer maddening terror
of heU. Such stories are of every-day occurrence in
the experience of those who have to deal with weak
and vaciUating natures.
And even when we turn to her writings, we do not,
at first sight, discover much that is relevant to our
present-day quest of ReaUty. On the surface there
is much that has a merely antiquarian and literary
interest for us and not a little that repels. Some
students of Mysticism, indeed, have stopped short
at the repellent elements. Dean Inge,^ for instance,
dismisses her summarily as an exemplification of that
^ Christian Mysticism, p. 97.
144

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
" self-centred individualism " which was the de
humanising factor in the lives of so many medieval
mystics. Others have treated her writings as a
purely literary achievement, ranking with the Golden
Legend, as one writer has it, as " our rarest literal y
heritage from those days." But such writing as
Blessed Angela's is no mere matter of verbal music,
graceful imagery, and the literary interpretation of
exquisite moods and soul-shaking emotions ; it is lite
in all its authenticity, sincerity and timeless interest —
life clothed in words, not as a fair body is clothed
in deUcate garments, but as bone is clothed with
flesh. To read with open and attentive mind is to
discover a life in God which, beginning as a troubled
and shaUow trickle, gains little by little in breadth
and depth, and we accuse our own experience of
feebleness and shaUowness beside the profound and
peUucid intuitions of this passionate and humble
soul speaking to us across the centuries in words of
truth edged with beauty.
The strictly progressive character of her experience
becomes clear on careful reading, and it is largely
through overlooking this steadily upward trend that
Dr. Inge and other writers lay such condemnatory
emphasis upon her admittedly inhuman attitude
towards her relations. Let her tell the story in her
own words : " In that time and by God's will there died
my mother, who was a great hindrance unto me
in following the way of God ; my husband died
likewise, and in a short time there also died all my
children. And because I had commenced to foUow
the aforesaid way, and had prayed. God that He
145

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
would rid me of them, I had great consolation of
their deaths, albeit I did also feel some grief." ^
Such an attitude is, of course, frankly repellent,
but it is in no sense peculiar either to Blessed Angela
or to mystics in general. It represents the common
mediaeval conception of religious detachment, the
common mediseval interpretation of Christ's " He that
hateth not father and mother is not worthy of Me."
AU mediseval religious literature is full of appaUing
examples of this inhumanity, and Italian and Spanish
literature more especially abounds in examples of
pious heartlessness. In the case of Blessed Angela,
however, this attitude was virtually though not
formaUy repudiated as her spiritual life clarified.
Thus she tells us that her vision of God's supreme
justice issued in love : " There came upon me,"
she says, " such a fulness of charity, and with so
great a joy did I understand that power, will,
and justice of God, that not only was I satisfied
concerning the questions I had asked, but likewise
concerning all creatures, even the demons and the
damned, for I felt I was called to save them one
and all." ^
Here we have the direct opposite of the sentiment
expressed in our first quotation — a spiritual love
whose altruism does not draw the Une at heU. In a
later chapter she records her love for toads and ser
pents, and even for her enemies : " Moreover, I rejoiced
greatly in praying for those who might work me these
evils, ... for not only ought we to pray unto God
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, p. j.
- Ibid., p. 176.
146

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
for them, but we should beseech Him to grant them
especial grace. Therefore was I very ready to pray
for them who did me evil, to love them with a very
great love, and to take compassion upon them." ^
But perhaps the foUo-wing passage taken from her
" Last Admonition " to her " children " shows most
strikingly how far she had traveUed since the days of
her spiritual selfishness : " I do exhort you that ye
desire not only to have charity among yourselves, but
Ukewise unto aU people. For I say unto you that of
a certainty my soul hath received more profit from
weeping and lamenting over the sins of my neighbour
than over mine own. . . . Oh, my children, strive
to possess this charity and judge not any man, even
though ye should behold him commit a mortal sin. I
do not say that sin should not be displeasing to you,
but I do say that ye should never judge the sinners ;
and, moreover, I say that ye should never despise them,
for ye know the judgments of our Lord God ; and
many there are who do appear unto men to be con
demned unto heU, but who are saved in the sight of
God, and many who appear unto men to be saved are
reprobate in the sight of God. ... / could tell you of
some whom ye have despised, but of whom I have the sure
hope that God wiU lead them back into His own hand." *
II
We now proceed to a more systematic account of
her spiritual development as set forth in her writings.
There is perhaps nothing in all mystical literature
1 The Book ofthe Divine Consolation, pp. 199.. 200.
* Ibid., pp. 260, 261.
147

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
— not even in the Little Flowers of St. Francis or the
exquisite legend of St. Rose of Lima — tbat can compare
for dewy freshness and quiet deep loveliness to Blessed
Angela's walk with Christ through the Umbrian vine
yards, as set forth in the first chapter of her Book oj
Visions}- Set free from the snare of lust, she yearns
for a love that knows no evil, and thus yearning she
walks the Umbrian plain between SpeUo and Assisi —
part of the walk which Goethe described as the most
beautiful he ever took — with unseeing eyes. The
gradations of glorious green stretching into the dim
distance, the richness of vine, olive and ornamental
trees, the magic of the far hills — none of these pene
trated through the absent eyes to the soul that craved
what they could not give. Then suddenly, when she
was come to " that place which lieth between Spello
and the narrow road which leadeth upwards unto
Assisi," Christ meets her and, speaking words of
sweet assurance, says : " I love thee better than any
other who is in the valley of Spoleto." And with the
simple abandonment of a maiden who had never
known sin she nestles to the very Heart of God, thrill
ing with joy to hear her Divine Lover comfort her
loneliness, saying, " I wiU bear thee company, and
will speak with thee aU the way." So on they fare,
she wistfully questioning, Christ pouring clearness and
consolation into her dim and aching soul, untU He
departs " with great gentleness," and she is left weep
ing and " crying with a loud voice, clamouring and
calling without any shame." " Oh Love," she
cries, " heretofore I have never known Thee, why
* The Book of the Divine Consolation, pp. 160-167.
148

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
leavest Thou me in this manner ? " Yet with great
comfort she went upon her way at last, speaking of
God, and the new, sweet consolation abode with her.
At first sight the record of this vision seems little
more than a piece of naive and exquisite writing. It
seems entirely in keeping with the writer's character
that her religious experience should take an emotional
and even an erotic form ; and our modern sense is
swift to suspect something less unimpeachable than
pure religion and undefiled behind a spiritual idyll
whose charm even the most suspicious can hardly
deny. At best we divine in it the sign-manual of a
one-sidedly emotional and romantic soul, lacking that
moral realism without which religion tends to be a
fatal soporific. But on looking closer we find that
this walk with Christ and the visions and consolations
which succeeded it came to her at the end of certain
hard and soul-harrowing " spiritual steps " by which
she climbed the steep stairway of repentance. " In
my process towards the road of Penance," she says,
" I travelled by eighteen spiritual steps before I knew
the imperfection of my life " '^ — so deeply had the
sword of Divine love pierced that simple and joy-
loving heart. Nor did that severe process of progres
sive self-knowledge end at the eighteenth " step.'"
In a profound sense it cannot be said to have begun,
even, until her love-hungry soul heard Christ say that
He loved her, not among many other poor sinners, but
better than anyone in her native valley. Many times,
she assures her readers. He said these and other
amazing words to her, and as she Ustened doubt
1 The Book of the Divine Consolation, p. i,
149

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and fear sprang up like weeds in the new-made garden
of her joy. But let her again teU her own story:
" Again He said unto me, ' My beloved and My bride,
love thou Me ! All thy Ufe, thy eating and drinking
and sleeping and all that thou dost is pleasing unto
Me.' . . . Then, when I heard these words, I did
count over my sins and consider my faults, and how
that I was not worthy of such great Love. And I did
begin to cast doubt upon these words, wherefore my
soul said unto Him who had spoken unto it, ' If Thou
wert truly the Holy Spirit, Thou wouldst not speak
thus unto me . . . seeing how that I am weak and
frail and might grow vainglorious thereby thereat.'
He answered me, ' Reflect and see if thou couldst be
vainglorious because of aU these things for the which
thou art now grown proud ; and see if thou couldst
not perceive the folly of thy words by thinking of other
things.' So then I did endeavour to grow vain
glorious that I might prove if what He had said were
true ; and I began to gaze at the vineyards, that I
might learn the foUy of my word. And wheresoever
I looked He said unto me, ' Behold and see, this is My
creation,' and thereat did I feel the most ineffable
sweetness. In the meantime I had remembered all
my sins, and on my side I beheld nothing save sins
and wrong-doing, so that I did feel greater humility
than I had ever felt before" ^
Like aU her subsequent visions, this first meeting
with Christ was dynamic in character — i.e., it was the
symbolic expression of a deep spiritual and ethical
change. To begin with, a new spiritual caution
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, p. 163.

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
awakes in her. Remembering her sin and weakness,
she doubts whether the vision be not a delusion
of sense or a wile of the devil. She looks straight
into the treacherous depths that yawn beneath her
emotional nature, and sees herself growing vain
glorious. Almost like a modern soul, trying to rele
gate its vision to the realm of psychic abnormalities,
she tries to work herself into a state of vainglory, as
it were ; and when she does not succeed, she turns to
those beauties of Nature which her mediseval super
stition shuns as a source of temptation, feeling sure
that, if her vision be indeed of God, even the opulent
and alluring Umbrian scene could not blot it from her
soul. And as she looks she knows once and for all
that vineyards and hUls and all the beautiful green
earth and its denizens are the creation of Him whom
she loves, and she becomes a true daughter of ,St.
Francis, And with this transforming assurance of
the authenticity of her vision there comes to her a
deeper humility than she had ever known in her days
of dim and painful striving after repentance.
There is something very germane to the modern
soul in this deepening of her humility. Her sense of
sin is not based upon a dry doctrinal conviction. It
is in no sense the artificial product of " groveUing "
conceptions of man's " total depravity " ; it is the
spontaneous and passionate self-accusation of love in -
the presence of the supreme Love, the deep and sudden
conviction of poverty and nakedness in face of the
riches of offered grace. There is nothing " theologi
cal " about it. So feels the thoughtless and self-
satisfied youth when a great love comes into his life.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Then all is swallowed up in one trembUng Non sum
dignus, and lowly kneeling, the gay cavalier receives
the sacrament of love. So feels the well-meaning and
benevolent idealist when he comes upon his ideal
incarnate in a human life. So feels the sin-stained
artist in the presence of a devvy dawn, of a tender,
admonishing evening sky.
And the same sense of spiritual kinship grows on us
as we go through her wonderful sequence of visions.
They are by no means flawless. At times, indeed,
they are childishly and somewhat distastefully
mediseval. Her detailed and pedantic " application "
of the physical suffering of Christ ^ and much in her
visions of the Sacrament ^ are instances in point ; while
some of her visions are merely vivid recollections of
what was known to her already, made actual by the
dramatic energy of faith. But as we read with the
understanding these blots vanish and we are gripped
by the extraordinary intimacy, the unfaltering can
dour, and the psychological truth of this amazing
spiritual autobiography. One thing that will strike
readers whose acquaintance with Catholicism is
limited to the Post-Tridentine, if not the Ultramon
tane, type is her evangelical quality. Christ comes to
her and assures her of His immense love, not at the
ead of a life of bitter penance and laborious service,
nor at the end of a long process of occult initiation
^ E.g., " And He sho-wed unto me the pains of His hsad, particular the
hairs plucked from His eyebro-ws and His beard," et(. [The Book of the
Divine Consolation, p. 7). Compare also pp. 205, 206.
^ E.g., " Sometimes I have seen the throat of Christ inthe Sacramentmore
splendid and beauteous than the sun. . . . Sometimes I have seen two eyes
of great splendour, and so large that I beheld nothing af the Host save the
edge thereof " {The Book ofthe Divine Consolation, p. I30).

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
and training after the manner of Eastern mystics ;^^
and Western dilettanti, but at the beginning. As in
evangelical theology. He is to her not the Rewarder,
but the Creator of virtue ; not the Crown of perfection,
but the Perfecter. He comes with His most super
lative assurances when her need is greatest and her
desert least. More than once she hears Him say
ing that He loves her better than any human soul In
the Spoletan valley, and each time the extravagance
of the assurance (so unreal to our modern ears, but so
easUy understood by those who possess historical
sense and are at home in the world of spiritual expe
rience) is justified by the state of her soul. The first
time it found her so saddened and discouraged by her
past sins that it needed an expression of love that
reached " unto folly " to inspire glad and humble
confidence in the forgiving Love of God. The second
time it came to her when she was " stirred by spiritual
tribulation " and " for the space of a month " seemed
to " feel nothing whatsoever of God." ^ When the
assurance came to her on this occasion, it found her as
timid and doubting as if it had come to her for the
first time. " How may I beUeve this," she cries,
" seeing that I am full of tribulation and do seem to
be forsaken of God ? " And the reassuring Voice
makes answer, weaning her for ever from reliance
upon moods and feeUngs : " When thou thinkest thy
self to be most forsaken, then art thou most dearly
beloved and nearest unto the eternal God." The
dynamic character of the vision becomes immediately
manifest, for on going to Communion a few days after-
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, pp. 245-248.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
wards in a mood of sadness and fearsome misgiving
she nevertheless found herself able to " enter into
Christ " with a faith and security such as she had
never before experienced — a deliverance the great
ness of which only those who know what it is to be
the dupes of their moods can rightly estimate.
From that dread, sweet walk with her Lord to the
end of her pilgrimage her recorded visions represent
the growth of her soul in the severe school of the
saints. Mr. Algar Thorold ^ pertinently remarks that
her book might be called, in the Hegelian sense of the
term, the logic of sanctity. He is inclined to attribute
the accuracy with which " the moments of what might
be called the dialectical process of sanctification " are
set forth to the editing of Blessed Angela's Franciscan
director, Fra Arnaldo. But while it is quite likely
that she went to her confessor for suggestions and
correction, one cannot trace any actual " editing " In
her writings. They seem to be the work of one hand
only, and, while they show a deep spiritual under
standing and a certain strong sanity behind a very
charming manner, they do not suggest the trained
thinker in even a single passage. They record the
commerce of a pure, candid and entirely simple soul,
strangely girlish to the very end and full of a deUght
ful humanity which ranges her over against the
passionate austerity of St. Teresa and the inhuman
detachment of St. John of the Cross, and ranks her
with our own natural and homely Lady Julian. There
is perhaps nothing more enchanting and rare in all
spiritual literature than her blend of an extraordinary
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, Introduction, pp. xxv, xxvi.

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
capacity for self-observation and self-analysis with a
naive and unconscious absorption in her spiritual
world. She records her moods and emotions without
a trace of morbidity, and in some elusive way which
is far more than genius she never seems to stand out
side herself. The records are frankly reflections upon
what took place some time before, yet one cannot get
away from the impression that these reflections are
indeed an integral part of the vision they relate and, in
that sense, continue. Her visions are without excep
tion " intellectual," i.e., unaccompanied by physical
manifestations ; but in relating them she does not
affect that strained spirituality which is the peculiar
temptation of mystics. She is unashamedly anthro
pomorphic, describing things invisible with the sim
pUcity of a Uttle child in terms of that which she has
seen and felt and handled. Naturalness and a keen
relish of beauty, harmony, and joy are characteristic
of her aU through, and make pure and cheerful melody
to accompany her sternest encounters with Divine
Grace. Stern these encounters were, and not all her simple
charm and freshness of narration can veil this severity
from the discerning reader. Weak in not a few ways,
but always conscious of her weakness, she yields her
self to the inquisition and purging of God and is made
wisely and sweetly strong, but not without pain.
Scarcely is the first glad meeting with Christ over,
when the sharpness of discipline is mingled with the
sweetness of joy. Her second vision, while deepening
her joy in knowing herself dearly loved of Goa,
already brings a taste of that hardness. For when
155

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
she asks to be made able to bear the full manifestation
of the Love she can only know in part she is refused.
" If I were to do what thou askest," says the Voice,
" thou wouldst have here aU that thou desirest, and
wouldst no longer hunger after Me." ^ Thus early
must she learn that to covet " cojisolations " is
spiritual gluttony, and be made to realise — surely a
hard task for that simple "enjoying" soul! — that
the life in God is a life of hungering and thirsting.
Her affectionate and clinging nature demands de-
monstrativeness from the Lover of her soul. Again
and again she seeks a sign, and each time teUs us
in candid language how that sign was, not refused,
indeed, but given far otherwise than she dreamed.
The classic example is found in her tenth vision :
" Then besought I Him that He would give me some
tangible sign, something which I could see ; such as
putting a candle into my hand, or a precious stone, or
some other thing, or that He would give me any sign
He pleased. . . . Then He replied, ' This sign which
thou seekest is one which would only give thee great
jov when thou didst behold or touch it, but it would
not free thee from doubt and thou mightest be
deceived by that sign. Therefore will I give thee
another sign . . . which will be for ever with thee,
, , . The sign shall be this : thou shalt ever be fer
vent in love, and the love and the enlightened know
ledge of God shall be ever with thee and in thee. This
shall be a certain sign unto thee that I am He, because
none but I can do this, . . , My Love do I leave in
thee, so that for Love of Me thou wilt endure trihula-
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, p. 1 76.
156

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
tion."* " ^ At once on hearing this her soul forsook
dreams of sweet rapture, ending in a speedy and pain
less assumption into Heaven — that favourite dream
of the mediaeval " religious " — and braced itself to
every suffering in the loving service of God and man.
Nothing could be more sudden, nothing more con
vincingly real. And the renunciation is made in the
Franciscan spirit of unfaltering cheerfulness. There
is no visible agony, no sombre struggle. " My love
and my joy," she says, " was so great that I can In no
wise express it." From first to last all her renuncia
tions are made, aU her hardships endured — and we can
only guess how terribly severe her self-denial was, for
she says little concerning it — ^with the characteristic
gaiety of those who have heard the very Voice of
Jesus. No Divine demand was stern enough to cloud
her joy in God, her only trouble being a certain
" weariness of waiting to be fully joined to her Lord,"
because of which she was sometimes "plunged into
mortal pain." * For the rest, this brave and loving
spirit delights in the " immense cunning " of the great
Fisher of men who hides His barbed hooks in morsels
of surpassing sweetness. " It is given unto me to see
Christ," she says, " who draweth me with such
gentleness that sometimes He saith, ' Thou art I, and
I am thou.' I see those eyes, and that face so gracious
and pleasing, which embraceth and draweth my soul
unto itself with infinite assurance. And that which
proceedeth from those eyes and that face is nothing
else save that Good . . . wherein I delight so greatly
1 The Book of the Divine Consolation, pp. 198-159,
2 Ibid., p. 186.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
that I can in no wise speak of it." ^ And again she
clothes the completeness of her renunciation in a song
of praise which filled her days and nights, so she teUs
us with joy. " Thee do I praise, oh God, my delight,"
she exclaims, " for upon Thy Cross have I made my
bed." ^ Upon that bed she lay racked but radiant
until the hour of her death, asking nothing but
the three beloved companions of her Lord — poverty,
suffering and contempt — yet never falling into the
gloom of accidie or the inertia of quietism. Setting
out on pilgrimage with only one chosen companion,
her heart enlarged as she went on, and soon she
gathered round her a wide family of " children."
Twice at least she had a special consolation after her
own heart. Once she heard Christ saying to aU who
foUowed Him in the way of Holy Poverty that the
cup of His bitter passion was rendered sweet unto
Him through their love ^ — a word that surely thrlUed
her devoted spirit. At another time, when she was
very iU, He stood at her bed, saying, " I am come to
serve thee," * and His " service " was to give her
what she most desired, a clear spiritual perception of
His grace and beauty.
To the end she subjected her visions to the most
faithful and searching examination in her power, and
abated not one jot from her severe but wholesome
self-introspection. Thus at the moment when the
perfection and profundity of Christ's love toward her
come home to her and her soul rushes out in pas-
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, pp. 184-185.
2 Ibid., p. 185.
° Ibid., p. 242.
* Ibid., p. 243.
158

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
sionate response, she tests her sincerity by the abso
lute truth of the Divine affection and says : " I have
served Thee with lies, and I have never desired to
draw nigh unto Thee in very truth, for fear lest I
might feel those burdens which Thou didst feel and
bear for my sake." ^ To those unacquainted with
mediseval reUgious literature this seems curiously
modern in its implied insistence upon our obligation
to ask a humble share In the atoning suffering, instead
of acquiescing in a doctrine which would make a pas
sive acceptance of Christ's sufferings on our behalf
sufficient for the remission of sins.
Ill
As Blessed Angela's death drew near, the welfare
of her numerous ' children " lay much on her heart.
She who had begun her religious life In that spirit of
" holy " selfishness and heartlessness which has
caused her to be held up by modern writers as the
warning example of the mystic as he ought not to be
was in the end surrounded by a " family " for whose
sake she gladly curtailed her hours of solitary joy in
her Lord, and whom she taught not only the love of
the brethren, but love towards that whole world of
men which, once despised, was now so dear to her
heart. Four of her consoling visions referred to her
" children," and in them the core of delight lay for
her in the generous and affectionate praise with wHch
Christ spoke of many of them.
When she foresaw her death from afar, she " with
1 The Book ofthe Divine Consolation, p. 207.
T59

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
great affection did constrain her writer " to pen her
last, passionate song of adoration to the incarnate
God.^ "O burning Love," she cries, "Thou hast
effaced Thyself. . . . Oh, Thou incomprehensible
One Who hast made Thyself comprehensible for me."
And then. In words that are edged with fire, she enume
rates the seven gifts of Christ to her : life, eternity,
the sacrifice of Christ, the reason to understand this
sacrifice, the capacity to apprehend God, wisdom that
knows the burning love of God, and lastly love itself,
for God is Love. In these flaming words, halting
through sheer passionate desire, we recognise the girl
(and indeed she was of them that cannot grow old)
who had so often stood before that favoured priest,
Fra Arnaldo, deaf to the words he read to her, but
with soul a-tiptoe to catch the whisper of God, so
wrought with ecstasy that " at times her eyes shone
like candles and her face was as a rose."
But at the end as at the beginning sober ethical
judgment was wedded to rapture, and in a spirit of
instructed and watchful moral judgment she frames
her " last testament " ^ to her children. She ascribes
praise to God, seeing that He gave into her care " all
His sons and daughters who are in this world, both
here and beyond the sea." That care was a solemn
reality to her. " I have been as careful of them as I
was able," she testifies at the brink of death, " and I
have grieved and suffered more sorrow because of them
than ye would readily believe." Then follows her
last " commandment " ' to her family, which Is
^ The Book of the Divine Consolation, pp. 252-258.
* Ibid., pp. 258-262.
' Ibid., p. 261.
160

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
" mutual love and profound humility." She warns
them against spiritual pride — " greater deception
still is there in spiritual self-sufficiency even than in
the worldly " — and she bids them, in a passage par
tiaUy quoted already, to extend their love " unto all
people." Her last vision came to her about Christmas, 1309.^
Once more on earth Christ came to her, showing her
the bridal garment wherein she was to appear before
saints and angels — " neither of purple, nor of scarlet,
nor of sendal, nor of samite, but a certain marvellous
light which clothed the soul." As He had once,
and more than once, startled her soul into ineffable
joy by teUing her that He loved her better than any
in her valley, so now, when that joy is being clouded
with the last shadow. He assures her that He will
not commit the soul He loved to the charge of angels
or saints, but that He wiU " come personally " to
fetch her. Receiving that promise with a peaceful
mind and -with deep humility, she again and again
commends her spirit into the Father's hands ; then
turns to her friends to tell them that she has received
an answer to that committal, " It is impossible,"
she hears Christ say to her, " that in death thou
shouldst lose that which has been impressed upon
thine heart in life," This was her last recorded utter
ance, and thereafter she lay in repose of body and
cheerfulness of spirit, until upon the Octave of the
Innocents the Eternal Lover who had called her
across the Umbrian hills and walked with her all the
way led her into the presence of God,
* The Book of the Divine Consolation, pp. 262-264.
161

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Her influence did not die with her, and an ItaUan
version of her Book of Visions made in 1510 from the
Latin of Fra Arnaldo was one of the earliest and most
popular reUgious books printed in Italian and took
its place beside the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena
and the Little Flowers of St. Francis. Through
Ubertino da Casale she influenced Dante. Ubertino,
who had been spiritually enlightened by those " two
great practisers of seraphic wisdom," Peter of Siena
and Cecilia of Florence, but still lived laxly in his
monastery, met Blessed Angela in 1298 and owed his
soul to her, as he freely acknowledges : " She restored,
yea, a thousandfold, aU the gifts of my soul that had
been lost through mine own sinfulness, so that, from
that time, I have not been the same man that I was
before. When I had experienced the splendours of
her flaming virtue, she changed the whole face of my
mind ; and drove out infirmities and languors from
my soul and body, and renewed my mind that before
was rent with distraction that no one who had known
me previously could doubt that the Spirit of Christ
was begotten anew in me through her." Seven years
after coming under her influence he wrote that
strange and fascinating book, Arbor Vitce Crucifixa
Jesu, the last of the literary sources of the Divina
Commedia. IV
We may briefly sum up the claim of Blessed Angela
to be considered a typical mystic under the foUowing
heads : —
(i) She neither teaches nor exempUfies a mechanical
162

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
sequence called the Mystic Way. In her spiritual
life purgation and illumination go hand in hand and
react upon each other, while fugitive but genuine
anticipations of the unitive life gladden her, not at
the end, but at rough or dark places all along her
pilgrimage. She thus satisfies our instinct for a
natural development in consonance with that grace
which gives before it demands.
(2) She exhibits in a marked degree the influence
of both the institutional and the mystical elements
of reUgion upon the growth ot the Christian soul.
Like most Catholic mystics, she was a devout and
frequent communicant, and frequently found the
starting-point of vision in the Eucharist. But she
never conceives the Eucharist as conveying a grace
different in kind or independent of the grace given to
believing, prayerful souls at other times. Thus, when
she is reluctant to communicate because of great
desolation of soul at the remembrance of her sins, she
hears Christ saying, " It pleaseth Me that thou
shouldst communicate — because if thou receivest Me,
thou hast already received Me ; and if thou receivest
Me not, thou hast received Me all the same." ^ And
so on this as on other occasions, she went to com
munion consciously to receive One whom she had
received already in the depth of her soul. Again she
teUs of feeling Christ within her soul, not after having
received the elements, but during the elevation.^ And
the same balance is maintained all through. She
receives a vision in the open road on her way to
1 The Book of the Divine Consolation, p. 246.
2 Ibid., pp. 223-224.
163

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
church, but this does not stop her from going into the
church and taking part in its worship as she had first
intended. (3) She combines with a degree of deep and ab
sorbed contemplation of the Ineffable, wonderful in
one so unschooled, a constant and ever-deepening con
viction of sin and a constant recourse to the redeem
ing Cross. " When God gives life to a soul," says
Ruysbroeck, " the chasm between herself and Him
appears immense " ; and this was characteristicaUy
true of Blessed Angela. Her contemplation takes her
into that dim and perilous " darkness " — that " nega
tive way " which is the legacy of Neoplatonism to
Christian Mysticism — and again, with sublime au
dacity, she sees herself " wholly clean, whoUy pure,
wholly sanctified, wholly upright, whoUy assured, and
wholly celestial in Him." ^ Yet there is no trace of
spiritual megalomania, of any claim to " deification."
Her daring gUmpse into the Divine dark breeds
" mortification of sins." When the Voice says unto
her, "Thou art the temple of My delight, and the
heart of the Omnipotent God resteth upon thy heart,"
she records how in the midst of her joy she remem
bered her sins and esteemed that there was nothing
in her that could be pleasing to God.^ When her
responsive heart brims over with that fulness of love
which Christ left her for a " sign," it comes to her
that " whoso desireth to keep the grace that he hath
shall not turn his eyes away from the Cross." ^ From
beginning to end a truly evangeUcal spirit, which has
* The Book of the Divine Consolation, p. 191.
^ Ibid., p. 196.
* Ibid., p. 201.
164

A TYPICAL MYSTIC
its root, not in doctrinal orthodoxy, but In the
" fundamental orthodoxy of love," underlies her pas
sion for spiritual adventure, her daring, darting
flight into the bosom of the Ineffable. But while this
fundamental disposition gives authenticity and weight
to the romantic quests of her soul, it is in its turn
steeped in the heroic and romantic quality that was
her very nature. Thus it comes that her theological
" orthodoxy " does not irritate the theological free
lance, provided he possess spiritual sympathy, and
that her reUgious impressionism does not offend the
discerning evangelical believer.
(4) She exemplifies in a most convincing manner
what Mr. Algar Thorold admirably describes as the
positive quaUty of the saint, namely, love expressing"
itself in joy.^ With this quality her book is informed
from end to end. It radiates a spiritual gaiety which
is miles removed from the heartless mystic joy
(so-called) of the amateur of Eternity, but is the very
smile on the face of love. Thus, when she knew her
self to be under the very glance of God, she says that
her soul felt such joy under that holy inquisition
that no human tongue did declare it. She finds
" a new and most exceUent pleasure " at almost
every step of her brave and humble ascent, and
even beneath her most sober and mournful utter
ances there ripples the quenchless joy of a simple,
loving, wholly surrendered spirit. Warmly human,
yet incomprehensible and even repeUent to natural
' " The positive quality of the saint is love expressing itself in joy. Thus
he is a fascinating combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar ; for, if
few of us are ascetics, we have most of us some experience of love " (TAe
Book ofthe Divine Consolation, Introduction, p. xxii).
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MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
humanity, this joy, which is one of the most authentic
mystical qualities, is seen in her in its purity and
simplicity. (5) While yielding to some extent to the super
stition of her time and to the peculiar temptations
of the mystic temperament, she shows that combina
tion of the heroic and the submissive, the active and
I the passive, the austere and the tender, the sober and
^ the passionate, which makes up the rare and winsome
j temper antia of the best mystics. She has none of the
^constitutional timidity of the conventional feminine
devotee. Hers was no warm-flannel goodness, but
those " splendours of flaming virtue " which Ubertino
recognised, and which could change the whole face of
a man's mind. Yet she had the most instant sense
of responsibility, the most scrupulous care, lest, by
the naive recital of her audacious visions, she might
misrepresent the majesty and grace of God. It is
easy to gain a certain futile balance by avoiding
"extremes," but to venture upon the deep seas of
love and passion, and yet remember the famiUar
music of the homely burn, is the high sanity of the
saints and the crown of the true mystic.

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CHAPTER VII
MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
Christianity does not as yet take in the whole of man ; it is the bringer of
the sword, setting one part of his nature in array against the other ; it bids
him emphatically lay down his life, but to what end f That he may take it
again. We do not gain a true conception of Christianity until we look at it
under this two-fold aspect ; until we see in it a seed sown in weakness to be
raised in power.
Dora Greenwell.
There lies the cro-wn
Which all thy longing cures.
Refuse it, mortal, that it may be yours I
It is a Spirit, though it seems red gold,
Aud such no man may but by shunning hold.
Refuse it, till refusing be despair,
And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.
Coventry Patmore.
Tbat I may know Him and . . . the fellowship of His sufferings. St. Paul.

SYNOPSIS.
Four mystical types — The three " roads " of Plotinus —
Divisions misleading — " A. E." as an example of the mixed
type. I. The great ascetics : their strength, definiteness, and
militant courage — St. Teresa on " silly devotions " — St. Cathe
rine of Siena on " manly courage " — The repellent aspect of
mediseval asceticism — Ruysbroeck's " horrible " joy — Prayer
of a Carmelite nun — St. Bernard's attitude to Nature — St.
Augustine's execration of light. II. Asceticism cannot be
dismissed as an aberration — Its secret of strength and victory
— The great ascetics influenced and still influence the world
they despised— Peculiar attraction of ascetic Mysticism —
The practical and revolutionary force of the great ascetics :
St. Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa
— Their strength the outcome of faith in a crucified God —
Their irreducible and daring logic — Ascetic excesses mere
accidents — The essence of Asceticism : a strong personal
devotion to a Crucified Redeemer — Not a theory, but an
experience — The fellowship of His sufferings — The vicarious
element in asceticism. III. The relation between asceticism
and the mystic vision — The revealing power of penitential
love — The essence of Puritanism — Its relation to art —
The true meaning of " Art for Art's sake " — St. Catherine of
Genoa— Dame Gertrude More and Zeb-un-Nissa on dism
terested love — The mystic's love of sufiering not morbid :
Let me suffer with Him. IV. The inwardness of mystic
asceticism — St. John of the Cross on true self-denial — Bishop
Chandler on making God a means— Ruysbroeck on chastity
— The vine-clad Cross — The gaiety of the great ascetics —
Pain a sacrament — The Cross and Nature — The mystic's
simple acceptance of the failure and ignominy of the Cross —
The dark night of dereliction— The pain of spiritual dryness
— St. Mechthild of Magdeburg on spiritual forsakenness —
Validity of the ascetic principle.

CHAPTER VII
MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
The relations of the mystics to Nature (in which
term we, of course, include human nature) are suffi
ciently varied and complex to make anything like
generalisation extremely hazardous. Mysticism is
not aU of one type, and in viewing its relation to
Nature a fourfold division suggests itself. There are
the Mediaeval Devotional mystics, who practised a more
or less monastic asceticism ; the Philosophical mystics,
who, in individual cases, practised a stern asceticism
but whose ideal was temperance rather than renuncia
tion ; the Nature-mystics, who, generally speaking,
turned their back upon the world of civilisation and
found the Kingdom of God in a flower ; and what has
been caUed the Love-mystics, to whom human love
was sacramental in the Catholic sense. These last are
obviously the antipodes of the first class. While the
ascetic mystic renounces love and beauty as hin
drances to tbe soul's communion with God, the Love-
mystic sees God giving Himself to men in the kiss of
human love. Some such division as this is suggested
by Plotinus, when he says of spiritual apprehension
that " there are different roads by which this end may
be reached : the love of beauty which exalts the
poet ; that devotion to the One and that ascent of
169

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
science which make the ambition of the philosopher ;
and that love and those prayers by which some devout
and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards
perfection. These are the great highways conducting
to that height above the actual ?nd the particular,
where we stand in the immediate presence of the
Infinite, who shines out as from the deeps of the
soul." 1
But such a division, while it may be aUowed to
stand, is necessarUy imperfect and even misleading.
There are forms of genuinely mystical feeling which
partake of the characteristics of aU four types in some
measure, and conform whoUy to none. Many mystics
exhibit a blend of two out of the four types, and it
is interesting to note how not a few Love-mystics
have an ascetic or Puritan strain mingUng with their
passionate and sensuous worship of the Divine seen
through the rainbow glass of beauty or the veil of
human desire. The work of the poet-mystic, " A. E."
(Mr. George RusseU) is a case in point. Viewed from
one angle, be is a whole-hearted worshipper of earth's
beauty, not, indeed. In the pagan sense, but as one
who, eating bread with joy and tasting the juice of
the grape to the last exquisite drop, knows them to
be transubstantiated into the true Body and Blood
of the Lord. Earth seems the perfect sacrament to
him, in which symbol and Reality are made one in
a lucid identity and equivalence. In this mood he
rebukes those who see in the earth the contradiction
of our immortaUty :
1 Letter to Flaccus.
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MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
" But I have touched the lips of clay,
Mother, thy rudest sod to me
Is thrilled with fire of hidden day,
iind haunted by all mystery." ^
And again :
" I saw the mystic vision flow
And live in men and woods and streams.
Until I could no longer know
The dream of life from my own dreams.
" It scrawlec5 the human mystery —
Dim heraldry — on light and air ;
Wavering along the starry sea
I saw the flying vision there —
'¦' At last, at last, the meaning caught —
The spirit wears its diadem,
It shakes the wondrous plumes of thought
And trails the stars along with them." ^
Instances of this sacramentarian doctrine might
easily be multiplied from Mr. RusseU's work. The
classic example is, of course, the well-known " I begin
through the grass once again to be bound to the
Lord," ^ where the poet, seeking refuge with his
mother, the earth, and laying his hot face against
*' the cool, green tresses that mantle her breast," finds
that in touching the soft, green hair of the earth he
has touched — God.
But there is another side to "A. E.'s" Nature-
Mysticism. " On the laugh of a child I am borne to
the joy of the King " is not his final word. The
* Collected Poems, p. 34.
^ Ibid., pp. 266-267.
^ Ibid., p. 270.
171

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
symbol that seemed to be so perfect and infallible a
vehicle of Divinity reveals Itself in one aspect as an
Ulusion — as aU but a delusion ; and we get lines of
such austere quality as " The Symbol Seduces " :
" There, in her old-world garden, smiles
A symbol of the world's desire,
Striving with quaint and lovely wiles
To bind to earth the soul of fire.
" And while I sit and listen there,
The robe of Beauty falls away
From universal things to where
Its image dazzles for a day.
" Away ! the great life calls ; I leave
For Beauty, beauty's rarest flower ;
For Truth, the lips that ne'er deceive ;
For Love, I leave love's haunted bower." ^
Here we have the ascetic spirit — ^the spirit that made
the lives of St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Siena, St. John
of the Cross, and countless other mystic saints, one
long renunciation. And that iron string vibrates
through " A. E.'s " poetry from first to last — a solemn
haunting refrain to stanzas of radiant delight. Quick
to repudiate the dogmas and convictions of tradi
tional Christianity, this poet, who would, we suspect,
have scant patience with conventional asceticism,
feels the age-long struggle between what our fore-
.fathers used to call sacred and profane love, the
implacable enmity between flesh and spirit, never so
bitter or agonising as when the flesh, refined to a
transparent beauty, clothes itself in the very robes of
the spirit. The monk who, after the first heroic
* Collected Poems, p. 27.
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MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
flush of exaltation is over, wonders with reeling brain
if the world is really but a shadow and Heaven the
only substance, and who, having persuaded himself
by the logic of his creed that it is indeed so, prays that
his revolting heart might feel as his brain thinks,
could not find a better spokesman than this modern
theosophical Nature-mystic :
" Love and pity are pleading with me this hour.
What is this Voice that stays me, forbidding to yield,
Offering Beauty, Love and Immortal Power
Aeons away in some far-off heavenly field ?
" Though I obey thee, Immortal, my heart is sore.
Though love be withdrawn for Love it bitterly
grieves :
Pity withheld in the breast makes sorrow more.
Oh that the heart could feel what the mind be
lieves ! " 1
We have singled out " A. E." as an example of the
intersection of two apparently opposite types of
Mysticism, because in his work it is shown more
clearly than anywhere else how it belongs to the very
essence of Nature- and Love-Mysticism to merge at its
intensest point into that which seems to be its nega
tion. It is when the symbol has had its perfect work,
when it has become a crystaUine medium of Divinity,
that it is shattered by the Reality which fiUs it. It is
not the man with no eye for beauty and no passionate
comprehension of love, who casts doubt upon their
complete and self-contained perfection. It is he who
has received the Divine through them who feels their
blurring as weU as their iUuminating power, and
^ Collected Poems, p. 189.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
is most anxious not to lose the Bride in contemplating
the veil that shrouds her. But while we recognise
that clear-cut divisions and classifications are never
so misleading as in the case of living souls, and that
in the case of the mystics especially rigid lines of
demarcation are impossible, we shaU find it convenient
to retain the conventional classification in our study
of the mystical attitude to the natural world.

The time is past when we looked upon the
great mediseval mystic-saints as weak, sentimental,
and morbid creatures. Our conception of them is no
longer derived from pious prints of St. Sebastian
smiling somewhat idiotically while bestuck with
arrows Uke a pin-cushion with pins, or of St. Catherine
with hands meekly folded across her breast and a
weak simper on her lips as she murmurs the edifying
mot printed underneath. A closer acquaintance with
the Uves and works of these saints has convinced us
that, so far from being effeminate and anaemic, they
belong to the iron age when the Christian mystic, no
less than his more matter-of-fact feUow beUever, was
essentially a soldier. Instances of weak and foolish
sentiment may be culled from their annals, no doubt ;
but their roots go deep into the harsh, stubborn soil
which produced the saints of the early Church.
Through the sweetness and romance which shed so
wonderful a glamour over the writings of the me
diseval mystics there runs a thread of steel. Strength,
definiteness, militant courage are their fundamental
174

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
characteristics ; shrewd sense and an often mordant
satire the salt of their meekness. " Dulness is not
sanctity," Erasmus once exclaimed ; and dulness
was no ingredient in the sanctity of medieval Mysti
cism. " From siUy devotions, good Lord, deliver
us ! " ^ cried St. Teresa in her Autobiography. " It
is certain that the love of God does not consist in
tears, nor in this sweetness and tenderness which we
for the most part desire . . . but rather in serving
Him in justice, fortitude and humility." ^ And St.
Catherine of Siena hears her Lord say : " Therefore
bear yourself with manly courage ; for unless you do
so, you wiU not prove yourselves to be spouses of My
Truth and faithful children, nor of the company of
those who reUsh the taste of My honour, and the
salvation of souls." ^
So, wHle once we shrank from the ideal of these
mediseval saints on the score of its honeyed feebleness,
we are to-day repeUed by its naked severity. Our
sweetly reasonable spirit is offended by the harsh
violence of their assault upon the Kingdom of Heaven.
Our beauty-loving soul is shocked by the frank
ugliness of these worn and emaciated figures which —
with the exception of the blithe and lovable little St.
Francis — seem to us to lack charm and poetry. The
sentimentally romantic amateur may possibly invest
them with some unguessed attractiveness, but to
cool and level eyes their colossal renunciations,
dreary self-denials, inhuman austerities, and brutal
' Autobiography, xiii, 24.
^ Ihid., xi, 20.
* The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, " A Treatise of Divine Pro
vidence," p. 39.
^7S

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
self-mutilations are merely repeUent, if not disgusting.
These saints do not move across the stage of life to
sublime and stirring music. Poetry falls mute in
face of their grim discipline. Pictorial art despairs
of these pale, unwavering eyes, those angular,
emaciated frames. St. Bernard scourging his body
to the point of death ; St. Catherine of Siena hugging
silence in her arms through long, hard years ; St.
Teresa crying out in the grip of her fierce infatuation
vsdth pain, " Let me suffer or not Uve " ; St. John of
the Cross, whose cruelty to his soul exceeded even his
indescribable bodily severities ; St. Rose of Lima
disfiguring her face and neck and thrusting her
beautiful hands into hot lime to escape the admiration
of men — is there anything in these to appeal or con
vince ? In them religion is a fretting trouble, a nag
ging goad, a Nessus-shirt of iron and flame which
tortures its wearer to madness. We may admire
their grim tenacity of purpose, their indefeasible
fortitude. But what sane Christian man would
incite his soul against his body, tiU the fraU house lay
shattered and in ruins about the spirit it had sought
to harbour ? What true woman would trample on
every feminine instinct tUl the very Christ was robbed
of all charm in her crucified and emptied imagination I
Such, we say, is not the sainthood which Christ has
taught us ; it is not the temper of those who have
drunk wine with Jesus at the marriage feast. Above
all, how can so inhuman a discipline be a true pra-
paratio mystica P Ruysbroeck cries out, " Needs must
I rejoice beyond the age, although the world has
horror of my joy ! " He might have added, " And the
176

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
Church " ; for such joy is, indeed, horrible with the
horror of the unnatural, if not the maniacal, to those
who walk in the clear, warm air of a genial evangelical
Christianity. It is, of course, quite easy to show that mediseval
asceticism is not Christian ; that it rests upon a
Manichsan dualism, and that, in the last resort, it
makes moraUty impossible and defeats its own ultimate
object of union with the Divine. To cease looking
upon Nature and aU the sweet and tender human ties
as means of grace and to view them as hindrances, as
part of that " flesh " that lusts against the Spirit and
against which the Spirit must ever lust, is the way,
not to " deification," but to dehumanisation. A
so-caUed love of God which strikes human love in the
face can only have one logical ending — the creation of
a fictitious world and the aUenation of the soul from
ultimate Reality. Of aU the many ways of cutting
the world in two with a hatchet, none is so tragically
disastrous as the separation of the love of God from
the love of one's brethren, from simple joy in natural
beauty, and from a self-respect that includes the body
as a temple of the Holy Ghost which it is sacrilege to
belittle or neglect. AU this is obvious to us at this
late day, and asceticism in its severer forms pro
vokes us to impatience. We believe in the essential
humanity of God, and in the Incarnation as the sign
and pledge that God dwells in man and is mediated
to us through human relationships. Nor does our
reading of the life and mind of Jesus leave us with any
doubt as to the untenability of a view of the world
which makes the beauty of earth and sky an enemy
177

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
against which the soul that God has cleansed is
pledged to undying warfare;.
It comes upon us with a sense of despair that such
things can survive in our own century, to read of a
young Carmelite nun pledging herself and a com
panion never to raise their eyes during meal-time in
the refectory and making such a prayer as this : " 0
Jesus, in honour and in imitation of the example Thou
gavest in the house of Herod, Thy two little spouses
resolve to keep their eyes cast down in the refectory.
When that impious king scoffed at Thee, 0 Infinite
Beauty, no complaint came from Thy lips. Thou
didst not even deign to fix on him Thy adorable eyes.
He was not worthy of the favour ; but we, who are
Thy spouses, we desire to draw Thy Divine gaze upon
ourselves. As often as we refrain from raising our
eyes, we beg Thee to reward us by a glance of love."
And when we try to persuade ourselves that this is
'merely a degeneracy of modern ultramontane piety,
we remember how St. Bernard rode for a whole day
along the enchanting shores of Lake Leman, with eyes
held steadily to the ground, lest the sight of natural
beauty lured his soul from its contemplation of God ;
and how St. Augustine cursed the light of day which
distracted him from his devotions. In face of such
facts we ask, why trouble about the ascetic attitude
towards Nature at all ? How can a philosophy so
perverse, a theology so inhuman, contain a message
for our day ? Why not shelve it once for aU as an
aberration which had no share in the making of
saints, who were saints in spite of it, and bore no
relation to their mystic vision i
178

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
II
It is easy enough to dismiss asceticism as a super
seded point of view so long as we discuss it abstractly.
But when we view it in vital relation to the great
mediaeval mystics and saints it becomes a different
matter altogether, and our abstract and somewhat
contemptuous disapproval is transformed into a wist
ful wonder. For in that extreme and unlovely askesis
which we think we can so easily prove " altogether
wrong both from the rational and the spiritual
point of view " we divine some hidden leaven, some
unguessed dynamic which wins not only the Kingdom
it desires, but also the world which it despises. What
do we see ? We see these gaunt and outrS saints, with
their grotesque and tragic self-stultifications, suc
ceeding where a broader, saner way of Ufe has failed.
Their life has a tang, a salt sting, which ours lacks :
it has not " failed of that prick which is God."
St. Francis, St, Bernard, St, Catherine of Siena, St.
Ignatius Loyola — can we mention representatives of
a more reasonable and genial Christianity who have
subjugated the world as these did ? Which exponents
of Uberal creeds are as adequate to their age as they
were to theirs ? And even to-day they conquer
where we fail, and carry citadels that resist our every
onslaught. What chance has the sanest and ablest
reUgious writer of to-day in the study or studio of the
cultured neo-pagan ? But the Little Flowers of St.
Francis is found there side by side with Anatole
France, and St. John of the Cross keeps strange com
pany with Oscar Wilde, Men and women who never
179 «»

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
darken church doors and barely hang on to the out
most fringe of society are stirred by the flaming ardour
of St, Teresa, touched and purified by the dewy self-
communings of Blessed Angela de Foligno, and awed
by the spiritual magnificence of St, Catherine of
Siena. They catch the very accent of GaUlee from
the talks of St. Rose of Lima with her birds and
flowers, and are smitten with the beauty of humiUty
as they con the wise simplicities of The Imitation of
Christ. While we strain our ingenuity and the inclu
sive power of Christianity to the utmost in our efforts
to win these gifted and wayward children of a deca
dent civilisation, they receive with grateful hearts a
grain of the true leaven, a spark of the hidden fire
from the fleshless hands of these forbidding ascetics
and world-despisers. Nor can we explain it by saying
that it is the specIficaUy mystical and not the ascetic
element in these saints which attracts. That is
undoubtedly true, but it is their type of Mysticism,
not the equaUy valid and beautifully expressed type
of a Traherne, a Whichcote, or even a Wordsworth.
It is a Mysticism which blossoms only on the soU of
that conviction which lies behind asceticism.
And when we make efl&clency in the affairs of
Church and State a test of authentic saintship, the
result is the same. While other types, from Plotinus
downwards, have been noted for practical sense and
capability, it has been the great cloistered ascetics
that have turned the world upside down. Humble
St. Benedict, starting " a school in which men may
serve God," secured the education of mediseval
Europe. Retiring St. Bernard, by dint of his eio-
i8o

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
quence, genius and statesmanship, retarded the great
inteUectual revolution which, in the end, broke his
heart and shortened his life. St. Catherine of Siena,
immoderate lover of solitude and silence, faced popes
and cardinals, holding the honour of the Church in her
hands and quelUng forces that appalled the strongest
men of her age. St. Teresa, the stern and ardent
visionary, effected that most difficult of all reforma
tions — the regeneration of a religious Order. And this
robust and effective impact upon the world is charac
teristic in greater or smaUer measure of aU the great
ascetics. Where is the key of their secret ? We
recognise that their ruthless renunciations and austeri
ties, so far from being means of grace, are avenues of
temptation, or, at best, crippling disabilities. In what
sign, then, did they triumph ?
Briefly, they were true to the profound and daring
logic of their faith in a crucified God. Their Mysti
cism was not an emotion or an artistic intuition ; it
was the mighty and mordant dialectic of a tremendous
spiritual argument. If God indeed seeks the soul of
man and stakes His utmost for its capture against all
rivals, then must not the redeemed soul meet such an
advance with a like abandonment, a like adventurous
daring ? If Jesus be the Son of God, then His fol
lowers can accept no broader, smoother way of life
than that of the Cross. If to be one with Christ
means to share His painful travail, then " let us
suffer or not live." There is nothing extravagant
about these masters of the spiritual life ; there is
merely that " giving of all for all " which is the con
dition of every great and serious business. Their
iSi

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
lives were the simple outcome of that irreducible
logic of theirs. They had seen Jesus ! And once a
soul has seen Jesus and dares to abide by its vision,
life is a very simple matter, and has aU the hard
ness and difficulty of simple things. Such lives
are a thorn in the side of a generation which covets
their simplicity but shrinks from their hardness. A
religion whose logic is the logic of the nail-studded
Cross rankles Uke a splinter in souls unready to
accept it.
To criticise their ascetic excesses and trace them to
a perverted conception of sanctity and to a vicious
philosophical dualism is entirely beside the mark.
That these excesses did have their root in a defective
ideal of saintship and in a dualistic conception of
things is beyond dispute. But these excesses are
not of the essence of asceticism : they are the mis
taken expressions of an eternally valid conviction.
What lay behind these inhuman mortifications was
not an impersonal ideal or philosophical theory, but
the longing of redeemed souls to know Christ and the
feUowshIp of His sufferings. If we of to-day hold a
view of God and the world which sets no value upon,
but rather deprecates, the crucifixion of the flesh, the
bruising and buffeting of the body, then it belongs to
us, if we too would suffer with Christ, to match the
bodily severities of the great ascetics with a spiritual
discipline even more profound and searching. In
analysing their ideals and conceptions we constantly
tend to omit the fundamental factor : their strong,
personal love to Jesus and the simplicity with
which they took His words in sober earnest. They
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MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
had heard Him say that he who would save his life
must lose it, and, taking Him unreservedly at His
word, they discovered by experience that we cannot
reaUy know the meaning of life — the true taste and
colour of it — until we throw it away. We of to-day,
who have so largely lost the secret of a strong, devoted,
intimately personal love to a living Lord, would
reduce their life to a theory. We would say that they
had discovered that we live in a universe " marked
on every side with crosses " and that things were so
constituted that only sacrifice can survive, and that
the cynic Uttle knew how profound a truth he
uttered when he remarked that there was only one
way of succeeding in the world — to let oneself be
crucified. But their minds were tuned to another
key. Their only wisdom was to keep their souls
fixed on their Lord vnth the directness and simplicity
of loving intention, meeting every demand, evading
nothing, questioning nothing. They called Him
Beloved, and fastened His name on their hearts, not
in a weakly, sentimental mood, but in fixed and
unalterable purpose, pledging themselves in simple
fidelity and courage to do and dare, to suffer and
endure aU He bids them, aU His service involves.
Inspired by so deep and ennobling a passion, their
asceticism was redeemed from the selfishness and
pettiness of the average cloistered religious of their
age. They suffered, not to gain salvation for their
own souls, but with-Christ; and with Christ for the
Church and for the_woild. The suggestion that to
attempt to share the atoning sufferings of Christ was
to belittle His work for us would have evoked a
183

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
blank stare of bewilderment from them. As weU
suggest that to pray for others is to belittle the inter
cession of the eternal High Priest, They believed
that we are members of Christ's Body, and that there
fore He cannot make His saving oblation of Himself
without us. And so they offered themselves, as they
understood it in their day, in union with the Crucified,
III
We now come to the bearing of their asceticism
upon their mystic vision. The relation between the
two is far closer than some interpreters like to admit.
There is a vision that is seen only by the eye of peni
tence, discerned only in the great illuminating
moments of love, given only to those who enter Into
Life maimed. It is the great vision which the whole
world is consciously or unconsciously longing for, the
merest second-hand account of which stirs strange
chords in wayward and battered souls. The great
ascetics practised penitence. To them contrition was
/iiot a mood, but a vocation. This is the gate to
illumination, and he who tries to enter in any other
way is a thief and a robber, though he call himself a
mystic. Only penitence can see " with open face "
the one vision that can subdue and satisfy a world —
the vision of a Man on a Cross — and this vision the
ascetics had. They strove after an interior know
ledge of sin, after a glimpse of the Love that sin has
stricken to the heart ; and, say what we wiU, here and
nowhere else is the beginning of illumination, the
great wisdom of unsealed eyes. It is at once a daring
184

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
adventure and a sweet safety, for the contrite heart is
an explorer of new planets and a dweller at the
Father's hearth. " Satan," says John Pulsford
quaintly, " can convert illumination into a snare, but
contrition is beyond his art."
They had the purged eye, the disciplined and
chastened soul which alone can see the vision In its
purity of outUne, We are slowly coming back to the
stern truth that only the pure can see either the
beauty of heaven or the beauty of earth, and that
purity, in aU but a few rarely-endowed souls, cannot
be gained or kept without a stern and frequently
painful discipUne, We are coming to realise once
more that ecstasy of spirit can only be had at the
expense of ecstasy of sense ; that one cannot be drunk
with wine and filled with the Spirit at the same time.
It is dawning upon us that laxity and hedonism are
not only the enemies of spiritual Ufe, but the destruc
tion of aU true art. The lesson is writ large over his
tory, and the close connection of Puritanism — using
that word in its widest sense, as applying to St. Teresa
far more than to Oliver Cromwell — with the truest
and most glorious art need not be emphasised. The
world's great artists have never been slow to perceive
the things that belonged to their peace. That is why
we find Michelangelo and Botticelli in the train of
Savonarola. After a wave of phallic immoraUsm
which perverted art to a disease, we are once more
groping our way to the conviction expressed by Mark
Rutherford when he contended that " a perfect form
or a delicate colour are the expression of something
which is destroyed in us by subjugation to the baser
185

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
desires or meannesses ; and he who has been unjust
to man or woman misses the true interpretation of
a cloud or falling wave."
In this sense the great mediaeval ascetics were
inspirers of art, but it must be remembered that, in
the case of the great mystic saints at any rate, they
did not start from a theory of morals, nor were they
preoccupied with the conscious culture of either
character or conduct. Here, again, their attitude
sprang from the simplicity and unreservedness of
surrender to One whom to know and serve was their
life, and who called them to the way of the Cross.
The strange and thrilling beauty of their utterance,
the lambent passion which turned words into tongues
of living flame, were the outcome of their simple
acceptance of the Cross. From no other root could
spring flowers whose purity is the deUght of virgin
souls, whose many-coloured splendour quickens the
jaded worldling with a sudden, wild throb of spiritual
desire. And as they embraced the Cross tiU the naUs
found their quivering flesh, it blossomed wondrously
like Aaron's rod, simply because they did not seek
blossoms ; they sought only to give love for love, to
give aU for aU, to ask for nothing and require back
nothing, but only to abide purely and unhesitatingly
in Him who had called them and for whom they
longed. Already the talk of " Art for art's sake," of
disinterested absorption in beauty and a contempla
tion of Nature for other purposes than to point a
moral, is dying away. Principles sufficiently valid In
themselves have acquired a vicious significance In the
mouth of those who are actuated, not by the high
i86

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
indifference and impartiality which sees the pathos
and splendour of life in the slime of earth as well as
in the purity of the lily, but by the prurient instinct
of sensuaUsm. Yet behind them lies an immortal
truth — the truth the mystic saints knew. Theirs it
was to give themselves up to their object with no
arriere pensie, merely for its own sweet and glorious
sake. They knew of only one unpardonable sin — to
make what should be the end a means for the attain
ment of benefits, no matter how exalted and spiritual.
They knew no spiritual cupboard-love, but cried out
with St. Catherine of Genoa : " O Love, I do not wish
to foUow Thee for the sake of these delights, but
solely from a motive of true love." ^ Their ofttimes
horrible and even loathsome acts of mortification grew
out of a single positive conviction, and not out of a
theoretical denial of Ufe, however strongly and inevit
ably they were influenced by the monastic theory and
ideal. Their eyes were yielded to the Vision Beauti
ful. If an eye of flesh stood in the way of such seeing,
what more natural and, in spite of the sharp pain,
deUghtsome than to pluck it out, that the spiritual
eye might be made keen to pierce the very stars f
They would have gladly sung with their Eastern
sister, Zeb-un-Nissa :
" Like Yaqub, blinded by his agony.
No face in all the world is aught to me :
What use have eyes, except to look on Thee ? " ^
Or, if a greedy hand of earth contradict the heaven
ward gesture of the uplifted hand of the Spirit, what
1 Vita, p. 8.
• The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, p. 64.
187

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
more sensible and profitable than to cut if off ? And
if the rainbow-glass of natural life stain the white
radiance of Eternity, what more sane and truly wise
than to shatter it, even though the radiant vision
still remain veiled ? — for " God can never be sought In
vain, not even when He cannot be found." ^ If His
presence be felt only as a mist about the soul, what
true lover would seek to exchange that dimness for
the lights of an earthly home ? In all the great mystic
ascetics the cool and self-contained disinterestedness
of the scientist is matched by the passionate and
abandoned disinterestedness of the lover. " This
monk," says Mr. Arthur Symons of St. John of the
Cross, " can give lessons to lovers " ; upon which
Miss Underbill shrewdly remarks, " it would be
strange if he could not." ^ Says Gertrude More,
" To give all for love is a most sweet bargain," and
again the Indian mystic supplies a parallel, as she
exhorts the spiritually minded to a disinterestedness
which Is at once a longing for adventure and a great
surrender of will :
" If perilous Love doth thee lead
If thou enter his track,
In the desert, like Majnun, thou dwell'st ever
more,
Thou shalt never look back ;
Nor even take heed
To thy life, if thou lose it or keep it, and pain
Shalt disdain ;
Nor seek on the limitless ocean of love for a shore." "
^ St. Berrard, De Consideralione, V., p. xi.
^ Mysticism, p. 107.
^ The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, p. 40.
188

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
And vvhile many of the manifestations of this at once
adventurous and submissive spirit must needs repel
us, and ought to repel us, we must not seek to disguise
it from ourselves that very often our disapproval of
their austerities has its root, not in a purified and
Christianised doctrine of God's relation to His world,
but in a characteristic cowardice and compromise ;
in — let us say it plainly — a failure to understand
and an unwiUingness to follow the way of the Cross.
Very much has been made, for instance, of the " mor
bid " love of suffering which many mystics mani
fested. The heart of man, we say, is made for joy,
and to crave suffering is a pathological symptom.
But the mystics never craved suffering In the abstract.
They saw their Lord on His Cross, and their warm,
adoring love cried out, " Must Jesus bear the Cross
alone ? Let me suffer with Him, or not live." It Is
our departure from that passionate personal relation
to Christ which makes it possible for us to misunder
stand so simple and logical an attitude, and to
magnify its occasional extravagant manifestations Into
symptoms of radical abnormality. We are quite pre
pared to give a more or less generous assent to the
view of an Anglican theologian when he tells us
that " the men of sorrows are the men of Influence In
every walk of life. Martyrdom is the certain road to
success in any cause. Even more than knowledge,
pain is power. And aU this because it develops the
latent capacities of our being as no other influence
can." ^ With such a statement we have no quarrel.
Its impersonal character and the stress it lays upon
1 J. R. lUingworth, in Lux Mundi (loth ed.), p. 89.
189

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the gains of suffering appeal to our temperament.
But the mystic saints coveting pain, " not for the
hope of gaining aught or seeking a reward," but
simply and solely that they might be with Him and
take their part in His sorrows, strike us as exotic and
eccentric. Why ? The reasonable objection that
many of these saints were so busy in providing
themselves with artificial means of hardship that they
lost sight of the many opportunities of genuine and
healthy self-denial which God had put into their
daUy lives is quite irrelevant here. It is the source
and motive of asceticism, and not the form it may
take in particular individuals and at different times,
that we are concerned with. And if that source and
motive belong to the things by which men in aU ages
live, then our true wisdom is to immerse ourselves in
the lives and writings of men who, according to the
knowledge and insight of their day and generation,
were controUed and inspired by it, so that, perchance,
we may recover it and translate its inspiration into
the terms of our more liberal conceptions of life.
IV
Nor can it be said of the mystics that their asceti
cism was fundamentally external — a matter of fast
ings, scourglngs, and hair-shirts. The ascetic Utera
ture of Mysticism is marked throughout by that
Inwardness which we imagine to be opposed to the
monastic type, and is fuU of warnings against a mis
placed confidence in external mortifications which
leave the root of sin untouched. Two examples will
190

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
suffice. St. John of the Cross, in a passage too long to
be quoted in fuU,^ speaks of those who " think it
enough to deny themselves in the things of this world,
without annihilating themselves and purging away
aU self-seeking in spiritual things." Hence it comes
to pass that when they are faced with " the nakedness
of the spiritual poverty of Christ, they run away from
it as from death itself. They seek only for delights,
for sweet communications and satisfactions in God ;
but this is not self-denial nor detachment of spirit,
but rather spiritual gluttony. They render them
selves spirituaUy enemies of the Cross of Christ."
Such an attitude, he says, is " perhaps nothing but to
seek oneself in God, which is the very opposite of love."
As an apt coroUary to this, we may recaU the searching
words of Bishop Chandler : " God is called in that
. . . our religious or philanthropic work may be
carried forward and redound duly to our credit. God
is to revolve diligently round us, supply certain needs
and Uluminate our piety and good works in the eyes
of our feUow men, . . . The work for which we
occasionally ask God's help is ours : we have chosen
it ; we are sure that it is good and that God wiU feel
great pleasure in helping us to carry it out. . . . God
is the means and we are the end." ^
Our second example is taken from Ruysbroeck,
who, at a time when chastity, even spiritual chastity,
was primarily conceived in terms of the physical,
discourses thus on this " evangelical counsel " : " Chas
tity is an adhesion to God above inteUigence and
^ The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I., p. xi.
'•* The Cult of the Passing Moment, pp. 117-118.
191

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
feeling, above all gifts which the soul is capable of
receiving, , . . Chastity is the splendour of the
interior man the power which closes the soul against
the things of earth and opens it to those of Heaven.
Chastity requires us to be armed with the weapons of
Jesus, the Redeemer and Conqueror. It requires
that His name be the joy of our hearts ; that we bear
in our souls the resemblance of His life, the remem
brance of . . . His humility. His passion. His blood
poured forth. . . . Thus we must follow Him and
kneel in spirit before the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. . . . There truth and justice will
enlighten our spirit, and we shaU shine brightly in the
presence of God. The simple gaze must plunge and
lose itself in the Ught in which the Divinity of Jesus
Christ crowns the splendour of chastity. And in the
Beatific Vision Jesus wiU clothe us with the robe of
purity, which is Himself." ^
But, we ask ourselves, do not this overwhelming
emphasis upon the Cross and this obsession with the
mortification of the self destroy the joyous simplicity
of the Christian life ? To which it must be answered
^that there are tv/o types of joyous simplicity — the
viciously-acquired naivete of the pious amateur and
the deep gaiety of the soul that has come Into the
blithe garden of the Resurrection through the gateway
of the Grave. " Rheinfried noticed how wonder
fully the Cross was sculptured with a vine running
up the shaft, and birds and smaU wild creatures
among the vine-leaves," ^ says the legend, and the
1 Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic, pp. 49-51.
^ William Canton, A Child's Book of Saints, pp. 49-51.
192

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
mystics have ever trained vines of joy round the tree
of bitter pain, and peopled it with song birds of
spiritual merriment. For they welcomed the Cross
not for its own sake, but as a means of communion
with Him who is the Lord of Joy. Here again they
were sacramentarians. They venerated not the bitter
" elements " of the Cross, but the sweetness of the
Real Presence. Such souls do not fit into the frame
work of our blanched and mediocre life, with its con
ventional standards of pleasure and pain ; but we
cannot afford to forget that they are completely
naturalised in the life which is mirrored for us in the
New Testament. The disciples who, being called to
suffer, " went rejoicing " would not have counted
them abnormal ; nor would St. Paul have discovered
anything morbid in souls that found their joy in the
strange and bitter adventure of the Cross.
It aU turns upon our understanding of that Cross.
We say it is opposed to Nature, and so it is, in one
sense ; in another it is surely the most " natural "
thing in the world — that to which Nature tends, that
which makes all creation agonise together, awaiting
the consummated redemption of the sons of God.
And even where we exalt the Cross, it is after a
different manner from theirs. For to us it is often
first and foremost the sign in which we are to conquer ;
to them it was the load under which they must fall to
the earth. It was the shame, the Indignity, the weak
ness, the failure, the dereliction of the Cross which
they prized and sought, so that by any means they
might be united to the Crucified. We glory in being
adequate to our task through the Cross ; they gloried
193

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
in a task to which they knew they must ever remain
inadequate, and placed their sufficiency in One who
sank crushed and bleeding beneath the very instru
ment of His triumph. They offered their souls to
share the dark desolation of their " lovely Fore
runner." True, they believed that gloom was but
the " shade of His hand outstretched caressingly,"
but some of God's caresses leave wounds, and they
did not flinch from that afflicting touch. Their
spiritual treasure was stripped from them as a gar
ment, love itself was inexplicably removed, hope died
within them ; only the naked Intention of a sur
rendered wUl remained, only a dry and dumb faith
waited blindly In the dark. So general was this
experience among mystic saints that even so simple
and sunny a soul as Mechthild of Magdeburg cries out,
" Lord, since Thou hast taken from me all that I had
of Thee, yet of Thy grace leave me the gift which
every dog has by nature : that of being true to Thee
in my distress when I am deprived of Thy consolation.
This I desire more fervently than Thy heavenly King
dom." 1 Or, again, the dereliction often took the
less drastic form of spiritual dulness and languor — a
paralysis of the emotions, an utter failure of the
spiritual imagination. Even the sanguine and virile
St. Teresa could only " cling " and persevere In
prayer at such times.
It may be urged that such experiences are merely
the Inevitable reactions from supreme moments of
vision, the penalty which the soaring spirit must
pay for its hours of exaltation ; and that therefore
' Lux Divinitatis, II., 25.
194

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: ASCETICISM
their significance is psychological rather than religious.
But however frequently this may have been the case,
it was not uniformly so, as many who experienced the
" dark night " of dereliction were not of mercurial or
romantic temperament, nor conspicuous for moments
of clear vision. Moreover, even where the experience
of dereliction is, in one of its aspects, susceptible of a
psychological explanation, it is none the less a divine
schooling in selfless constancy, a graduation in
suffering love. And the point for emphasis is not at
aU that the mystics experienced these ebblngs of
Divine consolation, but that where we would chafe
undcr them and aU but demand a return of joy,
vigour and effectiveness, they ate the bread of
spiritual dryness and drank the cup of weakness with
humble, uncomplaining love. They accepted frankly
what we of to-day would evade or push aside ; hence,
by that strange paradox which is the very essence of
Christianity, they feU heirs to a joy which we, who
rush into the sunlit garden before we descend into the
tenebrous grave, lack. And while we may turn with
a certain sense of relief from these gaunt and weary
Cross-bearers to the more congenial Nature and Love
mystics, it is, as we shall note below, to the
principle which animated the great ascetics that we
shaU have to return in essaying to suggest a mystical
conception of Nature which shall be consonant with
our present knowledge and view-point.

195

CHAPTER VIII
MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
" What I " it will be questioned, " when the sun rises, do you not see a
round disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea f " Oh I no, no 1 I see an
innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, " Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord God Almighty ! " I question not my corporeal eye, any more
than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and
not with it. William Blake.
If the flesh owes all its beauty and vivacity, its love and sensibility to the
infinite Spirit, we must not shrink from confessing the other half of the great
mystery, that the infinite Spirit owes much to the flesh. He assumes the
flesh for the manifestation of the hiddenmost, intensest affections of His
nature. John Pulsford.
All the world is secretly maddened by the mystery of love, and continually
seeks its solution everywhere but where it is to be found. CoVENTRV PaTMOSK.

SYNOPSIS
Definition of symbolism — ^Dean Inge on false and true
symbols — ^The symbol as Sacrament — Relation of Eucharist
to Nature-Mysticism — ^The simplicity and suggestlveness of
mystic symbolism — M. Recejac on mystic symbols. I.
Attempts to revive Franciscan Nature-Mysticism — Miss
Underbill's directions to beginners in contemplation — Their
spirit contrasted with that of St. Francis — ^The secret of the
Franciscan genius. II. Thomas Traherne, Nature-mystic,
philosopher, ascetic, and Love-mystic — His infant paradise —
The unique quality of his Mysticism — His glorification of men
— His delight in the world — His conception of the crucified
Christ. III. William Wordsworth, his Nature-Mysticism,
philosophy, and askesis — Wordsworth a true mystic — Professor
A. C. Bradley on his visionary genius — ^His alleged lack of
human sympathy — ^The Emersonian type. IV. Coventry
Patmore — ^Traherne the link between Nature- and Love-mystics
— Browning, Rossetti, Shelley, Keats, Francis Thompson-
Coventry Patmore the supreme English exponent of Love-
Mysticism — His spiritual eroticism — His doctrine of the ideal,
unfulfilled marriage of man and woman — His respect for
celibacy — ^His glorification of pure Love — His doctrine of a
coming Bridal Dispensation — Man's soul the sponsa Dei.
V. Neopagan delight in Nature — Dora Greenwell on Nature
and Christ — Francis Thompson on paganism — " No heathen
ever saw the same tree as Wordsworth " — Richard Jefferles'
disillusionment — ^Nature not self-complete. VI. The pessi
mist's view of Nature as a cruel, anti-ethical force — Lotze's
monadism — Father Tyrrell's warning — Nature includes man,
but is not synonymous with spirit — ^The doctrine of Redemp
tive Creation — The value of asceticism — Man must stand out
side Nature to possess it. VII. The ideal mystical attitude —
The Sepulchre in the Garden — The Gardener — Religion must
become natural — ^The mystic doctrine of temporal and eternal
Nature — The Garden not an abode of selfish ease.

CHAPTER VIII
MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
Few words have been so persistently misused as
the word " symbol.'' In nine cases out of ten it is
wrongly substituted for " emblem," and it recalls to
most minds the quaint, conventional iUustrations
which adorn old editions of Quarles's Emblems and
similar pious books of a bygone age, or the senti
mental picture-language of tbe old-fashioned valentine
or birthday-card. This double usage of the word for
a merely conventional and a deeply sacramental
correspondence has led some interpreters to deny
that Mysticism is symbolic and others to affirm it.
Dean Inge, in his exceedingly lucid and practical dis
cussion of symbolism,^ contends that while it is not
easy to distinguish a merely conventional from a real
affinity between a symbol and that which is sym
bolised, there are certain broad principles to guide us.
Thus, " an aureole is not, properly speaking, a symbol
of saintliness, nor a crown of royal authority, because
in these instances the connection of sign with signi
ficance is conventional ; . . . but falling leaves are a
symbol of human mortality, a flowing river of the
' stream ' of life, and a vine and its branches of the
unity of Christ and the Church, because they are
examples of the same law which operates through all
* christian Mysticism, pp. 250-261.
199

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
that God has made." ^ This, however, hardly meets
the whole case. For a true symbol must not merely
be a natural, as distinct from an arbitrary, illustra
tion or exemplification of the thing signified ; itjnust
also be its vehicle and medium — it must convey as
well as illuminate. Goethe's definition of true sym
bolism as that in which " the more particular repre
sents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but
as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the inscrut
able," 2 comes nearer the mark, but is too exclusively
inteUectual to cover the whole meaning. A far more
adequate and comprehensive conception is reached
when we substitute " sacrament " for " symbol." A
sacrament is not only an external expression of a
spiritual reality, but also its vehicle. Dean Inge
forcibly points out what is constantly overlooked by
writers on symbolism, that both the superstitious and
materialistic view of sacraments, which makes them
miracles or magical performances, and the rationalist
view, which reduces them to mere commemorative
emblems, are alike destructive of the idea of a sacra
ment. A little common sense would save us from
much confusion at this point. If we turn away from
sacraments in the specific and ecclesiastical sense, and
turn to such a channel of grace as the atmosphere and
influence of a Christian home, we at once perceive
how fatal both the magical and the rationalist Inter
pretations are to the sacramental idea. The minis
trations of Christian family life, as they come to the
children of such a home, through example, through an
^ Christian Mysticism, p. 251.
- Quoted by Dean Inge in Christian Mysticism, p. 251 (note;.
200

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
atmosphere of integrity, helpfulness and affection, and
through verbal precept and common prayer and
worship, convey something to these children which
could come to them in no other way, and the lack of
which leaves a mark for life upon those who are
deprived of it. In other words, it is not merely an
arbitrary emblem of the fatherly nurture of God for
which any other iUustration may be substituted, but
it has a real and vital relation to that which it not
only reveals but effectuaUy conveys. On the other
hand, the very word " convey " excludes the idea of
anything Uke a magical transference or transubstan
tiation — as if, in the act of family priesthood, the
Christian father or mother were lost in the immediate
and miraculously substituted presence of God Him
self. True symbolism, then, is communion with God by
means of " outward signs " which are vital expressions^.
and natural vehicles of the Divine. In this sense,
aU valid dogmatic theology is the dialectical develop
ment of mystical symbols of which the Trinity is the
most influential and germinal.^ The great mystics
are essentiaUy sacramentalists ; and of by far the
greater majority it may be said that their sacramental
outlook upon Nature and life is rooted in their wor
shipful acceptance of the sacraments of the Church.
It was the Eucharist which taught the elect among
mediaeval saints to make a sacrament of every common
meal. It was their assimilation of the very " sub
stance " of Christ at the Lord's Table which made the
wisest of them so eager to feed on Nature, transub-
1 cf. R^c^jac, Essay on tbe Bases ofthe Mystic Knowledge, p. 137.
201

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
stantlating her " elements " by the alchemy of faith
into the very stuff of eternal life. Sacramentarianism,
even in the gross, materialised form to which it was
degraded in the Middle Ages, was a schoolmaster to
bring holy souls to an understanding of the sacra
mental value of Nature and of human love. AU
Nature-Mysticism and aU true Love-Mysticism are a
necessary corollary to the Hoc est corpus meum of the
Eucharist. Genuine Mysticism, then, is symbolic, in the sense
of being sacramental, and not after the fanciful
manner of a conventional and arbitrary typology, nor
after the sophisticated manner of certain types of
poetry. The symbolism of the great mystics is " not
merely a legitimate but a necessary mode of intui
tion." ^ And while it is not always safe to lay claim to
the gift of discerning the spirits, genuine symbols are,
broadly speaking, distinguished from the artificial
type by their simplicity and their extraordinary
power of suggestion. One need only lay one of the
great prophetic visions of Scripture — e.g., that of
Isaiah or Elijah — beside some of the more ornate and
intricate work of Francis Thompson to realise this.
The modern poet's symbolism is entirely valid in Its
own sphere : it is neither meretricious nor insincere ;
but it needs laborious translation, it lacks the vital,
immediate and potent suggestlveness of the simple
symbolism of Biblical prophecy. It is " produced,"
not " given " ; it iUustrates, but does not mediate
and convey ; it is the special property of the poetic
genius, not the potential heritage of the human heart
* Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 252.
202

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
athirst for God. M. Recejac, whose Kantian stand
point makes his interpretation of Mysticism all the
more valuable, gives noble expression to this convic
tion when he reminds us that " the most perfect
notion of God which has ever been conceived is ' the
Being forever communicating Its own essence.' By
it we have authority to believe that the symbols under
which God reaUy gives Himself, and which are more
interior than any other sort of mental image, may
arise in every sincere human consciousness." ^

Nature-Mysticism is very much in the air at the
present time, and we are even being provided with
elaborate and, it must be confessed, alarming instruc
tions on the best way to become Nature-mystics our
selves. From such counsels one instinctively retreats
upon the winsome picture of little St. Francis among
his birds and beasts, and falls to wondering at the
extraordinary futiUty and sophistication of modern
attempts to recapture the Franciscan spirit. Truth
is, St. Francis was an ascetic saint as well as a Nature-
mystic ; and while his natural genius made him a
master where others are mere imitators and dilettanti,
his deepest appreciations of Nature were the direct
outcome of his Christian discipleship, of the purged
and radiant perception of a soul that bore the Stig
mata. The same might be said of St. Rose of Lima,
It was ultimately the nail-pierced hand of Christ that
re-created the world for them, and that is why their
' Essay on the Bases ofthe Mystic Knowledge, pp. 144-145.
203

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
relation to Nature was distinguished by a directness
and spontaneousness beside which the best so-called
Nature-poetry seems artificial and sophisticated —
a relation which transcended even the highest type of
reflective meditation. That identification of the soul
with its object towards which poets and artists aspire
and which is the dream of the philosopher is perfectly
realised in the simplicity of a St, Francis, whose candid,
love-lit eyes see everything " in God " and therefore
in a true and vital unity. There is no abstraction, no
deliberate Immersion of the self Into Nature. There
is only the eye which God has lightened, looking at
its Maker and at everything in the unity of His
redeeming love. Well might Madame Arvede Barine
say that the plaisir egoiste of the dilettante found no
foothold In the soul of St. Francis. To him the birds
were not " symbols " in the sense of being parables
which bad to be translated laboriously Into terms of
spirit. They bad for him their positive value, their
Inalienable place, in God's Kingdom of Love.
The distinguishing quality of the Franciscan vision
of Nature emerges most clearly when we compare It
with certain directions for elementary contemplation
given by Miss Underbill.^ Contemplation, she says,
must begin with " the discovery of God in His crea
tures," and self must be pushed back, till we find In
every manifestation bf life — even in those we have
" petulantly classified as cruel or obscene " — the
" ardent self-expression " of the Immanent God. It
is the attitude of deliberate and self-forgetful atten
tiveness that matters, and not the nature of the
^ Practical Mysticism, pp. 89-93.
204

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
object contemplated. " Look," she tells us, " with
the eye of contemplation on the most dissipated
tabby of the streets, and you shaU discern the celestial
quality of life set Uke an aureole about his tattered
ears, and hear in his strident mew an echo of
" ' The deep, enthusiastic joy,
The rapture of the hallelujah sent
From all that breathes and is.'
The sooty tree up which he scrambles to escape your
earnest gaze is holy too."
Quite apart from the curious lack of humour which
such a passage betrays, and the fundamentally
un-Christian and unethical conception of God which
underlies its indifference as to the object of contem
plation, nothing could be farther from the genius and
quality of the Franciscan love of Nature which Miss
Underbill claims as her model. St. Francis did not
deUberately sit down to " contemplate " Nature in
order to discover God. God came to him, as to most
Christian mystics, through definite moral and spiritual
experiences, clear calls to heroic service, solemn
reveaUngs of sinfulness and of the grace that redeems,
dynamic visions of a personal Lord and King. We
could not imagine him setting himself to fix a contem
plative eye upon a " tabby " or any other creature —
possibly that was one of the reasons why no living
thing ever scrambled up a tree " to escape his earnest
gaze." He had seen God, and his natural endowment
helped him to see every living creature, not equaUy
beautiful and divine, as our unethical pseudo-Mysti
cism has it, but dear and beloved in God.
205

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
This is not to deny that the " creatures " may lead
the human soul to God, and that many a modern
mystic has found his true kingdom through " a little
feathered brother." ^ But it remains that to sit
down deliberately to discover God by gazing with
selfless attention at cats, or Alps, or insects, is a species
of devout sophistication which strikes a false note to
the ear that is attuned to the voice of Jesus and to the
lyric strain of St. Francis. The healing and puri
fying power of Nature is not in question here, nor the
soundness of the instinct which sends the worker and
seeker who is tired of the world's conventional plati
tudes and fussy activities to her beneficent bosom.
But when writers Uke Miss UnderhiU recommend a
deliberate course of contemplation of cats, or trees,
or any other manifestation of life, however cruel or
obscene they may appear, as a means to the discovery
of God, we have passed from the authentic to the
factitious. Between the true mystic's sympathy
with Nature and aU such deliberate cults there is a
great gulf fixed. St. Francis was the greatest Nature-
/mystic simply because he was not primarily a Nature-
mystic at all. He saw a Cross in the heavens; he
felt the nails in his soul ; he surrendered beauty as
weU as wealth in the great self-stripping. And so the
fair, green earth, which he had counted a " world weU
lost " tbat he might win Christ, feU into his hand Uke
a magic apple ; and he possessed it as the Greek soul,
intoxicated with the rhythm of passing things, had
never possessed it.
^ Cf. A Modern Mystic's Way, chap. L
206

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
II
If St. Francis links Nature-Mysticism to asceticism,
Thomas Traherne, also an ascetic, though of a widely
different type, and a philosopher to boot, links it to
Love-Mysticism. It seems a far cry from the lyric
spontaneity of St. Francis to the meditative habit and
profoundly reflective Insight of Traherne ; yet the
affinities between them are greater than their dif
ferences. Traherne was born a Franciscan, and
remained a Franciscan, until, at the mature age
of four (!), the fact that all men were bent upon
material success and happiness, and that the
feUcity of attaining it was given only to the few,
suggested a doubt as to the goodness of God. Of his
infant paradise he writes with curious and immortal
charm : " AU appeared new, and strange at first,
inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. I
was a little stranger, which at my entrance into the
world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable
joys. . . . The corn was orient and immortal wheat
which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I
thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.
The dust and stones of the street were as precious as
gold : the gates were at first the end of the world.
The green trees when I saw them first . . . trans
ported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual
beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with
ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.
The men ! O what venerable and reverend creatures
did the aged seem ! Immortal cherubims ! And
young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids,
207

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty ! Boys and
girls tumbling in the street and playing were moving
jewels. I knew not they were born or should die ;
but aU things abided eternaUy as they were in their
proper places. The city seemed to stand In Eden, or
to be built in heaven." ^
Only by degrees was that dewy radiance tarnished
by the influence of those who at last persuaded him
that " a drum, a fine coat, a penny, a gilded book "
were to be prized. It was not until he had passed
through Oxford and been appointed to his quiet coun
try living, that the heaven that had lain about him
in his infancy was reopened in deeper and even more
glorious fashion to his manhood's sight. Spending no
more than ten pounds a year, feeding on bread and
water, and, Uke George Fox, wearing a suit of leather
he found happiness in " a free and kingly life, as if the
world were turned again into Eden, or much more." "
In the case of St. Francis, an Innate sympathy with
Nature was refined and transmuted by the unreserved
surrender of his whole being to the severe alchemy of
the Cross into something every whit as naive and
simple yet deep as life itself. In the case of Traherne,
a long process of reflective brooding resulted In an
attitude towards Nature in which the lovable freshness
of childhood blended with the mellow maturity of a
patiently cultivated mind — a remarkable combination
of the intuitive and the intellectual, the aesthetic
and the ethical, which has no paraUel in the history
of Mysticism. Mr. W. K. Fleming justly observes
* Centuries of Meditation, ¦pp. 156-158.
* Ibid., p. 194.
208

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
that in reading Traherne's meditations we " take a
fresh breath, rub our eyes and get our gratitude
newly back again, as if indeed we were abroad with
him on some sunlit down, seeing with him God's grace
in every ' spire of grass ' and in his * orient and
immortal wheat.' " ^ For Traherne, as for St. Fran
cis, God has recreated the earth, but his philosophical
bent, and also his religious training and conviction,
aUowed him to discern and emphasise the human
factor in this re-creative act. He saw man so wonder
fully made in the image of God as to be capable not
only of understanding but of transmuting and, as it
were, re-creating God's universe, and by this creative
insight adding a new and precious element to the
world, glorifying what was already glorious. Thus he
says, " You never enjoy the world aright till the sea
itself floweth in your veins, tiU you are clothed with the
heavens and crowned with the stars. . . . TIU you can
sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in
gold, and kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the
world. , . . The world is a mirror of infinite beauty,
yet no man sees it. It is a temple of majesty,
yet no man regards it. . . . It is the Paradise of
God. ... It is the place of angels and the Gate of
Heaven." *
Traherne was, in his own quiet, brooding fashion,
an " enjoying " soul. He saw God ever desiring,
ever pleading for the responsive love of the souls
which He had made ; and he saw the heart of man so
'irgent in its cry for love, so clamant in its craving for
1 Mysticism in Christianity, p. 193.
* Centuries of Meditation, pp. 20-21.
209 '

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
joy, that to him the communion of the soul with God
was as the meeting of two great wants, the passionate
confluence of two rivers of desire.^ His delight in a
universe which met the myriad wants of the insatiable
human heart with such divine opulence stands In
some contrast to the more modest satisfaction and
undemanding contentment of St. Francis among his
birds and beasts. Beside Its vigour and opulence, the
chastened mirth of the little brother of the poor seems
as a crayon drawing beside an oil painting. No less
salient is the contrast when we set the homely Fran
ciscan wisdom, with its ascetic prohibition of learning
and the possession of books, beside the intellectual
magnificence of Traherne, who brought his Platonic
inheritance and his liberal learning to the altar of God.
Yet the two meet at the central point : both derived
what was deepest and most fruitful in their appre
ciation of Nature from the Cross of Christ. The
philosophical divine no less than the simple-hearted
friar learnt to love sun and stars, the birds, and the
humble grass in the school of the Cross.
To Traherne, living in a calmer and clearer atmo
sphere than that in which St. Francis wore out his
suffering frame, it was given to discern and celebrate
the glory which lay hidden in the wounds and bitter
agony of the Cross of Jesus. His delight it was to
re-live aU the august and delightsome happenings oi
sacred history, but, above aU, the Saviour's Cross was
to him " the throne of delights, that centre of eternity,
that tree of life in the midst of the Paradise of God. ' ''
' Centuries of Meditation, p. 34 : " Wants are the bands and cements
between God and us," etc.
* Ibid., p. 39.
210

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
In a passage which parallels his eulogium of the world,
he extols the Cross as " the abyss of wonders, the
centre of desires, the school of virtues, the house of
wisdom, the throne of love, the theatre of joys and
the place of sorrows." ^ He sees it as " a tree set on
fire with invisible flame, that illumlnateth all the
world," 2 the flame of the Love of Him who died upon
it ; and he sees in the dying Victim the Conqueror and
Heir of the whole world. Thus he says, in one of his
most genuinely mystical utterances, " To this poor,
bleeding, naked Man did aU the corn and wine and oil
and gold and silver In the world minister in an invisible
manner, even as He was exposed lying and dying upon
the Cross." ^
Nor was he merely a spectator in the face of the
Divine Passion. The sight of Jesus crucified moves
his dignified and fastidious pen to words which we are
accustomed to connect with the crude, emotional out
bursts of popular Catholic piety. " 0 my life and my
aU," he exclaims, " I beseech Thee, let those trickling
drops of blood that ran down Thy fiesh drop upon
me. 0 let Thy love enflame me. ... O Thou that
redeemed me from heU. . . . What shaU I do unto
Thee i What shaU I do for Thee . . . ? O Let me
this day see Thee and be united to Thee in Thy holy
sufferings. ... I pray Thee, teach me first Thy
love unto me and then unto mankind." * It is some
times remarked that the difference between the
Nature-mysticism of Traherne and that of St. Francis
I- Centuries of Meditation, p. 41.
2 Ibid., p. 43.
8 Ibid., p. 43.
' Ibid., p. 44. 211 ''

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Is that for Traherne the Crucified is pre-eminently the
Opener and Restorer of the earthly paradise to man,
whereas for St. Francis He is the Lord and Lover of
his soul, by whose death the world is crucified unto
him and he to the world. But while there is a degree
of truth in this view, words such as those quoted
above show how greatly it needs to be modified. And
such outbursts of adoring love are by no means
unusual with Traherne. " Thou wast slain for me,"
he says elsewhere, " and shaU I leave Thy Body in
the field, O Lord ? ShaU I go away and be merry,
while the Love of my soul and my only Lover is dead
upon the Cross ? " ^ And again, " By descending
into heU for the sake of others, let me ascend into the
glory of the highest heavens. Let the fidelity and
efficacy of my love appear in all my care and suffering
for Thee." ^ With hiin, as with St. Francis, Love is
the root and crown of vision ; but while in St. Francis
the conception of Love is determined by the monastic
ideal, Traherne's conception links him to a class of
mystics whose theological (and in many cases anti-
theological) presuppositions are widely removed from
his own — the so-called Love-mystics. His type is,
as we have seen, remarkably complex, for aU its
translucent candour. In him the flower of chUdUke
delight blossoms on the stem of philosophic reflection,
and an acute and refined sensibility to beauty flows
out of the adoration of the naked Cross. He shows
how a deep and loving contemplation of God and
Nature can make all human loving, not to pale and
^ Centuries of Meditation, p. 68. Cf. Richard Rolle's homely saying
" My Dear-worthy Lord hanged on the Rood, and I lie in this soft bed I "
' Ibid., p. 69.
212

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
take on the hue of sin, but to shine with the flame-like
splendour of a divine passion. Traherne, indeed,
more than almost any other mystic, has equally deep
affinities with each of the four classes.

Ill
We instinctively turn to Wordsworth for the
classic instance of pure Nature-Mysticism, In the
modern sense of the word, but in his case, too, the
conventional classification breaks down, and we find
him to be as much a philosophical mystic as a Nature-
mystic, and, like most philosophical mystics, informed
with a wisely ascetic spirit. He is Greek by tempera
mental affinity, more especiaUy in his dislike of fervid
emotions and his dominating sense of harmony and
wholeness. For him purgation consists in the avoid
ance of everything that can Impair a serene detach
ment and untroubled clarity of mind, and, on the
inteUectual side, in the pruning away of habits of
loose analogy, blurred distinctions, and false sym
bolisms. An inteUectual contemplative, his most
exalted visions are the outcome of refiection, i.e., his
intuitions come to him, for the most part, not as fore
runners of thought, but as the crown and fruition of
long reflective processes. His fundamental doctrine
is that God speaks not in Nature only, nor in the
human soul only, but in both ; and that It is to the
soul in the act of communion with Nature that the
deepest revelations are vouchsafed. Such revelations
are the fruit of the marriage of the intellect of man
(including the imagination, which is " Reason in her
213

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
most exalted mood,") to " this goodly universe, in
love and holy passion." They convey at once a sense
of that infinitude and eternity which are our home and
a sense of the depth of the hidden self — the twin fruit,
as we have seen already, of mystic introversion. The
final term of such experiences is the abUIty " to
breathe in worlds to which the heaven of heavens
is but a veil," and to perceive " the forms whose
kingdom Is where time and space are not " ; In
other words. Contemplation and Ecstasy. The poet's
one object is to possess " the eye made quiet by
the power of harmony and the deep power of joy " ;
to achieve that " wise passiveness " and fruitful
equilibrium in which the soul " sees into the Ufe of
things." A superficial view of Wordsworth, influenced
largely by Matthew Arnold's famous essay, denies to
him a place among the mystics. It pictures him as a
calm, serene, somewhat phlegmatic person, of inter
mittent and not particularly virile inspiration, and
innocent of any excess of human sympathy — a mUdly
meditative soul, in short, who found a certain quiet
and sober joy in contemplating the sweet and homely
things of Nature, and who did his best to Induce others
to make trial of this placid form of simple life. As a
matter of fact, however, his was a soul of fire, In which
strong passions intertwined and struggled like shooting
flames — passions which, by dint of a long, sharp
discipline, he had learnt to keep in wise and stern
control and guide into beneficent channels. His was
the thinker's subtle mind and the seer's darting
apprehension. The passions which he held in such
214

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
perfect and abiding control were turned from flaring
torches into a white and steady flame which trans
muted and welded the raw material of his emotions
into the fine and pellucid stuff of vision. His was
no provincial or domestic eye with a fondness for
insignificant detail. He was primarily concerned,
not with beautiful things, but with the life that runs
through the whole ; not with the fair flesh of
Nature, but with the soul that shines through it. An
inspiration so high and rare could not be constant,
and it needed the protecting screen of an apparently
phlegmatic habit to guard the body against the con
suming fire of the soul.
Above all, he was a mystic of the high and imperious
type of Plotinus — one who, like Blake, made inspira
tion and vision his eternal dwelling-place, and ever
discerned " the outward-flowering of Eternity in the
deUcate living forms of time." As Professor A. C.
Bradley has pointed out, he ever felt the presence of
mysterious, inviolable powers, and was, in the deepest
and most honourable sense, a visionary for whom all
Nature was one great " deep door " into the Infinite ;
for whom every highway disappearing in the blue
distance " Was like an invitation into space
Boundless, or guide into Eternity."
So far from being the poet of the primrose hedge and
the country cottage, he was pre-eminently the poet
of the mountain soUtude, of the great, pregnant still
ness where unspoken things Ue warm, of the mys
terious, silent spaces where everything is natural yet
215

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
everything is apocalyptic. True, he always had a
humble and attentive mind for smaU and lowly things.
A bird's note upon the still air, a girl's song, the
appearance of a peasant child, the faint spark of a
glow-worm, the sight of a flower in the grass — ^in aU
these he found nurture and inspiration. But each of
these in his hands became an intimation of the great
Life that pulses through aU ; a revelation of some
unguessed grace ; a hint of boundlessness beyond.
His was the " inseeing " eye, and it is by the fiash of
vision, not by the quiet browsing of observation, that
he is a great poet. To excise the visionary element
out of his poetry would be to leave him " shorn of his
strength," indeed. His Mysticism was not the out
come of his philosophic pondering, stiU less an acci
dental and negligible mood. It was the inborn
habitus of his soul. In the words of Professor
Bradley, " he saw everything in the Ught of ' the
visionary power.' . . . He apprehended aU things,
natural or human, as an expression of something
which, while manifested in them, immeasurably
transcended them. And nothing can be more intensely
Wordsworthian than the poems and passages most
marked by this visionary power and most directly
issuing from this apprehension." ^
Mystics of Wordsworth's serene and detached type
have always been accused of a somewhat shaUow and
facile optimism which cannot, or wiU not, see the
brutal and tragic aspects of Nature. With this
objection we shaU deal more fuUy further on.
Meanwhile it is sufficient to note that Nature can no
^ Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 126-127.
216

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
longer be regarded as merely " red in tooth and claw
with ravine." Nature includes man as well as beast,
and manifests mercy as well as cruelty, gives ground
for a valid optimism as weU as for a wholesome
pessimism. And if the discovery of these oppos
ing tendencies in Nature paralyses the uninspired
observer into an attitude of blank agnosticism, it
evokes in the seeing soul a vision of inworking grace,
and a sure and certain expectation of consummated
glory. For to such It is the good and beautiful
within Nature which is most natural, and therefore
destined to final triumph.
A more defensible charge leveUed against mystics
of this type is their lack of warm human sympathy.
We know it to be true of Wordsworth that " his soul
was like a star and dwelt apart," and a sound instinct
teUs us that such detachment, however lofty, misses
true greatness ; that such tranquillity, however stain
less, is of another perfection than that with which our
Father in Heaven is perfect. Wordsworth himself,
indeed, confessed that in his earlier days he preferred
hiUs and streams to human kind,^ and even when
through Nature he came to a more tender and wise
understanding of man, it was to man as a unity
that his spirit was drawn, and not to the world of
concrete, individual human beings.^ This, to the
Christian heart at any rate, is the blind spot that
dims the eye of many mystics ; and yet even here we
must qualify our criticism. In common with most
mystics of his type, Wordsworth did cultivate a pro-
^ Prelude, viii.
» Ibid. 21'J

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
found and intimate acquaintance with one individual
— himself. Much has been said concerning the
viciousness of a preoccupation with self-culture, yet
it remains that the man who engages in a humble and
rigorous self-discipline Is, by that much, in genuine
and vital, if severely limited, touch with humanity ;
whereas many a person whose cheap philanthropies
gain him a reputation for breadth of human sympathy
does not genuinely touch humanity at even a single
point. The man who works at bimself, always pro
vided his motive be noble, sanctifies himself for the
sake of his brethren ; while he who remains a stranger
to himself on the plea of a feeling for humanity which
exhausts itself in a smaU, cheap concern about other
people serves neither himself nor his feUows.
Even in the case of so provoking and aU-but-
exasperating a soul as Emerson this holds true.
Emerson deliberately turned his back upon human
sin and pain, and selfishly refused to let his eyes rest
upon ugliness, deformity, or disease. Yet he, too,
was pledged to a noble askesis, and, as Dean Inge
reminds us, his beautiful character was as noble a
gift to humanity as his writings. To keep one's mind
undeviatlngly fixed upon whatsoever things are pure,
lovely, and of good report is not a " soft " or easy
business ; and the soul that persists in such endeavour
has made more real contact with humanity than
could be made through a thousand so-called acts of
mercy In which the personality is not really Involved.
The ideal Christian mystic is, of course, one who Is a
true priest and pastor of humanity as well as a philo
sopher and a seer, and who combines the noble,
218

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
shepherdly heart with a clear and radiant wisdom.
For a Nature-mystic exhibiting such a combination
we must turn back to Traherne, who, while ever
caught in the enchantment of a world made new,
whose beautiful and mysterious Ufe invited his most
absorbed and exalted attention, went about his coun
try parish, seeing the passion of Christ in every eye
and treating every one he met " in the person of
Christ." With Wordsworth we may close our brief analysis
of typical Nature-mystics, leaving many Interesting
personaUties such as Blake untouched. Wordsworth,
like Traherne, though in a widely different way, has
affinities with both the ascetic and the philosophi
cal mystics, and may be cited as the exemplar of
an askesis which does not seek to suppress but to
control. IV
Traherne, as we have seen, forms a link between
the Nature-mystics and the great Love-mystics. For
him, love is the centre of the universe, and " the most
delightful and natural employment of the soul of
man." " By loving," he says, " the soul doth pro
pagate and beget itself." ^ And again, " When you
love men, the world quickly becometh yours ; and
yourself becomes a greater treasure than the world
Is. . . . You are as prone to love as the sun is to
shine. . . . By love our souls are married and
soldered to the creatures ; and it is our duty like God
to be united to them aU." ^ So far he Is in agreement
^ Centuries of Meditation, p. 120.
' Ibid., pp. 124-125.
219

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
with the great ascetics who were at the same time
apostles of love. The passages quoted are of a piece
with Mechthild of Magdeburg's " Who so knows and
loves the nobleness of My freedom cannot bear to
love Me alone, but must also love Me in the crea
tures " ; ^ for in Traherne, too, the love of mankind
is the direct and logical outcome of the love of God.
But Traherne, who, as a Protestant, was not cut off
from domestic life as most of the mediaeval mystics
were, goes further and, in at least one passage, flings a
bridge across the chasm between the mediseval and
the modern ideals of love. " Supposing a curious and
fair woman," he says. " Some have seen the beauties
of Heaven in such a person. It Is a vain thing to say
they loved too much. I dare say there are ten thou
sand beauties in that creature which they have not
seen. They loved it not too much, but upon false
causes. Nor so much upon false ones ; as only upon
some little ones. They love a creature for sparkling
eyes and curled hair, lily breasts and ruddy cheeks :
which they should love, moreover, for being God's
Image, Queen of the Universe, ... a mine and
fountain of all virtues, a treasury of graces and a
child of God. ... I dare confidently say that every
person in the whole world ought to be beloved as much
as this ; and she, if there be any cause of difference
more than she is." *
For examples of pure Love-Mysticism we must turn
to Browning, Rossetti, and, most of all, to Coventry
Patmore, the supreme English exponent of the sacra
^ Lux Divinitatis, vi, 4.
^ Centuries of Meditation, pp. 126-127.
220

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
ment of love. In Blake and Shelley, Love-Mysticism
has a subordinate place, while in Keats we have the
pagan and philosophic counterpart of the monastic
attitude. " The mighty abstract idea I have of
Beauty in aU things stifles the more divided and
minute domestic happiness," * he writes ; and if he is
keenly sensitive to " the charm of women," it is not to
women as such, but to the eternal essence — " the
lovely moon " — of which their charm is but one mani
festation. Francis Thompson also, though in quite
another sense, stopped short of being a typical Love-
mystic. Of genuine Love-Mysticism there is enough
In his poetry, and his sense of the divinity in woman's
beauty is summed up in the weU-known Unes, " Domus
Tua " : " A perfect woman — ^Thine be laud I
Her body is a Temple of God :
At Doom-bar dare I make avows,
I have loved the beauty of Thy house."
Yet human love is, in most of his work, a symbol, in
the narrower sense, rather than a sacrament ; a
medium of revelation, not a vehicle of grace.
Passing by Browning, whose philosophy of life is
too weU known to justify fresh exposition, and
Rossetti, who in his early prose romance, Hand and
Soul, made a glorious promise destined to remain un-
fulfiUed, we come to the most explicit of Love-mystics,
Coventry Patmore. Elizabethan in feeUng and
rhythm. Early-mediaeval in his essential CathoUcism,
Patmore was a curious and baffling mixture, and we
can readily understand how ill he fitted into the frame-
* In a letter to his brother George.
221

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
work, not only of Victorian conventionality, but also
of Victorian idealism. He was at once a materiaUst
and a mystic, an egoist and a devotee, a sentimentalist
and a realist, a voluptuary and a puritan. He sinned
grossly in many of his poems against the decencies of
emotion, yet the final effect was generally that of a
high and pure austerity. His philosophy makes an
equal appeal to the Catholic and to the Protestant
mystic, his conception of the " nuptial " relation
between God and the soul being, of course, most con
genial to Catholic, and his glorification of marriage to
Protestant, feeling. What seems a curious contra
diction to Protestant minds is the fact that while he
exalts marriage to the utmost Umit of wholesome
idealisation, he has no contempt, but, on the contrary,
the highest respect, for the typicaUy monastic habit
of applying the language of married love to the
" spiritual nuptials " between God and the soul of the
celibate contemplative. His philosophy of love serves
the purpose of h wholesome antidote to the modern
recoil from anything like an " erotic " conception of
the commerce between the soul and its God. It is
quite obvious that In many Individual cases enforced
ceUbacy resulted in a transference to the human
person of Christ of feelings which were denied their
legitimate outlet, and that such a cult led to a
religious amorousness, not only strongly repeUent to
the healthy spiritual instinct, but also fraught with
grave moral peril. So closely are flesh and spirit
intertangled in the web of our humanity that the
flesh may actuaUy feed and grow rampant upon the
fervour of the spirit and, in the end, take terrible
222

MYSTICISM AND NATURE SYMBOLISM
revenge. But such indisputable truisms do not dis
pose of the subject. In approaching what is termed
erotic Mysticism as exemplified, for instance, in the
mystical interpretation of the Song of Solomon, the
fundamental question is not whether the language
is nauseatlngly amorous, or whether the whole pro
cedure is brimful of danger, but whether it corresponds
to any genuine need and instinct of the soul and to
any reality in God.
Now Coventry Patmore recalls us. In more con
vincing accents than any other modern mystic, to the
fact that behind the unhealthlness and the ofttimes
painful immodesty which disfigure so much of erotic
Mysticism there lies the simple truth that love
between man and woman is the sacrament of that
great mystery which is the " burning heart " and
" celestial decorum " of the universe. He insists
with compelling power that not earthly but heavenly
marriage is the original. In applying the language of
earthly love to the soul's communion with God we are
not dealing in an alien and questionable terminology,
but speaking in the very mother-tongue of the Spirit :
it is when we apply it to human marriage that we
translate. No abuse, therefore, nor any lurking danger
need deter us from speaking of God and the soul in
terms which were coined in Heaven to fit that supreme
relationship before ever they were borrowed on earth
to glorify its human symbol. When men and women
in moments of humble insight know themselves
unworthy to be loved they bow, not merely before the
mystery of a love which earthly marriage can consum-
•mate, but before the perceived reality of that unful-
223

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
fiUed marriage of which their union Is but the shadow.
" God," he asserts in a highly mystical passage, " has
declared to us His mystic rapture in His Marriage
with Humanity in twice saying, Hic est Filius meus
dilectus in quo bene complaceo. He expressly and
repeatedly calls this marriage, and pronounces the
marriage of man and woman to be its symbol." ^
And again, in one of his most characteristic passages,
" Nothing more clearly proves that love between man
and woman is ' a great sacrament ' than the sense of
infinite non-desert and infinite poverty of capacity
for its whole felicity, which those who are most
deserving and most capable of its joy feel in the
presence of its mysteries. From this sense of incapa
city for an infinite honour and felicity proceeds the
tender passion of refusal which is the first motion of
perfect love, and which it would be adultery to feel
towards more than one. The lower love, being the
sacrament and substantial shadow of the higher — for
in divine things shadows are substances — is, no less
than the higher, ineffable and beyond analysis." ^
For Patmore the marriage bond is essentially
spiritual. " Lover and mistress," he says, " become
sensibly one flesh in the instant that they confess to
one another a fuU and mutual complacency of inteUect,
wIU, affection and sense, with the promise of inviolable
faith. That is the moment of fruition." ^
It is characteristic of Patmore's Catholicism
that his high valuation of marriage does not make
1 The Rod, the Root, and tbe Flower : " Aphorisms," p. 216.
« Ibid., " Homo," VI.
' Ibid., " Magna Moralia," V. 224

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
him contemptuous of the voluntary celibate. Thus
he says of the monastic saint that " he who bears the
flag is most the soldier though he does not fight. And
he who nobly upholds the honour for which man is
procreated helps as much as any in the conservation
of the race." ^ This double appreciation is exquisitely
expressed in his poem, " Dellclae Sapientiae de Amore,"
where aU who love purely are invited to assist at the
Marriage-feast of heaven, and to
" hear
Them singing clear
' Cor meum et caro mea ' round the * I am,'
The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb."
Not only virgins are caUed to gaze with unveiled eyes
upon the ineffable Purity, but all who followed Love
with clean intent :
" Gaze and be not afraid.
Ye wedded few, that honour in sweet thought
And glittering wdll . . .
For ye, though self-suspected here for nought.
Are highly styled
With the thousands twelve times twelve of undefiled.
Gaze and be not afraid.
Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid . . .
Gaze without blame.
Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame ;
There of pure Virgins none
Is fairer seen,
Save One,
Than Mary Magdalene.
* The Rod, tbe Root, and the Flower : " Aphorisms," p. 234.
225 2

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Gaze without doubt or fear.
Ye to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear.
Love makes the life to be
A fount perpetual of virginity
For, lo, the Elect
Of generous Love, how named soe'er, affect
Nothing but God,
Or mediate or direct
Nothing but God,
The Husband of the Heavens :
And who Him love, in potence great or small.
Are, one and all,
Heirs of the Palace glad.
And inly clad
With the bridal robes of ardour virginal."
In somewhat striking affinity with John Pulsford,
Patmore maintains that, in the gradual emergence
of a new order of humanity which will unhesitat
ingly, whoUy and unconditionally present body
as weU as soul to God, a bridal dispensation wiU
take the place of the filial. " Under the first dis
pensation," he says, " men were the servants of God,
under the second His sons ; what if under a third ' the
voice of the Bride and the Bridegroom be heard
again in our streets ? ' " i No gospel can finaUy
satisfy humanity but one which brings it " with glad
ness and rejoicing " to the house of marriage where
Wisdom pours the wine of joy and furnishes the table
with every meat that can delight and exhilarate, where
it is summer In the soul, and the slumbering bridal
germs of our nature are quickened and we know our
Divine Lover. In common with aU wise Love-
^ Religio Poette, p. 225.
226

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
mystics, Patmore is careful to point out that a profane
anticipation of these delights spells moral suicide,
and that filial fear still remains " the prudence of
the saints." It is not holy prudence, however, but
base contentment and craven indolence that restrain
our hearts from inditing a good matter, and seeing,
though it be as from afar, the King greatly desiring
the beauty of the Bride, arrayed in clothing of
wrought gold.
And we may weU suspect that if the Bridegroom
tarrieth, it is because we are too enslaved by tradition,
and too unsimple and unventuresome to yield Him
our whole humanity, body and soul, saying, " Behold
the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me accord
ing to Thy Word. " Every man's soul," says
Patmore " is as a woman before God " ; and in his
view a religion which, in the interests of a supposed
virility, suppresses the yearning receptivity of the
sponsa Dei, so far from being " manly " is not even
human. Only the weak need to suppress and deny
their tenderest instincts : the strong man has so
perfect, easy, and abiding a control of all his senses
and emotions that he can afford to do justice to the
feminine factor which is always most pronounced in
truly virile natures.^
1 Patmore has treated of this arpect of the mystic marriage between
Divinity and Humanity with matchless power in his odes, " The Unknown
Eros," " Eros and Psyche," " De Natura Deorum," and " Sponsa Dei."
For sheer splendour of spiritual passion and austerity they stand unrivalled
in literature, combining sensuous beauty and flaming ardour with a
certain deep and impassable discretion. In a book, Sponsa Dei, which he
burnt, feeling the world was not ready for it, he gave full expression to
this aspect of his thought. Mr. Edmund Gosse, who saw the volume in
manuscript, describes it as " a transcendental treatise in Divine desire
seen through the veil of human desire."

227

Q2

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM

There are to-day two widely current attitudes to
Nature which, dIametricaUy opposed to each other,
nevertheless agree in their antagonism to the mystical
doctrine. The first is the instinctive attitude of
healthy human nature — the pagan delight in the wild,
green world, which seems to be threatened by the
reign of the sad-faced Christ. No heart that knows
what it is to be thrilled with the enchantment of
Nature and dance to her magic rhythm but has felt
the antagonism between the clear and fuU-blooded
perfection of natural beauty and the brokenness of
the Crucified ; between the joy of the laughing earth
and the sorrow of Christ. Dora GreenweU has given
almost classic expression to this deep-seated mood of
the soul, in her description of the young clergyman
who had to pay a round of parochial visits after
reading Keats for the best part of a golden summer's
afternoon in a garden brimming with flowers and
a-quiver with birds. " First on my Ust," he said,
" came an old woman, almost stone-deaf, ignorant
but anxious. I had to sit beside her before a huge
fire ; her son worked at his loom in an inner room, and
did not cease when I began to read. How hot and
noisy the cottage seemed ; how contracted aU around
me ! Had the world of light and beauty I lived In,
moved in but half an hour ago collapsed into this ?
How confused, too, seemed my own statements, my
very utterance thick and hesitating, as of one under a
heavy thrall, for my heart was with Endymion, and I
had to tell the story of Christ." ^
^ Two Friends, p. 5 1.
228

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
Panting for life intensified, for life edged with flame
and steeped in sweetness, the restless soul of man
shivers as it hears the Voice that bids It throw life
itself away. It has made a magic garden for itself — a
garden ablaze with flowers, musical with birds ; a
garden in whose trees dryads whisper their intoxi
cating secrets, among whose bushes fauns leap in
search of fierce deUghts. And when One shakes the
gate and craves admission, the soul is sore perplexed.
There is a lure in the mingled strength and pathos of
those knockings, a charm in that insistent Voice ;
but the garden — the garden ! Those feet, white with
the tears of sinners and the ointment of saints, crim
son with the piercing of nails, wiU surely tread the
brimming flower-cups into the earth. Those sad and
brooding eyes will scare away nymphs and dryads ;
at that gentle and compeUing Voice the very larks
will hold their breath. The loss of this beautiful life,
so brimful of wonder and ecstasy, is too heavy a price
to pay, even for immortality, " since in a world that
wiU so soon forget us, mortality is so passing sweet."
In certain moods we like to call this attitude a
return to what was best in Paganism, and a refuge
from that " subterranean conspiracy against life "
which passes under the name of Christianity. But
was Paganism really a well of joy and beauty ?
There is no melancholy so tenebrous and persistent as
that which dogs the steps of the Greek soul ; and
nowhere did despair show so grey and terrifying a
face as in HeUas, the home of flawless form and sky-
blue serenity of soul. As Francis Thompson, himself
a whole-hearted lover of beauty, shrewdly remarks,
229

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
" to read Keats is to grow in love with Paganism ;
but it is the Paganism of Keats — and pagan
Paganism was not poetical . . . Bring back even the
best age of Paganism, and you smite beauty on the
cheek." ^ He reminds us how to the Pagan the
beauty of landscape made no appeal. The strength
of the hills poured no ardour into his heart ; his eyes
never filled at the sight of quiet vaUeys. VIrgU,
Horace, Cicero, viewed the beauty of a quiet country
side as merely a complex of so many factors which
ministered to their ease and well-being. It was with
Christianity that true appreciation of natural beauty
was born into the world. It needed a faith that
worshipped not beautiful things, but the Beauty that
is beyond beauty and is essentially spiritual, to reveal
to men the transcendent glory of a single tree. To
quote Thompson again, " no heathen ever saw the
same tree as Wordsworth." *
To the Neo-pagan enjoyment of Nature, Mysticism
opposes a deep, spiritual delight in which the soul
beholds Nature in God, and waxes glad with a
mingled sense of awe and joy. This sounds leaden-
footed and depressingly didactic to the Neo-pagan,
who craves something more immediate and irrespon
sible. Is It not enough that the sky is blue and the
sun filters golden through the leaves ? Can we not
drink in the glory of the lily and be thrilled by the
white mystery of the stars, without laboriously con
verting them into religious parables and symbols ?
If Nature is indeed Divine, may we not, must we not,
^ Works, vol. iii., pp. 39, 49.
^ Ibid., p. 43-
230

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
worship her without any arriere pensSe or reference
to something beyond her ? The answer may be given
in the bitter and haunting words of one who wor
shipped Nature with a whole-heartedness and finality
that has no parallel in Pagan literature : " The earth
is all in all to me," says Richard Jefferles, " but I am
nothing to the earth : it is bitter to know this before
you are dead. These delicious violets are sweet for
themselves ; they were not shaped and coloured and
gifted with that exquisite proportion and adjustment
of odour and hue for me. High up against the grey
cloud I hear the lark through the window singing, and
each note falls Into my heart like a knife." ^ That is
the. inevitable envoi of aU such Nature-worship ; for
no soul can allow the earth to be its aU in all with
impunity, and that not because such aU-absorbIng
worship is a " sin," but simply because it is contrary
to the constitution of things — because the man who
so loves Nature divorces himself from Reality. We
cannot let Nature be all in aU to us, for the simple
reason that she is not aU in aU : she is dependent
upon God and can therefore only be truly known in
Him. It is only to those who see in her the garment
of God which conceals as much as it reveals, and to
whom she is the bridal veil whose folds create a
craving for something behind and beyond itself, that
she yields up her pure deUghts. That is how it came
about that Christianity, and not Paganism, opened
man's eyes first to the dewy freshness of dawn, the
solemnity of evening, the exquisite enchantment of
birds, the humble, patient charm of the grass ; to the
1 Field and Hedgerow, p. 5.
231

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
wondrous beauty of the human face, the unfathomable
loveliness of woman's eyes. It was Christ, not Pan,
who taught us to consider the lilies. And the same
holds true of love. To love one's mistress outside of
God, to find the soul's ultimate in the lift of her eye
lashes, is to kill love itself — to violate and destroy the
Mystery of Beauty. For human love is so indis
solubly bound up with its Divine source that it can
only reveal its most perfect beauty and yield Its most
Ineffable delights to eyes which look beyond it, to
hearts that are yielded to a Divine Lover.
VI
On the other hand, many thoughtful and sensitive
souls still see Nature with Tennyson as " red in tooth
and claw," and stigmatise her with Huxley as an anti-
ethical force, in face of whose insane and savage
cruelties faith in a loving Creator is hard, indeed, if
not impossible. To such " the religion of Nature "
is at once a stupidity and a blasphemy. Mindless and
heartless, they .say, must be the man who can find
unmixed delight in the gigantic shambles and charnel-
house we call Nature, or who, by some strange pro
cess of mental juggling, can discern a loving Father-
spirit at the heart of its cruelty. Nor is this attitude
confined to the temperamentally sceptical and pessi
mistic. In some moods it is common to aU thought
ful souls. Lotze, viewing the matter from another
angle, remarks that it is not strange that no Nature
religions have raised their adherents to any high pitch
of morality or culture. And Father Tyrrell throws an
232

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
unconscious sidelight upon Lotze's view, when he
declares that " the conception of Nature as being,
apart from man, a direct expression or self-manifes
tation of the Divine character, is responsible for the
moral and spiritual perversions that are everywhere
associated with polytheistic or pantheistic Nature-
worship. To worship the caricature of Divinity there
revealed to us is reaUy to worship the devil." ^ It is
with Nature apart from man that a monadistic system
like Lotze's is concerned. But can we really view
Nature apart from man — apart from those potentiali
ties of justice and mercy, love and reverence, which
are adumbrated in the lower animals and slumber
in the most primitive savage ? Can we of to-day
acquiesce in a dualism which opposes the cosmic to
the ethical and Nature to Grace, seeing the Creator
and the Saviour in tantalising opposition ?
But while protesting against such a view, the
mystic cannot afford to forget — nor have the best
mystics ever forgotten — that it enshrines an impor
tant aspect of truth. Dean Inge, in criticising
Lotze's monadism, remarks that " any philosophy
which divides man, as a being sui generis, from the
rest of Nature is inevitably landed either in acosmism
or in Manichaean duaUsm." * That is undoubtedly
true, and recent philosophy, in its violent reaction
from Personal IdeaUsm, lays abundant stress upon it.
But we are tempted to forget that a corresponding
danger threatens any and every philosophy which, by
a knack of juggling with values, makes Nature not
1 Lex Orandi, p. 145.
* Christian Mysticism, p. 314 (note).

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
only to include man, but to be synonymous with
Spirit. In our recoil from a theology which practi
cally Identifies Nature with the kingdom of evil, or,
at least, denies to it any inherent God-ward trend, we
sometimes fail to recognise that the only way In which
we can equate Nature and Grace without losing intel
lectual integrity and lapsing into a fundamentally
unethical conception is by a doctrine of Grace which,
in seeing God as the Redeemer of Nature, sees Him
first as her Adversary and Judge. If Nature Is
indeed one with Grace, it is because the act of creation
is essentially a redemptive act. And redemption impUes
antagonism : the subduing of chaos to order and
beauty, the reclaiming of waste places, the resolving
of discord, the overcoming of evil. When we say
God " made " the world, we mean that He brought
and is still bringing it out of confusion, lawlessness,
disharmony, irrationality, and evil into the order of
His own law, harmony, reason, and goodness. Upon
no Pagan complacency in Nature, upon no Pagan
enjoyment of love, could this truth dawn. Only In
one way could the true Theodicy in Nature be
revealed : by a conception of God which sets Him in
relentless and undying opposition not only to evil,
but to a merely animal good, by a vision of Jesus as
the Root and Crown of creation. At this point
Mysticism at once opposes and fulfils both the Pagan
and the Pessimist views. It sees love and beauty, not
cruelty and brutishness, at the heart of Nature, It
recognises God, not blind force, as her animating
principle. But the love which the mystic sees in
Nature is not an idyllic sentiment, but a devouring
234

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
passion which purifies as by fire ; the God he worships
is not undifferentiated Immanence, but the Lord who
was crucified and is risen.
It wiU readily be seen how greatly asceticism con
tributed to this conception. The Pagan, whether
ancient or modern, sees man rooted in Nature, and
Nature as the sum total of his environment. The
great ascetics recognised also that if man would
Indeed be the son of God and the conqueror of Nature,
he must take his stand outside of Nature and make
Eternity his refuge and his home. In turning their
backs upon a world which they saw in the naked,
unredeemed shame of enmity to God, they lost much
but gained more. They built not only better than
they knew, but far better than we have as yet realised,
laying up with empty hands an imperishable treasure
for future ages. Pilgrims and strangers In the land
of Nature, they bequeathed to us the golden secret
that we can only inherit the earth by colonising it as
citizens of Eternity. Even as the perfect Man was
born, not of the perfection-haunted Greek, but of the
art-disdaining Hebrew, so it needed the extreme
asceticism of mediaeval sainthood to give birth to the
vision of God in Nature. It needed the remorseless
self-mortification of a St. John of the Cross, who
refused to look at the beauty of the green earth and
sang — " In Christ I have the mountains.
The quiet wooded valleys " —
to help us who are of a freer mind to look upon earth
with worthier eyes. We smile or are repelled as we
235

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
read how St. Teresa, as she advanced in the spiritual
life, ceased even from her rare interviews with friends
through the grille, believing that such human con
verse stood in the way of a diviner intimacy. But it
was through a friendship with God achieved at so cruel
a cost that there came to the Christian soul of later
ages that high vision and that pure and penetrative
understanding by which human love became the
sacrament of ineffable Grace. It was only by
standing outside Nature that man could come to a
knowledge of her Divine character. It was only by
becoming her adversary that he could become her
redeemer, even as God, in " turning to be our enemy,"
made Himself the supreme Friend of our race.
VII
The mystic, like the Neo-pagan, Uves in a garden,
but his is the Garden of the Resurrection, and in the
heart of it there is a sepulchre. No wiUow or cypress
betrays the spot : it is known only to the soul and Its
God, for it lies hidden from man among the Garden's
gayest flowers. The grave of the dead self is not
where the soul is conscious of its renunciations and
mortifications, but where the mirth andijoie de vivre
of true sainthood hide the pain of that slow, deep
dying which is man's second birth.^ The dweller in
the Garden, so infantile in his simple gaiety beside
the pessimist with his self-conscious Weltschmertz, has
silently and bravely died a death of which the pessi
mist knows nothing, and whose exceeding severity his
» Cf. J. Brett, The Garden ofGod, Chap. V.
236

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
nature could not endure. It is from that exceeding
bitter death that the soul awakes to find itself in a
Garden at dawn of day, " when aU wild things are
tame and the earth most lovely to look upon " ; a
Garden replete with youth, beauty and joy ; a Garden
in which the hedges break into flower at the fall of an
approaching shadow, and birds and angels sit together
in the trees. A Gardener moves along its walks, and
flowers spring up between His wounded feet. But
yesterday, the stiU, white Form seemed to put an
anathema upon every fair and joyous hope ; now the
soul's dread Redeemer, the world's crucified Judge,
comes back from death's utmost dereliction to care
for the little flowers of human gladness, the trembling
grasses of human desire.^
It was in this Garden that Coventry Patmore wrote
when he urged that religion " is not religion until it
has become, not only natural, but so natural that —
nothing else seems natural in its presence " ; and that
" God has no abiding power over even the lower
forces of man's nature, so long as they remain unsatis
fied and hostile." ^ In a passage which to the Pro
testant sense of things seems hopelessly Romanist,
but whose deeper meaning is open to the spiritually-
minded of whatever creed, he says, " ' Under the
tree where thy mother was debauched, I have
redeemed thee.' We are healed by the serpent by
which we were slain. It is by the natural desires,
made truly natural by inoctdation with the Body of

1 John Cordelier, The Spiral Way, p. 129.
8 The Rod, tbe Root, and the Flower : " Homo," XXI.
237

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Christ, that we are ultimately saved. Religion has
no real power, until it becomes natural." ^ We may
shrink from such an expression as " inoculation with
the Body of Christ " as implying a physical and magi
cal conception of the spiritual life — it aU depends
upon what view we take of our physical nature;
but one thing is clear : that even so realistic an
expression falls short of conveying the intimacy of
the union of the twice-born with their Redeemer.
The closest tie of blood, the marriage tie itself. Is
remote and accidental, compared to the " con
sanguinity " with Christ of the soul that has been
crucified and buried with Him and is alive with
Him for evermore.
It is here that the mystical and theosophical dis
tinction between Nature and Eternal Nature is of
value. In temporal Nature the mystic sees eternal
powers projected and working redemptively in tem
poral forms. Out of disorders, enmities, rebelUons,
ruins and horrors, temporal Nature is being redeemed
into her eternal prototype. And this redemption is at
once cosmic and moral, for it centres not In the sub
duing and refining of the great forces of Nature, but
in the redeeming of human hearts and wills. The
great Reconciliation of all things is focussed in the
return of the prodigal ; the earnest and guarantee of
the new heavens and the new earth is in the obedient
love and surrendered wiU of God's redeemed human
chUdren. That is why the soul that is born again into
the Garden of the Resurrection sees everything In
newness and loveliness of aspect, without surrendering
^ The Rod, tbe Root, and the Flower : " Aurea Dicta," p. 28.
238

MYSTICISM AND NATURE: SYMBOLISM
mental honesty or moral insight. It has been born
again into the reality of Eternal Nature.
The mystic, then, treads the aisles of Nature, the
homely paths of common life, as one who has put on
an immortal body and sees dear, familiar things
through the " larger, other eyes " of the twice-
born. Christ comes to him in the Garden of his
delight ; and not as a radiant spirit moving through
moon-spun meadows of dream does He come : He
shows the soul the wounds of His patient hands.
His tireless feet ; yea, even the spear-cut way to His
sacred Heart.^ And so it comes about that no selfish
delight, no Pagan appreciation can survive in the
Garden of the Resurrection ; for He who walks there
among the UUes is He who thrusts His beloved ones
forth to plant the seed of Ufe in the very furrows of
death. To the rough and stony places of earth, to
the wilderness and the unfriendly city, are they sent.
And when, shrinking from so hard a task, they would
tarry in the cool and dewy fragrance of the Garden, as
Dora GreenweU's admirer of Endymion was loth to
shake the gold-dust of dreams from his eyelids and to
go and teU the Gospel story in vlUage hovels. He
smUes and whispers to them His counsel of perfection.
Then they are rebuked and understand. They know
that there is a charm like the charm of Endymion
which is confined within the covers of a book, the
duration of a mood, the Umits of painless, happy
hours ; and there is a Charm that is with us alway,
even unto the end of the world.

t John Cordelier, The Spiral Way, p. 132.
239

CHAPTER IX
JIYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
O trovs QcuriKeis. Plotinos.
To thlok well is to serve God in the interior court. Traherne.
Sir, I oppose not rational to spiritucl, for spiritual is most rational.
Whichcote.
Christianity has been a philosophical reUgion from the time when it first
began to have a sacred literature. Ikoe.

SYNOPSIS
Anti-intellectualism of present-day mystical thought — Its
connection with Bergson's philosophy. I. John Cordelier on
" The Child amongst the Doctors " — A perverted cult of the
" child " in religion. II. Miss Underbill's anti-intellec
tualism in The Mystic Way — A manipulation of historical
facts — Jesus and the Pharisees— Intuitions of Grace include a
demand for reasoned interpretation — The static helplessness
of thought a fiction — Hovs^ are oppositions overcome in
" experience " ?— What is true in intuitionalism is not new.
III. The testimony of history — The relation of thought to
spiritual insight in mystical literature : St. Augustine's
Confessions, Plotinus, Scotus Erigena, Eckhart, Boehme,
etc. — Even devotional mystics essentially thinkers : Law,
Lady Julian, Blessed Angela de Foligno, Ruysbroeck — The
influence of Platonism and of Greek theology — Dr. A. V. G.
Allen on the Alexandrian school — Influence of the Latin
theology and of Scholasticism. IV. Present-day Mysticism
powerless as an intellectual force — Dr. H. B. Workman on
Clement and Origen as intellectual pioneers — Pre-Reformation
Mysticism an intellectual solvent and theological ferment —
Luther's relation to Mysticism — The passing of speculative
Mysticism — Professor Troeltsch on the need for a n^w
Platonism — A de-intellectualised Mysticism spiritually im
potent — Bishop Chandler's Cult of the Passing Moment. V.
The antagonism between intellect and intuition largely illusory
¦ — Mr. Bertrand Russell on intuition — Professor Croce on
Hegel and Bergson — Popular perversion of Bergson's " plunge
into Reality " — M. Recejac on the most dangerous aberratian
of Mysticism- — Tlie lust for immediacy — Mr. Bosanquet upc«
the inadequacy of the given — Is philosophy capable of 'dealing
with life ? Vl. Intuition both rooted in latent reason and
the crown of reasoning — " The intellect and will energising
under the impulse of Love " — Scotus Erigena on the nature
of " understanding " — Pascal on love as reason — Miss Under
hiU's vicious antithesis between life and knowledge, and
between the " inward " and the " outward " in Christian
experience — Mr. Bosanquet on a false immediacy — Volun
tarism logically incompatible with Mysticism — Spiritual
provincialism no longer possible for the mystic — The identity
of the rational and the spiritual.

CHAPTER IX
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
Just as mediaeval Mysticism was a protest against
a barren scholastic system, so the present-day revival
of Mysticism Is born of a revolt against a dry and
tyrannous intellectuaUsm. And precisely as certain
mediseval mystics exalted the will and the emotions
not only at the expense but practically to the exclu
sion of the inteUect, so most present-day writers on
Mysticism (Baron von Hiigel and Dean Inge are the
most notable exceptions) deprecate the intellect In
the supposed interests of what they call " life." ^
in this they are Influenced not so much by the
anti-intellectualism of mediseval mystics as by the
characteristic /iicroXoyta of a certain school of modern
philosophy which is generally associated with the
name of Bergson, but which dates back to Lotze, and
had invaded theological thought long before the bril
liant French philosopher had been popularised into
^ This cult of the elan vital is a characteristic instance of the way in which
a suggestive and influential philosophy may be popularised into a vicious
mental obsession. By turning Bergson's tentative conception, of the cosmic
iife intothe shibboleth of a school, a certain number of his disciples havemade
it every whit as pale and lifeless an abstraction as they i.iiagine " Thought "
to be. As to how far Bergson's conception is in itself merely a hypostatised
abstraction with no real resemblance to the mystical idea of Life is a problem
we cannot enter upon here. At any rate, the rise of a Bergsonian cult has
made the true understanding of Bergson's own doctrine doubly difficult.
There is only one way of understanding a philosophy : to apply it candidly
and consistently to the whole universe of problems. To twist it into an
apologetic is always fatal. 243

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
an apologist for what a reviewer has shrewdly caUcd
" reUgion without thought." It is interesting to note
that while anti-intellectualist writers on Mysticism
cannot say enough about the narrowing dogmatism
of the Ritschlian view of reUgion, they themselves
rival that school in the art of cutting the world in two
with a hatchet and are betrayed into precisely the
same disabiUty of dealing with life as a full-orbed
unity. I
This vicious attitude may be seen in its most prac
tical application in the devotional writings of John
Cordelier, a writer in whom, amid much that is beau
tiful and iUuminating, the pseudo-mystic's lofty con
tempt for traditional piety and popular religion comes
into somewhat unpleasant prominence. Writing of
the child Jesus in the temple, he says : ^ " We are
growing, stretching out in aU directions . . . and
suddenly we see, as a dazzling vision, wisdom
and understanding awaiting us, enticing us with
their promises, ready, as we think, to snatch us from
the dim, uncertain world of intuition and satisfy our
new and arrogant demand that we may know. . . ,,
So we loose the hand of Life, our mother, and run to
find knowledge among the doctors — knowledge of God
and man, having yet to learn that the only way of
iUumination for immortal yet imprisoned spirit is
the way of Pain and Growth and Love. . . . The
child Christ fancied He was about His Father's
business when He disputed with the theologians in
1 The Spiral Way : V. " The Child amongst the Doctors."
244

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
the temple porch, and tried, by the exploration of
their traditional wisdom, to discover the secret of
that mysterious Life which He felt, but did not under
stand. He left the actualities of human experience for
the abstractions and the subtleties of the intellectual
world. At once he was ' lost ' In respect of humanity ;
the virgin soul that had borne the Divine Seed and
cherished it now sought for its traces in vain."
After pointing out, somewhat In contradiction to
his fundamental attitude, that the way to life does not
consist in the acquirement of some jealously-guarded
knowledge, the property of a closed confraternity of
adepts, Mr. Cordelier seeks to show that the hill of
Calvary, and not the hill of Zion, is the soul's ulti
mate goal, and that the road to Calvary is by way of
Nazareth. " Not the head, but the heart," he Insists,
" is spirit's growing-point. Divine humanity shall
attain to manhood's stature, power, and courage not
by anything taught, told, or shown, but by difficult
choices made, work honestly done."
Now aU this is simply a popular devotional com
mentary upon the anti-inteUectual conception of
Mysticism which we find expounded in such books as
Miss Underbill's The Mystic Way. It is, at bottom, a
religious version of the well-worn superstition that
the average toiler in contact with the grim realities
of naked existence has, ipso facto, a truer insight into,
the heart of life than the philosopher and teacher,
who, according to this theory, is merely an onlooker
in the game. That thought is not the inutile hobby
of a few arm-chair philosophers, but part of the very
stuff of life ; that it has a history and a passion ; that
245

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
it is nothing less than the constructive principle
which brings a cosmos out of the seething chaos of
sensations. Impressions, and intuitions which we
loosely call Experience — all this does not seem to enter
the minds of these eager eulogists of the man who
sees life in terms of bread and cheese. No one would,
of course, deny that a peculiarly profound insight may
come to the humble worker through his grim struggle
for existence ; but such insight wdU come to him pre
cisely in the measure in which he is a thinker and seeks
to Interpret his experience.
To say that the village carpenter may see things
that are hidden from the eyes of the savant Is as con
vincing as an argument as to agree that Cowper's
little girl reading her Bible at her cottage door was In
the possession of " truths that the brilliant Frenchman
never knew." Both assertions are unimpeachable,
but one may be excused for asking with the mythical
senior wrangler who tried to read Paradise Lost,
" What is proven ? " Surely, our Lord's declaration
that things hidden from the wise and prudent are
revealed unto babes bears a far less platitudinarian
meaning than those who are given to opposing IUite
rate piety to scholarly arrogance have discovered.
When we consider the historical situation out of
which that great saying arose, it becomes abundantly
clear that it cannot fairly be used as an argument
against Intellectualism. The Pharisees, while con
summate masters of a niggling ceremonial ethic and
displaying an amazing adroitness in the intricacies of
legal casuistry, could not by any stretch of imagina
tion be termed thinkers ; and the term " wise and
246

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
prudent " becomes charged, on the Ups of Jesus, with
a gentle but most incisive irony which only those
strenuous persons who appeal to such a text in the
Interests of a pet theory can possibly miss. And
while the " little flock " of His unlettered, loyal-
hearted followers would certainly be In Christ's mind
as He spoke of " babes," we must remember that the
babe may wear, and often has worn, the philosopher's
mantle, and that Plato entered In where many a
Christian Pharisee, proud of his narrow Ignorance and
a child In everything but the child-like heart, was shut
out from the Kingdom.
There never was a time when the Christian
doctrine of the wisdom of babes was so curiously
perverted as to-day. Our religious life and literature
are infected with a curious cult of the spiritual babe,
which very often runs to an attitude of sheer babyish-
ness. Our devotional books, and more especially
those vdth a mystical flavour, are characterised by a
strange, deliberate, and often positively unpleasant
artificial simplicity of language, and by a " viciously
acquired naivete " of thought which is frankly repel
lent to sincere minds. Often both language and
thought are laborious imitations of the mediaeval, and
as often they are pale and attenuated adaptations of
the factitious and the exotic In impressionist literature.
Many of our most popular mystical volumes present
the distressing appearance of entirely sophisticated
and reflective persons cudgeUing themselves into an
attitude of lisping childishness. Again and again we
are reminded that philosophy cannot inherit the
Kingdom of God and that the heavenly Father
247

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
delights in revealing His hidden things to babes ; and
the impression conveyed is that the Creator of the
mind takes special pleasure in elderly infants, whose
innocent and loving mien disappears as if by magic
the moment some matter of mundane business is
mooted. Sometimes this attitude takes an aggressive
and controversial form, and the assumptions of the
proud intellect are combated vnth a vehemence and
dogmatism which certainly do not err on the side of
humility, while the stupidities and anachronisms of
" official " theology are castigated with a very adult
fist indeed. One might say that never has the lamb
stalked through our literature so fearsomely arrayed In
wolves' clothing as in some of these most aggressive
and combative apologies for the exclusive rights of the
StiU and humble heart. The ascendance of such a
spirit, stultifies the spiritual life it intends to exalt, and
offers an insult, not to the wise and prudent, but to
the meek and humble who live by keeping the things
they hear and pondering them In their hearts.
II
How an anti-inteUectual bias in the interpretation
of Mysticism must inevitably issue in a defective
reading of history, and of the mystical experience
itself, is shown, as we have hinted already, in Miss
Underbill's book. The Mystic Way, where, alongside
of much that is profoundly suggestive, we have a
treatment of the experience of Jesus, the Apostles and
the early Church, so divorced from the estabUshed
canons of historical inquiry and exegetical integrity
248

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
as to sink to the merely fanciful at the most critical
junctures. Miss Underbill — and it must always be
borne in mind that she represents a large and influen
tial school — seems to regard the Intellect as decidedly
in the way where spiritual adventures are concerned.
Thus, after voicing the soul's perennial question.
Whither ? she says, " To address such a question to
our intellects is to invite failure in the reply ; for the
careful mosaic of neatly-fltted conceptions which
those inteUects wiU offer us in return will have none
of the peculiar qualities of Ufe : it will be but a ' prac
tical simpUfication of reality,' made by that well-
trained sorting-machine in the interests of our daily
needs. Only by direct contact with Ufe in its whole
ness can we hope to discern its drift, to feel the pul
sations of its mighty rhythm ; and this we can never
contrive save by the help of those who by loyal service
and ever-renewed effort have vanquished the crystal
lising tendencies of thought and attained an immediate
if imperfect communion with Reality — ' that race of
divine men who through a more exceUent power and
with piercing eyes acutely perceive the supernal light '
— the artists, the poets, the prophets, the seers ; the
happy owners of unspoilt perceptions ; the possessors
of that intuition which alone is able to touch upon
absolute things." ^
The passage is representative of the characteristic
attitude of present-day writers on Mysticism. It
explains how it is possible that an exponent who
possesses so competent a knowledge of the psychology
of Mysticism, and so minute an acquaintance with the
1 The Mystic Way, p. 8.
249

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
lives and writings of the great practical and devo
tional mystics, as Miss Underbill does, should manifest
a certain deUberate neglect of the great speculative
mystics and an unconcealed impatience with anything
like inteUectual inquiry. If it is the peculiar merit
of the true mystic to " vanquish the crystallising
tendencies of thought," then Plotinus, Augustine,
Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme, the
Cambridge Platonists, and indeed any and every
mystic who is also a consecutive thinker, fall short of
the ideal, and obscure rather than iUumlnate the
Mystic Way. In Miss Underbill's view it is every
where the psychology of the new life that counts.
From that point of view, and that point of view only,
the development of Jesus and of Paul is carefully
traced. The corresponding development in their
thought is barely touched upon ; nor does the treat
ment Include a study of the origin and growth of
fundamental New Testament conceptions. Through
out we hear of a growing adaptation to the Absolute,
a plunging into the vital movement of Reality ; but
never of a clarifying of ideas, a coming to birth of a
new dialectic.
An anti-intellectual conception of the spiritual Ufe
inevitably leads to a manipulation of historical facts
and to a vicious method of interpretation. We are
not concerned here with the legitimacy, or otherwise,
of a mystical or allegorical interpretation of Scripture
passages. Where such interpretations are not offered
as attempts to elicit the writer's actual and Uteral
meaning, and where, however far removed from It,
they ring true to the depths of the human soul, we
250

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
may take them as belonging to that larger exegesis
which gathers round every inspired book and Is
justified by something deeper than exact scholarship.
What is in question here, however, is not the right to
aUegorise a text, but the right to falsify a historical
figure. Do what we may, we cannot be content to
see Jesus as Miss UnderhiU or Mr. Cordelier sees Him
and StiU retain our mental integrity. The Cross, and
aU it meant, and the ministry of which it was the
culminating point, did not grow immediately out of
the homely, simple life of Nazareth, but issued out of
long and patient brooding upon the facts of life, and
upon the very documents round which the Pharisees
had woven their close-meshed net of tradition. Call
Jesus a genius, if you wiU, of whom it could be said that
He knew " letters," having never learned : it still
remains that His knowledge came by way of a close
and disciplined study of the books of the Law and
the Prophets. He stood in the temple and taught.
His polemic against the Pharisees was not the un
reasoned fulmination of a self-styled theosophist, who
claimed to be in possession of all knowledge and learn
ing without having passed through the schools. He
met them as a teacher meets opposing teachers, and
joined issue with them on their own ground. We
cannot, of course, claim Him on either one or the other
side of our well-worn controversy between intuition
alists and the intellectuaUsts. Such an opposition
was quite foreign to His mind and to the atmosphere
of His day, and had no place whatever In the situation
In which He acted. But from the spirit and temper of
His utterances, and from the impression and effect of
251

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
I His Gospel upon His disciples, this much may be
1 gathered : that if He inveighed against the claims of
' the intellect, it was always against reasoning as
; opposed to Reason ; against mere learning as opposed
! to Wisdom. We cannot construe His teaching into a
depreciation of the intellect without falsifying it to
some degree ; it is a case of putting the picture out
of perspective in order to prove a preconceived
theory of art, and the result never deceives persons of
robust sense. If it be permissible to use the words
" intuition " and " thought " in writing of a teaching
into which such abstractions never entered, we might
say that Jesus accepted both at their fuU value,
recognising their indissoluble relation to each other,
and that He attacked the scholars and ecclesiastics of
His day, not for thinking overmuch, but for thinking
wrongly. And if it be insisted that what He bequeathed
to His followers was not a body of thought, but a few
creative intuitions, it must be added that these Intui
tions, by their very nature, carried in themselves
the imperative demand for inteUectual interpretation
and formulation. The theology of St. Paul is not a
separable addition to his spiritual experience, nor
is it merely a consequence of that experience ; it is
rather, in a deep sense, part of that experience. True,
it was the grace of God, and not his theological Inter
pretation of it, that made him what he was ; but that
grace would have been less than itself had it not
included a creative demand for reasoned interpretation.
The experience of reconciliation has ever been the
generator of thought, the fountain of doctrine ; and
just as a fact is not truly and wholly a fact if It does
252

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
not include an interpretative theory, so the new life in
Christ, to be life indeed and not merely a set of moods,
impressions and sensations, must include its reasoned
interpretation. The opposition between " life " and " thought " is
written large over the work of Miss Underbill and
kindred interpreters. Everywhere the " life move
ment " of intuitional experience is contrasted with
the " static helplessness " of thought. Again and
again we are told that the intellect works merely in
the interests of an artificial simplification and abstrac
tion,^ that it classifies, tabulates, indexes ; in short,
that it reduces living, moving things to the state of
dead museum-objects. We are ceaselessly reminded
that it is not through thought, but through living
participation in the movement of Reality, that the
true mystic reconciles the transcendent and the
immanent, being and becoming ; and there is an
attraction and a plausibility about such a presentation
which makes a strong appeal, especially to impres
sionable souls who shrink from the task of logical
thinking. But can there be any such living partici
pation without thought ? Is there such a thing as a
vital experience (as distinct from mere sensation)
apart from the sifting, interpreting, constructing
function of thought ? To say that the oppositions of
transcendence and immanence, being and becoming,
are overcome " in experience " Is to say nothing,
unless it means that experience includes the inter-
1 For a most powerful and instructive vindication of the essential con
creteness of thought, see Professor Aliotta's recently-translated book, The
Idealistic Reaction against Science. 253

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
pretative and unifying function of thought. Expe
rience from which thought is excluded cannot over
come any oppositions. For it the two contradictories
simply exist side by side, and such co-existence, in
the last resort, imposes the same unreal and iUusory
character upon life as the abstract intellectualism
which juggles them away sub specie eeternitatis. They
can only exist side by side without utterly Invalidating
the experience which professes to reconcile them. In
as far as the inteUect Is able to suggest a reason for
them which is firmly grounded in the nature of things.
And as a matter of hard fact, there is no logician so
" logical " as to deny that the most important and
influential realities come to us by way of Intuition or
insight, just as there is no mystic so " mystical " as
not to apply his reflective reason to the experience
gained In moments of supreme Insight, or to shrink
from employing his best reasoning powers to persuade
himself and the world that reason Is a most inferior
and clumsy Instrument. Moreover, the most purely
practical and devotional mystics were also the most
slow to accept the uncorroborated testimony of their
intuitions, and had recourse at every step to the
faculty they most despised to sift and correct the
reports of the faculty they most valued. And, as we
have seen already, the Intuitionalist claims to make a
synthesis of the transcendent and the immanent, and
after availing himself of the constructive faculty
which makes such a synthesis possible, proceeds to
exclude it from its own product under the name of
intellectualism. He has a curious horror of the
unifying activity of the intellect, which he conceives as
254

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
consisting in the imposition of an artificial schema
upon Reality. From his presentation of the matter
one would conclude that the unity of the world was
not a reality at all, but that the Intellect, instead of
merely recognising the underlying unity of things and
showing our inarticulate experiences to be parts of a
coherent whole, manufactures that unity and cohe
rence. From what has been said already, it will be easily
seen that the whole discussion is needlessly com
plicated by a persistent element of logomachy. One
half of the mystic's protest against Intellectualism is
not directed against the righteous claims of the
reason at aU, but merely against the usurping arro
gance of the discursive understanding. That Intellect
in this narrow sense cannot enter the kingdom of spirit ¦
is too obvious a principle to need defending at this,'
late day ; nor are attacks upon " pure " reason any
more pertinent, for the conception of pure reason, i.e.,\
reason acting in vacuo, is as extinct as the proverbial j
dodo. One suspects that while most exponents of an'
intuitionalist doctrine of mystical experience are
excellent psychologists, they are not quite so well
equipped on the metaphysical side, and seem to
some extent to lack understanding for the historical
development of philosophy. As a result, they some
times tilt against windmills, and at other times tend
to present as new discoveries what Aristotle and
Plotinus taught as commonplaces of philosophic
doctrine. The doctrine that a static universe is an
unreal universe in which. nothing ever really happens
is a case In point. 255

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
III
For an immediate and concrete refutation of the aU-
too-readily-accepted shibboleth of thought versus Ufe,
we need only go to the history of Mysticism. Not
only do we find that the best mystics persistently
reflected upon their visions, but also that the most
profound, moving and truly inspired passages In
mystical literature were the direct outcome of severe
and systematic thinking — the sparks that flew up as
the writer beat his dialectic out upon the anvil of a
strenuous mind. A glance at the Confessions of St.
Augustine suffices to demonstrate the force of this
contention. These innumerable passages of the most
profound and poignant insight, in which the soul on
the stretch towards God has found its classic expres
sion, passages which exhibit that mingling of splen
dour and loveliness, prophetic fire and Uterary charm
that go to make great writing, are seen to spring from
an inexorable process of dogged wrestling with Intel
lectual problems. The lyric cry of the soul soars
skyward from out the hum of the mental workshop ;
poetry of a more piercingly exquisite beauty than any
rhymed verse blossoms upon the gnarled stem of
logic. The same is true, in varying measure, of Ploti
nus,^ Dionysius, Scotus Erigena, Eckhart, and Boehme ;
of St. Thomas Aquinas, in as far as he was a mystic ;
of the Cambridge Platonists, Traherne, S. T. Coleridge,
Wordsworth, and other inteUectual contemplatives.
^ I venture reluctantly to differ from so eminent an authority as Baron
von Hiigel, who finds inconsistency and antagonism between the philo-
•ophical and the mystical utterances of Plotinus {Eternal Life, p. 83). As I
read Plotinus, his mystical utterances seem to spring immediately from hit
dialectic
256

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
And when we turn to the great non-speculative
mystics, such as the two SS. Catherine, St. Teresa,
Blessed Angela de Foligno, Lady JuUan, St. John of
the Cross, Richard Rolle, Walter HUton and many
others, we find that it was a process of refiection,
analysis, and construction — a process which, however
far removed from academic standards, was neverthe
less essentiaUy one of thought — that gave birth to
their most moving appeal, their most abiding message.
Almost without exception, to come upon an ex
plicitly anti-intellectual passage in mystical Uterature
is to discover a conspicuously uninspired passage.
EspeciaUy is this true of endeavours of mystical
writers to describe the " sleep " of reason under the
ravishing touch of the Godhead, where the world is
but the stage-scenery against which the drama of the
God-intoxicated soul plays itself out, and where
memory, wiU, and thought are all suspended in the
beatific vision. Such utterances, as a rule, not only
lack sanity and the moral realism which is the salt
of the spirit ; they also, strangely enough, lack aU
those qualities of spiritual fervour and immediacy
of religious feeling which make the best devotional
Uterature immortal. They lack wings and eyes ; or
having them, there is no wind in their vsdngs, no living
light in their eyes. They give point to Dr. McTag
gart's too-little-heeded warning which bids us remem
ber that " a Mysticism which ignored the claims of /
the understanding would, no doubt, be doomed. None '\
ever went about to break logic, but in the end logic
broke him." ^
1 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 2^2,
257

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
It may, of course, be argued that whatever be true of
ideal Mysticism, the majority of great mystics, and
not least those who possessed high mental powers,
were. In the main, anti-InteUectual, however many
isolated passages might be adduced to prove the
% contrary. That is undoubtedly true ; but what we
are concerned with is not the theoretical anti-
intellectualism of the mystics, but the fact that,
even where they most strenuously opposed the claims
of the intellect, they remained, in the deep and vital
sense, thinkers. As to-day, so with them, reason was
" the stone which the builders refused " — it was the
men who made the most lofty and triumphant use
of the intellect who rejoiced in pulverising it ; and it
Is their practice, not their theory, which is the decisive
factor. Moreover, as we have pointed out already,
their fulmlnatlons are to a large extent directed not
against Reason at all, but against the logic-chopping
activity of the discursive understanding, as mani
fested, e.g., in scholastic hair-splitting or in the plati
tudes of eighteenth-century Deism. Even so thorough
going and extreme a voluntarist as WUUam Law
appeals throughout to the higher reason. Read in
Isolation, the passages In which he glorifies the wiU as
the supreme alchemist and master of magic in the
soul's laboratory and the concentrated essence of life
itself, and his frequent contemptuous references to
the understanding and the acquirement of knowledge,
argue a //.loroXoyia of the most uncompromising type.^
But read his treatises as a whole, and it wiU appear
'^ For an abundance of such passages see The Spint of Prayer and The Way
to Divine Knowledge. 258

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
that they are addressed from beginning to end to the
reason that is in man. Only a truly reasoning and
reasonable soul could appreciate Law's magnificent
logic ; a person who lived solely and simply by his
intuitions and feelings — i.e., a mere religious im
pressionist — would be left utterly cold and probably
a good deal bored by it.
The same Is true. In a less explicit sense, of the
Revelations of Lady Julian. No devotional book
breathes such pure, spontaneous, warm feeling as this
genial yet profound work. Its simplicity and imme
diacy affect the reader as a mountain rill ; nothing is
studied, premeditated, or reasoned out. Yet through
it also there runs the high Platonic sanity and logic
which only the genuinely rational soul can appreciate.
It is informed with a reasonableness which owes
nothing to reasoning but everything to Reason. A
similar judgment would hold true of the Blessed
Angela de Foligno, concerning whose famous Book of
Visions Miss UnderhiU remarks discerningly that " In
it we seem to hear the voice of Plotinus speaking from
the Vale of Spoleto " ^ ; and a certain deep reasonable
ness and thoughtfulness is, in varying degrees and
kinds," predlcable of aU the great practical and devo
tional mystics. Professedly anti-intellectual, they none
the less demonstrated in practice the high function
of the intellect in shaping mystical experience. Even
Ruysbroeck, while he conceives of reason " standing
wide-eyed but unseeing In the midst of the shadow " ^
which is the cloud upon the mount of vision, is
^ Mysticism, p. 418.
* Flowers from a Mystic Garden, p. 82.
259

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
careful to insist that " this luminous ignorance, though
in itself beyond reason, is yet not alien from it,^ but
that, on the contrary, when the spirit of man feels the
touch of God, " the illumined reason shares the con
tact." 2 And, as we have seen already in this and
previous chapters, when we turn to the great specula
tive mystics and to intellectual contemplatives of the
Wordsworthian type, we note how the intellectual and
visionary powers rise and faU together, and how often,
as with Peter and John at the sepulchre, it is the
slower-going of the two — intellect, not intuition —
which gets first to the goal. Thus, with Eckhart
reason is the fiery dart which pierces the clouds. " The
reason," he says audaciously, " presses ever upwards.
It cannot rest content with goodness or wisdom or
even with God Himself. It must penetrate to the
Ground from whence all goodness and wisdom
spring." And again. In terse phrase, " Reasonable
knowledge is eternal life."
But it is when we go back to what may be caUed
the great origins of Christian Mysticism that we see
how deeply it is rooted in philosophic thought. The
great prceparatio mystica was Platonism, with its
commanding inteUectual sweep and its noble wonder
and reverence. It was the Platonic and Stoic leaven
— m other words, the beautiful rationaUty of Greek
thought — which kept the Asiaticised compound caUed
Neoplatonism sweet and pure enough to be the main
source and inspiration of the finest mediaeval and
modern Mysticism. Greek philosophy, coming to
' Flowers from a Mystic Garden, p. 60.
' Ibid., p. 24.
260

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
the later mystics through the austere and exalted
thought of Plotinus and the informed and penetra
tive imagination of Scotus Erigena, and Greek
theology, represented by Clement, Origen, Metho
dius, and the other great thinkers who laid the founda
tion of an as yet unexploited Logos-doctrine, are
the twin streams which to this day make glad the
mystical city of God. Even the triumphant incursion
of Augustinianism could not quench the influence
of Alexandrian thought as far as Mysticism was con
cerned. The most obediently Catholic mystics, though
formaUy submitting to the Carthaginian dogma and to
a large extent writing in the dialect of Hippo, were
never whoUy converted to Augustinianism ; for no
one can be a mystic and exchange the personal,
living, inward Teacher — the Deus loquens of Greek
theology — for the forensic and impersonal grace of
Western dogma. Nor must it be forgotten that to
the last St. Augustine remained a Neoplatonist and
a mystic in spite of himself, and that by a certain
irony of fate he, more than any other except Plotinus,
served to keep aUve the mystic spirit and doctrine.
It is important to remember that Mysticism is not
merely in its very nature the timeless religion of inward
experience, the perennial witness to the authority of
the Spirit, the reality of the soul's contact with God.
Historically also it stands for freedom and inwardness,
and -the Christian mystic, at any rate, may well be
proud of the rock whence he was hewed.^ In his stiU
'^ In speaking of the sources of Christian Mysticism, I have ventured to
take its fontal source— the New Testament and especially the Fourth Gospel
— for granted.
261

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
unrivaUed study, The Continuity of Christian Thought,
Dr. A. V. G. Allen lays just emphasis upon the fact
that in the second and third centuries " Alexandria
had become more thoroughly Greek than Athens in
the days of its renown. For the first time in history
thought was absolutely free. . . . The limits of thought
were as boundless as the flight of the human imagina
tion. In such an atmosphere it was inevitable that
the largest hearing should be accorded to him who
spoke most directly and powerfully to the heart,
the conscience, and the reason of the age. . . . The
Christian thinkers in Alexandria, at that favoured
moment in the history of thought, gave the outlines of
a theology which for spirituality and Catholicity could
never be rivalled or even appreciated at Its true value,
tiU, in an age like our own, the same conditions which
made its first appearance possible should make its
reproduction a necessity." ^
In estimating the Intellectual factors which went
to the origination and development of Christian
Mysticism, it is, of course, possible to ascribe too
exclusive an influence to Alexandrian thought.
The Latin theology,^ while it narrowed the religious
conceptions and, to a greater or lesser extent, en
slaved the spirit of the mediaeval mystics, suppUed
the element of moral realism which the later develop
ments of the Greek theology lacked. At the other
end of the scale, even Gnosticism, with aU its vagaries
and degeneracies, stimulated the healthy instinct to

^ Pp- 33-34- . . . ¦ ,
^ It must not be forgotten that up to the beginning of the scholastic period
Latin theology was informed with Platonic reaUsm.
262

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
aspire to " a gnosis spoken among the perfect," and
in Its protean mediaeval forms kept the flame of
speculative freedom burning for those who little
dreamed of their indebtedness to It. How vitally
Mysticism was influenced by Scholasticism for good
as well as for evil has scarcely been adequately
recognised. In one sense, later mediaeval Mysticism
may be termed a development of Scholasticism.^ It
remains, however, that the main historical source of
Mysticism as a reasoned attitude was Alexandrian
Platonism. IV
Present-day Mysticism seems to have forgotten
that it was when the disciples reasoned together that
Jesus Himself drew near, and It Is curious to note that
even a Church reputed for her intolerance and dog
matic despotism should have given a larger liberty to
the speculative inteUect than is given by the modern
champions of spiritual freedom and inwardness. The
magnificently daring work of the Christian Platonists
found a more respectful and appreciative treatment
even in the Church of St. Bernard than with a repre
sentative type of modern exponents of Mysticism
which glories in classing Plotinus with Hegel as a
groper along the cui de sac of uninspired wisdom. In
1 While Scholasticism impresses the popular mind with its dry and
niggling intellectual quality, it should be remembered that one of its prin
ciples was Pectus facit theologum. Thus it came about that while, on the one
hand, Gerson attempted to reduce Mysticism to an exact science, on the
other hand, the Scotist reaction, with its distrust of reason, encouraged a
Mysticism that sought in devotional fervour a refuge from intellectual
bankruptcy, and, so far from involving the highest exercise of reason, offered
itself, in quite latter-day fashion, as a substitute for thinking.
263

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the great days of Alexandria the leaders of a move
ment which, though not pure Mysticism, carried
within itself the essential elements of Mysticism were
triumphantly adequate to the needs of their day.
As Dr. H. B. Workman admirably puts it, " Clement
and Origen attempted with a wonderful measure of
success to do for the Christianity of the third century
what St. Thomas Aquinas and the great Schoolmen
accomplished for the mediaeval Church, what Erasmus
and the humanists of the Renaissance failed to do for
the Church of the Reformation, what many of the
deepest thinkers and most loyal Christians of to-day
see must be done for the Church of the twentieth
century." ^ It wiU immediately be objected that
it is no part of the function of Mysticism (if indeed
anything so deUberate and pragmatic as a " function "
may justly be predicated of what is a free and spon
taneous movement of the spirit) to create or recon
struct a philosophy or a theology. But, as a matter of
fact, mystical thought has always acted as an intel
lectual solvent and a positive factor in theological
construction just in proportion as it was genuinely
mystical. Unacknowledged for the most part, but
none the less active, mystical theology has been the
ferment in every theological reaction, the leaven in
every spiritual movement, the constructive impulse
in every reform. Behind Luther's reformation stood
the influence of mystical groups as represented by
the Theologia Germanica which Luther republished,
and to which he acknowledged a deep indebtedness ;
by the work of John Wesel Gansfoort, with whom
* Christian Thought to the Reformation, p. 44.
264

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
Luther avowed himself in such close mental con
sonance, and by the mystic leaven which had pene
trated the Dominican and other Orders and touched
Luther through Staupitz. Luther, however, never
really understood the influences which lay behind
his own doctrine of justification by faith. His
unreasoning fulmlnatlons against the mystics of his
age have become classic, and he initiated an attitude
which came to be part and parcel of the German
mind and found its characteristic modern expression
in the Ritschlian view. The old moral dualism was
replaced by a new intellectual dualism. Speculative
Mysticism, which had for so long kept alive the con
viction of the underlying unity of all knowledge, and
which, in this particular sense, found its completion
and crown in St. Thomas Aquinas,^ passed away,
and its function was taken over by the professional
philosopher, who gloried in his complete independence
of and separation from reUgious thought.
This is why to-day we find it so hard to extricate
ourselves from the impasse into which our undigested
neo-Kantian duaUsm has brought us. The only way
of escape is through a reaffirmation, in terms of
modern thought, of the Logos conception, and the
development of a new Christian Platonism. The only
philosophy which can ever yield us a consistent meta
physic of the Christian faith is a new Platonism, con
troUed and corrected by a reinterpretatlon of the
^ Cf. Professor Hastings Rashdall's estimate of the work of St. Thomas in
The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. While, of course, recog
nising that in one sense the work of St. Thomas Aquinas must be done over
again, Dr. Rashdall shows that in another sense it was final, for it was built
on " the grand conviction that reason is Divine, and that all knowledge and
all truth must be capable of harmonious adjustment."
265

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
PauUne and Johannine conceptions, and it is most
significant to find a German philosopher. Professor
Ernst Troeltsch, sharing this conviction. " In my
opinion," says Professor Troeltsch, in the course of a
reply to the RitschUan Kaftan's criticism of his own
theological position, " the sharper stress of the
scientific and philosophical spirit in modern times
has made that blend [Neoplatonism and New
Testament Christianity] the only possible solution
of the problem at the present day, and I do not
doubt that this synthesis of Neoplatonism and
Christianity will once more be dominant in modern
thought." 1
And a de-intellectualised Mysticism is not merely
powerless to Influence the world's thought ; it is also
spiritually depleted. As in the Gospel story, the
reasoning mind and the burning heart go together, and
a Mysticism which lacks intellectual viriUty wiU
sooner or later be smitten with spiritual impotence.
One of the most disquieting characteristics of
present-day devotional ' Mysticism, even where It
explicitly dissociates Itself from any and every form
of theosophy and follows the main stream of Christian
thought, is its refusal to attempt anything like an
intellectual interpretation and unification of the
moments of spiritual experience. This is most
strikingly seen In Bishop Chandler's forceful and sug
gestive book, The Cult ofthe Passing Moment. As the
title implies, the volume stands, for spiritual Impres
sionism — for that element in Mysticism which makes
each fragment of spiritual experience a self-contained
^ Theologische Literaturzeitung, 1912, p. 727.
266

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
whole, " the Instant made eternity." ^ For Bishop
Chandler the radical mistake which has depotentiallsed
nine-tenths of our spiritual Ufe is the lust to har
monise and to systematise the intimations of God to
the soul at various times. He contends that In
the interest of securing an Imaginary consistency,
demands which seem to conflict with previous de
mands are Ignored or flatly disobeyed, and so the soul
escapes from the control of the living God into the
dead hand of its own passion for formal harmony.
The ideal is rather the attitude of the humble local
preacher who, when God told him to do a thing
which seemed In direct opposition to the Divine order
of a day before, gave the Almighty " no back-talk,"
but simply " went and did it." In such simplicity
and Immediacy of faith, which is nothing else than
the " moment by moment " doctrine of Keswick and
kindred types of evangelical conviction, the soul
grows strong, and the life develops In harmony with
its Divine pattern. Behind the apparently incon
sistent communications of God there Is a plan, but
that plan belongs to God only. " Ours not to make
reply, ours not to reason why " ; the consistency and
rationality of the Divine plan are hidden from us,
and our sole part is to render immediate and whole
hearted obedience to each demand as it comes to us,
without seeking to reconcile it to anything that has
gone before, or to discover a unifying purpose behind
it. The plan is God's concern, not ours.
Such an attitude is characteristic of this type of
1 See specially the whole of Section I., The Cult of the Passing
Moment {a). 267

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
mystical conviction ; but whither does it lead ? It
has only one logical outcome : a purely subjective
and infra-rational standard of personal inspiration
which denies authority, not only to aU the past
experience of the individual, but to every historical
expression of the mind of God, including the Cross of
Christ. It is only the lack of a thorough-going logic
which keeps the cult of the passing moment in the
hands of writers Uke Bishop Chandler subordinated
to the worship of the abiding Christ. Bishop Chand
ler's mystical discipline is based upon the principle
that the Cross makes the saint ; but if it be imperative
that we test the word that comes to us moment by
moment by the Word of the Cross, by what show of
reason can we refuse to compare it with the word of
yesterday, which, on that same principle, was only
accepted because it was a valid exempUfication of
the greater Word ? If it be right and profitable to
trace — as far as finite minds can trace — the redemp
tive plan of God as it is manifest in the life of Jesus
and the history of His Church, how can it be wrong
and weakening to seek to trace the same plan as it is
expressed for us in the moments of our past experi
ence ? That there is a narrow and peddling sense of
continuity, which on the communal scale manifests
itself as enslavement to tradition, ahd on the indivi
dual scale as an infatuation with literal consistency,
has always been recognised by the masters of the
spiritual life. Such a misinterpretation of the Divine
consistency in terms of mere formal logic has in aU
ages retarded great reforms, and kept the individual
from being obedient to his heavenly visions. But the
268

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
existence of a false ideal of consistency does not
absolve us, surely, from doing justice to that divinely-
implanted instinct for continuity and coherence
which is the birthright of every rational soul. If God
has a plan for us, it is our duty and privilege to attempt
humbly and reverently to understand that plan and
think His thoughts after Him. There will certainly
come a point in our experience when a demand or
message, apparently In sharp contradiction to aU that
has gone before, wIU present itself with Divine
authority before our amazed consciousness. At such
moments, it wIU be ours to obey ; but once such
obedience has been rendered, it will be equally our
duty to try and see this " new commandment " as
continuous with " the law and the prophets " of our
past experience — as their fulfilment, as weU as their
supersession. A notion of barren identity and con
sistency will, needless to say, never issue is such a
vision ; and as a protest against a sterile philosophy
of the spiritual Ufe Bishop Chandler's cult of the
moment is of value. But the truth seems to lie with a
synthesis in which the elements both of continuity and
of newness find adequate recognition. Each word of
God to the soul is the word for the moment, and must
not be truncated by a vicious reference to the past ;
yet it could not be the word for the moment, if it
were not rooted in the past out of which that moment
sprang, and therefore part of a timeless whole. To
cut off the moment from the whole is to introduce a
source of weakness and confusion into our interpreta
tion of spiritual experience. In reading recent mysti
cal Uterature, one is struck not only by its theoretical
269

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
anti-intellectualism, but by a certain incoherency and
fragmentariness of thought — a loose and invertebrate
mental impressionism. On the InteUectual side, this
literature presents a mere haphazard succession of
mental and spiritual apercus — briUiant enough at
times, but at best more brilliant than powerful —
which robs its devotional appeal of aU genuine
influence with thinking men. Not least is this appa
rent where a semi-occult gnosis is made the distin
guishing mark of the true mystic.

The antagonism between intellect and intuition has
been, as we have seen, quite unnecessarily sharpened
by certain recent interpreters of Mysticism, who In
this way have greatly obscured their true relation and
interaction In mystical experience. To begin with,
we must bear in mind that the intellectuallst of a
generation ago, for whom the universe was a problem
in Hegelian logic, is dead. At the present stage of the
discussion, the most convinced opponent of Mysticism
is ready to admit that Intuition has a large place In
the discovery of truth. Even so doughty a champion
of the scientific attitude as Mr. Bertrand RusseU
admits that " much of the most important truth is
first suggested by its means," ^ and goes on to point
out that " even In the most logical realms it is insight
that first arrives at what is new." ^ He sees " an
element of wisdom to be learnt from the mystical way
of living, which does not seem to be attainable in any
'^ " Mysticbm and Logic," Hibber Journal, July, 1914.
» Ibid. 270

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
other manner," ^ and recognises that even the cautious
and patient investigation of truth by the scientist,
which seems the very antithesis of the mystic's swift
certainty, may be fostered and nourished by that very
spirit of reverence in which Mysticism lives and
moves." ^
Representing a widely different philosophical ten
dency, Professor Croce has recently given us a
re-Interpretation of Hegel which serves to show that
whatever be the gulf between Hegel and, say, Bergson
— and one does not wish to minimise any real diver
gence — it is not to be concluded, as is still the fashion
here and there, that Hegel ignored or disparaged
intuition. We must not forget that much that
passes for intuition is something far less respectable —
is, in fact, that " pure " feeling which Professor Flint
pertinently defined as " pure nonsense." Nor would
Bergson recognise in the intellectual stupefaction and
the sentimental self-hypnotisation which some think
essential to the mystical attitude that plunging of the
self Into the Real of which he has so much to say.
Father Tyrrell observes somewhere that it needed a
new mind to grasp Bergson's doctrine of intuition :
it requires no kind of mind whatever to grasp the
moist and pulpy sentiment by means of which
certain professed disciples think to transplant them
selves bodily into the " thickness of the Real."
What Bergson demands is 'the Installation of the
personality in the movement of ReaUty. " But," asks
Dr. Croce, " was not this just what Hegel demanded
1 " Mysticism and Logic," Hibbert Journal, July, 1914.
2 Ibid.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and the point from which he began — to find a form of
mind which should be mobile as the movement of the
Real ; which should feel ' the pulse of Reality ' and
should mentaUy reproduce the rhythm of its develop
ment without breaking it into pieces by making it
rigid and falsifying it ? But for Hegel such a view
was only a starting-point, not a conclusion, as it is for
Bergson and for others of like tendencies. The
renunciation of thought would have been asked of
Hegel in vain. To have shown that the demand
of concrete knowledge is satisfied under the form
of thought is his great merit, his Immortal dis
covery." ^
' It is StiU the fashion in many quarters to distin
guish with WilUam James between the mystical
consciousness which gives " direct perception of the
invisible," and the non-mystical or rational con
sciousness " which is based upon the understanding
or senses alone " ; but such a conception introduces
a quite unnecessary rift into the personaUty. That
there are deeper levels of consciousness of which the
man who Uves only in his discursive understanding
little dreams, and that a sudden awakening, or the
gentle and persistent knocking of the " DweUer in the
Innermost," may throw open a door into a new and
larger world, is sound mystical doctrine ; but that
this implies a double consciousness, or that the con
sciousness ceases to be rational when it becomes
mystical, is a gratuitous assumption which has done
more than any other to invaUdate the message of
Mysticism. It has indeed almost invariably ended b
* What is Living and what is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 214-215.
272

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
betraying the mystic into the old theosophical heresy
of postulating a superior order of spiritual facts,
unverifiable by the reason and open only to a special
mystical faculty whose existence and efficiency must
be taken for granted, since it can be subjected to no
known tests. In other words, it introduces a rift
vnthin the mind, more disastrous both to a true
rationalism and to a genuine Mysticism than Kant's
opposition between the pure and the practical reason
taken at its extremest. In this connection the sober
and shrewd observations of M. Recejac deserve
serious pondering. " The most dangerous and lasting
of aU the aberrations of Mysticism," he points out,
" arose from yielding to the inordinate desire to
establish the fact of some conscious activity other than
Reason, imparted by God to the elect only. ... It
would be better for man to remain without that intel
lectual and moral addition which mystics seek in the
Absolute — better for him to go on working as best
he can with the innate means at his disposal for the
extension of his knowledge and his morals — than to
risk the consequences of an imaginary inspiration
which did not have the impregnable criterion of
evidence and identity. Reason, Uke Ufe, is only
susceptible of inner augmentation by effects immanent
to their proper cause . . . the alteration of Ufe is
death ; the alteration of Reason is madness." ^ It
is obvious that in a passage such as this, " Reason "
is used in the sense of " the real and logical foundation '
of personality " ^ — that " which makes us the ' one '
1 Essay on tbe Bases of tbe Mystic Knowledge, pp. 95, 98-99.
* Ibid., p. 117. 273

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Uving and real which we are." ^ God is known not
by processes of formal reasoning, but " of the heart,"
and our most vaUd intuitions of the Eternal defy
logical analysis. But to postulate a special order of
facts and a special spiritual sense to apprehend them
is to remove Mysticism to an occult sphere, professedly
supra-rational but reaUy out of all relation to reason.
It is to set up a new world over against the old,
instead of creating the new out of the old. Such a
procedure can neither explain the old, nor justify the
new. It offers something that cannot be judged by
any known criterion.
Very much that passes for Mysticism is merely a
lust for immediacy. There is, of course, a spiritual
immediacy which is the very essence of true Mysticism ;
but while the mystical experience is in a real sense
immediate and creative, it only becomes its true self
in as far as it is acted upon by the reflective faculty
and related to the rest of our knowledge and experi
ence. Analysis and reflection, so far from stiffening
into mortal rigidity what once throbbed with Ufe,
reveal a Ufe more abundant and intricately organised,
more richly dowered with unguessed heights and
depths, than our first intuition ever dreamt of. It
must, of course, always be remembered that when
we say " inteUect " we mean " the inteUect of a
moral consciousness " — a faculty which, so far from
being unable to deal with the great immediacies,
not only shares in their apprehension with the will
and the emotions, but exercises an interpretative
function without which such immediacies could not
^ Essay on the Bases ofthe Mystic Knowledge, p. 117.
274

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
become permanent factors of experience. Professor
Bosanquet states this view in its most moderate
form. " To say that reality is only to be found in
the given and not in its extension and Interpretation
through thought is surely the vicious folly of naive
realism. If thought had a point of departure foreign
to existence, then it would be idle to speak of either
generating the other. But the connection of thought
and existence, whatever it may be, is not so simply
disposed of as this." ^ >
We are far too ready to accept such threadbare
assertions as that philosophy is Incompetent to deal
with Ufe. That philosophy has often suffered at
the hands of exponents afflicted with " learned stu
pidity " and unable to grasp what is central and vital
in experience is only too true. But to admit that
philosophy has often been inadequate to life is one
thing ; to assert that it is inherently incapable of
deaUng with life quite another. The latter statement,
whUe aimed at philosophy, really hits " life " ; for
philosophy is " the formal embodiment of the pene
trative imagination ; it deals with the significance of
things and transforms them, but only by intensified
iUumination." To say therefore that it cannot deal
with life is to deny that life can be thus illuminated —
is, in fact, to make il gran rifiuto, in which life ignores
and disowns Its own largest and deepest experiences.
VI
It has been said that Intuition Is the forerunner of
reason. It is quick to perceive, and slow-footed
1 The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 80. '
275

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
reason can follow and see the great thing that has
come to pass only as intuition takes it by the hand.
This is doubtless often the case ; but in as many
instances intuition comes as the crown and reward of
a long process of patient InteUectual research. The
thinker has beaten his brain long and vainly against
an obstinate problem, when suddenly, at the very
moment of exhaustion, a flash of intuition reveals the
secret.^ In such cases the heart very often boasts
itself against the inteUectual with the proud chal
lenge, " I have felt." But when a man says, " I have
felt," he opposes, as Sir Henry Jones has so often
pointed out, not his feelings as such to the doubts
of his mind, but " his personaUty in the wealth of
his experience." * ,And that experience includes the
struggle of the inteUect which made the intuition
possible. Intuition is thus not only " rooted in latent
reason," but also the crown of the larger reasoning.
For it is only as it is worked upon by the intellect,
and transmuted from one of many unrelated moments
in a sequence of impressions to a constituent part of
an organised world of experience that its real value
is made explicit.
Nor must this be taken to mean merely that the
raw material of intuition, as it comes to the soul,
often with flashing and dazzUng suddenness, is after
wards, in hours of calmer leisure, submitted to the
reflective and interpretative activity of the inteUect.
Mystical intuition is not something which is isolated
^ A most lucid and suggestive treatment of the much-neglected distinction
between the two kinds of intuition is found in the section on " Bergson " in
Professor Hoffding's Modern Philosophers.
^ Cf. Browning as a Philosopher and Religious Teacher, chap. x.
276

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
from the intellect. It is. In fact, the action of the
intellect and the will energising God-ward under the
supreme impulse of love. It is love which is " the true
hierophant of the mysteries of God," and " love in its
Divine fulness is the unity of wIU and reason In the
highest power of each." ^ We are entirely right in
insisting that the true mystic ponders his experience,
not vAth. the cold, detached intellect, but wdth the
whole man ; that his Absolute " does not withdraw
to the heights of the mind, but takes possession of
the whole soul." ^ It remains, nevertheless, that in
the appropriating activity of the whole consciousness
Reason stiU is " king," not indeed, as swaUowing up
wiU and emotion, but as conferring their truest and
highest rank upon them. Spiritual reaUty is appre
hended by that faith " which cometh of the natural
love of the soul, and of the clear Ught of our reason,
and of the steadfast mind which we have of God in
our first making." ^
Such a burning apprehension transcends mere
" understanding " as much as simple intuition. In
it the mystic's desire is fulfilled, not by means of a
special organ of spiritual vision, but by the interplay
of all the faculties fused into one by the higher
Reason.* This is most characteristically expressed by
John Scotus Erigena : " Whoever rises to pure under
standing becomes that which he understands. We,
while we discuss together, in turn become one another.
^ W. R. Inge, Personal Idealism and Mysticism, p. 6.
^ R^c^jac, Essay on the Bases ofthe Mystic Knowledge, p. 126.
' Lady Julian, Revelations of Divine Love, p. 132.
^ Cf. Inge, Personal Idealism and Mysticism, p. 5 : " The higher Reason
is that unification of our personality which is the goal of our striving and the
postulate of all our rational life."
277

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
For if I understand what you understand, I am become
your understanding, and in a certain unspeakable
way I am made into you. And also when you entirely
understand what I clearly understand, you become my
understanding, and from two understandings there

arises one

" 1

The classic phrase of intuitionalism, M. Gaston
Rageot's " to understand in the fashion in which one
loves," has been so de-intellectualised by many
interpreters as to be no longer an " understanding "
at aU, but merely a sucking in, as it were, of a fiuld
mass of impressions. But to love truly, be it God or
man, is to love with the mind. And thus we find Pascal,
for whom thought appUed to reUgion was essentially
a passionate activity of his whole being — an amor
intellectualis Dei — flinging out the striking dictum
that " love and reason are only one thing. Love is a
precipitancy of thought which rushes in one direction
without examining every detail, but none the less it
is a kind of reason." Whether it be the NoCs epiav
of Plotinus, or the " God known of the heart " of
Pascal, where " the heart " is understood as " an
implicit of Reason and Love," it is, as we have already
pointed out, the intellectual element which, by adding
Ught to heat, gives a luminous glow, a convincing
passion, a vital logic, to the utterances of the great
mystics which no esoteric theosophy or mysticism of
" pure feeling " can give.^
Once the vital and concrete character of thought

^ De Divisione Natura, iv., 8.
^ Cf. a suggestive discussion in Dr. W. M. Macgregor's Christian Freedom
especially pp. 111-136.

278

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
is adequately recognised, the vicious opposition of
faith to knowledge, intuition to reason, and the inward
to the outward is rendered impossible. In a most
characteristic and representative passage. Miss Under
hiU gives what she holds to be the answer of the true
mystic to the Ritschlian objection. " The Ritsch
Uan says in effect, ' We only know Deity as we see It
expressed in Christ ' — a statement which, if it is
to have any meaning at aU, seems to demand a highly
developed mystical consciousness in those who sub
scribe to it ! The true mystic answers, ' Life, not
knowledge, is our aim ; nothing done for us, or
exhibited to us, can have the significance of that which
is done in us. We can only know the real in so far
as we possess reality : and growth to that real life In
which we are in union with God is an organic process
only possible of accomplishment in one way — by
foUowing in the most practical and concrete sense the
actual method of Christ." ^
Taken in one sense, such a statement is the merest
truism ; in another, it is an example of vicious anti
thesis. If " knowledge " be taken in the formal and
technical sense, then the RitschUan excludes it from
reUgious experience quite as unequivocally as the
mystic. If, on the other hand. Love is the constraining
principle of the mystic personality, then there is a
Gnosis which, so far from being out of relation to life,
is " the very Ufe blood of religion." Nor can it be
admitted that the antithesis between what is done for
us and what is done in us is vaUd here. Many of our
most truly inward experiences consist in the appro-
1 The Mystic Way, p. 64.
279

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
priation and assimilation of what is " exhibited to us "
or " done for us." There is no opposition between
the inward communications of grace and the media
tion of Nature, society, and the thousand and one
disciplining and exalting influences which operate
upon the spirit from the " outside " world. There
is, indeed, no such thing, the introspective mystics
notwithstanding, as a purely " inward " experience ;
and often what seem the most secret and direct
whisperings of the Spirit are in reaUty mediated by
the very influences which the one-sided lover of the
inward most disparages. In this connection Mr.
Bosanquet reminds us that " the immediate cannot
stand. You cannot anywhere, whether in Ufe or in
logic, find rest and salvation by withdrawing from
the intercourse and impUcations of life ; no more in
the world of individual property and self-maintenance
than in the world of international politics and
economics ; no more in the world of logical apprehen
sion than in that of moral service and reUgious
devotion. Everywhere to possess Reality is an
arduous task ; stability and soUdity are not in the
beginning, but if anywhere only in proportion as we
enter upon the larger vistas of things." ^
It is true, of course, that we can only know the
real in as far as we possess reality, but only in the
sense that knowledge must be vital, not formal ;
and such vital knowledge is, in fact, three-fourths of
that possession of reaUty which is placed in vicious
opposition to it. To omit knowledge — in other words,
inteUectual apprehension — from our vital possession
* The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. j.
280

MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
of reaUty is to surrender that disciplining and control
ling principle which brings our emotional and voli
tional activities into wholesome subjection to the
great realities which are independent of them. To
Uve in a voluntarist universe, where facts are one
thing and faith another, is to live in a universe In
which Mysticism is possible only by a trick of mental
juggling. This is demonstrated wherever a volun
tarist creed is taken with any pretence of logical
consistency ; and so we find Tyrrell escaping from
the bitter conclusions of his own philosophy, but not
the dry and thorough-going Loisy. Turn it as we
wiU, anti-inteUectualism is in the long run the death
of Mysticism and in this sense (which, however, is
hardly the sense he intended) Professor Oman Is
entirely right when he says somewhat harshly that
Mysticism just exists to save people from real feeling.^
In these days of the unification of all know
ledge and experience, when the whole coherent field
of Ufe presents itself to the spiritual pilgrim and he
can no longer make a province his kingdom Mysti
cism must not, at its peril, surrender the heroic con
viction that man's higher reason, to quote St. Thomas'
characteristic phrase, " participates in the Word in an
eminent identity " ; ^ in other words, that all thought
is grounded in the Divine Reason, whose motions can
therefore be traced in the normal processes of the
mind. To the genuine mystic what is most spiritual
is also most truly rational, and it ill becomes him
" to make his intellectual faculties Gibeonites." To
^ The Churcb and the Divine Order, p. 309.
2 Summ. contra Gentiles, I., xl'.
281

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
degrade our rational powers into hewers of wood and
drawers of water to a supposed mystic faculty is to
transport ourselves into a world where no known
criterion of truth and validity is applicable ; where
faith becomes creduUty, grace magic, vision haUu
cination. In the Mysticism of the future the specu
lative and the Intuitive elements must once more
interact, as they did in the greatest Mysticism of the
past. " The fire still burns on the altars of Plotinus,"
and God Is still discerned most surely by " an
inteUectual touch."

282

CHAPTER X
MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
Mysticism has been the ferment of the faiths, the forerunner of spiritual
liberty, the inaccessible refuge of the nobler heretics ; the inspirer, through
poetry, of countless youths who know no metaphysics ; the teacher, through
devotional books, of the despairing ; the comforter of those who are weary
of finitude. It has determined, directly or indirectly, more than one-half '
of the technical theology of the Church. " ""
Josiah Royce.
The great service rendered by the speculative mystics to the Christian
Church hes in the recognition of those truths which Pantheism grasps only
to destroy. Dean Inge.
Creation, Redemption, Sanctification are all one and the same indivisible
fact. . . . The Death of Him who is Himself eternal God is the final
creative act. C. E. ROLT.

SYNOPSIS
The attitudes of the mediasval and the Protestant Churches
towards Mysticism — The Ritschlian influence — Professor
Oman on Mysticism as Neoplatonism. I. Professors Schlatter
and Haering on Mysticism — Anti-theological bias in recent
mystical literature — M. Shurd on esoteric Christianity — The
historical value of the anti-mystical movement. II. The
reaction against Ritschlianism — The disastrous influence of
Ritschlianism upon theology, German and British — Theo
logical petits -mattres and critical mechanics — Canon Scott
Holland on Athanasian theology — What is mystical theology ?
III. The mystical doctrine of God the Redeemer — ^The Via
Negativa, an " accident " of Mysticism — Devotion to a
personal Redeemer central to Mysticism — Ruysbroeck and
Lady Julian on the relation of the believer to Jesus Christ —
The acosmism of St. John of the Cross — The relation of
Mysticism and Pantheism — The doctrine of God's " becoming "
in the cosmic process : Dean Inge's and Professor John Watson's
criticisms — The same objections applicable to Incarnation.
IV. The constructive principle found in the Christian concep
tion of Redemption — The relation of cosmic to etliical —
Redemptive Creation — Neglect of speculative soteriology —
The doctrine of cosmic redemption founded on the soUl's
experience of the Redeemer. V. God's redeeming love His
only perfection — The paradox of His redemptive " becoming "
— Divine love known to be eternal only when and as perfected
by suffering in time. VI. Redemptive immanence the con
dition of true personality — Union with God a union of love,
not of absorption — The struggle with sin real only as viewed
sub specie Christi. VII. Does mystical theology disparage
history ? — Dr. W. F. Cobb on Fact and Process — The mystic
view Johannine rather than Gnostic — Professor E. F. Scott on
the Logos-idea. VIII. Ne evacuetur crux Christi ! — The mystic's
protest against a narrowing historicity — Grace co-extensive
with life — The glory of the Cross — Soren Kierkegaard on the
popular cult of the Exalted Christ — " The Gnostic Crucifixion "
— The Kenotic principle — The essential Christhood of God.

CHAPTER X
MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
Speaking broadly and generaUy, it may be said
that up to the Reformation the mystic and the " pro
fessional " theologian lived on terms of mutual
respect and forbearance, even where they did not
work in perfect harmony. The mediasval mystic,
who was in most cases a " religious," subjected his
characteristic views to the judgment and correction
of his " superior " and his " spiritual director," and
the ecclesiastics and theologians of that time had a
tolerance for speculative thought which we do not
generaUy connect with the " dark " ages. This
remained true, to a certain extent, even in the time
of the Counter-Reformation. St. Teresa, for instance,
submitted her whole intellectual Ufe and outlook to
her director and encouraged her sisters to do the
same, yet the fine audacity of her meditations and
reflections shows no sign of having been " edited "
in the interests of conventional CathoUc piety or
conviction. Indeed, Dr. Alexander Whyte's short
" appreciation " contains more of adverse criticism
than the whole CoUege of Cardinals would have found
to advance against her during her lifetime. But it
was the mediaeval Church especiaUy which showed
a degree of tolerance and a sense of the multi
coloured nature of religious thought and experience
285

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
remarkable for that uncompromising age, when white
was white and black black, and when the Church
had to wage war to the knife against the brute
forces which were threatening the spiritual existence
of the race.
With the Reformation a new era began. The new
born Protestant Church was acutely suspicious of
the very men who had prepared the way for it. With
characteristic intemperance, Luther launched volleys
of savage and contemptuous invective against men
Uke Carlstadt and Sebastian Franck, whom he took
neither time nor trouble to understand. Dean Inge's
comment on this attitude of early Protestantism is
sufficiently caustic. " Speculative Mysticism," he
says, " is a powerful solvent, and Protestant Churches
are too ready to faU to pieces without it." ^ Be that
as it may — and one could conceive of Churches
which would be all the better for a touch of that
readiness to faU to pieces — the Reformation initiated
a misunderstanding and a hostility between mystic
and theologian which persists to this day. Open a
German book on theology, and in nine cases out of
ten you wiU find an attack on Mysticism, written very
much sine scientia, necessitate et amore ; and the same
holds true of many English writers who have been
strongly influenced by the Ritschlian school and
whose acquaintance with Mysticism does not reach
very far beyond the attractive mis-information
derived from such books as Vaughan's Hours with the
Mystics. There are, of course, many theological
writers whose antagonism to Mysticism rests upon
* Christian Mysticism, p. 196.
286

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
far more respectable foundations, and who attack It
mainly from the standpoint of an incompatible
doctrine of salvation. Yet even in such instances
one is now and again assailed by a pardonable sus
picion as to the extent and thoroughness of the
critic's knowledge of mystical sources. When, for
instance, Professor John Oman tells us that " Neo
platonism was Mysticism," and that " to Pantheism
God is whoUy immanent — all is God ; to Mysticism
God is whoUy transcendent — God is all," ^ we cannot
refrain from wondering if such a statement is due to
a careless use of the term " Mysticism " when only
one variety of the speculative type is intended, or
to a somewhat Hmited acquaintance with mystical
Uterature. I
The antagonism of most evangelical * theologians to
Mysticism is directed against an alleged Neoplatonic
doctrine of God which leaves no room for the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ — a doctrine involving a
non-moral conception of salvation and a view of
God's relation to His world which reduces the phe
nomenal universe to an illusion. Dr. Oman gives
characteristic expression to this objection when he
says : " It [Mysticism] could only teach men to
ignore, and not to inherit, the earth, and it could
only efface, not rescue, the distressed moral per-
^ The Churcb and tbe Divine Order, p. 170.
' The word is here used, of course, in its widest sense, and not in its
specialised meaning, as contrasted with " High " or " Broad " Church
" Liberal " or " CathoUc."
287

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
sonality." ^ And this antagonism is by no means
confined to those theologians who have been more or
less swayed by Ritschlian influences. We find, for
instance, so independent and in many ways penetra
tive a thinker as Professor Adolf Schlatter repeating
the unfounded allegations which since the days of
Luther have defaced the pages of German theological
Uterature. Dr. Schlatter characterises Mysticism as
" inactive," and In a footnote to this phrase defines
mystical religion as " a religion which seeks the
process by which God is revealed and through which
He unites us to Himself solely in the inner life of the
individual, denying aU religious value to history and
Nature." * In writing of the Baptism of Jesus and the
" sign " which accompanied it, Dr. Schlatter thinks
it necessary to go out of his way to attack the " mysti
cal " view which would see in the Dove and the
Voice " merely a subjective vision which was the
result of a long and deUberate process by which the
soul hoped to raise itself to God." ^ One wonders
where in aU mystical Uterature Dr. Schlatter has
found such a view expressed. What he seems to be
thinking of is a mixture of theosophy and laboratory
psychology. For aU the great devotional mystics,
visions came by the grace of God — often when least
expected, always vdthout " the wIU of the creature."
Even so perverse an exponent as Miss UnderhiU has
shown herself to be in her book The Mystic Way sees
at the back of the subjective vision a genuine contact

^ The Churcb and the Divine Order, p. 172.
^ Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments, vol. i., p. 35.
° Ibid., vol. i., p. 470.
288

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
with an objective Reality, which the subject " trans
lates " into terms of sight and hearing.^ Dr.
Schlatter returns to his charge in supposing that had
the vision of the risen Christ been " subjective," the
Church would have degenerated into a coterie of
mystics, preoccupied with the attempt " to reproduce
in themselves the ecstatic condition in which the
disciples saw their risen Lord."^ It surely takes
very slight acquaintance with mystical literature to
know that such self-hypnotisation is sternly con
demned by aU the great mystics. Dr. Schlatter also
persists in confounding Mysticism with the Mani
chaean duaUsm by which it was so strongly and
disastrously influenced, but to which it is at bottom
opposed.^ In refreshing contrast to most German Protestant
theologians, Professor Theodor Haering * seeks to
do justice to Mysticism and carefuUy distinguishes
between certain theosophical varieties which deny a
historical revelation and the authentic type. It is
interesting to note that Dr. Haering, in contrasting
the swoUen complacency of modern mystics with the
sober Christian temper of those whom they claim as
their predecessors, cites two such problematic magni
tudes as H. Hart and Bonus as representatives of the
former class, and can only think of Tersteegen in
connection with the latter.^ One is inevitably forced
' The Mystic Way, pp. 87 et seq.
* Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments, vol. i., p. 563.
' Ibid; vol. i., p. 474 ; vol. ii., p. 470.
* Professor Bernliard Duhm is another notable exception. _ Cf. his
dictum : " Let us say it once and for all, that religion is a mystical thing
from beginning to end " {The Ever-Coming Kingdom, p. 14).
' Tbe Christian Faith, vol. ii., yjZ-jSz. 289

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
to conclude that whatever knowledge of Mysticism
the majority of German theologians possess is some
what curiously derived and severely limited.
British theologians have with notable exceptions
neglected Mysticism rather than antagonised it. It is
symptomatic, for instance, that such a treatise as Pro
fessor H. R. Mackintosh's The Person of Jesus Christ
takes no cognisance of mystical thought, especiaUy
on the cosmic significance of Christ, the only reference
to Mysticism being a few remarks upon the dangers of
its " unbridled and capricious " varieties, with special
emphasis upon the service rendered by Rltschl in
bringing such aberrations Into discredit.^
On the other hand, we find a corresponding an
tagonism to professional theology — an antagonism
often strongly tinged with contempt — among mystics ;
and this attitude also goes back to the Reformation.
If Luther had scant courtesy for the illuminati of his
day, the so-caUed spiritual reformers often retaUated
with a somewhat irritating assumption of superiority ;
and when we turn to recent mystical Uterature, the
note of esoteric hauteur frequently becomes, as we
have seen already, blatant and jarring. In many
cases these esoteric scribes treat the work of theo
logical research and Biblical scholarship as altogether
beneath the notice of the spiritually minded ; and
even Miss UnderhiU, who In The Mystic Way has
made abundant and suggestive use of theological
literature, sees fit to speak of " the platitudinous
ethics of modern theology " ^ and to lapse here and
^ The Person of Jesus Christ, p. 378.
2 The Mystic Way, p. 85.
190

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
there into an esoteric attitude quite unworthy of her
genius. It is, however, in the pages of a rapidly increasing
mystical Uterature, which, while claiming to be
specificaUy Christian, is essentiaUy a polemic against
the historic Christian faith, that we must look for
typical examples of a bias which is threatening to
provincialise and sterUise the present-day revival of
Mysticism. M. Shure, for instance, in his irritating
but none the less interesting study. The Great Initiates,
speaks of " the childish data of clerical theology,"
and claims to represent the only true and inward
Christianity — " Christianity understanding at last the
origin, spirit and import of its own traditions." ^ He
is, in fact, a neo-Gnostic, with the Gnostic's charac
teristic eagerness to be considered, above aU things,
" a good Christian." In reading his expositions and
similar works, such as Mr. W. L. Wilmshurst's Contem
plations, or Miss J. de Steiger's able and characteristic
annotations to her translation of Eckhartshausen's
The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, we cannot escape the
conviction that these writers have but the slightest
and most superficial knowledge of the theology they
so Ught-heartedly dismiss as external, not to say
childish ; and that — what Is of more importance —
the esoteric wisdom which they propose to substitute
for it is neither particularly wise nor excessively
esoteric. M. Shure teUs us ^ that for him the Gospels
are iUuminated by Essenian and Gnostic traditions,
and that when they are interpreted in this sense
1 See The Great Initiates, vol. i.. Introduction.
2 lbid. 291 . "'

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Christian esotericism wiU be seen to gush forth like a
living spring from the words of the Christ ; but we
wait In vain for anything genuinely vital to gush
forth from the waters which he " troubles " with so
skilful a finger. What does gush forth in tolerable
abundance is a succession of the merest common
places of theological thought and Christian conviction,
presented with breathless awe as new discoveries and
claimed as the specific fruit of the esoteric spirit.
Take these vaUd and valuable commonplaces away,
and we are left with a body of " esoteric science "
and theosophical speculation which, while it contains
some valuable elements. Is nevertheless, taken in Its
totaUty, a thousand times more inechanlcal and
puerile than the feeblest specimen of the theology it
is Intended to replace.
This mutual suspicion and distrust between theo
logian and mystic — a suspicion and distrust which
is, partiaUy at least, the result of ignorance on both
sides — bodes IU for a true revival of Mysticism and
a genuine development of mystical theology. Let
us admit freely that the mystic is the last person
in the world who can dispense with the steadying and
formative infiuences that come to him through the
work of the philosopher and the theologian. No
bread turns more bitter and ashen In the mouth of
him who thinks to live by it alone than the manna of
mystical Intuition ; and a Mysticism that would
ground its theology upon nothing more substantial
than its own unsifted guesses is in danger of being
overtaken by moral and spiritual decrepitude and
degeneracy. Nor is the loss of the anti-mystical
292

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
theologian to be minimised. The anti-mystical bias
which has come to be inherent in certain schools of
theology has its root in an honourable solicitude for
the ethical reaUty and virility of the Christian con
ception of salvation over against a conception which
exhausts itself in vague philosophemes. It is, in
essence, the antagonism of West to East ; of Augus
tinian to Greek theology. And only a very one
sided critic could deny the historical value and
necessity of a movement which restored the soul's
experience of redemption to its central place, even
though it meant the ecUpse of what would otherwise
have been a most fruitful source of progressive
theological thought. But It must always be remem
bered that tbe value of what may broadly be termed
the anti-Greek movement was historical. As always
in the development of human thought, it needed a
one-sided statement to correct an opposite one-sided
ness. To persist to-day in a belated Ritschlianism
which rules out the first four centuries of theological
speculation as alien to Christianity, and which
describes every attempt to transcend the limits of a
narrow Hebraic moralism and historicity as a de-
ethicising of the Gospel, is to help forward a
theological decadence which will affect first and
foremost the very doctrine which Rltschl was
most anxious to retain. II
The truth is, we can no longer formulate a doctrine
of redemption which does not involve the cosmic
293

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
aspect of things without weakening the very position
we wish to strengthen, for we can no longer completely
sever conscious personality from its matrix of uncon
scious life, or sin from the larger context of evil in
general, without being broken on the wheel of facts.
The scientist and the philosopher have made short
work of theological bulwarks once believed to be
Impregnable, and in driving us from their shelter
have forced us back upon the cosmic Christology and
the mystical doctrine of personaUty as found in the
New Testament. The new race of theologians are
less careful than their predecessors to have it under
stood that the soul's mystical union with Christ has
an ethical and not a metaphysical (let alone a biologi
cal) significance — as if ethical and metaphysical were
mutuaUy exclusive, and matter were impervious to
the action of spirit. We are once more nearing the
point which F. D. Maurice had reached when, on
being asked for the best treatise on the nature of sin,
he answered unhesitatingly, " The Epistle to the
Ephesians." In other words, we are beginning to
see that if we insist upon adopting the Ritschlian
expedient of cutting the child in two, we must not be
surprised if the half we elect to keep turns out to be
as dead as the half we threw away.
This has been abundantly proved in the course of
post-RitschUan theology. The rejection of the meta
physical element has kiUed theology on its speculative
and constructive side, and left us with a host of
historians and BibUcal critics, most of them working
with moraUstic and rationaUstic preconceptions and
prepossessions. We have had historians of dogma
294

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
who, starting from the sound fundamental principle
that the experience of reconciliation is the fountain
of doctrine, proceed to define that experience in
terms of a RitschUan moraUsm, and rule out of court
as aberrations and vicious accretions aU theologies
whose doctrine of salvation does not conform to
their paradigm. We still suffer from the tyranny of
certain exponents of the Synoptic tradition, whose
characteristically German Wirklichkeitssinn is so
perfect as to open their eyes to everything except
to the great eternal facts which are the Gospel.
And we have been aU too quick to welcome those
hyper-efiicient mechanics of Biblical criticism who
can hear the grass grow and whose ingenious con
jectural emendations often betray a quite astonishing
lack of historical imagination and spiritual insight.
No modest and sane student would seek to minimise
the debt we owe to the great Biblical scholars of
the past fifty years, but it is nevertheless true that
the impulse given to critical investigation by the
great pioneers has, for lack of a correspondingly
fruitful impulse in the field of systematic and con
structive theology, gone to produce a generation of
petits-maitres of critical detail, whose work lacks
spirit and insight and must be classed as a symptom
of decadence. It is significant that Germany has
produced no great constructive theological force
(with the exception of Rltschl himself) since Dorner
and Rothe, both of whom were imbued with the
spirit of the Greek theology.^
1 Rothe's essentially theosophical bent made him fundamentally akin to
the great Greek theologians. Dorner's clear-sighted appreciation of the
29s

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
And even in England, where the innate theological
trend has always been appreciably Athanasian, the
RitschUan influence has largely sterilised theological
thought, and driven writers Into the barren regions
of mere critical minutice on the one hand and of a
shaUow popular pragmatism on the other. One
need not be bUnd to the defects of Greek speculation
in order to reaUse the force of Canon Scott Holland's
eloquent regret, which might weU be Inscribed on
the waUs of every coUege of divinity until a revival
of speculative Christian thought has rendered It
unnecessary. " We have lost much," says Canon
Scott HoUand, " of that rich splendour, that large-
hearted fulness of power, which characterises the
great Greek masters of theology. We have suffered
our faith for so long to accept the pinched and
narrow Umits of a most unapostolic divinity, that we
can hardly persuade people to recaU how wide was
the sweep of Christian thought in the first centuries,
how largely it dealt with those deep problems of
spiritual existence and development which now once
more impress upon us the seriousness of the issues
amid which our souls are travaUing. We have let
people forget aU that our creed has to say about the
unity of aU creation, or about the evolution of history,
or about the unlversaUty of the Divine action through
the Word. We have lost the power of wielding the
mighty language with which Athanasius expands the
significance of creation and regeneration, of incar-
Greek theology is writ large over his monumental work on Tbe Person of
Christ. See especially the sections dealing with St. Augustine and St.
Thomas Aquinas ; also his interesting monograph, Augustinus : Sein theo-
logisches System und seine religionsphilosopbiscbe Anschauung.
296

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
nation, and sacrifice, and redemption, and salvation,
and glory." ^
There exists a considerable body of literature upon
what is caUed " mystical theology " ; but for the
most part the term is used to cover the psychology of
reUgious experience and the askesis of the inward life,
rather than theology in the speculative and con
structive sense. To deal with the actual or possible
contribution of Mysticism to theological thought
within the limits set in such a treatise as this is no
easy task. This is partly due to the lack of any
systematic work on mystical theology proper, and
partly to the fact that theology and philosophy are
so closely related that we shaU be constantly tempted,
in deaUng with the former, to enter upon the discus
sion of phUosophical doctrines and tendencies which
rightly pertain to the previous chapter but could not
conveniently be dealt with there. For the sake of
clearness and brevity, we shaU confine ourselves to
an investigation of the mystical doctrine of redemp
tion, or rather, the mystical doctrine of God the
Redeemer. Ill
The subject of the mystical doctrine of God is
hedged about with difficulty. Owing to their lack
of phUosophical technique and their loose mental and
verbal habit, the great mystics are for the most part
obscure and self-contradictory in their attempts at
doctrinal statement, and it would be quite easy to
deduce two diametrically opposed conceptions from
1 Logic and Life, p. vii.
297

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the writings of any one mystic. In most text-books
the discussion is confined to a brief exposition and
critique of two opposite tendencies in Mysticism —
the via negativa and the pantheistic tendency.^ The
former, which has its roots in Plato, but which from
Dionysius onwards became Asiatic rather than Greek
in its expression and resultant temper, is the outcome
of a sense of the Divine transcendence run riot. One
of its earliest, as weU as extremest, expressions is
found in BasiUdes, who says that " we must not even
caU God ineffable, since that is to make an assertion
about Him : He is above every name that is named "
— a statement quoted approvingly by St. Augustine.
In words familiar to English readers. Hooker voices
it when he says : " Of Thee our fittest eloquence Is
silence, while we confess without confessing that Thy
glory is unsearchable and beyond our reach." This
negative way of approach to God is reaUy the way of
analogy reversed. It proceeds upon the assumption
that, since the Infinite is the complete antithesis of
the finite, everything that can be affirmed of man
must logicaUy be denied of God, who can only be de
scribed by negatives. Of such a method of approach
to God, Edward Caird has weU said that he who
ascends the mount of the Divine Unity by that
sterile path arrives at the summit "with empty
hands," ^ while Professor John Watson characterises
it tersely as " a deification of the word ' not.' " *
In the opinion of not a few theologians, this negative
I For a lucid and masterly discussion of these two tendencies within a
small compass see Inge, Christian Mysticism, pp. 1 10-122.
* The Evolution of Theology in tbe Greek Philosophers, vol. ii., p. 215.
' The Interpretation of Religious Experience, vol. i., p. 73.
298

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
way is the whole of the mystical doctrine of God ; ^
and such a view might be easily substantiated from
mystical literature, for it is, broadly speaking, true
that whenever the mystics attempted the formal
exprecelon of their doctrine of God they did so In
terms of the via negativa. But who would judge the
tenor of a spiritual, as distinct from a technical,
literature by its formal expressions ? At the heart
of mystical Uterature there throbs, as its vital impulse,
a sense of God immanent in the world and in the
soul, not merely as cosmic Force, but as personal Love ;
not only as an animating Principle, but chiefly as
redeeming Power. However passages might be multi
pUed that seem to prove the contrary, it remains
that the God of the Christian mystic, a,t any rate, is
and has always been a Person whom he delights to
describe positively and in terms of his own highest
and best, and whom, more often than not, he com
pletely identifles with the Saviour; Christ to whom his
most passionate and personal love is given. Nor is
it possible to maintain that this warm, personal
relation is the mystic's inheritance of the common
Christian faith, while the abstract negative conception
is the specificaUy mystical element. It needs only a
very average acquaintance with mystical Uterature
to produce the contrary conviction — 'that what makes
the true mystic is his personal relation to the Lover
and Redeemer of his soul ; that it is precisely in the
convictions which he shares with the Church CathoUc
that his specific genius finds its most characteristic
expression. ^ cf. passage from Professor Oman quoted on p. 287.
299

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
In saying this we do not, however, intend to imply
that every Christian mystic is an evangelical beUever,
or that the conception of the " Divine Dark "
of Dionysius had no real influence upon mystical
theology. The very reverse is, indeed, the case. But
what we contend for, and can never afford to lose sight
of. Is that the heart of Mysticism — that which makes it
a genuine spiritual movement and experience, and not
a mere theosophy — ^is its passionate personal appre
hension of Jesus Christ the Redeemer. So far from it
being the case, as some critics would have us beUeve,
that the passages in mystical Uterature which deal
with Christ and His redeeming work directly are
mere accommodations to ecclesiastical demands, or
survivals of a conventionally accepted faith, these
passages belong to the most original, inspired and
profound expressions of the mystic spirit. For a
typical example one need only turn to Ruysbroeck,
who, always boldly daring and often profoundly true
and suggestive in his accounts of the soul's adventures
on the heights and In the abyss of the great luminous
darkness of God, Is never more so than when he
leaves the contemplation of the ineffable Godhead for
the expression of the soul's intimate communion with
its Saviour. " The first token of love," he says in
one of his best-known and most memorable passages,
" is that Jesus has given us His flesh to eat and His
blood to drink. . . . The property of love is to be
always giving and always receiving, and the love of
Jesus is hungry and generous. All that He has, aU
that He is. He gives ; aU that we have, and aU that
we are. He takes . . . and the more lovingly we give
300

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
to His hunger, the more fuUy do we possess Him.
He creates in us bread to feed Himself. . . . And
our life is fuU of vice, while His is fuU of grace and
glory, aU prepared for us, if only we give up ourselves.
If our eyes were clear enough to see this eager craving
of Christ who hungers to make us whole, nothing
could hold us back from rushing into His open mouth.
This wUl seem but fooUshness except to those who
love and who, so doing, understand." ^ These are not
the words of one who, in the midst of an enjoyable
contemplation of abstract deity, breaks off reluctantly
to throw a sop to the Cerberus of CathoUc orthodoxy.
And when we turn to that strange and exquisite
tractate. The Book of the Twelve Beguines, in which
he now and again stands upon the outermost edge
of thought, gazing deep into that darkness where the
reason swings between exaltation and aUenation, we
find that his most audacious raids upon that abyss
are made from the base of the soul's personal rela
tion to the Divine Man Christ Jesus. His writings
iUustrate in peculiarly characteristic fashion that
" dual orientation " which Delacroix has rightly
discerned to be a differentia of Christian Mysticism.
" Christian Mysticism," he remarks, " is orientated
at one and the same time towards the inaccessible
God where aU determination vanishes, and towards
the God-Logos. ... In spite of the sometimes
contradictory appearance of absorption in the Father
it is, at bottom, the Mysticism of the Son.^
Examples might be multipUed. Lady JuUan, for
^ Flowers of a Mystic Garden, pp. 69-70.
' Etudes sur le psychologic du mysticisme, p. xiii.
301

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
instance, that unconscious Neoplatonist who was
" led by the logic of the heart straight to some of the
speculative doctrines of the philosophical mystics,"^
refuses any heaven that is independent of Jesus, and
violently rejects every suggestion to turn her eyes
from the Cross. " Then I had a proffer in my
reason," she relates, " as if it had been friendly said
unto me : Look up to Heaven to His Father. ... I
answered inwardly with aU the might of my soul,
and said Nay ; I may not ; for Thou art my Heaven.
. . . For I would liever have been in that pain tUl
Doomsday than come to Heaven otherwise than by
Him . . . meliked no other Heaven than Jesus." ^
And again, when she was shown her soul " so large as
it were an endless world," and understood that it
was " a worshipful City," she saw in the midst of
that City, not the ineffable Godhead into whose dark
Being her speculative mind loved to peer, but " our
Lord Jesus God and man . . . most worshipful
Lord." And while the Godhead " ruleth and sus-
taineth heaven and earth and aU that is . . . the
place that Jesus taketh in our Soul He shall never
remove it, without end, as to my sight : for in us is
His homeliest home and His endless dwelling." '
With the notable exception of St. John of the
Cross, who, Uke Lady Julian and Ruysbroeck, was
a Neoplatonist without being a philosopher, and
who, unUke them, carried mediaeval acosmism to its
bitterest logical conclusion, the great mystics — and
here we may even include Eckhart in his best moods
'^ Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 202.
* Revelations of Divine Love, p. 42.
' Ibid., p. 167. 302

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
— based their spiritual edifice upon the corner-stone
of the Person of Christ, however imperfectly they
may have conceived it. With the vague sentimen
talism of being " in tune with the Infinite " they had
but little in common, and where they seem to deny
the reaUty of personaUty both human and Divine, it
is oftener than not due to a loose use of contemporary
phUosophical terminology, and to the disabilities
imposed upon them by the defective conception of
personality current in their day, and not to any
Inherently unethical or acosmistic conviction.
But if some critics have identified Mysticism with
that via negativa, which Is its most unfortunate
" accident," others have charged it indiscriminately
with Pantheism. While, however, it may readily be
granted that the extreme form of mediaeval reaUsm
which was the philosophical atmosphere of the great
mystics tended towards true Pantheism, i.e., towards
the doctrine of the equally perfect manifestation of
God in every created thing. Western Mysticism, at
any rate, has always been so ineradicably teleological
in tendency as to exclude an attitude which beholds
God aUke in the reverend Brahmin and in the ox.
Such an attitude might be logically deduced from
certain utterances of the great mystics, notably of
Eckhart, and not a few have classed him among
thorough - going Pantheists. But Eckhart never
dreamed of carrying these stray statements of his
to their logical conclusion, and the main trend of his
teaching is against a Pantheistic interpretation in the
strict sense of the term. It is not too much to say.
Indeed, that whenever the mystics lay themselves
303

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
open to a charge of Pantheism, their attitude, when
taken in the larger context of their teaching as a
whole and not unfairly deduced from isolated am
biguities, must be described as Panentheism rather
than as Pantheism. In common with the best
Christian thinkers, they believe In the immanence of
a transcendent God, their characteristic differentia
being found in the emphasis they lay upon the
indweUing of the Spirit or of Christ In the heart of
man, and in the elaboration of a paraUelism between
the events in the historical life of Jesus and the
mystic process by which the new man is born, cruci
fied, burled and risen In every beUever. As the life-
history of Jesus is, for most mystics, a recapitulation
and focussing of an age-long cosmic process, so the
inner life of each believer is a recapitulation of the
Gospel story. It may at once be granted that such
a conception has many weaknesses and dangers, and
that Panentheism does not of Itself secure the mystic
against the pItfaUs of Pantheism. Whenever the
indwelling of Christ in the heart Is conceived of as a
substitution of the Divine for the human and there is
a consequent loss of true personaUty, a Panentheistic
doctrine may rival the vagaries of the most grossly
unethical Pantheism. Here, as at previous stages
of our inquiry, it must be borne in mind that Divine
immanence is in itself a mere empty phrase which
may cover many widely opposed conceptions. It aU
depends upon who the God is who is worshipped as
immanent, and what precisely is meant by declaring
Him to be immanent in the universe and in the soul
of man. 304

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
There is yet another conception met with in mystical
literature which may be termed pantheistic, and that
is the doctrine which makes the cosmic process in
some sense a real " becoming " of God. Dean Inge
disposes of this conception by saying that it is " not a
philosophy which commends itself specially to specu
lative mystics, because it involves the belief that
time is an ultimate reaUty. If in the cosmic process,
which takes place in time, God becomes something
that He was not before, it cannot be said that He is
exalted above time, or that a thousand years are to
Him as one day." ^ Dr. Inge sees the escape from aU
such systems in the idea of will as a world-principle,
wiU being defined not in Schopenhauer's sense, but
as " the determination of a conscious Mind." Such
a doctrine preserves " the distinction between what
is and what ought to be which Pantheism finds no
room for, and at the same time implies that the
cosmic process is already complete in the conscious
ness of God, which cannot be held if He is subordi
nated to the category of time." ^ Professor John
Watson deals severely with the same doctrine from
a slightly different point of view : " ReUgion, since
it consists in identification with God, does not in
volve a process from the lower to the higher. God is
not a Being who grows in experience, as some recent
writers have suggested. Such a conception is the
natural complement of the view that God may or
must be finite. If God is graduaUy acquiring new
experience, it must be because He Is getting better
1 christian Mysticism, p. 1 19.
* Ibid., pp. 119-120.

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
acquainted with the true nature of the universe.
And therefore the universe as a whole, and not God,
becomes the true principle of Reality." ^ Dr. Watson,
however, goes on to say that " while we cannot admit
that God undergoes a process of development, this
does not mean that aU process is necessarily denied of
Him. There is process, but it is not a process from
lower to higher. . . . AU process is within God
Himself : it is not something that goes on apart from
Him, and which He contemplates from without." ^
But while we may grant the justice of aU these
objections within certain limits, and admit that the
idea of a becoming of God never greatly appealed to
the speculative mystics, it may yet be maintained
that It is precisely a doctrine of God which, in a
carefuUy safeguarded sense, involves His becoming
that is likely to provide us with a starting-point for
the mystical theology of the future. If the objec
tionable features to which exception is taken could
be shown to be inherent in every doctrine of God
which Interprets His relation to His world in terms
of a process of becoming, we might weU relegate
all forms of this conception to the scrap-heap. But
such is not our conviction, and it must not be left
out of sight that the objections which are levelled
against the phUosophical conception of a Divine
becoming apply also to the evangelical doctrine
of a Divine redemption actuaUsed in history. The
moment we accept the Pauline principle that God was
in Christ reconciling the world to Himself and hold
^ The Interpretation of Religious Experience, p. 126.
» Ibid.
306

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
that it finds its highest expression in Jesus of Nazareth,
we lay ourselves open to the twofold objection that
such a doctrine " Umits " God and gives to time an
absolute value which it does not possess, and that
any attempt to escape this double pitfall issues
logicaUy in either Unitarianism or Docetism, both of
which positions reduce the words " In Christ " to a
metaphor. In saying this we do not for a moment
Intend to imply that the Christian doctrine of a
redemption wrought out in history is equally open
to objection with the so-called Hegelian ^ doctrine of
a becoming or coming to Himself of God in the cosmic
process, but merely that the same objections have
force in both cases. To assert that God became man
— i.e., to go beyond the Ritschlian formula, " Christ
has for us the value of God " — is to create precisely
the same difficulties which made the speculative
mystics of past generations so shy of entertaining any
doctrine of a Divine becoming.
But these difficulties, we maintain, can be overcome,
and the resolving and transcending principle is found
in the Christian doctrine of Redemption conceived in
the spirit, if not in the letter, of classic mystical
theology. We believe that the centre of a new
mystical theology destined to leaven and transmute
the Christian thought of the future, will be found In
the old philosophical conception of a Divine becoming,
expressed in terms of the Christian doctrine of
Redemption and interpreted by it. But to provide
this normative and interpretative principle, a revision
1 But it may be doubted if Hegel ever intended his doctrine to be con
strued in this sense. See McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, pp. 1 59 ff.

307

X 2

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
of our doctrine of Redemption is needed, and our
attempts at theological restatement, while firmly
based upon the fact of redemptive experience, must
aim at relating that experience to aU new develop
ments in the realms of scientific and philosophical
thought. We can no longer afford either to sub
ordinate our thinking to the latest philosophical
and scientific fashions, or to take the high-handed
Ritschlian way out of the difficulty ; still less may
we seek to force every wind of philosophic doctrine to
work the apologetic miU. But in proportion as both
the servile and the arrogant methods of treating
extra-theological thought are abandoned, the need
for a hospitable though independent appreciation
and for an honourable affiliation and co-ordination of
theology with other fields of thought wiU become aU
the more apparent. IV
That our conception of redemption is already in
process of revolution seems beyond doubt. As it is
increasingly recognised that the Huxleian opposition
between the cosmic and the ethical has no foundation
in Reality, that the antithesis between Nature and
Grace — however useful and important within Its
Umits — ^is only of relative value, and that it is no longer
possible to regard God the Creator and God the
Redeemer as if they were two distinct Beings, Christian
thinkers are coming to realise that our conception
of redemption can no longer be expressed exclusively
in terms of human sin and salvation. A generation
308

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
ago it was the fashion in certain theological circles to
give somewhat boastful expression to one's rejection
of the doctrine of a " FaU." But in discarding that
doctrine not a few discarded precisely the element that
gave it permanent value — the conviction of the reality
and tragic significance of original sin, and retained
the very feature which made it untenable — the habit
of regarding human sin as separable from cosmic evil
instead of seeing in it the ultimate expression and
acutest form of that evil.
EvangeUcal theology has always stood for the
ethicising of philosophical speculation and for a firm
insistence upon man's experience of redemption as
not only the fontal principle, but also in a sense,
the sole content of Christian theology. Its repre
sentatives have in all ages tended to reject as empty
speculation everything that did not bear directly
upon the soteriological problem, as they defined
it, and to stigmatise as unethical any conviction
which rested upon the unity of the universe. Even
at this late day every endeavour to break down
that opposition between the cosmic and the ethical,
which has so long kept Christian theology from its
true birthright, is met by the objection that aU
such attempts rest upon an arbitrary transference of
ethical terms to a region in which they do not and
cannot apply.
This objection, however, would only be vaUd if
we proposed to establish the unity of the cosmic and
the ethical by means of a species of mental juggUng
which ascribes to the bUnd conflict of cosmic forces
the same moral value as to the struggles of the soul
309

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
that cries out for the Uving God, and which puts the
victory of a natural species over the kataboUc ten
dency of matter and its establishment upon anabolic
Unes, so to speak, upon the same level as the Parable
of the Prodigal Son. But such cosmic sentimentalism
has no place In mystical theology as we conceive it.
The mystic's doctrine of God is not that of Deity
diffused throughout Nature and finding equal expres
sion in the stinging spray of the ocean billow and the
bitter craving for God in the troubled human soul,
but that of a Father of spirits whose presence is per
sonal and redemptive, whose delight it is to dwell
with the children of men, and whose love finds its
supreme satisfaction not in the beauty of the earth,
but in the conscious, penitent response of the moral
personality. Yet as we believe with increasing weight
of conviction that the universe is one, so we believe
that the redemption which is made explicit in the
deUverance of the human soul from its sin and in Its
reconciliation to its heavenly Father begins with the
first inscrutable beginning of that continuous act of
creation which has won and is winning chaotic
material forces to harmony and order, and subduing
the earth to fruitfulness and beauty. The cosmic Is
not the ethical, Nature is not Grace : they are the
raw material of moral evolution and redemption.
The cosmic process cannot be understood apart from
the salvation of the sons of God upon which it
depends. It will be seen at once that such a doctrine of cosmic
redemption, so far from being allied to sentimental
Pantheism, is sharply opposed to it ; for its whole
310

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
bent is teleological : it construes its doctrine of
immanence, not in terms of what is, but in terms of
what ought to be and shall be. It is here that the
doctrine of the birth of Christ in every human soul,
which has at times exercised so confusing an influence
upon mystical speculation, comes to its own.^ Its
practical religious value is simply this — that the
immanence of God as held by Christian Mysticism is
the immanence of a Saviour struggling to be born
within the soul, i.e., pleading with the soul against
its sin and wooing it into the loving surrender of
fiUal obedience. Professor Watson, in his often
acute but not always just critique of Mysticism,
opposes to what he considers the innate tendency of
Mysticism to aboUsh the distinction between the human
and Divine a doctrine of immanence conceived as
man's conscious self-identification with God.* But
such a doctrine is in reaUty. not far removed from the
true mystical conviction which states the Divine
immanence not exclusively in terms of the completed
/ict of self-identification, but certainly in terms of the
whole, long process by which the Redeemer woos
the soul into conscious surrender to Him and union
with Him. It sees the beginning of the " sweet,
long patience " of God in the meek influence which
divided Ught from darkness ; in that Love which
-constrains the stars. The words " Let there be Ught "
were spoken not merely to the lights of heaven,
but to the smoking flax of the unborn human soul.
I For a most informing discussion of this doctrine, consult W. R. Inge's
Christian Mysticism, pp. 183-194, and especially Appendix C on " Deifica
tion." * The Interpretation of Religious Experience, vol. ii., pp. 125-126.
3"

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
In brief, the mystic believes in Redemptive Creation.
UnUke the Pantheist, who looks with complacency
upon every created thing as the very expression of
God, the genuine mystic, while he has often used
pantheistic phraseology and so obscured his real
meaning, sees God patiently moulding all created
things out of their imperfection, discord, and blind
cruelty and evil into that which they shaU be when
the salvation of the sons of God is manifest. He does
not, as so many critics accuse him, take his stand
upon Nature and develop a more or less sentimental
theory of cosmic redemption. He takes his stand upon
his personal experience of redemption in Christ Jesus
and, viewing the cosmic process from the only point
from which it can be rightly estimated, i.e., from its
fulfilment in the salvation of mankind, sees it as part
of God's redemptive purpose and activity.
It is StiU the fashion, even where the right of
theological speculation is admitted, to relegate all
passages in the New Testament bearing upon the
cosmic aspect of Christ's redemption to the penum
bra of thought — to that nebulous borderland which
defies the explorer. This neglect of what may be
caUed speculative soteriology is a survival of the
Ritschlian vogue, and derives an apparent justification
from the arrogance of a theosophy which opposes
its guesses to rational knowledge In the name of a
Heaven-born occult wisdom. But it must not be
forgotten that while an apotheosis of unreasoned
intuition puts the ban of sterility upon all thought.
It yet remains true that the most profound and
influential doctrines first came to inspired men as
312

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
intuitions which they had not the requisite knowledge
to ground In reason, and that many such Intuitions
have remained mere intuitions, simply for lack of
being reasoned out by subsequent generations. We
are still far too quick to assert that such and such
a theologoumenon cannot be verified by experience.
What precisely do we mean by " experience " ? If'
we define it In narrowly moralistic terms, then our
sense of communion and union with the risen and
exalted Christ immediately falls into that negligible
penumbra of thought — as was always held, indeed, by
consistent Ritschlians. But if we believe not only
in a historical, but also In a " pneumatic " revelation
and mediation of truth and grace, then we must surely
admit that such intuitions as those relating to Redemp
tive Creation, so far from being antagonistic or
even unrelated to the experience of a historlcaUy
mediated redemption, are its inseparable corollaries.
Like St. Paul and the writer of the Epistle to the
Ephesians, the true mystic knows Christ to be the
Source of aU existence, the Pulse and Soul of the
Universe, and the Bond in which all things consist,
because he has known Him first as the Redeemer of
his personal life.
Mystical theology, then, if consistently developed,
must include a doctrine of Cosmic Redemption ; and
that not merely because it rests upon a Logos-philo
sophy which demands such a doctrine (certainly not
because it aims at harmonising its Intuitions with
science), but because, like evangeUcal theology, it Is
based upon the soul's experience of redemption and
is nothing else than an endeavour to give rationaUty
313

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and context to that experience. Now every truly
vital experience Includes a number of deductions and
coroUarles which are the necessary development of its
own inherent dialectic ; and whUe such deductions
may belong to the penumbra of thought in the sense
of being undeveloped, this does not justify the thinker
in neglecting them and so Umlting and truncating
the experience out of which they arose. In aU ages
redeemed souls have seen the universe in terms of
redemption, and in so conceiving it have not only
found themselves in possession of the master-principle
which solves the dark enigma of the groaning and
travail of creation, in as far as it can be solved by
finite minds, but have also known a great deepening
and enrichment of their personal experience of redemp
tion in Christ Jesus.

Here lies the parting of ways. The time has
passed when we could rule the interpretation of the
age-long cosmic process out of the sacred pale of
theology and relegate it to the secular realm of meta
physics, and the question before us Is, ShaU we con
ceive of that process in terms of redemption, or shaU
we continue to interpret it in terms of natural law
as popularised by nineteenth-century scientists and
apologists ? Shall we find the key to the riddle of the
universe in the sinner's experience of a redeeming
Saviour, or in a theology which practicaUy uses the
categories and the method of Haeckel to establish its
" defence " of God's good and wise government of the
universe ? The crucial weakness of popular religion
3H

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
and of a certain type of popular apologetics which,
while it rarely finds its way into books, is still far more
widely prevalent than one cares to think, must be
sought for in a doctrine of God which defines His
omnipotence, omniscience, and justice in terms derived
from Nature rather than in terms of His redeeming
love In Christ Jesus, and makes Him little more than
physical force personalised and endowed with an
occult justice which cannot be reconciled with any
known standard of moral values.^
God, then, according to the Implications of aU truly
mystical theology, created the world by His redemp
tive power. In other words. His creative activity is
none other than the redeeming Love which subdues
chaos to order, brings good out of evil, and woos
fooUsh, sinful human hearts to filial obedience. The
Creator is the Saviour, and His cveati've fiat is the first
act of redemption, as His giving His ^onto be our
very Brother Is the crowning act of creation. For
Him to create was to enter into His creation, wearing
its sorrows as a garment, its joys as a crown of glory —
nay, far more, thrilling with its joy and dying upon
its bitter cross. This is Pantheism, if one wishes to
caU it so ; but, be it remembered, it is a Pantheism
which teaches not the diffused immanence of a World-
soul that finds Its adequate and natural expression in
the mingled beauty and terror of things, but the
immanence of a Personal Redeemer. Such imman
ence finds its fuU realisation in the indwelling of
'^ For a most original and suggestive restatement of the problem
of Divine omnipotence, marred only, in our view, by a defective con
ception of the true significance of Force, see C. E. Rolt, The World's
Redemption. 315

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Christ, or of the Holy Spirit, in the human soul, and
can only be explained in terms of that indweUing.
And In so far as He is immanent in His creation as its
Redeemer and has made this redemption explicit in
the human life and death of Jesus, in so far the cosmic
process must be construed by the mystical theologian
as a becoming of God.
The subject is beset with difficulties which no
degree of theological or philosophical acumen wiU
ever surmount, but our common Christian experience
suggests a line along which something like a doctrine
of the becoming of God may graduaUy be established.
The most common objection to such a doctrine is, as
we have already seen, that it militates against the
complete and utter perfection of One who is beyond
all processes of time and change. But what is this
perfection of God for the Christian consciousness ?
It is nothing else than His redeeming love, and it is of
the very essence of that love that it should subject
itself to aU the conditions under which its object
groans and labours. It is only in doing this that It
becomes what it is. And so mystical theology teaches
as its fundamental doctrine, implicit though often
unrecognised in aU mystical experience and all
mystical literature, that since the only perfection and
omnipotence of God is His love. He must attain to
that perfection by means of that sacrifice, struggle and
bitter anguish. It is only when perfected by suffering,
and as so perfected, that the love of God is known as
unchangeable and eternal, beyond discord, imper
fection, evil, and all the antinomies of temporal exist
ence — the everlasting. Immutable, and all-inclusive
316

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
Reality. To assume a redemptive becoming of God
is not, as Dean Inge holds, to give a fictitious and
exaggerated value to time. Time is but one of the
conditions under which the enduring love of God is
shown to be eternal. Time is not independent of
eternity : it only exists because God is above it, and
because through it eternity is realised. So matter
also, while having no beginning in time, is not con
ceived as eternal by the mystic who has escaped from
Manichaean dualism, but as dependent upon the exist
ence of God, and as one of the means through which
that Eternal Existence is realised.
All such objections tend to lose much of their
force when applied to the endurance of pain by the
Redeemer. That God should pass through time
seems untenable to many who make no objection to
the Idea of His being afflicted with the pain and
anguish of His human children. Yet in both cases
the experience, if it is to have any reality at all, must
leave the Divine Experient as He could not have been
without such experience — must, in fact. Involve in
this sense a becoming ; and the first case is, after all,
only the generalised form of the second. We ask,
then, Is it reaUy more difficult to reconcile God's
eternity with His experience of temporal process than
it is to reconcile His perfect and immutable bliss with
His subjection to the bitter anguish of suffering love ?
We Iraagine it to be so, but that is only because we
have learned to deal with the speciaUsed form of the
problem, which faUs within the province of experi
mental religion, while we have got into the habit of
relegating its more general form to the barren region of
317

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
metaphysics. We readily recognise that the eternal
and unchanging happiness of God consists not in
the absence of pain, but in its overcoming and in its
transmutation into joy ; and how can pain be thus
transmuted except by being experienced in Its un-
transmuted form by the Divine Redeemer ? But if
it be permissible to count God's endurance of human
pain as not merely compatible with, but, as it were,
the very stuff of His eternal joy — that by which He
realises the bliss which was His from aU eternity — ^it
is surely not less reasonable to believe that His passing
through the processes of time is a becoming of what
He is from everlasting to everlasting.
In this lucid yet ever-baffling paradox mystical
theology finds an approximate formulation of what is
the very secret of the universe. And here, too, we
may seek for the grounding and justification of our
own struggle with sin and evil. The weary contro
versy between what is still broadly caUed HegeUan
InteUectuaUsm and what has come to be known as
Activism centres for the religious soul in the question.
Has human history a value for God ? InteUectuaUsm
of the extreme and doctrinaire type has not unfairly
been charged with reducing aU history to the mere
" reading of the cosmic novel," the mere making
explicit of what is already there implicitly ; in fine,
with depriving the human struggle of aU ethical value.
Activism, on the other hand — In many of its forms, at
least — may be charged with ascribing to the events
of history a value which they cannot possibly have,
and with ultimately reducing the Absolute to the
chief actor on the human stage — primus inter pares.
318

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
The solution must be looked for in the direction of a
redemptive becoming of God. If God can only attain
to His Eternal Perfection by passing through time —
nay, if His subjection to temporal processes be the
supreme condition and the very substance of His
Immutable Being — then human becoming has found
an impregnable ground and justification in the very
Being of God. Then both the gradual achievement
of victory over sin by the redeemed soul and its time
less justification and stainlessness in the sight of God
are made eternally real. Man, too, has to achieve
that which he is already, and to view him perfect and
victorious beyond time and change is to see him as
having washed his robes and made them white in the
Blood of the Lamb — In other words, to eternalise, and
not to destroy, the importance of his struggle with
sin. The temporal struggle is, in a very real sense,
the eternal reconciliation. VI
These are, of course, only tentative hints, offered
with the utmost diffidence as lines of fruitful dis
cussion to which the implications of Mysticism Invite
the theologian — lines of discussion which seem to hold
out promise of at least a partial solution of many
intractable problems. The question of the reality of
human personaUty, for instance, may, we think, be
rewardingly reconsidered in the Ught of mystical
theology. Mysticism has always been charged with
seeking to absorb human personality in the Divine,
and so to destroy the reaUty of the human will and
ultlmatety of aU moral striving. To revert once more
319

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
to Dr. Oman's characteristic criticism, " it could onlv
efface, not rescue, the distressed, moral personality."
And, as Professor Watson justly points out. Mysticism
where it is not modified by the positive Christian
consciousness, constantly tends towards the oblitera
tion of the distinction between the human and the
Divine personalities, and thus, in its very eager
ness to preserve the unity of God, only succeeds in
destroying it ; for consciousness of God is inseparable
from consciousness of self.^ But if we believe that aU
created things exist only because God exists, and that
their significance is found in the fact that through
them He realises His uncreated and timeless Per
fection, which is nothing else than Redeeming Love
I made victorious, then in making human existence as
: relative to the Divine we really postulate its timeless
-significance. The problem of human personality is a vast and
intricate one, but we submit that at least a clue to its
solution may be found in the central experience of
Mysticism. The mystic who has made the dread
descent into his own heart and, having touched that
Hidden Ground which is both very God and truly
himself, says, " I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth In
me," reaUses thereby that bis complete dependence
upon God guarantees his inaUenable Individuality. It
is in virtue of his dependence upon One who Is
Absolute and Eternal that man, too, partakes of the
Absolute and Timeless. His relativity secures his
absolute value. The magic words " In Christ " con
tain at once the confession of his complete depend-
^ The Interpretation of Religious Experience, vol. ii., p. 253,
320

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
ence and the assertion of his individual persistence
beyond all time and change. His God-consciousness,
or rather his Christ-consciousness, is the measure of
his truest and highest self-consciousness.
Or the problem may be stated thus : How can God
be immanent in man and man preserve his indivi
duaUty f There Is, of course, a Neoplatonic and
Pantheistic doctrine of Divine immanence which is the
virtual negation of all true human Individuality ; but
if immanence be construed in terms of redemption,
then so far from "effacing" the distressed moral
personality, it comes to its rescue as no other doctrine
can. For redemptive immanence is but the other
side of redemptive transcendence, and He who is so
deep within us is by that very fact of immanent love_^
infinitely high above us. So St. Augustine cries out,
" Where did I find Thee, except within myself ? "
correcting himself swiftly with, " or rather, in Thyself
above me." It is in the humility of the IndweUing
Christ that the transcendent majesty of the Holy One
is discerned. And redemptive Immanence is also the
other side of that conscious self-identification with
God which is the essence of evangelical conversion.
It Is the condition of man's true personaUty ; for just
as the individual would not be self-conscious at all
but for his relations to his fellows, so it is only in God
that man can achieve spiritual personality. Human
individuality and freedom, so far from being incom
patible with Divine immanence, are its indispensable
conditions. The more free and reasonable two self-
conscious beings are, the more inward and intimate
wiU be their interaction and their Influence upon each
321

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
other. Mysticism of the genuine type has always set
its face against a doctrine of the Divine indwelling
which made God a gigantic hypnotist. Of passages
which describe the soul as being " swaUowed up " of
God there are many in mystical Uterature, it is true ;
but, taken in its totality, the teaching of the best
mystics is against any such absorption. One need
not adduce even a single passage in proof of this : it is
sufficient to remember that the science and method
of Mysticism is love, and love, to be in any sense real,
presupposes two distinct and free personalities. In
love alone dweUs reason — nay, love is reason " heated
into that intense and burning passion in which it
becomes most truly Itself." And in it two persons,
distinct yet indissolubly one by something far more
intimate and vital than mere ethical harmony of wiU
and purpose, seek to lose themselves in each other,
only to find in the beloved one the Self which Is
not self. The soul — supposing such could exist — that
is impervious to and incapable of interpenetratlon
and permeation by another is incapable of true self-
consciousness, bereft of the gift of personality.
It must be admitted that even Christian mystical
Uterature has at all times been infected here and
there with an Asiatic doctrine of absorption in the
Divine which seems to bear out the popular accusa
tion that Mysticism makes for the destruction of
personality, and therefore of aU true ethics. The
fuU significance of this doctrine, which in the writings
of Christian mystics is veiled in conventional religious
phraseology, emerges in the utterances of Eastern
writers. Thus Zeb-un-Nissa offers a tribute of
^22

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
envious praise to the moth lured to destruction by
the flame :
" How strong thou hast become, 0 moth, how great,
Worshipping thus the flame ! this is thy fate —
Vainly to love and die, yet thou canst bear
The burning sparks and ever scorn despair.
Thou knowest, fluttering nearer to the fire,
In death thou shalt be one with thy desire." ^
And even Rabindranath Tagore, In whom East and
West so strangely mingle and react upon each other,
is Incurably stricken with the longing for a union
which is reaUy destructive of all union. " O my Sun,
ever glorious ! " he sings, " Thy touch has not yet
melted my vapour, making me one with Thy light.
... If this be Thy wish and if this be Thy play
then take this fleeting emptiness of mine, paint It with
colours, gild it with gold, float it on the wanton wind
and spread it in varied wonders. . . . And again,
when it shaU be Thy wish to end this play at night, I
shaU melt and vanish away in the dark." *
If this really represented the doctrine of mystic
union vsrith God — and the numerous passages In Ruys
broeck, the Theologia Germanica, WiUiam Law, and
countless other mystics who craved for a union of the
soul with God in which there should be no " me "
and " mine " could fairly be construed in this non-
moral sense — then we might well regard Mysticism as
essentiaUy hostile to the soul's highest interests.
Then, too, the charge of a vague and sentimental
conception of salvation as a cosmic romance in which
* The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, p. 58.
2 Gitanjali, pp. 74-75.
323

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the swift leap of the tiger upon its prey is equated
with the sudden rioting of passion in the veins of
undisciplined manhood, and the darting of a moth
into a candle is placed on a level with the soul's flight
Into the bosom of its God, would be proven to the
hilt. But, as we have seen already in our consideration
of the mystic's relation to Nature, such a charge Is
unfounded, for while he may broadly be said to view
Nature as not separate from but including man,
this does not exhaust his attitude. Merely to include
the noblest attributes of humanity together with the
most savage instincts of the brute under the term
" Nature " is, after all, only to convert the consistent
hcU of a " Nature red in tooth and claw " into a con
fused and irrational jungle of mutually neutraUsing
elements — a chaotic ferment from which one can
draw diametrically opposite conclusions, according
to one's temperamental affinity. For the Christian
mystic. Nature does not merely include man : It
tends towards man, and ultimately towards the
perfect Man Christ Jesus. ^ In man. Nature, as It
were, recognises not merely her original purpose and
final destiny, but her source and animating impulse —
that which, hidden in her womb, made her what she
was and explains her age-long travail. For the
mystic, man is the index to Nature. In man's re
demption Nature is being redeemed, and in redeemed
humanity is the justification of aU her evil and woe,
the reconciliation of all her antinomies.
Here lies the safeguarding of Mysticism against a
^ cf. John Pulsford's fine phrase, "The pulse of Nature beats man-
ward" {The Supremacy of Man, p. 170).
324

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
doctrine of evil and sin which, in order to escape from
duaUsm, would reduce them to an illusion. Evil and
sin are there not to be annihilated, but to be trans
muted by the alchemy of redeeming Love. And to
come within the scope of that redeeming Love, the
bUnd evil of the cosmos must come to consciousness in
man as sin. In man the dim, inarticulate struggle
between order and chaos, beauty and ugliness, gentle
ness and brutality, self-sacrifice and self-seeking has
become aware of itself. In the microcosm of humanity
the serpent and Its Bruiser meet at last on common
ground. In other words, tho Christian mystic,
while refusing to view good and evil as equally abso
lute and independent forces pitted against each other,
sees the reality and exceeding sinfulness of sin in
its very dependence upon a righteous God who denies
and condemns it, and, stiU more, in the death of
a Divine Redeemer. He views it, not sub specie
ceternitatis as an illusion, but sub specie Christi as that
which redeeming Love, by suffering unto death, has
transmuted. To him, therefore, the grim and bitter
conflict between right and wrong is the method by
which good overcomes and transmutes evil — is, in
fact, the victory of good over evil. Individual
mystics of all ages have Irritated thoughtful and deep-
going souls by exhibiting the facile optimism which
attains bliss by closing its eyes to evil. But genuine
Mysticism is not so shallow a thing. Its undying
hopefulness and calm come not from Ignoring sin and
evil, but from interpreting them in terms of redemption.
To view sin apart from the Redeemer-God is to see
less than Reality. 325

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
VII
Another common charge against a doctrine of
salvation which includes an interpretation of redemp
tion in terms of the cosmic process is that it denies the
supreme value of history : that it substitutes ideas
for facts, speculation for revelation, and metaphysical
enquiry for religious experience. Mystics have been
somewhat impatient of this objection, which is far
more securely grounded in the nature of things than
they have been wiUing to admit, standing, as it does,
for the reality of redemption over against the abstrac
tions of a high and hoUow rationalism. In many of
its aspects, however, the objection is merely a stubborn
revival of the RitschUan prejudice against meta
physics, and stands not so much for the historical
mediation of eternal facts as for the denial of the
ideas behind those facts. And ultimately it rests upon
the old, vicious opposition between " fact " and
" theory," and the controversy resolves itself into
logomachy of a most irritating type. When, for
instance, the rigid defender of the exclusive rights of
history opposes the " fact " of Christ's crucifixion to
the " theory " or idea of God's eternal self-immolation
upon the altar of the cosmic process, what does he
reaUy mean by " fact " ? Obviously not the bare
event of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth under
Pontius Pilate. Concerning facts in this naive sense,
Lessing was surely right when he contended that
no eternal truths could be deduced from accidental
happenings, and Dr. Bosanquet justly observes that
history is " a hybrid form of experience. Incapable of
326

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
any considerable degree of ' being or trueness.' " ^
But it is not in this sense at aU that the upholder of a
historical revelation regards facts. In common with
the mystic, he recognises that if a historical fact has
an eternal value, it is because it is far more than
historical. When he says " Christ crucified " he
means that conviction and experience of redeeming
Love made possible by the Cross of Christ — the whole
body of evangelical doctrine by which the Church
Uves. He means, in fact, the " theory " which, so
far from being separable or opposed to the " fact," is
the fact. He may, and generaUy does, disparage the
doctrine of an eternal process behind the Cross,
imperfectly manifest in the cosmos and becoming
explicit in the Ufe and death of Jesus ; but his doctrine
of the " fact " of the Cross nevertheless includes a
process beginning with Calvary and culminating in a
redeemed humanity and a new creation. The term
" process " has a somewhat different connotation for
him from that which It has for the mystic, but this does
not weaken our contention that when he speaks of
"fact" he means a good deal more than the bare event ;
that, indeed, he unconsciously formulates a whole
philosophy when he enunciates what he would call his
" simple " Christian conviction. The Christian mystic,
on the other hand — providing his Mysticism be reaUy
dominated by his Christian conviction — when he
expresses his belief in a great redemptive process of
which the life and death of Jesus are the most perfect
actualisation, does not, as so many think, declare
thereby that the process is the all-important thing and
^ The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 79.
327

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the fact a mere Illustration. For Christian Mysti
cism the fact reveals the process ; but for the central,
pivotal, organising fact of the Christian Gospel, to
talk of process would be the merest chimera of specu
lation. Fact and process are indissolubly connected,
and the most mystical soul that ever found anchorage
by turning from the crucified Jesus to the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world, and from a Christ
who loved us and gave Himself for us to a Christ
in us the hope of glory must, by sheer compulsion
of common-sense logic, admit that it is only as a
deduction from historical fact that the doctrine of an
eternal process can havc any real and concrete value.
Dr. W. F. Cobb puts the inter-relation of fact and
process with admirable good sense when he says,
" That soul should subsist vnthout manifesting itself
in formal acts, or that actions, on the other hand,
should come from nowhere and have no process
behind them are equally Incredible propositions." ^
The mystic may place the weight of emphasis upon the
process which energises through the fact, but it is
only as energising through the fact that the process
becomes part of his experience ; and this has always
been recognised by the best mystics, whose most
characteristic experiences and intuitions originated,
as we have tried to show already and under various
aspects. In their reverent and passionate apprehension
of the great historical facts of the Gospel.
A great deal has been made of the mystic's insistence
upon the inwardness and incommunicablUty of his
experience — an insistence which is commonly con-
^ Mysticism and tbe Creed, p. 9.
328

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
strued into a disparagement of a historical revelation.
And it must be granted that not a few mystics feU
into an exaggerated and unwholesome subjectivity,
opposing the Word of the indwelling Christ, spoken in
the secret places of the soul, to what they tended to
look upon as the exoteric teaching of the Gospels and
" milk for babes." But a reaUy careful and con
textual reading of the great spiritual autobiographies
which form such an important part of mystical
literature will not fail to show that in actual practice
this tendency was held in check by the constant
Unking up of those private and personal intimations
with the common facts and teachings of the Catholic
faith. Thus Blessed Angela of FoUgno, even in the
midst of her most daringly subjective flights. Insists
upon the necessity of " a constant consideration and a
profound knowledge of Christ crucified." ^ Her whole
spiritual edifice is founded upon her deep and con
tinuous contemplation of the literal facts of the
poverty, humiliation and bitter suffering of Jesus,
without any of the attempts to spiritualise and
aUegorisc which are deemed to be so characteristi
caUy " mystical."
We may contend, then, that while it is true
that many mystics were guilty of an exaggerated
inwardness and individualism — partly the natural
reaction against an externaUsed Catholicism, partly
the inevitable result of a defective conception of
personality — and that it withheld from them the
great fruitful impulses which can come to the indi
vidual believer only through the Christian ecclesia,
1 The Book ofthe Divine Consolation, p. 42.
329

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
this individuaUsm was counteracted by their contact
with the Christ of history and of common Christian
experience. If they cut themselves off from the
branches, they abode in the Vine in whom aU branches
live ; and if they failed to appreciate the Church miU
tant, they often showed an aU the more vivid and
profound realisation of the great cloud of witnesses.
Thus Thomas Traherne, speaking of man's power to
" see into aU ages," says : " The present age is too
Uttle to contain it [the human understanding]. I
can visit Noah in his ark, and swim upon the waters
of the deluge. I can see Moses with his rod, and the
children of Israel passing through the sea ; I can
enter into Aaron's tabernacle and admire the mysteries
of the holy place. I can travel over the Land of
Canaan and see it overflowing with milk and honey.
I can visit Solomon in his glory . . . and admire the
magnificence of his kingdom. . . . But above aU
these our Saviour's Cross is the throne of delights."^
The relation of the great Christian mystics to
sacred history was by no means that of the Gnostics,
or even of Origen : it was essentially Johannine.
They used it as the writer of the Fourth Gospel
used the Synoptic tradition. Their communion was
with the Eternal Christ, and had they been asked if
they regretted not living in Gospel times, they would
doubtless have answered that there was nothing in
the four Gospels one-half as wonderful as the un-
irecorded sayings of the Eternal Christ, spoken daily
in the secret temple of their heart. Yet they never
failed to recognise that Exalted and Living One as
^ Centuries of Meditation, p. 38 ; see also pp. 210-21 1.
330

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
" this same Jesus " who walked in GaUlee and was
crucified on Calvary. The very thing which is supposed
to constitute their disparagement of history — their
easy passage from the Christ of the Gospels to the
" pneumatic " Christ, without seeming even to be
conscious of any transition — is their supreme tribute
to the eternal value of history. Theirs was the only
true philosophy of history — that spiritual appropria
tion which incorporates it vitally into the timeless
present. That they erred formally in their concep
tion of the value of historical fact cannot be denied,
though it must always be remembered that one-
half of their apparent neglect or vicious manipulation
of history was common to an unscientific age. But
their religious use of history amply compensated for
aU theoretical defects.
It is often objected that, after all, mystical Christ
ology does not spring from evangelical experience at
aU, but is due to the influence of an aUen Logos-
philosophy, and to a vicious attempt to force speci
ficaUy Christian intuitions into its mould. This view
Is ably represented by Professor E. F. Scott, in his
thought-provoking monograph on the Fourth Gospel
In summing up the Johannine use of the Logos-
category, he says that the adoption of the Logos-
idea involved the evangeUst " in a mode of thought
which Is alien to his deeper religious instinct. ... On
the one hand, he conceives of Jesus as manifesting
God to men and raising them to a higher Ufe by the
might of His ethical personaUty. On the other hand,
he is compeUed to think of the revelation under
metaphysical categories. . . . The Gospel wavers
331

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
throughout between the two parallel interpretations
of the life of Christ — that suggested by the history
and that required by the Logos-hypothesis. Super
ficially the two conceptions are blended together ;
but they cannot be brought into any real harmony.
The doctrine of the Logos, born of philosophical
theory, has nothing to do with the historical revelation
in Jesus, and Is wholly inadequate to explain It.^
One Imagines that a large majority of modern
theologians who have been Influenced by German
masters would agree to this ; but are the assump
tions upon which such a view is based as unquestion
able as their supporters claim ? That the Fourth
Evangelist could not harmonise his experience of a
Uving, Divine-human Redeemer with a Logos-philo
sophy bequeathed to him by Philo few would care
to deny. But does this admission settle anything ?
Does it prove that no Logos-philosophy can ever be
the metaphysical expression of the Christian expe
rience ? It must be remembered that, owing to the
ascendancy of Latin over Greek theology in the fifth
century, and the consequent diversion of the whole
trend of Christian thought from the doctrine of the
Logos, that doctrine was never developed ; and only
the rise of a new Christian Platonism, such as Pro
fessor Troeltsch desiderates, could reveal whether the
Logos-conception is capable of interpreting the great
Christian facts or not. To deny that It can prove an
interpreting medium, simply on the ground of the
obvious circumstance that the early Christian writers
necessarily lacked the philosophical acumen to restate
^ The Fourth Gospel: its Purpose and Theology, pp. 174-175.
332

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
it in terms of Christian thought, and therefore
presented a composite edifice whose stones would not
hold together, is surely an unconvincing procedure.
VIII
Once more we come back to the mystic's personal
relation to his crucified Redeemer as the mainspring
of his attempts to formulate his intuitions, however
largely phUosophical influences may have gone to
decide the terms of these formulations. It was no
theory of the Logos, for instance, that caused Tra
herne to see the Cross as " that Centre of Eternity,
that Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise of God," ^
and the whole world sprinkled with the Blood of
Christ ; '^ or that inspired WilUam Law, following in the
footsteps of Jacob Boehme, to see Jesus as the Light
of that Eternal Nature which was before aU creation.'
It was rather their experience of a Christ who, in
coming to them as the Lover and Redeemer of their
souls, smote them with the conviction that He who
healeth the broken In heart can be none other than He
who teUeth the number of the stars ; that the Lord who
openeth the eyes of the blind is He who made the
eye and aU the beautiful world it loves to look upon,
and that the Cross of Calvary was also the ground-
plan of the Great Architect of the Universe. To
assert less than that would be a grave error, not because
it would fail to satisfy the demands of a Logos philo-
' Centuries of Meditation, p. 39.
^ Ibid., p. 42-
» An Appeal to All Wbo Doubt, p. 54. Cf. Boehme's De Signatura
Rerum, chap. xiv. 333

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
sophy, but because it would take away from the glory
of the Cross — it would deplete it, emasculate it. Ne
evacuetur crux Christi! is the unspoken aspiration of
the mystic heart, and St. Paul would, one likes to
think, be the last to deny the vaUdity of this appUca
tion of his classic utterance.
To sum up, Mysticism bids us remember that we
deplete the Cross of Christ when we treat it merely
as an event in history with tremendous and eternal
consequences. Behind the Christ crucified on Calvary
is the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of
the world. To conceive or preach Calvary in the
sense of a narrow historicity is to rob the Cross of a
glory which St. Paul was quick to perceive and which
the deep heart of the Fourth EvangeUst discerned so
piercingly. All conceptions of the Atonement which
make the historical act of the Crucifixion a more
Important and crucial thing than the vast, eternal
self-donation of God which Ues behind it, are not
so much an obscuring of the loving Fatherhood of
God as a spoliation of the very Cross they intend to
exalt. It is only on the prehistoric rock of Eternal
Love that the crucified Son of Man can truly be
lifted up from the earth.
Nor dare we Umit the Cross to the sphere which
conventional theology has assigned to Grace. What
is true in the realm of Grace must be true — though
the mode and measure of its truth may not be
revealed to us fully — in the realm of Nature. If the
Cross that was reared on Calvary saves the lost and
ruined soul of man, it is because it is the very ground-
plan of the universe, the foundation of the house of
334

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
life, stretching from star to star, linking unborn worlds
in the anguished embrace of its passion. The Law
of Gravitation is not so deeply scored on the heart of
Nature as the Sign of the Cross. It is the puU of
the Cross that makes the whole creation groan and
travail in pain together until now. The Cross has
blazed its trail across aU Ufe. " Turn to the heights,"
exclaims Thomas k Kempis, " turn to the deeps, turn
within, turn without — everywhere thou shalt find
the Cross ! " If it were not so, the city missionary and
slum evangeUst would know their message hoUow and
empty In the act of uttering it. Only a Cross that
Unks a universe of worlds and reconciles abyss to abyss
can save " Old Born Drunk." That the city mis
sionary is probably unaware of this wider context
matters not the least ; the wisest of us reck little of
the things by which we live. If Grace is to be any
thing more than a theological catch-word, it must
be co-extensive with life ; and to make it thus co
extensive is not to belittle its supreme manifestation
in Christ Jesus, but to magnify it. A Cross that
only operates in the Uttle patch we have fenced off
from the whole coherent field of life is a depleted
Cross. And Mysticism, more than any other spiritiaal
movement, has served to recall the theologian to
the essential glory of the Cross as the most charac
teristic expression of the Being of God and not
merely a temporary expedient to meet an emergency.
The separation of the humiliation of the Son of Man
from the glory which He had from the beginning with
His Father, of the shame He endured from the joy
335

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
that was set before Him, has tended to make our
theology unreal and to vulgarise popular religion.
Soren Kierkegaard, the deep-souled and eccentric
Danish philosopher, has launched the darts of his
caustic wit against a popular Protestantism which
does its best to forget " that little episode of Cal
vary " and exhausts itself In lauding and magnifying
an exalted Redeemer whom it would have scorn
fully passed by in the days of His humiliation.^
The charge is not entirely unfounded. Of faith
which becomes contemporaneous with the Crucified
and recognises His royalty in His most bitter shame
there is aU too Uttle. That the Cross should be
the Throne and the King of Glory be " reigning
from the Tree " is a truth which Protestantism
has largely forgotten and Ultramontanlsm denies
daily, though many a humble Christian soul lives
by it StiU.
It Is at this point that Gnosticism, for aU its
distorted vision, voiced a genuine human instinct.
Gnosticism perished miserably because it appeared
at a time when Christological dogma was as yet at
too fluid a stage, and the Church too weak either to
absorb the good in it without being swamped by its
vicious elements, or to hammer it into a more vaUd
shape. It crumbled to decay before it had reached
maturity — a noble clay turned to mud for want of
an opposing force strong enough to mould it. But
in what survives of Gnostic Uterature we of to-day
may see how tremendous and myriad-faced an
impression Jesus made upon the first centuries, and
* Einubung im Christentum, pp. 189-197.
336

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
how deeply the " blazing scandal and flagrant
indiscretion of the Cross " had scored itself upon
minds to which It was a stumbling-block, but which
none the less felt the drawing power of the Crucifled.
The Gnostic mind revolted from the idea of an
Incarnation and a death whose lowUness and sheer,
sordid ignominy seemed to it unworthy of God and
incompatible with His essential being. This feeling
was obviously not peculiar to Gnosticism. It was
common to Jewish and pagan opponents of Chris
tianity, whom it moved to reject the Gospel, and to
Christian theologians, whom it forced to treat the
humlUation of Jesus as a brief, temporal experience —
a kenosis in the sense of a surrender of essential
attributes. Gnosticism, however, took its own most
significant way out of the dilemma in the so-caUed
" Gnostic Crucifixion." ^ While the simulacrum of
Christ is being mocked and crucified, Christ Himself,
who cannot suffer, takes His disciples aside and shows
them a cross of Ught and glory of which the cross of
wood is but the exoteric symbol for the benefit of
such as are " outside the mystery." " Nothing,"
says the Christ to John, " of the things which they will
say of Me, have I suffered." Grotesque as the narra
tive is, it enshrines a healthy instinct. It represents
a heroic attempt to meet and answer the natural
protest of the rational man against a humiliation of
God which does violence to His essential nature ;
and it seems to us, on the whole, a worthier solution
of the problem than that assumption of a temporary
^ The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew, and Thomas (ed.
Pick), pp. 183-188. 337

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
masquerading of God which has for so long defaced
popular theology. It expresses that indefeasible
conviction of the sincere soul in the presence of
Jesus which made Traherne declare centuries later,
in words we have already quoted, that aU the corn
and wine and oil and gold and silver in the world
"ministered in an Invisible manner to the Son of
Man as He hung upon the cross."
It is only slowly that we are coming to recognise
that the problem which underlay the Gnostic posi
tion is a genuine one — that the candid and aspiring
soul must ever revolt against a humiliation of the
Incarnate God which is not in entire consonance with
His eternal being, and that such labels as " kenosis "
do not lessen the difficulty by one hair's breadth.
Nor can we pretend that the mystics have solved
it. Whenever they have attempted to deal with it
they have leaned towards the Gnostic Interpretation.
Yet mystic theology has served to keep the problem
before our eyes, and carries within it valuable mate
rial for its solution. For it implies that the Cross is
not an after-thought of God — a heroic remedy for a
desperate emergency — but the corner-stone of crea
tion. If the Christ-process must be repeated in every
human soul ; if no son of God can be brought to
glory except he be crucified with Christ as well as
believe in Christ crucified for him ; nay, if the whole
cosmos must travel to God by way of Calvary,
then the Cross is the heart of the universe — Is, Indeed,
none other than that meek omnipotence of God by
which chaos is being turned to order and evil to
good. Mysticism here adumbrates a theological con-
338

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
viction which Is gradually coming to its own — that
in the life and death of Jesus God Is most truly
Himself ; that in it there is no humiUatlon which is
not entirely " natural " to the unfathomable humility
of Divine Love, no kenosis which empties it of one
fibre of its original and inherent majesty and glory.
If we have got beyond the naive and untenable
doctrines of mutually contradictory attributes In
God, and realise that He is Love and that His omni
potence, wisdom, and justice are the omnipotence,
wisdom, and justice of perfect Love, we must sooner
or later arrive at the doctrine of the essential
humanity, or rather Christhood, of God, and see in
the death of Jesus, not the veiling, but the most
perfect manifestation of His glory.
And mystic Christology, unlike the Gnostic type,
was born of a deep experimental fellowship with the
Crucified. Whatever its defects — and it must at aU
points be supplemented by the more explicitly evan
geUcal interpretation — it was the theology of those
who reaUsed the peace and the conflict, the humilia
tion and the glory, the joy and the anguish, the
severity and the sweetness of the Cross in terms of
their personal Ufe. As Principal Forsyth once said
of the theology of the Puritans, so it may be said of
that of the mystics, that it was graven on their
hands. For them there was at bottom only one way
of depleting the Cross of Christ — refusing to bear it,
and only one way of making that Cross effectual —
nalUng our lives to it. They allowed the nails of the
true Cross to strike through, tiU in the anguish of that
transfixion the world was indeed crucified to them and
339

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
they to the world ; and so they uttered their message.
" Not with words of wisdom " — nay, with not a few
words of foUy — they preached their gospel, but with
the smiting eloquence of those who bear in their bodies
the marks of the Lord Jesus.

HO

CHAPTER XI
MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
The eschatology of a nation is always the last part of its religion to
experience the transforming power of new ideas and new facts.
Canon Charles.
If there be in Thy Eternity, before Thee, some One Body, or Kingdom of
Thy children, not a division, not a tribe, not a party, but one that includes
all, one that by principles and sympathies in common with all, offers sacrifices
of thanksgiving for all, and communicates blessings to all, then I pray, if it
seem good in Thy sight, that I may be associated with that Body.
John Pulsford.
The King's Daughter is all glorious within,
Her clothing of wrought gold sets forth her bliss ;
Where the endless choruses of heaven begin
The King's Daughter is ;
Perfect her notes in the perfect harmonies ;
With tears wiped away, no conscience of sin,
Loss forgotten and sorrowful memories ;
Alight with Cherubin, afire with Seraphim,
lily for pureness, rose for charities.
With joy won and with joy evermore to win,
The King's Daughter is. Christina Rossetti.

SYNOPSIS
The significance of the problem — The Eschatological School
and the " Galilean Gospel " — Mysticism as a solution.
I. Should Eschatology be completely transmuted into
Mysticism ? — Its corrective value — Vicious antithesis between
evolution and cataclysm — The true opposition that between
two types of final events — The eschatology of Jesus to be
interpreted by His filial consciousness — Von Dobschiitz on
transmuted eschatology — The eschatological dement in
Mysticism. II. The eschatological element in the doctrine of
the Indwelling Christ — Where Christ is, there is the Kingdom
— The indwelling implies an aTro/cciA.vi/'is — Without eschatology
the experience of timelessness a delusion. III. The mystic
doctrine of the Holy Spirit and its eschatological reference —
Pre-Reformation Mysticism and its emphasis upon the indi
vidual aspect — The post-Reformation conception of a Spirit-
created Church — The eschatological principle in the Christian
Ecclesia. IV. The Doctrine of the Holy Assembly — Sir W.
Robertson Nicoll on the catholicity of the mystic Holy Church
— ^Mr. A. E. Waite on its inwardness — The Holy Assembly not
the Church Invisible — Eckartshausen's The Cloud upon the
Sanctuary — The eschatology of the Holy Assembly. V. The
Mystic Doctrine of the Redemption of the Body — Its connec
tion with Sacramental doctrine — Coventry Patmore on God
manifest in the flesh — John Pulsford on transfigured humanity
— The " multitudinous " coming of the Son of Man.

CHAPTER XI
MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
It is coming to be more and more recognised that
the eschatological problem will for a long time to
come form the storm-centre not merely of New
Testament criticism, but also of theological inquiry
in the broadest sense. To those for whom the
eschatological theory is identified with the name of
Albert Schweitzer this wiU seem an exaggerated
statement. But it must be borne in mind that
Schweitzer, while his meteoric brilliance made him
the most conspicuous figure in the field, is neither the
pioneer nor the most solid and important represen
tative of a movement which still awaits its full
development, and that the reaction from his extreme
positions, so far from ending the controversy, gave it
a new lease of life.
To give even a brief outline of that controversy is
impracticable here, and indeed its details do not affect
our present considerations. It suffices to remind our
selves that the eschatological school, even at its ex
tremest, produced a salutary effect upon theological
thought. It shattered the idylUc convention of
what was called " the GaUlean Gospel," and planted
the Cross on the very shores of Gennesaret. The
Uberal theology which preceded it made Jesus a
winsome preacher of the Kingdom, a lover of birds
343

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
and lilies, of children and of homely common life.
When at last He saw that clerical prejudice and priestly
hatred were bent on His destruction. He accepted the
Cross as the test of His loyalty and the crowning oppor
tunity of self-sacrifice. To this the eschatological
school opposed a reading of the life of Jesus which
made the Cross central. It spoke of One who was
conscious of having come into the world only to die,
over whose soul a great and imminent catastrophe
had cast long shadows, who was, indeed, obsessed
with a sense of pending doom. Nurtured in the crude
and lurid apocalyptic expectations of Judaism, his
Messianic consciousness naturaUy fitted itself into
their mould, and so real and present were they
to Him that even His purely ethical teaching was
conditioned by them. And so He taught an Interims-
ethik — entirely admirable for those who expected the
immediate return of the Son of Man, but lamentably
impracticable for citizens of a world destined to last.
For many this new reading of the Gospel shattered
not only the Galilean idyll, but their whole conception
of Jesus as the perfect Man, leaving them with a Jewish
visionary whose teachings must needs be of doubtful
value for modern needs. Unable to meet the escha-
tologists on their own ground, they sought refuge from
their conclusions in Mysticism. If the teaching of
the Synoptic Jesus was overwhelmingly eschato
logical, it was transmuted in the PauUne, and stiU
more perfectly in the Johannine, writings into pure
Mysticism. Thus New Testament Mysticism became
the haven of troubled souls from the unwelcome
encroachments of an " eschatological " flood-tide,
344

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
and it may be claimed that the present revival of
interest in mystical literature on the part of preachers
and teachers is largely due to this recoil from an inter
pretation which would rob the Christian message of Its
characteristic inwardness and universality.

With the critical aspect of the situation we need
not concern ourselves here, but a question which
extends far beyond merely textual and historical
considerations caUs for treatment. Is Mysticism
reaUy a refuge from eschatology ? Does it not
include a strong eschatological element, and may not
eschatology be as truly a corrective of Mysticism as
Mysticism is a solvent of eschatology ?
The question does not appeal to the popular reU
gious mind. We have had it ingrained into us by a
generation of teachers that eschatology is a crude,
unspiritual thing, leading on the inteUectual side to a
materialistic conception of God, and on the practical
to an " other-worldUness " which sings about heaven
whUe grinding the faces of the poor. True, Jesus
used the language of Jewish apocalyptic, but He did
so out of pedagogic accommodation to His hearers,
and invested it with a deep spiritual significance.
And so we have come to dismiss all apocalyptic
and eschatology as a decidedly regrettable survival.
But was Jewish apocalyptic, even at its crudest,
the thing we have so conventionally accepted it to
be ? Was there nothing in it that attracted the mind
of Jesus, no inherent value that commended it to
345

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Him as a fit vehicle of His teaching ? Was it a mere
accident that the Greek, whose gods were destined
to become the decorative figures in eighteenth-
century vers de societe and ornamental parks, had no
eschatology and knew only of a golden age in the
dim past, while the Hebrews, who were destined to
give the world its Christ, had a whole apocalyptic
Uterature and a popular Messianic hope ? Is there
not at bottom (though usage forbids the appUcation
of the term) something eschatological in every
manifestation of growth and development ? Are
not quiet development and cataclysmic upheaval com
bined in Nature and in man ? The adolescent boy is
conscious of mental growth. He feels a straining and
stretching in his soul, a sense of daily coming nearer —
he scarcely knows what ; he only knows that such a
tension of soul as he feels must tend towards some
thing. Then one day, by some apparently trivial
thing, a word, a look, a woman's smile, a lark's song,
his whole world is shattered and a new world lies
about him. It came in the twinkUng of an eye —
the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.
It was a cataclysm, yet he knows that It was also
the result of slow growth. Development and cata
clysm, growth ending in a leap that bridges years —
" so shall it be," says the mystic who is always an
eschatologist also, " when the Son of Man comes " ;
that is, when the eye which could not see the ascended
Christ suddenly gives place to a new organ of vision
which sees " this same Jesus " walking along the
old familiar roads, and the amazed and joy-intoxicated
soul realises that this sudden, startling change is
346

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
the leap at the end of a gradual process. For years
the new eye, the new capacity for seeing, has been
slowly built up beneath the dark scaffolding of the
old. Then suddenly something was broken away, a
film was removed, and behold the Son of Man walking
on the earth which He had never left. We are not
concerned here with the vaUdity or Biblical " sound
ness " of this particular view of the meaning of the
Ascension. The point is that it Is at once true
Mysticism and genuine eschatology.
To oppose the idea of a gradual growth to a
sudden cataclysmic consummation and to call the first
mystical and the second eschatological is to fall into
the old error of opposing process to event. As we
have reminded ourselves in the preceding chapter,
eyery^vent presupposes a process. Process must
manifest itself in events and be a process towards
something ; events cannot spring from nowhere : they„
must be expressions of some underlying process. And
indeed in such seemingly contradictory Gospel sayings
as, " Verily I say unto you, there are some standing
here who shaU not taste of death until they see the
Kingdom of God arrive with power," and, " So is the
Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed on the
earth . . . but when the fruit is ripe, straightway he
putteth forth the sickle," the opposition is not at aU
between event and process, but between two types of
events — between the immediate arrival of a Kingdom
of God faUing ready-made from heaven, as it were, and
the final estabUshment of a Kingdom which comes as
the end of an inward development. Here, and not in
an artificial antithesis between process and event, Ues
347

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
the crux of the eschatological problem.^ In its gene
ralised form it may be stated thus : Every spiritually-
minded man, and in a deep though not obvious
sense the mystic most of aU, looks forward to a
Divine Event. The question is whether this Divine
Event is something ready-made and inherently inde
pendent of what has gone before, or whether it is the
consummation of a process which not only leads up
to it, but is an integral part of it. In other words,
does the process which precedes the event bear to it
the relation of a finger-post to the village it indicates
or that of the seed to the ear of corn ? Does it
merely herald the comlrig of the event, or is it that
coming ? In the first case we have an eschatology
which is little if anything more than apocalyptic,
and which does not necessarily involve any ethical
content. In the second, we have an eschatology
which is, in fact, a teleology based upon ethical values
and informed with an ethical impulse.
For the Christian that Divine Event is what is known
as the Kingdom of God interpreted in terms of the
consciousness of Jesus ; that is, in the Ught of the
Fatherhood of God and the Saviourhood of Christ.
It will be seen at once that for one who so interprets
the concept of the Kingdom the eschatological prob
lem, while it has its own place and importance, and
while it would be worse than folly to minimise its
difficulties, cannot present itself in that sharp and
lurid form in which scholars like Schweitzer would have
us conceive it. After all, the ultimate question is,
* For a succinct and illuminating discussion of the eschatological element
in the teaching of Jesus, see Professor Moffatt's The Theology of tbe Gospels,
chap. ii. 348

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
Are we to interpret the consciousness of Jesus by His
eschatological teaching, and that treated with a
Uteralness and lack of imagination which we should be
ashamed to apply to the inspired symboUsm of any
other prophet, or are we to interpret the eschato
logical element in His teaching by His consciousness
of God and of His Sonship, and by the spiritual
impression He made upon His contemporaries and
those who came after ? Or — to narrow the issue down
to one crucial point — if for Jesus the forgiveness of
sins was the very core and soul of His Gospel of the
Kingdom, that which gave His Messianic works of
heaUng their significance and character, then clearly
He could not take over the current eschatological
forms without so changing their content as to effect a
virtual trans valuation. Much is made of the trans
mutation of eschatology in the Pauline and Johannine
writings ; is it reasonable, to say the least, to assume
that He who was the Source of their inspiration
should have brought no appreciably transmuting
influence to bear upon the eschatological material He
found to His hands ? ^ The words of von Dob
schiitz ^ are worth pondering In this connection.
" There is," he says, " in the teaching of Jesus a strong
Une of what I would caU transmuted eschatology. I
mean eschatology transmuted in the sense that,
what was spoken of in Jewish eschatology as to come
^ I am, of course, aware that in many eschatological passages — notably
the discourse in Matt. xxiv. — we have not the words of our Lord as He spoke
them, but as affected by an infiltration of Jewish apocalyptic elements into
the primitive sources. This does not, however, impair the force of the
argument, as the extreme eschatological position is not based upon such
passages, which are admitted to be doubtful by leading scholars of the
extreme eschatological school.
* Quoted by Professor Moffatt in Tbe Theology ofthe Gospels, p. 84.
349

.--I-

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
in the last days is taken here as already at hand in the
lifetime of Jesus ; transmuted at the same time in the
other sense that what was expected as an external
change is taken inwardly ; not all people seeing it
but Jesus' disciples becoming aware of it."
Turning to the Christian mystic, we find that the
differentia which distinguishes him from his feUow-
Christians is that he interprets the idea of the King
dom of God predominantly in terms of the indweUing
Christ. Viewed on the surface, he carries the trans
mutation of eschatology to the point where it ceases to
be eschatology and becomes pure Mysticism. But in
reaUty his most deeply mystical convictions carry an
eschatological principle which, so far from marring
their spirituality, serves to keep them within the realm
of moral reaUty. In four mystical doctrines especiaUy
may this principle be traced : the doctrines of the
IndweUing Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Assembly,
and the Redemption of the Body.
II
For the Christian Mystic Christ is the Kingdom.
When Jesus said " The Kingdom of God is at hand "
and " The Kingdom of God is within you " He spoke
with Uteral truth, for He was knocking at the door.
He was dwelling with His own, and where Christ is,
there is the Kingdom. The mystic knows that the
Kingdom of Heaven is in the timeless present, for
Christ dwells in his heart by the time-annihilating
energy of faith. He knows also that the Kingdom
wiU come at the end of long sore travail and tribula-
350

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
tion, for the Christ In him is not only the ever-present
Treasure of the soul, but the Hope of glory ; not only
the Source of the soul's Ufe, but also its Critic, whose
unerring finger ever points to what ought to be but is
not yet. Unless he be a false mystic who mistakes the
manifestations of natural religiosity or erotic emotion
for the operation of the indwelling Christ, his con
sciousness of the presence of Christ within wiU in
creasingly imply an expectation of the Christ to come.
To him the coming of Christ is not the coming of One
who had been absent, but the perfected manifestation
and final unveiling of a Presence that has always been
the inspiration and comfort of the faithful soul.
To say that Christ dwells with us here and now is to
come short of the mystic realisation of His presence.
For him who knows Christ within his soul, there is
neither " here " nor " now," for he has surmounted
time and space. This timelessness, however, does
not contradict the eschatological principle, for, as we
have already seen, it is only in passing through time
and being fulfiUed in time that the love of God is
known to be beyond time and change ; and this holds
true also of men's realisation of the timeless present.
It is not by treating time and space as iUusions, and
therefore aU eschatology as unspiritual, that true in
wardness is attained, but by humble and devout
intimacy with Him who wrought out our redemption
in time and space, and whose present comfort in the
deep places of the heart speaks of a coming " in the
clouds of heaven." To transmute the eschatology of
Him who is to come completely Into the Mysticism of
the Christ within is to open the door to every form of
351

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
unethical, if not anti-ethical, spirituality and to close
it upon reality. The Kingdom within cannot be
realised by ignoring the fact that we have not yet
attained. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God ;
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we
know that when He shall appear, we shaU be Uke Him,
for we shaU see Him as He is." The mystic may, in
rare moments of vision, anticipate that consummation.
St. Bernard, the Victorines, Blessed Angela de
FoUgno, Lady JuUan, Ruysbroeck, Richard Rolle,
and aU great mystics of the explicitly visionary
type, knew themselves in moments of transcendent
iUumination to be looking with transformed and
glorified eyes into the unveiled face of Christ. But
they did not profane these moments of vision by
trying to give them a permanence in time which did
not belong to them, and by some act of mental
juggling to persuade themselves that they had finaUy
passed beyond the phenomenal to the ultimately real.
Their way was rather to see the sins and imperfections
of their pilgrimage loom black against the flashUght
picture of attained bUss, and to let the fugitive glory
of their vision drive them with a deeper repentance
and a more whole-hearted surrender to that Cross
which alone makes the saint.

Ill
At first sight it would seem as if the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit were the most uneschatological of aU
New Testament convictions. It might, indeed, be
taken as marking the final transmutation of escha-
352

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
tology in the Fourth Gospel, where " eschatology as
such has practically vanished," and where " the grand
vision which mystic faith and communion inspired
of life present yet eternal, springing from the sacra
mentally sustained union of the Christian with God
in Christ or by the Spirit, replaces the older and
authentic expectations of a Kingdom to be and a visible
judgment on a transfigured earth, and the local and
national is absorbed inthehuman and universal vista." ^
If Mysticism Is nothing else than " the experience of
the Holy Spirit " or " the realisation of the Spirit of
hoUness," ^ it might seem to foUow that the mystic has
no room for eschatology in his deeply individualistic,
inward and " pneumatic " conception of religion.
And such a view is apparently confirmed by a
study of pre-Reformation Mysticism. In the litera
ture of that fruitful period, the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit, where it is formally stated at all, is nothing
else than the intensification and extension of the
doctrine of the Christ within individuallstically con
ceived. The Spirit is He who makes that indwelling
real and effective. He is not conceived of as coming to
indemnify us for our Lord's absence, but to convince
us of His abiding presence and to make His inward
ministry available for the believer. One important
fact, however, is usually forgotten In such an inter
pretation of Mysticism, namely, that the inward and
often exaggeratedly individualistic conception of the
indweUing Spirit which some take to be central in
Mysticism was primarily a reaction against the insti-
1 E. W. winstanley, Jesus and tbe Future, p. 353.
* R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. jia.
353

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
tutionalism and externally-conceived eschatology of
the mediaeval Church. The pre-Reformation mystics
had discovered, as a pearl of great price, the value of
the individual soul. Over against the institutionalism
of a Church of which they remained loyal and devoted
members and the unspirltuaUty of an eschatology
whose main features they never chaUenged, they were
moved to bear witness to the individuality. Inwardness,
and secrecy of God's approach to man and man's
response to God. That testimony, with aU its force of
one-sided emphasis, is contained In their writings, but
behind these writings lies a wiUing and, on the whole,
uncritical acceptance of ecclesiastical dogmas and
institutions. Their conviction of the inwardness of
religion existed side by side with an inherited belief
in an external and cataclysmic eschatological system
which they took for granted.
It was otherwise, however, with post-Reforma
tion mystics. They felt themselves to be under no
vow of allegiance to any visible Church, Catholic
or Protestant, to owe no filial obligation which
excluded criticism. They challenged Churches and
dogmas in the name of tbe free and Uberating Spirit
of God. They were, on the face of it, spiritual free
lances, if not rebels ; and their utterances breathed a
virile and Indomitable determination not to let any
Church consistory or council rob them of the Uberty
wherewith Christ had made them free or deny to
them the inalienable privilege of every Christian soul
to " prophesy " as the Spirit moved it.^ Yet, on
' For a valuable original study of post-Reformation Mysticism see Rufus
M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the i6th and I'jth Centuries.
354

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
looking into the facts, we find that these freemen of
the Spirit were not at aU the individualists so many
assume them to have been. In spite of a reaction
from every type of institutionalism which led them to
imagine that spirit could dispense with form, they
proceeded to form groups which were reaUy Churches
In a sense in which the pre-Reformation mystical
groups were not. They were not merely societies of
illuminativfhich. asked for little more than tobe aUowed
to foUow the gleam in peace, but societies which
were conscious of an apostolate and claimed the
authority of the Spirit for their corporate testimony.
Their most important contribution to Christian
thought was their unformulated and almost uncon
scious witness to the social activity of the Holy Spirit.
They recaUed Christendom to a truth to which no
Church born merely of a protest against Rome could
have recalled it — to the fact that at Pentecost the
Spirit came not upon one individual here and another
there, but upon a company of men aU in one accord
and in one place — that it found the disciples a group
of Uke-minded individuals and left them a Church.
The Spiritual Reformers were individualists, if you
Uke ; yet, by one of the strange and significant incon
sistencies with which history is sown, they revived the
Pentecostal doctrine of the Church which stands for
the passing of individualism, the breaking away of the
hard edges of human personality, and for new and
wonderful possibilities of expression and feUowship.
Corporate prayer (which, be it remembered, is a very
different thing from either saying prayers in unison
or foUowing the extemporised prayers of a leader)
355

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
was born in the Quaker meeting and in the conventicle.
Here also Ues the justification of the free exercise of
prophecy and other gifts of the Spirit. So profound
and dominant was the consciousness of a call to mutual
comfort and inspiration that the Spiritual Reformers,
Uke the Apostles, judged all gifts by their power unto
edification. " I would have you aU speak with
tongues," they exclaimed with St. Paul, " but rather
that ye should prophesy . . . that the Church may be
edified."
But the moment the descent of the Holy Spirit is con
ceived of as something more than individual iUumina
tion and inspiration and is interpreted in terms of an
ecclesia, the eschatological principle is granted. A
Church involves a commission, an apostolate. The
Body of Christ is Christ's instrument. His organ, and
that implies purpose. A Church without an escha
tology in that sense degenerates into a coterie of
esoteric initiates, an inner circle which possesses the
Kingdom of God as the drunken man possesses a
fortune — in a deUrious or cataleptic dream. Inward
ness which does not react upon and transmute the
outward is a poisonous drug. But such is not the
true mystic doctrine. As the Holy Spirit represents
at once the intensifying and the extension of the Christ
in man, so the Spirit-created Church represents the
continuation and extension of the Incarnation. She
is the Body wherewith the ascended Christ clothes
Himself for His continuous dweUing in the world ;
the Body in which He knocks at the door of an un
wiUing and rebellious world ; the Body in which He
suffers and offers His Atoning Sacrifice for all mankind.
356

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
To make such an indwelUng and redemption an
inward thing in the sense of excluding its aTroKaXin/zts
and its realisation in terms of a Kingdom of God upon
earth is to rob it of its ethical significance.
IV
This leads us on to the doctrine of the Holy
Assembly. As time wore on, and even the most
spiritual of the post-Reformation communities tended
to formalism and graduaUy to decadence, mystic
souls turned more and more to that Church Invisible
which is for ever secure " from the contagion of the
world's slow stain," and whose walls shelter ten
thousand times ten thousand of fedeemed ones whom
no Church or party ever owned. And as mystics sat
more and more loosely to the Bibllcism of the Refor
mation theology, and speculation once more reared
its head, not under the protection of Mother Church
this time, but under the more doubtful aegis of Gnostic
and other theosophical traditions, the Cabalistic
doctrine of the Holy Assembly was explored afresh.^ .^
This doctrine, while it" may be construed in the
sense of a vicious esotericism, is, as Sir W. Robert
son Nicoll justly observes, "a testimony catholic
to aU Mysticism. It is concerned with a withdrawn
brotherhood in whose hands the experimental know
ledge of God has remained and has increased. . . .
^The most popular exposition of this difficult doctrine is found in
Eckartshausen's well-known tractate, The Cloud upon the Sanctuary,
while its deeper and more exhaustive unfolding is enshrined in a largely
anonymous and not easily accessible literature, which has been brilliantly
utilised in the profound and erudite investigations of Mr. A. E. Waite.
357

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
They [the mystics] have recognised that the Church
visible is a stage on the way to the esoteric
Church, the Holy Assembly that has hoped and
worked through the ages. . . . The door of that
Assembly is never closed. Through it there pass
continuaUy men of aU sects and denominations —
those wise and enlightened spirits who know that they
have not reached finality and keep passing on through
stage after stage in search of the Absolute, the Ulti
mate, the Everlasting. ... It is one of the chief
aUevIations of the sorrow of earthly disunion that we
may ever and anon come to the surprised and joyful
consciousness that the brother who is bearing another
name and is fighting in another army is in reaUty one
with us in the Mystical Holy Church. . . . Wherefore
it is the wont of mystics to claim this fellowship, and
to exact recognition ' In all houses, temples and tarry
ing places of the Fraternity.' " ^
Mr. Waite, in his admirable Introduction to Miss
de Steiger's translation of The Cloud upon the Sanc
tuary, emphasises certain marks and characteristics
of the Holy Assembly not readily discerned by the
beginner. He points out, for instance, that the Holy
Assembly is not, as some have supposed, a " corporate
body existing merely within the Church and control
ling or leading it from a specific local centre in con
cealment." * It is not, in fact, a magnified secret
society or lodge. He also reminds us that it is distin
guished from the Church Invisible or the Communion
of Saints In that it possesses not merely " a concurrent
' The Garden of Nuts, pp. 69, 71, 73, 74.
' The Cloud upon tbe Sanctuary, Introduction, p. xiv.
358

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
harmony of mind in Christ Jesus," ^ but also a dis
tinctive common consciousness. The inwardness of
the Holy Assembly — an inwardness which, however,
does not preclude a purified eschatological element —
is weU expressed by Eckartshausen himself in his
classical treatise. " AU exterior societies," he says,
and in this he includes mystical lodges, " subsist only
in proportion as this society [the Holy Assembly]
communicates its spirit thereto. . . . If it be necessary
that true members should meet together, they find
and recognise each other with perfect certainty. No
disguise can be used, neither hypocrisy nor dissimu
lation could hide the characteristic quaUties of this
society, because they are too genuine. . . . Anyone
can look for the entrance, and any man who is within
can teach another to seek for it ; but only he who is
ripe can arrive inside. . . . He who is ripe is joined
to the chain, perhaps often where he thought least
Ukely, and at a point of which he knew nothing him-
self."2 It is impossible to do more here than touch the
outmost fringe of an obscure and weighty subject,
but this much is obvious — that such a doctrine as that
of the Holy Assembly, if rightly discerned, may lead
us to the house not made with hands, and that
if it be profaned by a superficial and pseudo-
esoteric interpretation, it wiU lure us into the twilight
country of artificial adeptship and cheap theosophical
speculation. Against this danger Eckartshausen and
aU true hierophants of this mystery attempt to
1 The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, p. xxxi.
2 Ibid., pp. 26, 28-29. 359

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
secure us by laying overwhelming stress upon the
inward and spiritual character of the Holy Assembly.
But none the less the doctrine has a distinctly
eschatological aspect, which is tersely stated by Eck
artshausen himself when he declares that the Holy
Assembly is "the society whose members form a theo
cratic republic which one day will be the Regent Mother
of the whole world." "• And this is further empha
sised when he treats of the passing away of the exterior
Church not merely as the absorption of what is abiding
within it by the Holy Assembly, but as part of the
great consummation when the Son shaU yield up the
Kingdom to the Father and God shaU be aU in aU.
Here again it is the eschatological principle which
gives ethical tone to the doctrine, and preserves it
from the taint of quasi-esoteric self-sufficiency and
selfishness. The Holy Assembly is not merely the
inmost circle and hidden sanctuary of elect souls :
it is the earnest and guarantee of a world-wide
redemption, the mountain to which aU peoples and
tribes shaU gather. It is not the perfecter of
the race — one only is the Perfecter of humanity,
even Christ Jesus ; on the contrary, it needs the
whole redeemed human family of God for its
perfecting.

The return of the later mystics to the venerable
doctrine of the Holy Assembly was born of a reaction
against the gradual externalisation of even the most
^ The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, p. 29.
360

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
spiritually conceived religious societies. The rehabili
tation of the doctrine of the Redemption of the Body
originated in the opposite movement — in a recoil from
the essentially Manichaean spirituaUty which secu
larised the temple of the Holy Ghost in the supposed
interest of the altar. The awakening social conscience
of Christendom and a new conception of human
personaUty produced a twofold result. In not a few
quarters it combated one secularisation by another —
it degraded the Church into a social organisation and
a philanthropic agency. Again and again the repre
sentatives of social Christianity defeated their noblest
ends by forgetting that if the body is to be redeemed
at aU, it can only be through the soul — a truth which
the mystics, on the other hand, were never tempted to
forget. They, too, were touched by the new social
feeling. They, too, realised, in their own fashion,
that man is not an impervious individual but the
member of a body, and that true union with the Head
involves a genuine and vital sympathy with Him in
His care for the bodies as well as the souls of men.
And with such a conviction increasingly strong within
them, they did not hesitate to take their full share in
the social and philanthropic movements of their time.
But graduaUy — (and it must be admitted that the
immediate impulse came largely from their inherent
interest in alchemy, magic, and theosophy) — the idea
of a transmutation of the body and the emergence of a
new type of humanity took root in the minds of many
of the later Christian mystics. In the very nature of
things this doctrine contains many purely speculative
elements, and any attempt at a hard-and-fast formula-
361

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
tion, such as finds favour with theosophical mystics
who affect the dead language of alchemy, must be
sternly deprecated. The roots of the doctrine are,
however, deeply embedded in the soil of Old Testa
ment prophecy and Pauline Christology and escha
tology, and in the Church's confession of faith In the
resurrection of the body she gives an eschatological
form to the mystic doctrine of the redemption of the
body with its own subtler eschatological reference.
In as far as Christian Mysticism remained loyal to
the Visible Church of Christ, it was guarded against a
one-sided spiritualism, in spite of its share In the
mediaeval contempt of the body. If it depreciated
the body of man, it at least magnified the Body of
Christ. Dora Greenwell voices the sane and discern
ing temper of the best mystics when she reminds us
that " it is not by rejecting what is formal, but by
interpreting it, that we advance in true spirituality ;
the Spirit of God, even as the spirit of a man, works,
and as far as we yet understand the conditions of our
being, lives only through ' the body which has been
prepared for it.' By things which we can see and hear,
by things which our hands can handle, by words and
forms, by doctrines and institutions men Uve, and in
them is the life of man. For it is neither by that which
is merely natural, nor by that which is purely spiritual,
that man's complex nature Is nourished and sustained ;
he lives neither by bread alone, nor yet upon angels'
food, but upon that in which the properties of each
are included, the Bread which came down from heaven to
give life unto the world." ^
^ The Patience of Hope, pp. 70-71.
362

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
And while the later doctrine of the redemption ot
the body received its outward stimulus from the
theosophical speculations which were in the air, it, no
less than the doctrine of Cosmic Redemption, had its
source not in the speculative impulse, but In the
mystic's personal experience of redeeming grace.
ReaUsIng that body and soul were not separable
quantities, and that salvation comes by the personal
touch of Christ upon the receptive heart of man, the
mystic also realised that the soul cannot so touch
Christ without the body sharing in that redemptive
contact. This follows, indeed, from the sacramental
doctrine which has always distinguished the main
stream of Mysticism from its backwaters. The ques
tion of specific sacramental dogma does not affect the
issue. Whatever dogmatic position the individual
mystic may or may not hold, it is his conviction that
the most vital and intimate relation between himself
and his Redeemer is a continuous assimilation or " eat- „
Ing into himself " of His substance and being transub
stantiated into His likeness. Not thinking, prayer or
meditation, not dutiful obedience or ethical harmony
of wills, but a contact which can only be expressed by
saying that it is a permeation with the Body and Blood
of Christ constitutes the essence of mystic communion
with God. Such sacramental contact is, of course,
not confined to sacramental observance ; a Quaker
may (though he rarely does) hold this conviction. If";:
consists not In partaking of the Eucharist, but in a \
Eucharistic Ufe ; and thus for the CathoUc mystic the {
reservation of the consecrated Host upon the altar is ;
the outward symbol of the abiding inward and sacra- |
363

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
j mental presence of Christ. It is only too easy to
construe such expressions as " inoculation with the
body of Christ " In the sense of that " pharmaco
logical superstition " whereby the Eucharist has
been degraded in the Church of Rome, and which,
in another form, is characteristic of many heterodox
cults of the New Thought order; but the sense in
which the mystic understands them is far other.
He believes that the same Spirit who formed that
Resurrection-body of Jesus which is the firstfruits of
our resurrection will also, not through any mate
rialistically-conceived contact of matter with matter,
but through His spiritual impact upon us, build up
within the scaffolding of our mortal bodies that
glorified body which is the building we have of God,
eternal in the heavens.
Here Ues the justification of St. Paul's plea for the
consecration of our bodies to God. There can be no
holding back of the flesh which is not in a far more
real sense a holding back of the soul. It is the carnal
mind that spells death. And, says the mystic in
effect, if we offer our bodies to be the temples of the
Holy Spirit, think you that generating and energising
Spirit will remain inactive ? Will He not set His
stamp on the clay ? Nay, will He not rather, working
from within, evolve our immortal body, the new house
of our humanity, out of the old ? That flesh and
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God has no hard,
literal significance for the mystic who believes that
not only our spiritual being, but even the Infinite
Being of God, owes something to flesh and blood,
seeing that it was through the Flesh and Blood of the
364

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
Son of God that the Divine essence which Is Love was
made manifest and so perfected. It is because the
true mystic believes in an Incarnation which was not
the mere putting on of a fleshly garment, nor the sub
mission of the Divine to the humiliation of the flesh,
that he also beUeves in the " interior organisation "
of redeemed man in Christ's image by being built
up inwardly in body as well as in soul. Coventry
Patmore, whose writings abound in hints and gUmpses
of that mysterious craving of spirit for conjunction
with that which is not spirit, pleads for this concep
tion when he insists that Incarnation must be regarded
" not as an historical event which occurred two
thousand years ago, but as an event which is renewed
in the body of everyone who is in the way to the ful
filment of his original destiny," ^ and repeatedly
emphasises that " redemption and transfiguration of
the senses " which come from " participation h
Christ's spiritual Body." The spiritual alchemy
and transubstantiation which is the essence of
the mystic conception of the redemption of the
body is not merely a spIrituaUsatlon of magical
beUefs, a Christianised revival of the dream of
an EUxir of Life, though it has often been cast
in those forms, but a corollary of the faith which
sees in Jesus the Resurrection and the Life — the
great Recreator who can restore to unimagined
beauty and vigour the body that has lain in the
grave for three days. And while such a conception
is hedged about with difficulties, it yet contains
material which, if patiently and cautiously worked
1 The Rod, tbe Root, and the Flower, " Homo," xix.
365

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
upon, may yield a most valuable contribution to
Christian thought.
But the redemption of the individual body carries
with It the emergence of a new humanity, and this
constitutes the characteristic eschatology of this type
of Mysticism. The inward transmutation of the
individual becomes the earnest and firstfruits of a
transmuted humanity. And as in the Individual the
spiritual body is built up within the scaffolding of the
old, so within the scaffolding of Churches and States
there is being built up the mystic Kingdom of God —
profoundly inward and spiritual, and therefore ever
tending to transmute the outward by incarnating
Itself In it. The outward manifestation, so far from
being a degradation of the inward, is its most
characteristic expression.
We may let John Pulsford expound the doctrine
at this point in his own inimitable fashion. Speaking
of that coming Kingdom which " is being built of
secret materials and by secret builders within the
scaffolding and present appearance of things," he
says, " As this kingdom presses itself down into the
souls of men and into the inner spirit of the elements,
there cannot but be agitation and change upon
change. Fury in the elements, commotion in nations,
and perplexity in men's minds are spoken of by
Christ as signs of the motion and progress of His
kingdom. ... By a law more fixed than that of
ocean-tides, do streams of Divine influence, direct
from Christ, flow into aU whose eyes and thoughts are
turned to Him. . . ." ^ His conviction of the gradual
*¦ The Supremacy of Man, pp. 223, 224, 228.
366

MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
on-coming of a Kingdom whose encroachments nothing
can stay is based upon the mystic doctrine of the
Christ within. " Having involved Himself, sunk
Himself, in Man, He involves Himself in all history,"
and to receive Christ is to receive the Kingdom.
In common with Coventry Patmore, Pulsford dweUs
much upon a bridal dispensation when a receptive
humanity, wonderfully quickened in mind and heart,
and with senses chastened to celestial keenness, will
repair to that great Feast on the Mountain of God which
Isaiah adumbrated. In his eschatology the element
of joy preponderates. " To constitute a feast," he
says, " there must be much more than enough. The
necessaries of life are not a feast ; ordinary fare is not
a feast. We take for granted that at a great festival
there will be not only luxuries, but a superabundance.
We bring together delicacies from the ends of the earth
for a special feast. Fragrance must be there ; floral
wonders must be there ; music must be there, and every
art. The idea of a feast is not the appeasement of
hunger, but the liberal refreshment of the whole man ;
not of the spirit only, but also of the senses and the
soul. . . . The Divine and the sensuous wiU not be
divided as now. The pleasures of the senses will be
deeper and intenser than at present, and the exercises
of the soul and spirit be more generously embodied ;
but every exhilaration of human Ufe will be purified
from aU admixture of corruption or dregs. The 'lees'
wiU be a dead, quiescent subsidence, and the wine of
the soul a 'well-refined joy, fuU of nature, fuU of
humanity, and fuU of God.' " ^
1 The Supremacy of Man, pp. 267, 269.
367

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
Thus mystic eschatology is seen to reproduce that
wondrous interweaving of the temporal and the eternal,
the natural and the spiritual, which is the ground
work of humanity, perfectly revealed In the sacred
humanity of the Son of God. And while the mystic
theologian has often been lured into the doubtful
realm of theosophical speculation, the central feature
of his eschatology Is conceived in the spirit of evan
geUcal doctrine. It is nothing else than the triumph
of the Father's seeking and redeeming love " in and
through the whole motherly and missionary body of
the Incarnation." It is the consummation not of an
evolutionary process, but of the saving activity of
Christ. It is not so much man achieving his destiny
as the Son of Man seeing of the travail of His soul and
being satisfied. It is not humanity cUmbing the throne
of God, but the Son of Man descending multitudinously
in a redeemed and glorified race.

368

CONCLUSIOJJ

CONCLUSION
We have sought to consider Mysticism from a
variety of aspects and to relate it to cognate fields of
life and thought. We have reminded ourselves that
in its case, no less than in the case of any other
spiritual movement, the Apostolic injunction to try
the spirits must be followed at every step. We have
also seen that, taken in Its totaUty, Mysticism is not
the pearl of great price for which the wise merchant
man of the spirit Is ever searching ; it is rather a wide
and stony field wherein he must dig diUgently to find
goodly pearls and where the deceptive and worthless
Ues nearest the surface. Our chief business has been
with its underlying thought of God, its basal doctrine
of salvation, and we have found that if Mysticism has
contributed and wiU yet contribute much to the
"development of Christian doctrine, it is because the
evangelical doctrine of Redemption is its forma
tive principle, as the soul's experience of redemption
is its vital impulse. We speak here of Christian
Mysticism, for It is our conviction that while there are
many mansions in our Father's house, and the Sufi
saint or the God-Intoxicated Fakir may be our fore
runners on the way to God, it yet remains true that
only as dominated by specifically Christian convictions
can Mysticism bring to us an inwardness which carries
within it no peril of delusion, a spirituaUty which does
371

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
not menace our ethical life, and an absorption in the
Divine which does not destroy the sacredness of our
personaUty, the reality of our freedom.

It is because Christian Mystics have often laid
more emphasis upon their Mysticism than upon their
Christianity that we find a theologian of commanding
eminence asking if the true badge of spirituality is
reaUy "a lex insita, an inner Ught, mystic indivi
dualism, and quietist piety which are co-equated with
the historic Word," or if it is " historic faith founded
on fact, energising in love, and working by consti
tutional progress. Which is the way of the Spirit
— subjective illumlnism with its shifting Ughts, or
objective revelation in an ever-fresh and growing
experience ? Is It to-day's vagrant insight, or yester
day's Apostolic inspiration, good for to-day and for
ever ? " i
An utterance such as this is, of course, open to a
charge of antithetical trifling, and it might be pointed
out that subjective illumlnism, unless it be patho
logical. Involves objective revelation. But even a
cursory acquaintance with mystical literature reveals
the fact that the error of vicious antithesis lies pri
marily at the door not of the critics of Mysticism, but
of such mystics — and there were not a few of them —
who opposed their untutored guesses and undisciplined
fancies to the Apostolic Gospel and who co-equated
their febrile visions with the historic Word. It is not
1 p. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, p. 272.
372

CONCLUSION
orthodoxy we are jealous for here, but the vaUdity of
Mysticism itself. History teaches us that wherever
a professedly Christian Mysticism has substituted its
own intuitions for the historic revelation, it has not
only failed to commend itself to the Christian con
sciousness but, what is far more serious, to redeem
its own pledges. Dr. Forsyth is entirely right when
he reminds us that " Christian mysticism reposes not
on the depths of subliminal being, which give no
footing for any authority that royalises life, but upon
the miracle of the forgiven conscience of the world
and its holy redemption." ^
But we have also seen how, in its classic type,
Christian Mysticism has been and remained centraUy
and profoundly Christian. We have seen how not
only its fundamental doctrines, but also its more
tentative and speculative positions, spring ultimately
from the experience of redemption in Christ Jesus.v
That so much in mystical doctrine is still vague and
nebulous is largely due to the inhospitable attitude of
the theologian. Instead of co-operating with the
mystic by bringing his firmer grasp and wider know
ledge to bear upon these fluid intuitions, and, wherever
possible, helping to bring them out of the penumbra
of thought into its illuminated focus. Christian
theologians have been and are content to dismiss them
as " theosophy." And If it had been their deliberate
purpose to encourage and foster questionable theoso-
phemes, they could not have adopted an attitude more
Ukely to do so. Conscious of being despised as a
vague dreamer by the official theologian, the theo-
1 The Principle of Authority, p. 470.
373

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
sophlcaUy-inclIned mystic tends to regard himself as a
martyr for spiritual liberty in face of a tyrannous
tradition, and to prosecute his wildest speculations with
redoubled vigour as a sacred obligation in the interests
of freedom. Thus speculations which otherwise would
either have been nipped In the bud or solidly grounded
and fruitfully developed become as rank and poisonous
weeds in the mystic garden. II
Our main concern, however, as we finally survey
the field, is to inquire what is its most precious and
important yield for the sorely vexed and baffled Chris
tian soul of to-day and for a Church in breathless
conflict with hostile forces without and with more
deadly foes within. That inquiry Is generally met by
the general statement that Mysticism recalls us from
the institutional to the spiritual, from externaUty to
inwardness, from ritual to communion, from creed to
Ufe. But we have so long juggled with spatial terms
such as " outward " and " inward," opposing the two
halves of one whole and putting asunder what God
has joined, that an answer in terms of mere inwardness
must prove misleading and involve a dreary tussle
with endless logomachies. We would rather say that,
among many treasures, the pearl of great price that is
hid for us in the field of Mysticism is simple devotion
and humble, loving intimacy with Jesus as the secret of
the mystic knowledge of God and the mystic communion
with God.
The great genuine Christian mystics were, above aU
374

CONCLUSION
things, men and women who had that experimental
knowledge of God for which our generation is once
more athirst. And the secret of this knowledge —
often veiled in philosophical, theosophical, and magical
terminology in their more ambitious writings, but
always patent in their lives and in their devotional
utterances — ^was their personal intimacy with Jesus
Christ. Here Ues the reason of our failures in the
spiritual Ufe, here the solution to our most complex
and ramified problems. If the mystics have any
central and specific message to our age, it is that
true inwardness, deep and habitual simpUcity of soul,
purity and clearness of intention, fixity of purpose,
splendour of courage, superb generosity of love,
heroism that ventures and throws its all into the
scale, cannot be had in their fulness and abiding
potency, except through personal, devoted, habitual
communion with Jesus Christ. They teU us that to
those who know Jesus with the deep understanding of
adoring love, prayer becomes an apostolate ; the
devotional Ufe a fruitful field of untold expanse and
potency ; the daily round one continuous, uncalculating
response to Love Incarnate. To love Jesus simply and
constantly has ever been the mystic's most " Uberal
education " in the science of God, and wherever he
has thought to transcend that personal relationship
in fte interests of a supposed spiritual immediacy,
he ha5 fallen from true communion with God and failed
of vaid spiritual achievement. Outside that relation
ship, :he hiddenness of the mystic Ufe degenerates into
abstraction and ineffectiveness, instead of being the
braclig tonic atmosphere of dynamic activity. Love
375

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
becomes a perilous sentiment, faith a presumption,
vision a fancy. Only the redeemed soul's Intimacy
with Jesus can create a devotion which wiU bear
translation into the stern and rigid necessities of the
consecrated will.
Closely aUied to this central impulse of Mysticism
is that sacramental conviction we have touched upon
so often. The mystic not only lives with Ckrist, he
lives by Him and upon Him. His message to us is
that while sacramental theories may differ, the sacra
mental Ufe is the immutable condition of the Chris
tian's communion with God. Nothing else can give
that sure power of soul, nothing else that intensity
and vicarlousness of sympathy which come of living
in mystic and sacramental union with Christ.
Ill
And at this point the testimony of Mysticism to the
soul's habitual converse and communion with Clirist
as the indispensable condition of its Ufe in (jod
merges into a testimony to the Church CathoUc and
holy as the mystic Body of Christ.
The doctrine of the Holy Assembly as " a -vfith-
drawn brotherhood in whose hands the experimefital
knowledge of God remained and Increased " haf Its
unique value ; but for the Christian mystic it is, jifter
all, not the last word upon the Church. Its hari^ony
and wholeness jar the heart that is attuned tc the
brokenness of Christ. If St. Catherine of Siena p6yed
that she might, in her measure, bear the sins j of a
heedless world ; if the theosophical mystic. Join G.
376

CONCLUSION
Gichtel, besought God that, since he was unworthy
to be an anathema for his brethren, he might at least
suffer the loss of aU things that they might be saved,
surely the Bride and Mystic Body of Christ must be
smitten with a like pity and a like passion for self-
oblation. With the gradual passing of the individualist
phase of Mysticism there dawned upon it once more
the vision of a Church which is not so much a school
and temple of wisdom as an organ of atonement and
redemption. Realising the rich and age-long infusion
of grace into the Body of Christ which every Christian
soul is caUed to share, and to which it is its duty to
contribute in its measure, the mystic also reaUses
that opportunity of a corporate filling up of what is
lacking of the sufferings of Christ which is the Church's
everlasting glory. And so, after a long and dreary
excursion into the wilderness of subjective specula
tion, separatist piety and morbid spirituality, the
mystic is turning his face back towards the Church
that he must needs be patient vsdth, remembering her
patience with him in past ages. And the gift he
bears in his hands is the long-lost conviction that
it is only into a broken Body that a lost and sor
rowful world wIU come, that it is only into a pierced
side that a perplexed humanity will thrust its hands,
that the Church must be crucified with Christ and
refuse to come down from the Cross until her travail
is consummated. Herein, and not merely in any
doctrinal or institutional reforms, Ues the remedy for
her present deblUty and dismemberment.
Torn by conflicting philosophies and theologies,
lured by a thousand wiU-o'-the-wisps of pseudo-
377

MEANING AND VALUE OF MYSTICISM
mystical cults, helpless between a world that has lost
its way and a Church which seems bereft of all power
to guide, where shall the soul find anchorage and
renewal ? The great company of Christian mystics
answer. In personal, sacramental, unbroken com
munion with Christ. And we know they speak truly.
Such communion alone can remake the soul ; it alone
can recreate the Church. It is the soul of Mysticism,
the secret of its highest wisdom, the Impulse of its
most divine adventure.

378

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thh following selection from a large and growing literature
dealing directly or indirectly with Mysticism is offered in the
hope that it may prove useful to any who wish to pursue the
subject along the lines suggested in this volume.
GENERAL
W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism (London, 1899).
The standard introduction, indispensable to the student. Its emphasis
upon the historical background and philosophical implications of Mysticism
puts the reader into the position to appreciate specifically psychological
interpretations from the vantage-ground of a sound working knowledge of
the historical and metaphysical context of the subject.
Evelyn Underbill, Mysticism (London, 191 1).
The fuUest and best exposition in English of the psychological aspect ol
Mysticism. Contains a valuable and exhaustive bibUography of the writings
of the mystics.
W. K. Fleming, Mysticism in Christianity (London,
1913)-
A sound and lucid introduction which may profitably be used to supple
ment Inge.
RuFus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion
(London, 1909).
A most important and valuable historical study, written, however, from
the individualist point of view.
RuFus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and
lyth Centuries (London, 1914).
Supplementary to the above, and containing the results of original
research.
Baron F. von Hijgel, The Mystical Element of
Religion, 2 vols. (London, 1908).
Indispensable to advanced students. 379

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Of smaller books the following may be mentioned :
Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, The Garden of Nuts
(London, 1905).
The best brief introduction from the devotional side, full of insight and
charm.
C. F. E. Spurgeon, Mysticism in English Literature
(London, 191 3).
A thoughtful and suggestive little book.
W. H. Dyson, Studies in Christian Mysticism (London,
1913)-
A sound elementary exposition from the evangelical point of view.
SPECIAL
(i) THE PSrCHOLOGT OF MYSTICISM
E. R:icijAc, Essay on the Bases of the Mystic Know
ledge (Eng. trans., London, 1899).
A most valuable book, indispensable to the student.
H. Delacroix, Etudes d'Histoire et de Psychologie du
Mysticisme (Paris, 1908).
The best book for the student who wishes to specialise in the psychology
of Mysticism.
Th. Flournoy, Les Principes de la Psychologie
Religieuse (Archives de Psychologie, vol. ii.,
1903)-
Th. Flournoy, Le Genie Religieuse (Salnte-Croix,
1904).
A lecture to the members of the Swiss Students Christian Union.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
(London, 1902).
Henri Joly, The Psychology of the Saints (London,
1898). 380

BIBLIOGRAPHY
(2) THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
A. Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer (Eng. trans.
London, 1910).
An elaborate exposition of the mechanism, askesis, and experimental
theology of contemplative Mysticisra from the Roman Catholic point of
view. Important for the Protestant student's understanding of Catholic
Mysticism.Ven. Augustine Baker, Holy Wisdom, or Directions
for the Prayer of Contemplation (ed. Sweeny,
London, 1908).
A classic manual full of experimental wisdom.
G. B. Scaramelli, A Handbook of Mystical Theology,
abridged translation (London, 1912).
A brief and convenient introduction to the Cathohc doctrine of Con
templation aud its grades.
A. Chandler, Ara Coeli : Studies in Mystical Religion
(London, 1908).
Written from the Anghcan standpoint. A thoughtful and suggestive
interpretation. A. Chandler, The Cult -of the Passing Moment
(London, 1914).
An interesting reinterpretatlon of the timelessness of the mystic expe
rience, marred here and there by an anti-intellectual bias.
Geraldine E. Hodgson, In the Way of the Saints
(London, 191 3).
Brief studies in the leading characteristics of Christian Mysticism.
Cyril Hepher (editor), The Fellowship of Silence
(London, 1915)-
The story of a remarkable spiritual experiment.
Cyril Hepher, The Fruits of Silence (London,
1915).
A sequel to above.
Coventry Patmore, The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
(London, 1895).
An exhaustless treasury of fragmentary but profound and inspiring
thought. 381

BIBLIOGRAPHY
(3) MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY
John Watson, The Interpretation of Religious Expe
rience, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1912).
a historical and critical study from a moderate Hegelian standpoint.
A valuable discussion which will help the student to relate mystical specula
tion to the development of philosophical thought. Takes a critical position
towards Mysticisra.
Baron F. von Hugel, Eternal Life (Edinburgh, 1912).
Marked by great erudition and profound insight. The most exhaustive
discussion in English of a great fundamental concept of mystical religion
from the philosophical side.
Bernard Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality
and Value (London, 191 2).
Bernard Bosanquet, The Value and Destiny of the
Individual (London, 1913).
Both these volumes are of great interest and value to the student of
Mysticism for their thorough and unsparing critique of a shallow spiritual
immediacy and their acute discussions of the fundamental problems of
personahty and freedom. A most effective antidote to pseudo-mystical
looseness of thought.
E. R]Sc:6jAC (see above under " Psychology "), Parts I.
and IIL
Specially interesting on the philosophical side, because it approaches
Mysticism from the Kantian point of view.
W. R. Inge, Personal Idealism and Mysticism
(London, 1907).
A trenchant critique of Personal Idealism and Voluntarism.
John Caird, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
(Glasgow, 1880).
Still unsuperseded as an aid to the understanding of the mysticsl doctrine
ef Immanence, especially as expounded by Eckhart.
Edward Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek
Philosophers, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1904).
Specially valuable as helping the student to refer certain mystical concep
tions to their original source.
382

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual, 2 vols.
(London, 1900).
Full of suggestion and help towards a philosophical restatement of mystical
doctrine.
Herbert B. Workman, Christian Thought to the
Reformation (London, 191 1).
Contains a brief but excellent sketch of the philosophical background
of Christian Mysticism. (4) MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY
A. V. G. Allen, The Continuity of Christian Thought
(London, 1884).
A stimulating exposition and interpretation of theological struggles and
tendencies. Invaluable for the student who desires a brief but masterly
sketch of the theological background of Mysticism.
Herbert B. Workman (see above under " Philo
sophy "), chaps. Hi., iv., v., vi.
Thomas Allin, The Augustinian Revolution in
Theology (London, 191 1).
a brilliant if one-sided account of a theological period of high importance
for the student of Mysticism.
A. Harnack, History of Dogma, 7 vols. (London,
1894-99).
This monumental work may profitably be consulted as a corrective to the
Athanasian standpoint of the three first named.
J. A. Dorner, History ofthe Development ofthe Doctrine
of the Person of Christ, 5 vols. (Edinburgh,
1861-63).
The classic work on the development of Christological doctrine.
Charles Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria
(Oxford, 1886).
Indispensable for an understanding of the theological origins of Christiam
Mysticism.
Eugene de Fay, Gnostique et Gnosticisme (Paris,
1913)-
An original, erudite and unbiassed study, giving full documentary proofs.
See the same author's article, " Gnostic Sketches," in the Expositor for
February, 1915. 383

BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten
(London, 1900).
Written with a decidedly theosophical bias, but none the less interesting
and valuable for its quotations from Gnostic sources.
W. F. Cobb, Mysticism and the Creed (London, 1914).
Based upon the assumption that the Apostles' Creed was originally a
mystic symbol. Most suggestive but scarcely convincing, and marred by
allegorical artifice.
Evelyn Underhill, The Mystic Way (hondion, 1913).
An attempt to interpret the earliest Christian documents and the Roman
Mass in terms of the three-stage " mystic way." Interesting as an experi
ment, but never quite successful, and failing notably in the case of the life
of Jesus Himself. Of suggestive value.
R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality (London,
1901).
A profound piece of constructive theology, written from the standpoint
of Christian Mysticism.
C. E. Rolt, The World^s Redemption (London,
1913)-
A striking and original book, expounding the author's critique of the
current conception of Divine Omnipotence and his view of the doctrine of
Redemptive Creation. Full of interest for the student of Mysticism both
from the philosophical and the theological aspects.
W. M. Macgregor, Christian Freedom (London,
1914).
A study of the leading ideas of St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, giving
a fresh and stimulating view of the central mystic experience of Christianity.
W. L. Walker, Christ the Creative Ideal (Edinburgh,
1913)-
A thoughtful study in Cosmic Christology as found in the Epistles to the
Colossians and to the Ephesians. Symptomatic of our enlarging Christo
logical thought.
A. E. Waite, The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
(London, 1908).
This remarkable and erudite book is, in the words of the author, " a full
consideration of the Eucharist in the Divine Degrees of its communication."
In line with the great theosophical mystics.
384

BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. E. Waite, Studies in Mysticism (London, 1906).
An interesting book, based upon the assumption of the existence of a
Secret Tradition.
James M. Campbell, The Christ in Man (London,
1897).
A simple and attractive presentation of the doctrine of the Indwelling
Christ. Highly commended by the late Professor A. B. Bruce.
James M. Campbell, Paul the Mystic (London,
1907).
A useful popular study from the evangelical point of view. Specially for
preachers. (5) MYSTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a
Future Life, in Israel, in Judaism, and in
Christianity, second edition, revised and enlarged
(London, 191 3).
The standard work on Eschatology. Sufficient to put the student who
does not contemplate specialisation in possession of all relevant facts.
J. A. MacCulloch, Article " Eschatology " in Hast
ings' Encyclopcedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. v.
A comprehensive and up-to-date survey, with good bibliography.
James Moffatt, The Theology of the Gospels (London,
1912).
Contains in brief compass an admirable risumi of the problem as it
emerges in the Gospels.
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest ofthe Historic il Jesus,
second edition (London, 1911).
A brilliant volume, written from the standpoint of the extreme eschato
logical school of interpretation.
Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters
(London, 191 2).
A fresh but one-sided study in the transmutation of eschatology.
?8S

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Edwin A. Abbott, " The Son of Man " (Cambridge,
1910).
Extremely erudite and fuU of valuable and fruitful suggestion. The
mterpretations and conjectures are fanciful and unconvincing here and
there.
Edward W. Winstanley, Jesus and the Future
(Edinburgh, 191 3).
An able and useful study which seeks to mediate between the eschato
logical and the ethical schools of interpretation.
Ernest F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel : Its Purpose and
Theology (Edinburgh, 1908).
A striking study of Johannine ideas, written from the advanced critical
standpoint and a somewhat anti-mystical conviction. Chap. x. deals
more especially with the eschatological problem.
H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul's Conception of the Last
Things (London, 1904).
A sound and scholarly volume, marked by the sanity that avoids extremes.
Karl von Eckartshausen, The Cloud upon the Sanc
tuary (London, 1909).
A good translation of the classic exposition of the doctrine of the Holy
Assembly and its destiny, with a most valuable introduction by Mr. A. E.
Waite, and interesting Notes by the translator written from the theosophical
point of view.
John Pulsford, The Supremacy of Man (London).
A unique treatise on what may be termed mystical eschatology. A
classic in its own genre.

f\86

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADDENDA TO THE SECOND EDITION
A. E. Waite, The Way of Divine Union : Being a
Doctrine of Experience in the Life of Sanctity,
Considered on the Faith of its Testimonies and
Interpreted after a New Manner (London, 191 5).
A profound and illuminating study by one who writes out of an un
paralleled knowledge of mystical literature, and who is not only a master
in the interpretation of mystical doctrine and experience, but himself a
mystic of the first order. Specially profitable for readers who have a good
acquaintance with advanced mystical terminology. The writer's point of
view is Sacramentarian, though in the non-ecclesiastical sense, and he does
scant justice to the mystical element in Protestantism.
J. H. TucKWELL, Religion and Reality : A Study
in the Philosophy of Mysticism (London, 1915).
A notable contribution to the philosophical interpretation of mystical
experience by a thinker who, in his own words, has passed " from the strict
orthodoxy of one of the evangelical Christian Churches into which he was
born to that universal and inclusive view of religion presented by what
may appropriately be termed philosophical mysticism." Interprets the
mystic union in terms of metaphysical identity.
Annie L. Sears, The Drama of the Spiritual Life :
A Study of Religious Experience and Ideals
(New York, 191 5).
A careful and scholarly portrayal of the soul's pilgrimage as expressed
iu the Bible and ethnic scriptures, in poetry and general literature. Deals
with the mystical aspect of religious experience in a thoroughgoing and
instructive fashion, but with a marked detachment of attitude. Most
valuable as a complement and corrective to James' The Varieties of Religious
Experience. Professor Josiah Royce writes a cordial Introductory Note.
Concerning Prayer : Its Nature, its Difiiculties, and
its Value (London, 191 6).
An important and valuable volume embodying the result of an interesting
experiment in corporate thinking. It contains papers by such writers as
the author of Pro Christo et Ecclesia,^ Canon Streeter, Rev. W. F. Lofthouse,
and others — eleven in all — each writer treating of some definite aspect or
problem of prayer and being responsible for his own views. Professor
Rufus M. Jones contributes a fine study on " Prayer and the Mystic Vision,"
but all the papers are of vital interest to the student of Mysticism.
387

BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. W. Buckham, Mysticism and Modern Life (New
York, 1 91 5).
An attractive introduction to Mysticism in the wider sense. Specially
useful on account of its avoidance of technicalities. Traces the presence
of Mysticism in the various departments of modern life and Uterature.
J. P. Langham, The Supreme Quest; or. The Nature
and Practice of Mystical Religion (London, 1915).
A useful and practical exposition from the distinctively evangelical
point of view.
Jesse Brett, The Sacred Way (London, 1916).
A series of meditations upon the soul's pilgrimage. The author is steeped
in the thought of the great Catholic mystics, and like its predecessors,
The Garden of God, Wondrous Love, and Love's Ascent, this volume occupies
a place of its own in the literature of mystical devotion.
F. W. Drake, Masters of the Spiritual Life (London,
1916).
Brief biographical and expository studies forming useful introductions to
St. Augustine's Confessions, Lady Julian's Revelations of Divine Love,
Thomas k Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, Lorenzo Scupoli's The Spiritual
Combat, St. Francis de Sales' The Devout Life, and William Law's A Serious
Call.
Ernest F. Scott, The Kingdom and the Messiah
(Edinburgh, 191 1).
A full and scholarly exposition of the eschatological theory, marked by
a fine sense of proportion.
E. von DoBscHtJTZ, The Eschatology of the Gospels
(London, 1910).
A critical study by a well-known scholar.

388

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADDENDA TO THE THIRD EDITION
J. B. Pratt, The Religious Consciousness.
Baron F. von Hltgel, Essays and Addresses.
Baron F. von Hugel, The Philosophy of Mysticism.
Baron F. von Hugel, Mysticism and the Super
natural.
Evelyn Underbill, The Essentials of Mysticism.
Evelyn Underhill, The Life of the Spirit, etc.
Evelyn Underhill, Jacopone da Todi.
W. R. Inge, The Philosophy qf Plotinus.
W. E. Hocking, The Meaning qf God in Human
Experience.
R. H. Coats, The Realm of Prayer.
E. Herman, Creative Prayer.
B.. H. Streeter and A. J. Appasamy, The Sadhu.
E. T. Watkin, The Philosophy qf Mysticism.
A. Chandler, First-Hand Religion : Studies towards
the Practice qf Christian Mysticism.
E. J. Ives, The Message qf Thomas d Kempis.

389

INDEX

" A. E." (George RusseU), 170-173
Acosmism, 302
Activism, 318
Adamites of Paris, 86
Albertus Magnus, 114
Alchemy, spiritual, 361, 363
Alexandria, school of, 262
Alienation, 61
Aliotta, Prof., 253 {note)
AUen, A. V. G., 262
Angela de FoUgno, Blessed, 63, 67,
141-166, 329
a typical mystic, 141-142
her early inhumanity, 145
her Book of Visions, 145, 154,
162
her increasing charity, 146-147
her attitude towards her " chil
dren," 147, 159-161
her spiritual caution, 150
her sense of sin, 150-151, 164
superstitious elements in her
visions, 152
her evangeUcal quaUty, 153
her capacity for self-analysis,
'55 .
her sanity and balance, 158
her influence on Ubertino de
Casale, 162
her intellectual power, 259
Anti-intellectuaUsm its relation to Bergson's philo-
sophy,_243
in devotional Mysticism, 244-
248
in mystical literature, 257
Antinomianism, 84
Apprehension, mystic
its relation to the normal
faculties, 23-28
a susceptibiUty for God, 26-28
the faculty of the seer, 30-31
its nature, 32
is it attainable by aU ? 33-34

-Aquinas. See Thomas.
Aristotle, 255
Arnaldo, Fra, 154-160
Arnold, Matthew, 214
Art, 185, 186
Asceticism, 174-184
its Manichaean basis, 177
its strength, 179-180
its Christian motive, 181-183
its vicarious element, 183-184
its relation to illumination, 1.84-
185
its value, 235-236
Attention, spiritual, 29, 107
Auditions, 50
Augustine, St., 250, 256, 298
on contemplation, 131
his distrust of contemplative
vision, 132
his execration of Ught, 178
and Mysticism, 261
on the Divine Immanence, 321
Augustinianism, 261, 293
Auto-suggestion, 48-49, 51

Baker, Ven. Augustine, on mystic
Quiet, 120
Barine, A., 204
BasiUdes, 298
" Becoming " of God in time. See
God.
Beghards and Beguines, 83
Benedict, St., 180
Bergson, H., 243 {note)
popular perversion of his doc
trine, 271
Bernard, St., 176, 180, 263
his attitude to Nature, 17&
Blake, WiUiam, 215, 219, 221
Body, redemption of the, 360-368
in the Creeds,, 362
based on the soul's experience
of redemption, 363

391

INDEX

Body, redemption of the — contd.
its relation to sacramental doc
trine, 363
to the incarnation, 355
to the Resurrection, 365
Boehme, Jacob, 250, 333
on interior Quiet, 28
on social righteousness, 100
Bonus, 289
Bosanquet, Bernard
on the inadequacy of the given,
275, 280
on history, 326
Bradley, A. C, on Wordsworth, 215,
216
Brethren of the Free Spirit, the, 83,
86
Browning, Robert, 221
Bunston, Anna, 5

Caird, Edward, 2q8
Cambridge Platonists, 250, 256
Canton, WiUiara, 192
Carmelite nun, prayer of a, 178
Catherine of Genoa, St., 67, 63, 73
on disinterested love, 187
Catherine of Siena, St., 73, 176, 180
her attitude towards sin, 91-
9h 376
on " manly " courage, 175
Chandler, Bishop
on penitence, 97-98
on making God a means, 191
his Cult of the Passing Moment,
266-269
Chastity, spiritual, 191
Chesterton, G. K., 114
Christ, 89
the Christ in man, 114-117
the mystic's love of, 182-183,
189. 374-376
a personal Redeemer, 299-301,
303
the Hope of glory, 351
Church, mystic doctrine of, 356,
376-378
Clement of Alexandria, 261
Cloud of Unknowing, Tbe, quoted, 41
on auto-suggestion, 51-52
Coats, R. H.
on the contemplative ideal, 79-
80

Coats, R. H. — continued
on the inhumanity of Mysti
cism, 89
Cobb, W. F., 35, 328
Coleridge, S. T., 256
Comparative Religion, study of, 5
Contemplation its holy freedom, 79-80
its life-value, 81
not mere feeling, 81-82
its essence, 107
an askesis, 108-109
must beget a sense pf sin, 116
Cordelier, John, 244-245
Cowper, WilUam, 246
Creation, Redemptive, 310-316
Croce, Benedetto, 271-272
Cross, the
central to Christian Mysticism,
181-182, 186, 189-190, 339-340
and Nature-mysticism, 203, 206
the root of true joy, 192-191
its cosmic significance, 333-
334,338
its universal operation, 335
its glory, 336-339

Dark Night of the Soul, 194-195
Delacroix, H., 301
Dionysius the Areopagite, 256, 300
Dobschutz, E. von, 349
Dorner, J. A., 295
Dualism, 23
Manichaean, 22, 289
neo-Kantian, 265
Duhm, Bernhard, 289 {note)

Eckartshausen, C. von, 291, 357
on the Holy Assembly, 359,
360
Eckhart, Meister, 250, 256, 260
his alleged pantheism, 302-303
Ecstasy, 131
Emerson, R. W., 218
Erasmus, 175
Erigena, John Scotus, 250, 256, 261,
^77.
Eroticism, mystic, 222-223
Eschatology its relation to Mysticism, I17-
n8; 343-368

392

INDEX

Eschatology — continued
the eschatological school, 343-
. 345
Its value, 345-346, 350
its central problem, 348-350
in mystic doctrine, 350-368
mystical, 368
Esotericism false, 37, 290-291
true mystic type, 35-37, 41
Experience demands a reasoned interpre
tation, 252
includes thought, 253
narrow conception of, 313

Faber, F. W., i i i
Fellowship of Silence, The, 123-126
Finney, President, 133
Fleming, W. K., 208
Forsyth, P. T., 339
on Mysticism, 372-373
Francis of Assisi, St., 67, 90, 148,
175, 207
and Angela de Foligno, 143
his Nature-mysticism, 203-206
Francis de Sales, St., on the stig
mata of St. Francis of Assisi, 5

Gansfoort, John Wesel, 264
German theology. See Theology.
Gerson, 263 {note)
Gichtel, John G., 376
Gnosticism, 21, 22, 262, 291, 336-
338.
Gnostic Crucifixion, the, 337
God, doctrine of, 297
determines ethical quality of
Mysticism, 85, 99-ieo, 136-
137
E. Underbill's and Bishop
Chandler's doctrines con
trasted, 95-98
as a Divine " becoming " in
time, 305-307
in terms of physical force, 3 1 5
in terms of Redeeming Love,
315-316, 316-319
God, experimental knowledge ot,
'"^
Goethe, 15, 148, 2°°

Greek Theology. See Theology.
Greenwell, Dora, 228, 362
Gregory Nazianzen, St., no
Gwatkin, H. M., 16

Haering, Th., 289
Hallucination, 60-61
Harnack, A., 15
Harris, Rendel, 107
Hart, H., 289
Hegel, 263, 271, 307
and Bergson, 271-272
Hepher, Cyril. See Fellowship ef
Silence.
Herrmann, W., 16
Hilton, Walter, 36, 141
Historical facts of Christianity
"fact" and "process," 327-
328
attitude of mystics towards,
. 33°-33i
Hoffding, Harald, 276 {note)
HoUand, H. Scott, 296
Holy Assembly, the, 357-359
its inwardness, 358
defects of the concep tiou of, 376
Holy Spirit
mystic doctrine of, 352-357
social activity of, 355
Hooker, Richard, 298
Hiigel, Baron F. von
on ecstatics, 53
on St. Catherine of Genoa, 73
on Plotinus, 256 {note)
Hugh of St. Victor, on the sleep of
reason, 23
Humanity, a new, transmuted, 366,
368
Huxley, 232, 308
Hysteria, 57

Ignatius Loyola, St., 179
IlUngworth, J. R., 189
Illness, mystic, 58-59
Imitation of Christ, The, 180, 335
Immanence, 304, 321
of a personal Redeemer, 315
redemptive — and personaUty,
320-322
Immediacy, a false, 274
Inge, Dean, 16, 311 {note)

393

INDEX

Inge, Dean — continued
on Angela de FoUgno, 144, 145
on SymboUsm, 199-200, 202
on Lotze's monadism, 233
on love, 277
on the higher Reason, 277
on speculative Mysticism, 286
on Lady Julian, 302
on the doctrine of a Divine
"becoming," 305, 317
InteUect. See Thought; also
Reason.
IntellectuaUsm, 71, 318
Introspection, no
Introversion, iio-iig
Intuition falsely contrasted with thought,
253-254, 270
its twofold relation to the in
teUect, 275-276
nature of mystic, 277

James, William, 9, 12, 272
Jefferles, Richard, 231
Jesus. See Christ.
Johannine Mysticism, 331-333, 344,
353
John de Brunn, 83
John of the Cross, St., 5, 26, 81, 142,
154, 176, 235, 302
on psychic phenomena, 52-53
on self-denial, 191
Jones, Sir Henry, 277
Jones, Rufus M., 55, 83, 354
on religious psychology, 9
on auto-suggestion, 49
on stigmatisation, 64
Joy, mystic
rooted in the Cross, 192-193,
'95
JuUan of Norwich, Lady, 117, 154
her view of sin, 92-94
her Platonic quality, 259, 302
on faith, 277
her relation to Christ, 303

Kant, 273
Keats, John, 221, 228, 230
Kempe, Margaret, of Lynn
her vicarious sympathy, 90
Kenosis, 337-339

Kierkegaard, Soren, 336
Kingdom of God, mystic doctrine
of, 350-352, 366
Knowledge and mystic experience,
279-280

Lasson, A., 15
Law, WilUam, 36
on Introversion, 112-113
on the Christ within, 115
his appeal to reason, 258
on Eternal Nature, 333
Lessing, 326
Leuba, J. H.
on religious psychology, io-i2
Lindsay, Ruth Temple, 137
Logic and Mysticism, 257, 270
Logos-Conception, the, 256
its relation to Mysticism, 331
an undeveloped doctrine, 332
Loisy, Alfred, 281
Lotze, H., 232, 233, 243
Love the true mystic motive, 68
its stern discipline, 109-110
its exactions, 129-130
its disinterestedness, 187-188
as the unity of wiU and reasor,
277
and reason, 278, 322
Luther, Martin, 264-265, 286, 290

Macgregor, W. M., 278 {note)
Mackintosh, H. R., 290
McTaggart, J. E.,_257, 307 {note)
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 113
on sUence, 127
Magic, 361, 365
Manichaeism, 21. See also DuaUsm.
Marriage, mystic, its fecundity, 81
Maurice, F. D., 294
Mechthild of Magdeburg
on spiritual dereUction, 194
on love, 220
Meditation, 119"^
Methodius, 261 \
Mirror of Simple Souls, The, 79
Moberly, R. C, 353
Moffatt, James, 348
Monasticism, 77, 172
Montanism, 3

394

INDEX

More, Dame Gertrude, 68
on disinterested love, i88
Mystic feeling, 57, 66
Mystic Way, the, 13, 40, 48
Mysticism its historic function, 3-4, 261,
286 _ . .5 *, ,
revival of interest in, 4
its difficulties and ambiguities,
6-8, 16-17
its language, 13-14
definitions of, 14-16
degraded forms of, 34
its psychic phenomena. See
Psychic phenomena.
and practical benevolence, 74-79
and ethics, 85, 136-137, 309-
312,325
its perils, 86, 103, 134
its romantic quality, 86, 97
the basis of human brother
hood, 101-102
and asceticism. See Asceti
cism.
and Nature. See Nature.
and Philosophy. See PhUoso
phy.
and Theology. See Theology.
and Eschatology. See Escha
tology.
Mystics in what sense practical, 74-79
four main types, 169
their viriUty, 174
their personal love to Christ,
182-183, 189, 301-304
their practice of penitence, 184-
'«5.
essentiaUy thinkers, 250, 256-
260
Mystical faculty, special, 23-28,
272-273

NATURE-Mysticism, 20-,-2i9
Nature, raystic conception of, 230-
239
Pagan enjoyment of, 228-230
dependent upon God, 231
the aUeged cruelty of, 232
and man, 233, 324
and grace, 234, 236, 308, 334-
335

Nature — continued
value of ascetic attitude to
wards, 235
temporal and eternal, 238
Negative Road. See Via negativa.
Neoplatonism, 260
Nicoll, Sir W. R., 357
Noack, L., 15

Occultism, 34, 57
Oman, John, 16, 281, 287, 320
Origen, 261

Pantheism, 303-304
Christian, 315
Pascal, Blaise, 278
Patmore, Coventry, 37, 115, 221-
227, 367
on mystic apprehension, 30-31
on the marks of saintship, 41-
4^ . .
on spiritual impatience, 135
on the perils of spiritual exalta
tion, 135-136
on nuptial love, 223-224
on celibacy, 225
on a " bridal " dispensation,
226
on the redemption of natural
desires, 237-238
on the Incarnation, 365
Paul, St., 55, 58, 252, 313
Penitence, 184-185
Philo, 332
Philosophy and Mysticism, 243-
282, 308. See also Thought.
and life, 275
Platonism the great praeparatio mystica,
260-261
demand for a new Christian,
265-266
Plotinus, 73, 255, 261, 278, 282
on the higher inteUect, 24
his three "roads," 169
Pragmatism, 71-72
Psychic phenomena of Mysticism,
4.5-68
their relation to spiritual in
tuition and activity, 54-55,
57

395

INDEX

Psychic phenomena of Mysticism—
continued
their sacramental character, 57,
61
criterion of their validity, 61-
62
element of revelation in, 62-
Psychological interpretation of Mys
ticism, its disadvantages and
perils, 7-10
Psychology, 5, 46
its Umitations, 9
its relation to theology, io-i2
Pulsford, John, 324
on iUumination, 185
on the coming Kingdom, 366
on the " great feast " of hu
manity, 367
Puritanism, 185

Quiet, mystic, 119-122, 128-130.
See also The Fellowship of
Silence.
not sterile passivity, 120-122
not an end in itself, 128
Quietism, 120

Rageot, Gaston, 278
Rapture, 131
RashdaU, Hastings, 265
Reason the supremacy of, 277
the higher, 277
and love, 278
the Divine, 281
Recijac, E.
on hallucination, 60
on mystic symbols, 201, 203
on the supremacy of reason,
^73
Redemption, Christian doctrine of,
central to mystical theology, 307
Redemption, Cosmic, doctrine of,
293-294
not unethical or pantheistic,
309-310
based on the soul's experience
of Christ, 312-314
Ribot, T., 60
Richard of St. Victor, 81

Ritschhanism, 244, 265, 279, 286,
288, 293
its steriUsing eflect, 294-295,
312
Rolle, Richard, 141, 212 {note)
Rolt, C. E., 315 {note)
Romantic element in Mysticism, 86,
97
Rose of Lima, St., 148, 176, 180,
203
Rossetti, D. G., 221
Rothe, Richard, 295
RusseU, Bertrand, 270-271
Russell, George. See " A. E."
Rutherford, Mark, 185
Rutherford, Samuel, 86
Ruysbroeck, 81, 84, 88, 141, 301
on active love, 76, 88
on the liberty of the contem
plative, 80
on false peace, 87
on the exactions of Divine Love,
129
his " horrible " joy, 176
on spiritual chastity, 191
on reason, 259-260
on communion with Christ, 300-
301

Sacramentalism, mystic, 200-202,
224, 238, 363-364, 376
Schlatter, A., 288-289
Scholasticism, 263
Schopenhauer, A., 305
Schweitzer, A., 343, 348
Scott, E. F., 331
Scotus, John. See Erigena.
SheUey, Percy Bysshe, 221
Shur6, E., 291
Silence, interior. See Quiet.
The Fellowship of Silence. See
Fellowship.
Sin the mystic attitude towards,
89-94, 116, 184-185
mystic doctrine of, 325
Song of Solomon, 223
" Spiritual Reformers," 290
Staupitz, John v., 265
Steiger, J. de, 291
Stigmatisation, 64
Subconscious, the, 26

396

INDEX

Symbolism, true and false, 199-
202
S3rmons, Arthur, 188
Tagore, Rabindranath, 323
Teresa, St., 26, 81, 141, 154, 176, 180,
181, 194, 236, 285
on voices and visions, 50
on " silly devotions," 175
Tersteegen, 289
Theologia Germanica, 264, 323
Theology Greek, its influence on Mysti
cism, 27, 261
the dialectical development of
mystic symbols, 201
not a separable addition to
Christian experience, 252
Latin, its contribution, 262-
263, 293
German, and Mysticism, 286
Evangelical, and Mysticism,
287
its relation to Mysticism, 292
mystical, 297, 307, 373
neglect of speculative, 312-
313
Theosophy, 273, 361, 363, 373
Tber^se of Lisieux, Soeur, 38
Thomas k Kempis, 335
Thomas Aquinas, St., 256, 264, 281
importance of his work, 265
{note)
Thompson, Francis, 202, 221
on Paganism, 229-230
Thorold, AJgar, 154, 165
Thought not opposed to " life," 253-
255
its concreteness, 253, 278
its relation to spiritual insight,
256-257, 260
its relation to spiritual power,
266
its relation to intuition, 275-
277, 280-281
Time, 317, 319
Traherne, Thomas, 207-220, 256
on the Christ in man, loi
his infant paradise, 207-208
his affinity with St. Francis,
208, 210, 212

Traherne, Thomas — continued
unique quaUty of his Mysti
cisra, 208-209
his conception of Christ cru
cified, 211, 333
on love, 219-220
on history, 330
Transubstantiation, mystic, 57, 61,
202, 363
Troeltsch, Ernst, 332
on a new Christian Platonism,
266
TyrreU, G., 232-233, 281

Underbill, Evelyn, 7, 14, 120, i88,
245, 288, 290
her interpretation of Jesus and
St. Paul, 13, 251
on the mystical faculty, 23-
28
on mystic ill-health, 58-59
her doctrine of God, 95, 98
her definition of Mysticism,
98
on the art of contemplation,
204-206
her anti-inteUectualism, 249-
250
on Angela de FoUgno, 259
on life and knowledge, 279
Union, mystic, not absorption, 322-
323

Vaughan, R. A., 286
Via negativa, 298-299
Vision, moments of
their permanent influence, 132-
133
the penalty they exact, 134
their perils, 134-135
obedience the safeguard, 137
their value, 352
Visions. See also Psychic pheno
mena.
in the Scriptures, 55, 202
their value, 61-62
Voices. See Auditions.
Voluntarism, 281

Waite, A. E., 357, 35!>

397

INDEX

Watson, John
on the via negativa, 298
on the doctrine of a Divine
"becoming," 305-306
on Mysticism, 311, 320
Whyte, Alexander, 285
Wilmshurst, W. L., 291
Winstanley, E. W., 353
Wiseman, Cardinal, 15
Woolman, John, 90
Workman, H. B., 264
Word. See Logos.

Wordsworth, W., 29, 213-219, 256
his conception of purgation,
213-214
of contemplation, 213-214
his lack of human sympathy,
217-218
Zeb-un-Nissa, 187
on the discipUne of love, 109,
no
on its disinterestedness, 188
on absorption in the Divine, 323

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